homemaker

Most of our family traditions revolve around food.  It really doesn’t matter what the holiday is, there’s bound to be food involved.  Several years ago, my kids decided they wanted an Italian buffet for Christmas dinner, so I made my Utica (NY) Spaghetti Sauce, which is known to be the best on the planet.  My kids even lick the pan.  The secret is in the cooking.  It must be simmered for at least eight hours with meatballs and sausage or it really isn’t sauce.

I will be writing a lot about food in my next few blogs and giving you some recipes for the holidays.  If you would like the recipe for my sauce, just leave a comment at the bottom of the page and I will email it to you.

It’s Black Friday.  Did anyone get up at 3:00 a.m. to grab one of those high end, upper east side items?  Bet no one was there at 4:00 o’clock to check out the $2,500.00 shoes in these posh shops. 

What makes any item of clothing worth $18,000.00?  Does it come with a crate load of real gold coins?  Is it made from some animal skin that repels paint when a member of PETA tosses a can at it?

Well, I guess if you can afford to sail on the QE II, you’ll have enough left over to buy the $800,000.00 travel trunk to hold all your beyond-expensive garments.  And, you can find it on the same block in Manhattan.  Very convenient! 

I’ll bet the people who buy such things took their money out of the market last year and collected their bonuses before September of ‘08.

Anyway, happy shopping and see you at Walmart.

In case you missed it, a couple of days ago some guy attacked a woman in a grocery store parking lot in Raleigh.  When he jumped into her car and started beating her, several shoppers came to her rescue and one of them clocked the perpetrator with a frozen turkey.

As the thief tried to escape, apparently the turkey-brain-bashing kicked in, forcing the guy to crash into several cars just before the police stopped him.  The would-be hijacker is now in the hospital with serious head injuries.

How thankful is that lady to both the basher and the frozen turkey?  I’ll bet her family is grateful her rescuer just happened to be buying a frozen turkey on that day, at that time and so am I.  

Not only was a life saved but we now have a whole new line of self-defense products on the market.  I’ll bet a ten pound bag of ice would work , too. 

I don’t mean “Gestuno” which, no doubt is great for the deaf, but a sign language we can all use wherever we go or when foreigners visit us.  Imagine being understood everywhere in the world, simply by using our hands.

Many people talk with their hands flying all over the place anyway.  Too bad the signals aren’t specific words with actual meanings.

Many small children are being taught to “sign” nowadays before they become verbally skilled.  Wouldn’t it serve us better if we taught them a language that would be extremely useful as they grew, making them uni-lingual?

Wouldn’t it also be wonderful if computers could translate the words into international sign language so that we could communicate via the internet with everyone else in the world?

Why did a woman say she was taken into a building behind the grassy knoll, her camera taken from her and told she was never to discuss what she had seen that day?  I saw this woman interviewed on the Mike Douglas Show several years after the assassination.  She said she finally came forward because her children were grown and she felt they were no longer threatened.

Why did a famous organized crime attorney say he was at a meeting when the assassination was discussed before it took place and later quoted one of the attendees as saying, “You have to cut off the head to get the tail,” when referring to killing the president as a way of getting to the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy?  This was in one of the documentaries about JFK.

How can anyone believe the Warren Commission Report?  There are so many inconsistencies in this tragedy; will we ever know the real truth?

At first I thought it wasn’t true.  As it turns out, H.R. 800 and S. 1041 are bills waiting for your representatives to vote on again.  These two bills barely missed passing in 2007.  If passed now, “Card Check” will take away the federally supervised secret ballot process for unions.  According to “The Hill,” unions facing years of declining membership are desperately lobbying to have these bills passed, which will force people to vote openly on whether or not to join a union.

If this issue weren’t so serious, it would be funny.  Imagine a country where anyone could be forced to vote openly on anything.  Yikes!  Wasn’t our country founded  on the secret ballot so no one would be subjected to coercion from individuals or groups which practice intimidation?  Please go to the web page below and fill out the form at the bottom.

http://www.uschamber.com/issues/index/labor/cardchecksecrbal.htm

I guess that’s what the song says.  I don’t really care because I don’t drink beer.  But, you know what?  In my heaven there’s going to be chocolate mousse cake, Denali moosetracks ice cream, Jack’s chocolate chip cookies and big ass macaroni and cheese.

Who needs trumpets and music?  Just as long as there’s no salad, Weight Watchers’ stuff or Glucerna.

I am so sick of watching calories, salt, sugar, glycemic index and fat content on everything I put in my mouth, heaven has to be way better than this.

After I’m dead, if someone happens to find that last piece of apple pie mysteriously missing–I ate it!  Roving around in the dark, I’ll grab every bowl of chips and dip I can get my spooky hands on, then fall asleep in a heavenly rocking chair with a white robe draped over my gigantic belly.

Recently a young, female guest on the Dr. Phil show stated, “I like to text message while I’m driving so I don’t have to waste time talking to my friends.”

Seems to me there’s something wrong with this statement, maybe two or three things.

I guess we’ve created a whole generation of people who’d rather send messages via a small, electronic device than actually have a verbal exchange.  I find this strange because at one time, talking on the phone was a most desirable way of interacting with friends.  In fact, some people wouldn’t get off the phone except to eat.  The old-fashioned, talking type, wall phone rang constantly during dinner when my children were growing up.  They learned to swallow their food whole so they could return calls, then run out of the house to meet their friends and talk face to face.

Maybe texting is hot because we can keep eating while we’re interacting with others and technology has given us the ability to communicate under the table so we don’t really have to pay attention to what’s going on around us.

I cannot believe what I am reading with regard to the election backlash of people acting like fools because their candidate didn’t win.  Hey, my candidate didn’t win either but that doesn’t give me the right to burn a cross on someone’s lawn or scream hate slogans in public.  Have we turned into a society that lacks both good judment and values?

No one has given us the right to spew crap about people who do not share our skin tone or cultural heritage.  I suspect this phenomenon has a lot to do with the lack of respect the media and entertainers have shown to those in high positions.  Calling the president “Mr. Bush” is akin to calling the Pope “Benny” and a reflection of distain for leaders who do not agree with their politics or philosophies.  This example has left a legacy of disrespect unheard of in previous generations.

How sad that a country which had such great beginnings is deteriorating into a place where people allow themselves to behave in a manner that would make all of our ancestors weep with shame.

My eighty five year old step mother from Utica, New York summed up the election by stating that “people are just fed up.”  Looking back on terrorist attacks, an unpopular war (was there ever a popular one?) congressional scandals that criss-crossed party lines and a recent stock market history that defies explanation from any source, people just want “change.”  It doesn’t even matter what the change is.  The Republicans can stop wringing their hands wondering what went wrong.  Their loss started when elected officials began believing that sending inappropriate e mail to congressional aides, taking kick backs from big companies and not restricting financial borrowing procedures were all good ideas.