Wednesday Reader July 12 | Water Lilies

WEDNESDAY READER | JULY 12

Greetings fellow fans of the printed word –

How’s your week going so far?  Mine good-good-good.

Presenting Wednesday Reader for your enjoyment.

Once again, Leslie Elman gives us material – we may or may not have known – to think about and offer outside-the-box material to be the most interesting person in the room with her Pop Quiz Q&A and Fascinating Stuff.

Wow!  Quick Question – Good one – “What is worth standing in line for?”  I’m still pondering that one.  You?

Out of the mouths of 1st Graders still has me rolling with happiness!

Fun Fact – my mom was a 1st grade teacher for numerous years.
She entertained us with the hilarious, innocent antics the students in her classroom had said or done – while we were seated around the dining table during our family supper-time. We laughed so hard.  I still remember many of the stories.  So. Much. Fun.

Keith’s recipe for Herb Shrimp on the Barbie is outstanding.

As always, friends, so appreciate your time spending a piece of your day with us here at Daymaker Readable Art + reading + commenting your valuable, cool thoughts.

Grateful.

See ya Friday.

POP Quiz

POP QUIZ

  1.  WHICH STINKY ELEMENT CONTRIBUTES THE UNPLEASANT ODOR OF BAD BREATH?
    a) Argon
    b) Iron
    c) Potassium
    d) Sulfur
  2. TO DATE, WHO IS THE ONLY PLAYER TO BE NAMED MLB ALL-STAR GAME MOST VALUABLE PLAYER IN TWO CONSECUTIVE YEARS?
    a) Derek Jeter
    b) Fred McGriff
    c) Mike Trout
    d) Carl Yastrzemski
  3. WHAT SINGER TOPPED THE CHARTS IN 1977 WITH “YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE?”
    a) Debby Boone
    b) Debbie Gibson
    c) Debbie Harry
    d) Debbie Reynolds
Wednesday Reader July 12

QUICK QUESTION

WHAT IS WORTH STANDING IN LINE FOR?

Wednesday Reader July 12

POP QUIZ ANSWERS

  1. Bacteria in your mouth produce sulfur compounds that cause bad breath.
  2. Outfielder Mike Trout was the MLB All-Star Game MVP in 2014 and 2015
  3. Debby Boone, the daughter of singer Pat Boone.  It held the No. 1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for ten consecutive weeks in 1977 and topped Record World magazine’s Top 100 Singles Chart for a record 13 weeks.

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF A CLASSROOM OF 1st GRADERS

So the story goes … a 1st grade teacher presented her young class with the beginning of well known adages and asked them to complete the sentence.
Here are the fantastic Q & A – 6 year old responses – get ready for laughter!

  • Don’t change horses …
    until they stop running
    .
  • It’s always darkest before …
    daylight savings time.
  • Strike while the …
    bug is close.
  • Never underestimate the power of …
    termites.
  • Don’t bite the hand …
    that looks dirty.
  • A miss is as good as …
    a Mr
    .
  • If you lie down with the dogs …
    you’ll stink in the morning
    .
  • An idle mind …
    is the best way to relax.
  • Happy is the bride …
    who gets all the presents.
  • A penny saved …
    is not much.
  • Two’s company, three’s …
    the Musketeers!
  • Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry
    and …
    you have to blow your nose.
  • Children should be seen and not …
    be spanked or grounded.
  • If at first you don’t succeed …
    get new batteries.
  • You get out of something only what you …
    see on the box.
  • When the blind lead the blind …
    get out of the way.
  • A bird in the hand …
    is going to poop on you!

A LEAP OF FAITH CAN SOMETIMES BE THE BEST MOVE

(( Starve the landfills.  Recycle. ))

RIDDLE ME THIS

HOW CAN YOU DROP A RAW EGG FROM A HEIGHT ONTO A CONCRETE FLOOR WITHOUT CRACKING IT?

