Caturday!

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Things I Have Learned While Working At The Health Department

-- If the security guard won’t let you in the county courthouse with your expensive camera phone, you should walk back to your car and lock it in your trunk instead of hiding it in one of the garbage cans at the Health Department next door. On the other hand, you have probably provided the homeless guy who lurks in the basement with some badly needed cash. God bless you, brother.

-- When the nurse at the intake desk tells you that you can’t get an H1N1 shot because you aren’t under 24, don’t have an underlying medical condition, and aren't the primary caregiver for an infant under six months, coming back thirty minutes later and getting in another line with a different nurse isn’t going to do you any good.

-- Walking up to the vital records desk and asking if you can bury someone in your back yard is quick way to meet some new friends.

-- Please do not block the handicapped entrance while you are berating a staff member at the free clinic for not having a handicapped entrance.

-- There is a clean, well-lit, roomy unisex single-stall bathroom right next to the women’s restroom on the third floor. Use it. Do not bring your three little boys into the women’s restroom with you so that while you are otherwise engaged, one of them can discover that the latch holding the door shut on the last booth against the far wall is defective. It was news to me, too.

Quote of the Day

In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep;
for we are dying the darkness and we know no death. ~ Thomas Wolfe

(Via TYWKIWDBI: the photograph of Marines asleep in their fighting holes is from a series on Afghanistan by David Guttenfelder).

The Online Bookshelf - Traditional Nursery Songs of England

With PICTURES BY EMINENT MODERN ARTISTS, published 1843 and available for download from Project Gutenberg.

Patterns of the Past - a Bandanna Apron

From McCall's Needlework and Crafts, Spring/Summer 1950, an apron made from (what looks like) three bandannas. Might be interesting to try the next time the hobby store has them on sale.

Oh, Come On!

Driving home tonight, I passed two houses with their Christmas lights up.

Crochet - A Blouse From 1935

From Fashions Today in the Lovely New Boilfast Cottons, published by the Spool Cotton Company in 1935. Instructions on my Flickr account.

Vintage Advertising - Modart Corsets

From Woman's Home Companion, October 1921.

De Agony of De Feet

(no, these are not my boots. I'm not that old).

We held our fourth mass vaccination clinic in eight days at the University basketball arena today. What is it about the sight of a syringe that makes healthy adolescents keel over? There were four Cornfedton Fire Department EMTs lounging in the bleachers behind me keeping up a faintly bored commentary.

"The pink one by the garbage can; she's going down, she's going, she's gone!"

"Kid in the red t-shirt with the nurse, he's---OUT."

It was like being in the Coliseum and listening to bets on which Christian the lions got next.

Links - Feeding America

Michigan State University's online vintage cookbook collection.


This appears to be a recent addition; maybe I'll have time to read it later this week.

Links - Caturday!

A recent favorite from icanhascheezburger.com. Many cat owners (myself included) would wonder why the cat isn't lying on the book.

Links - Quote of the Day

The source.

Links - Project Gutenberg

What can I say? The original and still one of the best.

Links - Patterns of the Past

Vintage sewing pattern images, updated daily, at Flickr.

November 10th

Links - Free Sewing Patterns

A collection of free shirt patterns from around the web at craftstew.com (including a few of mine). They have many more sewing and other needlework projects, as well.

Links - Vintage Images

Due to a rather hairy work schedule, I am taking the easy way out by posting links this week. This one is to freeantiqueimages.blogspot.com, a site with an amazing selection of vintage images (found thanks to the lovely Amanda).

Knitters With Too Much Time On Their Hands Dep't

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

An Apple A Day

On my way back from Detroit last month, I stopped by an orchard in Coloma and bought a bushel of Empire apples. Eternity has been described as “two people and a turkey.” One might as well say “two people and a bushel of apples,” because we are still slowly eating our way through the basket. It’s a good thing Empires are keepers.

I was looking for a quick scone recipe when I found this one, and decided to add some chopped apple. My first try resulted in a batter too slack, as the old cookbooks say, for scones, but it made dandy muffins. The second time I added some spices and vanilla, and I didn’t chop the apple quite so fine.

Apple Muffins

1 cup Bisquick or other baking mix
¼ cup white sugar
¼ cup thin cream (or ¼ cup whole milk with 1 T. butter melted into it)
1 egg
1 Empire or other small apple, peeled and cored
1 t. vanilla
½ t. cinammon
¼ t. cloves
Cinnamon sugar

Coarsely chop the apple; I put eighths in the food processor with the sugar and pulsed about 3 times. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Beat the egg into the cream with the vanilla, and add to the dry ingredients, stirring just until they are mixed. The dough should look ragged. Fold in the chopped apple and spoon into a well buttered muffin tin. Sprinkle the tops of the muffins with cinnamon sugar and bake at 425° for 13-15 minutes. Allow them to cool in the muffin tin for about 10 minutes after you take them out of the oven, so they don’t stick while coming out of the pan. If you’re too impatient for that, use paper muffin cups.

I halved the original recipe so this makes six muffins. Unlike most home-made muffins, these are good for two or three days, probably because of the chopped fruit. I reheat them, wrapped in foil and in a 250° oven while I’m getting ready for work, and so can enjoy a warm muffin with my first cup of coffee.

(vintage fruit crate label from Dover).

Caturday!