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Monday, February 24, 2014

Losing volleyball = bad grammar binge

Sometimes in life you may lose a volleyball game or two.  When you lose three in a row, there is nothing left to do but to look up horrid examples of grammar online to make you laugh once again.  Thank you, bad grammar.  You always make me laugh and cry.

Peace, love, and tell me the one about "Let's eat Grandma" again,
Ms. Daisy

What?  It was either that or the People of Walmart.



 

Monday, February 17, 2014

Never Give Up Hope

Do you ever sigh and think this world will never change, no matter what you do?  Do you throw your hands to the sky and wonder when things will be different?

I am here to tell you - NEVER give up hope.  You can change the world.

If you didn't see the post dating from the 29th of January, this may not make any sense to you, but if you did, please rejoice wildly along with me.  (I'm so excited I don't even care that they ended "Thank you" with a comma.)

Peace, love and proper lexicon,
Ms. Daisy

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Silver Polish, version 2.0 - the easy way

 I wrote a post a long time ago wherein I found a recipe for silver polish from the Compendium for Cookery (circa 1890) - it's here.

I am glad for that recipe, but it is a paste.  And you know, with pastes, you must slather and slop and blaggle (I just made that up, but you get the idea) it all over the silver items in all of their nooks and crannies while scrubbing.  And your hands have to touch the stuff, which gets you all silvery smelling (do you know what I mean?  Its that sort of sulfur smell, sort of unpleasant, but not completely overpowering?) and all dirty.  

If it is between that recipe and the general run of the mill toxic chemical stuff made in factories and sold to you at your favorite retailer, I will choose the sloppy blaggle every single time - both for the reason of cost (to make a paste it costs about five cents - well, okay, I don't know, but I'm just guessing.) and for the toxic exposure.


BUT!

Oh, my lovely friends.  You have to try this.  I have something that is homemade, cheap, and you DON'T HAVE TO TOUCH OR SCRUB!  Wooo!

So, I'm having a tea party tonight and I looked at my china cabinet and was like, um yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, people are going to be choosing their tea cups today and alas, there, beneath the tea cups, is the silver tea set which looks like it was in a soot fight with Mary Poppin's friend, Bert, who cleans fireplaces.  So.  I tried to dig out my old paste recipe and didn't have it on a 3x5 card in my handy-dandy 3 ring binder, so I went online.

What did I find there, m'dears?  A very simple recipe for a silver dip.  No, not like you're going to eat the dip with chips, a dip to dip your stuff in.

(Just in case you were wondering.)

It looked so easy I had to do the science experiment.

You need to try this.  For real.  It's cheap, quick and did I mention there is NO SCRUBBING?

Yes.  Ahem.  

I am partial to those kinds of things, especially when I am in a hurry like today.

Here's what you do:
1.   Get your disgusting looking tarnished silver and marvel at how utterly horrid it looks.
2.  Fill up your sink with the hottest water you can.  Make it deep enough to put your silver items in so that they will be submerged.
3.  Put a piece of aluminum foil on the bottom of your sink.  I just made it about the size of the sink.
4.  Sprinkle salt and baking soda into the cauldron sink.  I don't know how much, maybe 2 teaspoons?  Maybe 2 tablespoons?  Whatever.  You don't need to measure.
5.  Stir it up with a wooden spoon.
6.  Place disgusting looking tarnished silver items in the water.
7.  Wait.  It may lay in there for up to 5 minutes.
8.  Watch as before your very eyes it turns from black to shiny silver.
9.  Cheer.
10.  Figure how to get it out of there without touching it (this is a Ms. Daisy thing.  I suppose you could touch it, but I don't know how toxic it is.  I used tongs to lift it out and the wooden spoon to balance it.).
11.  Dry it with some paper towel.
12.  Marvel at how shiny it is and you didn't even have to do anything difficult.  Wow.  Yeay!

I believe the last time I actually polished my silver was that last post, so you can imagine that it was quite oxidized.  If this is all it takes to clean silver in the future, I may actually be inspired to keep it clean.

I had to tell you.

Now, go on, try it!

Peace, love and party, party, tea party,
Ms. Daisy

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Winter = the devil

Apparently I am living amongst Mr. Beaver, Lucy and Tumnus.  I am living in the reign of the White Witch in perpetual winter and let me just tell you, I don't like it one bit.

I don't know if you remember, but on New Year's day I wrote a post about shoveling the snow.  I am pretty sure I have been shoveling snow continuously since that day.  I wake up, I look out the window, grit my teeth together in some sort of menacing snarly way and say, "OH...GOODIE...IT...SNOWED.  AGAIN."  It is a wonder I haven't broken any yet.

And then, I go outside with a shovel and lift thousands of pounds of snow off of my driveway and sidewalk up to snowdrifts that are so high, most of the snow you are shoveling tosses onto the side of it so that it rolls down the mountain and you get to shovel it five times.  The piles are higher than the fences now.  

