09.23.2008

Hello and Happy Fall. I hope everyone is having fabulous weather like we're having here in southern West Virginia. The days have been sunny with low humidity and the most blue skies and the nights are cool and crisp. So enough about the weather--let's see what we have to share this week.. ~Toni
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Here's a recipe from Marianne:

Baked French Toast Casserole with Maple Syrup
1 loaf French bread (13 to 16 ounces)
8 large eggs
2 cups half-and-half
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Dash salt
Praline Topping, recipe follows
Maple syrup

Slice French bread into 20 slices, 1-inch each. (Use any extra bread for garlic toast or bread crumbs). Arrange slices in a generously buttered 9 by 13-inch flat baking dish in 2 rows, overlapping the slices. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, half-and-half, milk, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt and beat with a rotary beater or whisk until blended but not too bubbly. Pour mixture over the bread slices, making sure all are covered evenly with the milk-egg mixture... Spoon some of the mixture in between the slices. Cover with foil and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Spread Praline Topping evenly over the bread and bake for 40 minutes, until puffed and lightly golden. Serve with maple syrup.

Praline Topping:
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and blend well... Makes enough for Baked French Toast Casserole.
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If you like cute animal pictures (and who doesn't!) check out this blog http://www.cuteoverload.com/
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This time of the year always reminds me of apples. My grandparents had the nicest apple orchard. Grandpa would take me when he went to pick apples and more than one year I got a bit carried away sampling and ended up with a tummyache. Grandma would make her own applesauce and can it and bake traditional apple pies and also my favorite, applesauce pies. I'll put that recipe in a future issue. But for now I thought it would be fun to learn some facts about apples.

· Apples are a member of the rose family.

· Although apples are now considered...well... as American as apple pie, they weren't native to this country. Apples were brought here by the Pilgrims, who found North America's native apple species--crabapples--to be inedible.

· In colonial times, apples were called "winter banana" or "melt-in-the-mouth".

· What did kids do before video games? Settlers made toys for their children from whatever was at hand, including apples. "Apple dolls" were made by carving a face in an apple and allowing it to dry.

· Why do apples float? Because 25% of an apple's volume is air.

· It takes the energy of 50 leaves to produce just one apple.

· The whole process of digesting a raw apple takes only 85 minutes, which makes an apple one of the easiest vegetable substances for the stomach to deal with.

· Apples have long been associated with love and marriage. In ancient Greece, an apple constituted a marriage proposal. A man would toss an apple to his beloved, and if she caught it, it meant she had accepted his offer. An Irish and Scottish custom called for throwing an apple peel over your shoulder, which, when it landed, would form the initial of your lover's name. Even the tradition of throwing rice (or now, birdseed) at a wedding is rooted in an ancient practice in which apples were thrown at the newlyweds. Rice and birdseed probably result in a lot less bruising...on both the apples and the bridal couple.

· Apples were one of the foods selected for the first space flight around Earth.
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~Cool Picks From Phyllis~

Hello ladies! I'm here to share another website that I think is pretty cool, and I hope you will too! This weeks Cool Pick is http://www.roadsideamerica.com/

If you're planning a trip out of state and like "weird" and unusual attractions, check out this site for must see places. Even if you're not going on a trip, its still a fun website to visit. It's interesting to see what attractions are listed in your own state. Click on "Maps" at the top left hand side of the page, and then click on your state to get a listing of offbeat tourist attractions. They even have listings of 'Gone But Not Forgotten' places....like The Museum of Menstruation in Maryland. (Perhaps its a GOOD thing that its gone!) One of my favorite sites that is still (barely) in operation is Spongeorama in Tarpon Springs Florida. I'm definately going to go there someday! In the meantime, its fun to see the oddities all around the country. So give Roadside America a peek the next time you're planning a trip, or if you're just feeling bored and want to see unusual sights in other states.
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Last week I included a riddle from Cheryl

What is greater than God,
More evil than the devil,
The poor have it,
The rich need it,
And if you eat it, you'll die?

The answer is "nothing".
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~Handyman John~

