Quotes with thought-provoking comments, contemplating the spiritual. Inspiration for lovers of words and deep thoughts. Thank you for your visit! - Denny Lyon
* April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four. - Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894
* Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed. - Mark Twain
* A fellow who is always declaring he's no fool, usually has his suspicions. - Anonymous
* Politicians never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge. - Thomas Reed
* Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. - Chinese Proverb
* Don't approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side. - Jewish Proverb
Hike on over to The Social Poets to enjoy a funny video, funny photos, and - I totally guarantee you haven't seen this fashion outfit - it's the weirdest fashion statement yet. Not even Lady Gaga wore this crazy thing! :)
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From Denny: Pull out the tissues because you are going to need them! If you are not crying your eyes out, wondering if you emptied out the tears reservoir, then you need to watch the hour long special of this story. Yes, it's that good. If you are in need of having your faith restored in the goodness of strangers, then this story is for you. These ordinary people will astound, amaze and delight your heart.
The entire town of Grafton, Wisconsin came to the aid of a single mother battling breast cancer who has 13 year old triplets. Two of those triplets are seriously ill with a life long degenerative disease and are already now in wheelchairs. They needed so much. A whole town of neighbors, many who lost their homes and their jobs, came together to help the Longoria family remodel their home so the kids could get around in wider halls and larger spaces.
It's quite an amazing story of what spiritual development is really all about: helping someone else when you have lost so much. There is a man in the process of losing his home because he's been out of work for two months. Yet he came and volunteered every day to renovate the house. There is a hotel owner who gave the family free rooms for the entire time it took to renovate the house.
There is an AIDS charity CEO, living on 40% less income now and facing an uncertain personal financial future, who showed up to organize and raise funding - cheerfully. Another story is of a mother who lost her son 19 years ago and today came to be the interior designer for this family's renovated home. She said this is the first time she has not felt emotional pain since the death of her child.
This first video is a clip that was featured on the news. The other video clips tell the story. The full story and more links are at Dateline and it's an hour show worth watching. It reminds me of a real life story to match the famous Christmas movie, "It's a Wonderful Life." What's so much fun about this story of giving is how the giving rolled into something bigger than the project itself. People got into the spirit of giving and the joy was contagious, drawing thousands of people to volunteer during construction or to help fund the project.
A Circle of Hands is a poem written by one of the volunteers to remember the "Hometown Heroes" project that healed the town.
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From Denny: This funny polar bear says it all: Whew! Time to take it easy after a long harsh winter!
If you are a blogger like me with the Blogger platform at blogspot.com, and you haven't already heard about it since it came out a couple of weeks ago, you might want to check out this new feature from Blogger: Blogger in Draft. I spent the entire weekend playing around with the possibilities and decided to change over to this new dashboard and template offerings.
Blogger has come out with some outstanding new templates and the ability to widen margins of all your columns to imitate the old stretch template or create your own ideas of what appeals to you. Be as creative as you like! Read that as embedding videos and cartoons will now work better. Before, if you had a background from somewhere else - like I was doing - you had to reduce the width of your template down to the Minima template offered by Blogger. Then you could not run the cartoons at all as they were chopped off on the right side.
You now have many choices of how to arrange your columns just like a newspaper. There is a good variety of stunning backgrounds from which to choose - and believe me I've been choosing all this weekend for 12 blogs! :) I would like to see them expand their background choices in various colors and genre but what they have offered so far is plenty for most bloggers.
What am I still looking for from Blogger? To the folks at Blogger: I'm looking for more seasonal choices that have a sophisticated look, peaceful or spiritual, as opposed to just fun or downright cheesy. Backgrounds tailored to writing, poetry, art and literature other than the standard stack of books would be great - like beautiful calligraphy pens and parchment papers, stylized handwriting or fonts offered on the background and for the blog. You might want to consider backgrounds of America's cities like New Orleans and others for those of us with regional food blogs.
I'd also like to see the ability to post headlines and 200 word summary excerpts of up to 10 posts per page so people could easily choose what they want to read much like Wordpress already offers. Scrolling at the top of the page or at the header of the most recent posts would be cool like you see at newspaper sites online. Dreamer, that's me! So far, Blogger is on a roll so keep up the good work, guys! Oh, and if you could ever get that Google Connect or Followers Gadget to work with Google AdSense ads on the same page it would be much appreciated too.
On to the posts of the week and a few extra recipe posts from the past two weeks in case you missed anything good! :) Finally got caught up over at my science blog this weekend with some interesting stories so be sure to check out their offerings. Please bookmark this post to catch up on all the interesting news, great recipes and beautiful photography in our world! :) Enjoy...
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From Denny: For those who visit this blog regularly, you can guess I've just been on one of my famous versions of the coffee break - finding interesting photos to fit a theme. :) Enjoy the unexpected choices and discover new photographers!
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From Denny: Finding a lot of funny things about the Easter bunny for Cheeky Quote Day over at The Social Poets was totally crazy! I went looking for funny Easter quotes, only to find very few. What I did find were plenty of late night show "top ten lists" and funny videos. This is a sampling of the funnies. Be sure to check out the full post for lots more grins and how to dye your own boiled eggs the way it was done before it became commercialized.