Wednesday Reader July 12

HERB SHRIMP ON THE BARBIE

This is my favorite recipe from my brother-in-law, Keith (outta Australia), who shared this recipe with me years ago.  It’s spectacular and I’d wager it’ll become one of your favorites.

HERE’S HOW WE DO IT:

  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
  • 1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped
  • 1/2 cup parsley
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tsp double strength dry mustard (I like Coleman’s – in a yellow tin can in spice section at the grocery store)
  • 1 TBSP good quality Dijon mustard
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp pepper
  • 3 pounds jumbo prawns (think big shrimp), peeled and de-veined (leave the tails on)

Place all ingredients (except prawns) in a blender and pulse several times until all are pureed like a THICK marinade

Toss shrimp in a zipper style plastic bag – or layer in a glass baking-syle dish.

Pour (really, more like scoop out with a rubber spatula) and add pureed marinade to prawns

Marinate at least 4 hours.
Mix up the marinade with the prawns every now and then to make sure all the prawns are getting properly “covered”.

Skewer the prawns on Kabob sticks (if you’re using wooden skewers, soak them in water for about 30 minutes first or they will likely catch fire on the grill)

Fire up the grill and brush grates with a little oil to prevent Prawns from sticking

Grill shrimp about 1-2 minutes per side.  Watch careful so not to overcook.

Serve.

~ Hippie Cowboy recipe box

RIDDLE ANSWER

CONCRETE FLOORS ARE VERY HARD TO CRACK

Wednesday Reader July 12

LOST IN SUBURBIA

IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREEN
BY TRACY BECKERMAN

My husband has never been a coffee drinker.  He’ll go for an extremely sweetened cappuccino every now and then that would induce sugar shock in most people, but typically he’s more of a tea kind of guy.  Still, he’s always respected our hot drink differences and although he’s suggested I should decaf a bit, he’s never sunk to doomsday tactics to get me to give up caffeine.  Then he started drinking this health food store green drink that smells like wet grass clippings and makes you want to moo when you drink it.  It came with names like Daily Health Greens, Green Goodness and Field of Greens, which neither made me want to drink it nor skip through meadows of it.

Of course, once he discovered his new elixir, he became the poster child of green drink consumption.  He extolled the virtues of a green drink lifestyle and pointed out all the celebrities who embraced his new passion with him.  At first, he subtly tried to get me to come over to the green side.  But then he made numerous overt attempts to get me to convert from coffee to mowed-lawn drink in the name of health.

He offered it to be mixed with lemon juice.  He gave it to me mixed with apple juice.  He blended it with ice and made me a mowed-lawn smoothie.  In an effort to be open-minded, I politely tried each one before making a face, gagging and pouring it down the sink.  Finally, I told him I’d have to have a tastebud-ectomy to drink it again.

This was not the first time he was on the beverage bandwagon.  There was the time he got on the juicing kick and every morning I would wake to the sound of apples, bananas and strawberries being diced, sliced and jucified.  He got a book about juicing, watched videos about juicing and got a special machine just for juicing.  I became resigned to the fact that my kitchen counters would be eternally covered in fruit pulp and my garbage overflowing with orange peels and apple cores.  But then one day the juicing craze ended just as mysteriously at it began and replaced by the powdered grass clippings.

“This green drink is filled with vitamins and minerals,” he said enthusiastically.

“So is my multivitamin,” I replied.

“But this has seaweed in it,” he said.

“Is that supposed to be a selling point?” I said, wrinkling up my nose.

“Seaweed is good for you,” he said.

“So is fish oil,” I said, “But I’m not going to drink that either.”  True, the idea of a seaweed smoothie made my mouth water … but not in a good way.

“Spongebob drinks kelp smoothies,” he finally said, attempting to appeal to the mom in me.

“That would only be a selling point if I wore square pants and lived in a pineapple under the sea,” I replied.

The next morning as I waited for my coffee to brew and he drank his glass of grass, he said to me, “You’re never going to drink this stuff, are you?”

“No,” I replied.  “Not unless I come back in my next life as a cow.”

~ Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, “Barking at the Moon:  A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble.”
You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS

Fascinating Stuff

FASCINATING STUFF

  • Three players hold the record for the most Major League Baseball All-Star Game appearances.  Stan Musial, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron were on the rosters for 24 consecutive All-Star Games, but they had an unusual advantage over today’s players.  From 1959 through 1962 — when Musial, Mays and Aaron were playing — Major League Baseball had two All-Star Games per season.  Playing two all-star games midseason subsidized the players’ pension fund, but it also diluted the event’s importance.  The experiment ended after four years.
  • From 1897 to 1904, the American Red Cross had its national headquarters in Clara Barton’s home in Glen Echo, Maryland (now a National Historic Site).  Red Cross staff lived there, too, tackling both business and domestic chores.  It wasn’t unusual to spy Barton in a calico dress carrying milk pails from her dairy barn.  She once said, “No bureau of government carries on the amount of business and work that is accomplished in this house from day to day, month to month, year to year.”
  • Cats seem to have a tendency to righties or lefties, using one paw more often than the other.  (This is a subject that’s been investigated by many animal behavior researchers.)  Some studies say the trait falls on gender lines — females are more likely to be righties, males to be lefties.  Others say using one paw rather than the other has to do with the task the cat is performing.  Cat owners might say that humans will never truly understand why cats do what they do.
  • Luciferin is the general term for the chemical compounds that cause fireflies, lanternfish, and other bioluminescent creatures to glow.  (The name comes from lucifer — Latin for “light-bringer).  Each animal has a distinct luciferin that reacts with a specific enzyme, called a luciferase, to produce a natural glow.  And each animal has a different reason for lighting up.  The light might be used to attract a mate or to confuse would-be predators, or it might be a sensory reaction to a disturbance in the animal’s environment.
  • Until recently, climbers on Mount Everest would know they were near the top when they reached the “Hillary Step,” named for Sir Edmund Hillary, who scaled the world’s highest peak with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953.  A massive boulder atop a group of smaller boulders, the Hillary Step was the final vertical obstacle to reaching the summit.  But in 2018, reports that the Hillary Step had fallen from its position were confirmed.  The change in terrain might have been caused by a 2015 earthquake.

~ COPYRIGHT 2023 LESLIE ELMAN
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

Day Maker Readable Art
7 replies
  1. Carol says:

    What a happy issue! Beautiful artwork, fun answers by the 1st graders, delicious recipe. . . The only thing I can think of worth standing in line for is voting. Thanks for the fun!

    • dixie bostick says:

      Hi Carol,
      Before reading your comment, I was going to respond that “nothing is worth waiting in line for, ” You’re right. Voting is a fundamental right and a cornerstone of democracy that allows citizens to participate in the political process and have a say in their government. However, it is unfortunate that only some people worldwide have equal access to this privilege. I always look forward to your engagement!
      Warmest regards,
      Dixie

  2. Laurie says:

    Here, here! Voting is worth it, for sure. The longest line I ever stood in was at the Dallas Convention Center to hear Obama speak when he was running the first time. I took my kids out of school and we went and waited as a line stretched for what looked like miles. Met some great people. The anticipation and excitement–it was worth every minute. Enjoyed reading this today and thinking back on that time. Lifted my spirits.

    • Cheryl clarson says:

      Right on, Laurie!
      Thanks for sharing your memory and the tough “gonna stand in this line no matter how long it takes” attitude! Grit. Determination. Awesome. And you guys met new cool people while in line.

      Kindred spirits – that day.

      And Lifted spirits today – we know not where they always find us – but they seem to. Indeed.

      You just lifted my spirits with your comment — so well written.

      Thank you.

      I appreciate you + reading + engaging + sharing — you’re a Daymaker! Have a great evening !

  3. Marty says:

    I would stand in line from here to heaven’s gate for a piece of my Mom’s homemade chocolate cake with white icing and coconut clinging to its side. Mom fixed it every Sunday for dinner following church. Our family numbered 8. We all got a big piece. Bring it on Mama!

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