Some of you may think, "Oh, but snow is so lovely!"  (While you bat your eyes and clasp your hands near your cheek.)  I dare you to say it to my face.  Apparently you have not shoveled thousands of pounds of snow daily and live in a place that is not drowning in snow.  I met two girls who are exchange students from Uruguay.  They said the first week of snow was real excitement!  Ooh!  Lovely, it's -5F/-20C!  What a novelty!  And now, after three weeks of snow dump and negative temperatures and 30 mph winds, they are ready to jog back to the land of 120 degrees F and delightful beaches, tank tops and shorts.

I suppose it does not help that almost every shovel scoop is a full one, so not much progress is had, especially since if you finish a section, by the time you are done, it is covered in snow again.

Yes, Susie mama, I'm all done with winter.  

Peace, love and OH JOY, I need to go shovel some more,
Ms. Daisy 

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Gallbladder: Part 4 - The Flush

Good gravy, my friends.  Gallbladders are something else.  I have been on the ride with the gallbladder for quite a while now in the vicarious way through my dear hubby.

Last week (ish), hubby went to a crazy genius triple doctorate doctor who exclaimed wildly that, "This is easy!" and recommended a liver flush.

This is the story of said flush and its results.

According to this flush, hubby needed to prep by doing two things - taking Standard Process phosfood and drinking raw organic apple juice.  Gallstones are part calcium and part cholesterol balls.  The bigger, harder ones are made of more calcium.  Phosfood is a phosphorus supplement - and since calcium and phosphorous are on the see-saw together, when you bump your phosphorus up, you can drop the calcium (and thus, softening the gallstones).  Otherwise, there is a component within raw organic apple juice that is called malic acid - this puppy shrinks those gallstones like nobody's beeswax.

He had to drink at least 6 cups (48 oz. +) of the apple juice for three days.  Some flushes say that on the third day, you fast except for drinking apple juice, but the one we were following did not say that (which made hubby really happy because he loves food).  

So, the night of the flush, I mixed up a lovely concoction (according to the directions of the flush) of 8 oz. organic extra virgin olive oil and the juice of a lemon and a half.  I shook it up in a jar for him to slightly emulsify it.  I don't know why.  I just felt bad, I guess, and I thought this would make it look nicer.

He drank it around 10:00 p.m. and then he laid down on his right side (that's what we were told he ought to do) for 30 minutes.  This was the time of nervousness.  Up to this point, hubby has had severe issues with his gallbladder when he ate fat.  And now he just drank a cup of olive oil.  He was freaking out that he was going to have an attack.  But don't worry, he didn't.

He tried to go to sleep.  I kept twitching when I was falling asleep so I kept him awake, but hey, I could not help it.  It's how I roll.  Eventually he fell asleep, but it was a light sleep and not of very good quality.

At 4:00 a.m., he woke up.  Since he was awake, he tried to go to the bathroom.  No gallstones.  But now he felt a little nauseous.  He was sure it wasn't going to work and he was just going to barf his guts out.

At 7:00 a.m., he woke up again.  Bathroom, yes.  Gallstones, no.

At 9:00 a.m., he went in for another bathroom party and guess what?  Gallstones, baby!  Those gross little puppies were floating!  We were not like other people who save them and put them on paper towels and take pictures of them, I am sorry to report to you.  If you'd like, I'll tell you that they were green and small and floated.

After this, he decided to try to have a little bit of a pancake.  It was the first time that he had eaten anything since August and his stomach didn't do flips and turns and churns and burgles.  He was so happy he could have said, "Hooray."  But I am more the spaz in the relationship, so he didn't say anything and I said, "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!".

At lunch he ate some other food and he said he felt normal.  He was very happy about this.

At dinner he ate spicy food and even took a bite of my grass-fed burger (something that was an instant trigger for him before) and felt fine.  (He's a daring fellow, eh?  Actually, I don't think he could stand the smell of the deliciousness without giving it a try.)

He did say that he felt a little sore on his right side, but it was not the way that it used to be.  I am happy to say that he thought it was not a big deal, although he initially thought it was going to kill him and his face off.  

If you are going to do it, let me encourage you to try it.  It's basically like you're just having a gulp of some delicious lemony dressing and just try to think that you're a brave, brave wild person and try to get through it.

We are more than a week out and he has had no gallbladder attacks (phew), lessened gallbladder pain (hooray! He says it is not the same pain.  It's like it is a sore muscle.  It used to be that when food touched his tongue, it would FREAK OUT.) and he is able to eat foods he was not daring to try before.  He is going to do the flush again, this time the official Dr. Hulda Clark flush - to see if it will increasingly improve.

(Speaking of Hulda, do you know about this lady?  She wrote a book called The Cure for All Diseases.  She's very interesting indeed.)

I'll keep you posted.

Peace, love and flush that thang!
Ms. Daisy


Saturday, February 1, 2014

New Look!

Hello, friends!

I just wanted to write to let you know I have a new blog look.  I know most of you get your dose of Ms. Daisy emailed to you and as a result, you just get plain text (well...I mean, it is pink, so it does have some fancy to it, but you know what I mean.).

So, if you want to take a gander at what's up, check me out.  Spicy.

http://www.pinksthinks.com

Peace, love and cheers to free time on a Saturday,
Ms. Daisy

(It must be the brownies.)

