Here I am cleaning up after my carpenters at the end of the day.  I go by every evening Mon-Fri to pick up trash.  I don't have to do it, but it makes me feel like I'm helping build my own house.

Umm Umm Good

A friend of mom's gave me some green tomatoes the other day with instructions that I should fry them up for mom.  We did that tonight and they were DELICIOUS!!!  The best I've ever made.  It was a new recipe I tried and I think it's a keeper. Here it is:

5 green tomatoes, 2 cups flour, 1 TBS salt, 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper, 2 eggs, 1/4 cup milk, 2 cups bread crumbs, 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, 2 TBS minced fresh cilantro, and the zest of 1 orange.

Trim the ends off each tomato, then cut into slices about 1/2 inch thick. Arrange the tomatoes on a cooling rack and allow to stand 15 to 20 minutes (to drain, to help reduce the mush factor). Or you could place the slices on paper towels to drain them.

In a wide bowl, combine the flour, salt and pepper. In a second bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk. In a third bowl, combine the bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, cilantro and orange zest.

Heat about 1/2 inch oil in a wide, heavy skillet over a medium-high flame. Dredge the tomato slices first through the flour, lightly coating both sides. Next, drag each floured slice through the egg-milk mixture, again covering both sides. Finally, place the slices in the bread crumbs, coating both sides evenly.

Fry the tomato slices two or three at a time, turning once, until golden brown on both sides. Return to the cooling rack to drain excess oil. (Again, you could drain the excess oil by placing slices between paper towels.

Serve hot. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Note: For a more authentic Southern flavor, add some bacon drippings to the vegetable oil before frying.

The insurance company is coming by on Monday to look at the car and give me an estimate of what they think it should cost to repair the door.  Then I take the car to a body shop and see if they'll fix it for what the insurance company estimates.  I just hope it doesn't take a long time to have it fixed. 

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later . . . and now that it has, I don't have to worry about it happening any more.  We have had a boo boo on the car.  Someone backed into my car last night . . . but it could have been a lot worse.  He hit ONLY the back door.  Neither the front door nor the back fender were affected at all, so I feel rather fortunate really.

Ggily said she'd like to see the rest of the note cards I made for my friend, so here they are.

Alice and I were supposed to go to a surprise birthday party today, but the birthday girl wasn't feeling well and canceled her lunch date with another friend.  What could we do? We couldn't say "Hey, how bad do you really feel, because we're having a party for you".  I printed out some note cards as her gift, and this is one of the six flowers I chose for her dozen cards.  I'll give them to her on Tuesday when we have our regular meeting.

This is our Thursday Scrabble game.  You see, Alice comes on Thursdays to do mom's chores (I do them on Mondays) and stays for lunch and then we all play a game of Scrabble. Today, Alice helped mom make my birthday cake.  It was a chocolate oat cake.  YUM.  My birthday is this Sunday the 16th, but Alice was there to help today so today it was. 

As you can see, mom takes her Scrabble games very seriously.  She is a very good player.

This was the sky I saw last night on my way back to my apartment after checking out the new house job site.  I thought it was especially pretty even though there wasn't much pink in the sky. Yesterday morning was a very pleasant morning with lots of cloud cover, but by 1PM it turned into a scorcher.

I wasn't at all sure what this was, but my son said it was called Mexican Bird of Paradise.  It made for a gorgeous bush with dozens of these beautiful blooms. 

See what the individual blooms look like up close. I'm wondering if this plant would grow in Oklahoma.

I even caught a honey bee collecting pollen.  He wasn't concerned about me at all.

Don't forget that you can click on any of the pictures and touch the F11 key to see a larger version of the picture.

The other day as I was walking out my front door I heard something above me and I looked up to see what it was and was delighted to see this colorful hot air baloon.  I ran back in the apartment as fast as I could to get my camera and got outside just barely in time to get this shot.  It was a breezy morning as I recall and the baloon was traveling at a pretty good clip. 

I used to think I'd like to take a ride in one of these things, but ever so often I hear about someone getting killed when their gondola gets tangled up in high voltage electrical wires.  That's enough to stiffle the urge for a while, but they sure are beautiful to watch.