Hi there! Another subject your readers may find informative is tire pressure. It's the most overlooked automotive maintenance chore, yet one of the most important. Not only for gas mileage issues but mostly for safety. Underinflated tires causes poor handling in steering & cornering and can heat up substantially to the point of tire failure.
If you don't have a tire pressure gauge, get one. They're inexpensive and can be picked up at any parts store, Wal-Mart, etc. Don't depend on the built in gauge at the gas station air pump. It's been used & abused by everyone coming & going and not going to be accurate. If you're going to Wal-Mart to pick up a tire gauge anyway, might as well pick up a 12 volt tire inflater that you plug into the cigarette lighter and keep it in your trunk and save a trip to the station. :) If you do happen to be at your local station & you need air, cruise by the diesel pumps (if your station has a lot of truck traffic). Sometimes they have a freebie air hose there the truckers use.
Anyway, check your tire pressure at least once a month, more often in colder months since the cooler outside air temperature has an effect on inflation pressure. Ideally check it in the morning after your car has set overnight. And go by the tire manufacturer recommended p.s.i. on the sidewall. Believe it or not a lot of tire shops don't do this. I've had them inflate my tires to 32 p.s.i. (which poorly trained mechanics wrongly assume is for all tires) when the correct pressure for these tires was 44. And be sure to check your spare. Yes it's a pain to get to, but less of a pain than some dark & rainy night when you might need it.
Hope this has helped someone. Remember: Take care of your equipment & it will take care of you.
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Did you know this week in September is:

Banned Books Week - Celebrate Your Freedom to Read September 24–October 1, 2005 (Banned Books Week 2005 is September 23 - September 30)
Source: American Library Association Web site: www.ala.org/bbooks

Dog Week (National, US) -- Observed the last full week of September
http://www.nationaldogweek.com/
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We sure have been hearing a lot about money and banks and the stock market the past few weeks. So my pick this time for word origins is:

Bull & Bear Markets
These two stock market terms appear in the early 18th century. Bear was the first to appear, referring to the practice of selling stock one does not yet own for delivery at a future date. The expectation would be that the price would fall in the meantime, enabling the speculator to buy the stock at a lower price. Such speculators were called bear-skin jobbers after the proverb to sell the bear’s skin before one has caught the bear. Gradually, the term took on the meaning of being generally pessimistic about stock prices. From Sir Richard Steele’s Tatler of 1709:
Being at that General Mart of Stock-Jobbers called Jonathans...he bought the bear of another officer.

And:

I fear the Word Bear is hardly to be understood among the polite People; but I take the meaning to be, That one who ensures a Real Value upon an Imaginary Thing, is said to sell a Bear.
Bull appears a few years later, in 1714, and was almost certainly influenced by bear. From Charles Johnson’s The Country Lasses of that year:
You deal in Bears and Bulls.

There is commonly told story that the origin of these terms stems from the fighting styles of the two animals. A bear presses down on its opponents, crushing them, while a bull hooks them with its horns and lifts them skywards. This is just bunk with no evidence to support it.
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Free granola bar http://startsampling.com/sm/100462/captureAddress.iphtml?item=100462&source
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I recently read The Shack by William P. Young. I really was touched by the book and thought you might want to check out the web site to see if it's a book you would enjoy. http://www.theshackbook.com/read.html
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PHOENIX - "Man's best friend" doesn't go far enough for Buddy — a German shepherd who remembered his training and saved his owner's life by calling 911 when the man had a seizure.
And it's not the first time Buddy has been there for owner Joe Stalnaker, a police officer said Sunday.

On a recording of the 911 call Wednesday, Buddy is heard whimpering and barking after the dispatcher answers and repeatedly asks if the caller needs help.

"Hello, this is 911. Hello ... Can you hear me? Is there somebody there you can give the phone to," says the dispatcher, Chris Scott.

Police were sent to Stalnaker's home, and after about three minutes Buddy is heard barking loudly when the officers arrived.

Scottsdale police Sgt. Mark Clark said Stalnaker spent two days in a hospital and recovered from the seizure.

"It's pretty incredible," Clark said. "Even the veteran dispatchers — they haven't heard of anything like this."

Clark said police are dispatched whenever 911 is called, but that Stalnaker's address was flagged in Scottsdale's system with a notification that a trained assistance dog could call 911 when the owner was incapacitated.

Clark said Stalnaker adopted Buddy at the age of 8 weeks from Michigan-based Paws with a Cause, which trains assistance dogs, and trained him to get the phone if he began to have seizure symptoms. Buddy, now 18 months old, is able to press programmed buttons until a 911 operator is on the line, Clark said.

Clark said Buddy has made two other 911 calls when Stalnaker was having seizures.
He said Stalnaker's seizures are the result of a head injury he suffered about 10 years ago during a military training exercise.
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Cheryl sent this in and it has some good information for all of us:

To whom it all concerns: Just a word to the wise. E-mail petitions are not acceptable to Congress or any other municipality. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address. Same with prayer chains -- be wary. Almost all e-mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all this type of e-mail is, is to get names and cookie tracking info for telemarketers and spammers to validate active e-mail accounts for their own purposes. Any time you see an e-mail that says forward this on to '10' of your friends, sign this petition, or, you'll get good luck, or what ever, it has either an e-mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and e-mails of those folks you forward to, or the host sender is getting a copy. Each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' e-mails to use in spam e-mails, or sell to others that do. Check it out: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/internet.htm