Baking Up Deception: Beet Brownies?

Ha-llo, lovies!  I have crossed the line today, my dears.  There was the line.  Here am I.  One hundred miles past.  Do you have any idea what I have done?  Let me tell you.

I have just made beet brownies.


Yes.  I know.  When I read the title of the recipe at first, I also threw up in my mouth.

But here is what happened - last week or so ago, I purchased some very dirty beety looking bunch of beets from my favorite local health store because I was absolutely DETERMINED to figure out something to do with beets.  It would be so wonderful to like something about beets!  I decided to do something.  This is because beets, to me, are something like a foreign language.  Something tremendously exotic, wild and foreign.  I never had them growing up (I had never had guacamole either until I was probably 30, nor an avocado - those things were wild Mexican flavors and the family of origin's idea of going tremendously food party wild is using salt and pepper on hamburger.).

I looked on some websites for beet recipes and most of them came back to me in the form of pickled beets (gag), beets with arugula and goat cheese (barf my intestines out - not only do I hate beets, I think goat cheese smells like rotten diseased feet with yellow chunky fungus growing on them), and beet tartlets with goat cheese (more barf in the mouth).  I hate beets.  I know very often people describe them as "earthy".  I consider this the most laughable understatement of the entire world.  Eating a bit of beets to me is something akin to me going out to the backyard in the spring, opening my mouth wide as can be and thrusting my whole face into the garden dirt while shaking my head back and forth in an effort to apparently find worms and compete with the local robins.  I don't taste the "sweetness" that people talk of.  I taste 100% straight up dirt.

I also feel the same about feta cheese.  Well, not the dirt part.  It's more like the sentiment I feel for goat cheese (= chunky rotten yellow foot fungus).  But wouldn't it be so sophisticated to like it?  I think so.  However, alas, I have failed at all attempts.  Add it to the pile with lamb.  Sad.

So, more than my hate for beets is the absolutely disturbing nature of the thought of wasting anything.  I couldn't waste the beets.  I had to do something.

And then I came across the recipe for beet brownies.  After my initial reaction of yelling at the computer and telling it how absolutely horrid and disgusting it was, I decided that if I could hide beets in chocolate, maybe people would eat it.  Maybe I would even eat it.  Maybe.  And if I couldn't, my littles would.

I mean, can you even THINK of a weirder thing to put in your brownies?  I had my hubby guess "what is the weird ingredient I put into the brownies" game and he came up with some also disgusting things, namely onions (wow, yep, that would be gross), broccoli (also hideous) and squash.  Worse, worse and WORSE, I cried!

When I told him, he said beets were not worse.  I suppose that may be in the eye of the beholder?

Anyway, I made this recipe with my littlest little who didn't know what beets were, so when we added this red puree to the mix, he merely said, "Mmm!"  (Although, I must warn you - oldest little jumped for rejoicing joy at the sight of my hubby bringing home cereal - I never buy the stuff.  Do you know what treat caused such great delight and spaztastic overwhelming titillation?  Erewhon Buckwheat and Hemp cereal.  No, I am not kidding.  He asked if he could have it for dessert after dinner.  We may have realized at that time that perhaps our children have either a very advanced palate, or are a teensy bit food sheltered.  Must be advanced palate.)  

At any rate, This is the very adorable, fantastic website I found this creative recipe on: The Way To My Family's Heart blog.  (Obviously she's creative - she made beet brownies! )

I tweaked it just a teensy bit,  Ms. Daisy style.  Here it is:


3 organic beets, peeled
3 free-range, large eggs
3 tbsp. organic molasses
1 cup organic cane sugar
1/2 cup organic coconut oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup cocoa powder (Now organic brand, GMO free)
3/4 cup freshly ground organic spelt berries flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp kosher or sea salt
1 smashed up bar of dark chocolate (72%), without soy lecithin

In a medium saucepan, cover the beets with water by an inch.  Place the pot over medium high heat and bring the water to a boil.  Reduce the heat to medium and simmer the beets until they are soft enough to easily be pierced through the center with a knife, about 25 minutes.  Drain the beets and puree them (I used a blender).  You may need to add a tablespoon or two of water to the beets to get them to puree smoothly, add only what you need.  Set the beet puree aside to cool.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl whisk together the eggs, oil,  and sugars.  Add the vanilla extract and beet puree and whisk to fully combine.  Mix the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt into the wet ingredients.  Stir in the smashed bits of chocolate bar.

Pour the batter into a 8x8 inch baking pan.  Bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the brownies comes out clean but still moist.  There you have it.


She is a genius, for sure.  I ate beets.  (Yes, never mind that they were hidden inside of brownies.)  And I can only barely think of the garden (it may not help to continually repeat the words, "There are beets in these brownies, there are beets in these brownies..." while you chew.) and it's dirty dirt flavor.  Seriously, you should try them.  Even you, Julie D.  They don't beat your G-brownies, but hey - can you think of any other way to trick your family into consuming beets?  Exactly my point.

Peace, love and make sure you're wearing your patchouli while consuming these,
Ms. Daisy







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