Check out this kid friendly music video of the Easter Bunny Rap to give you a smile:
Since Easter morning involves the giving of lots of chocolate, please abide by these "important" rules:
The Rules Of Chocolates
If you get melted chocolate all over your hands, you're eating it too slowly.
Chocolate covered raisins, cherries, orange slices and strawberries all count as fruit, so eat as many as you want.
The problem: How to get two pounds of chocolate home from the store in a hot car. The solution: Eat it in the parking lot.
Diet tip: Eat a chocolate bar before each meal. It'll take the edge off your appetite and you'll eat less.
A nice box of chocolates can provide your total daily intake of calories in one place. Isn't that handy?
If you can't eat all your chocolate, it will keep in the freezer. But if you can't eat all your chocolate, what's wrong with you?
If calories are an issue, store your chocolate on top of the fridge. Calories are afraid of heights, and they will jump out of the chocolate to protect themselves.
Money talks. Chocolate sings.
Chocolate has many preservatives. Preservatives make you look younger.
Why is there no such organization as Chocoholics Anonymous? Because no one wants to quit.
Put "eat chocolate" at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you'll get one thing done.
Chocolate is a health food. Chocolate is derived from cacao beans. Bean = vegetable. Sugar is derived either from sugar beets or cane, both vegetables. And, of course, the milk/cream is dairy. So eat more chocolate to meet the dietary requirements for daily vegetable and dairy intake.
Check out the full post of the latest Cheeky Quote Day from The Social Poetsfor more grins and how some Easter traditions got started from the beginning:
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From Denny: I usually only run spiritual posts over here, rarely recipes. This is such a great recipe that was recently tweaked to modern standards and tastes that I thought it might have a wide appeal - and you might have missed it on one of my food blogs. Any time I really like something I'm writing about I like to share it on most of my blogs.
Remember those dense rich flavorful pound cakes your great grandmother used to make in her time? Wonderful rich cakes full of butter - and calories. Well, we don't work on the farm anymore, unable to justify those calories since most of us are desk jockeys these days. How wonderful those cakes must have tasted with fresh homemade creamery butter! I have to go down to the Farmer's Market on weekends to find that "fresh from the farm taste" and quality product.
Well, the good news is the pound cake recipe idea has been streamlined calorie wise and is far lighter in texture. I paired this recipe with simple chocolate ganache. There is a video from Southern Living demonstrating how easy it is to make. There are also two ganache recipes, one with butter and the other uses light corn syrup. Take your pick.
Breakfast for the Diva Queen: Loaf Cake French Toast
Use leftover slices of Rich Yellow Loaf Cake to make a decadent breakfast treat. For four (1/2-inch) slices of cake, whisk together an egg and 1/2 cup of milk. Dip each slice in the mixture, turning to coat. Melt a tablespoon or so of butter in a nonstick skillet and cook the slices, turning once, until golden and crisp. Rich Yellow Loaf Cake, cooked this way, is great with strawberries and whipped cream.
Option: Make two smaller loaf cakes rather than the one (9x5-inch) loaf. Enjoy one and freeze the other one for later. Defrost the cake at room temperature before serving.
Lighter in texture than traditional pound cake, this golden loaf is still wonderfully rich tasting because it is made with egg yolks.
Ingredients:
4 large egg yolks 2/3 cup milk 2 tsps. pure vanilla extract 2 cups cake flour 1 tbl. baking powder 1/4 tsp. salt 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened 1-1/4 cups sugar
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan and dust with flour. Combine the egg yolks, milk and vanilla in a large glass measuring cup and lightly beat. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a medium mixing bowl.
2. Combine butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and cream with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes, scraping down sides of bowl once or twice as necessary.
3. With the mixer on medium-low speed, pour the egg mixture into the bowl in a slow stream, stopping the mixer once or twice to scrape down the sides.
4. Turn the mixer to low speed and add the flour mixture, 1/2 cup at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition. After the last addition, mix for 1 minute on medium speed.
5. Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Bake cake until it is golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Let cake cool in pan for about 5 minutes, invert it onto a wire rack, and then turn it right side up on a rack to cool completely. Slice and serve.
6. Store uneaten cake in a cake keeper or wrap in plastic and store at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Make a simple chocolate ganache to "enrobe" this luscious simple cake:
Microwave semisweet chocolate morsels and whipping cream in a 2-quart microwave-safe bowl at MEDIUM (50% power) 2 1/2 to 3 minutes or until chocolate begins to melt.
Whisk until chocolate melts and mixture is smooth. Whisk in butter; let stand 20 minutes. Beat at medium speed with an electric mixer 3 to 4 minutes or until mixture forms soft peaks.
Chocolate Ganache
From: Gina Marie Miraglia Eriquez
Makes: enough for 24 cupcakes Active time: 15 min Start to finish: 15 min
Ingredients:
6 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (no more than 60% cacao if marked), chopped 2/3 cup heavy cream 1 1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup
Directions:
Put chocolate in a large bowl. Heat cream in a medium saucepan over moderate heat until it just comes to a boil, then pour over chocolate and let stand 3 minutes. Whisk until smooth, then stir in corn syrup.
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From Denny: Check out the latest Cheeky Quote Day over at The Social Poets! Here are a few of the funny quotes:
