A Promised Poem (stop cringing!)

My Heart's Desire
By Stacy Christian-2006

Dear Father,

You have already answered many requests
From the gigantic to the mundane.
Well, I've got another big favor to ask.
So here I am praying, Lord...again.

There's a pile of laundry I don't want to fold
Waiting for me on the couch downstairs.
Baskets of undershirts and pants and towels;
Bed sheets and crew socks-all needing their pairs.

If you could see fit to take us to Heaven-
The sooner, the better. We won't mind!
We would much rather be with You anyway,
And I could leave the laundry behind!

Mowing Mutants

I, the sometimes somewhat intrepid Nitrocat, am not afraid of bugs. After all, I live in Northern Illinois and not the Amazon Rainforest. I've been there, you know. They have two sizes of insects down there. They have the ones that are small enough to fit through the holes in the screen door, and the ones that are big enough to open the door for themselves and walk right in. There was a spider in the shower with me once with a body the size of a grapefruit. I didn't stay in the shower, but that's another story. After surviving the jungle, there isn't too much that worries me (Okay, I do confess being freaked out by ticks when I find them on my stomach, but come on!). The bugs here are laughable by comparison.
That being said, I found myself fleeing for my life while mowing our yard yesterday. There was a mutant dragonfly, which I initially mistook for a bird, that seemed extremely angry about something. It started chasing me and smacking into my head as I rounded one corner. On the next pass around, it hovered in front of the mower, looked me square in the eye, and by some extra sensory means, I could hear it lick it's lips. I decided to leave off mowing and find something in the house that needed urgent attention, like laundry. I could fix the swerving path in the grass later.
After some astute thinking, I have decided that the dragonfly must have eaten part of the mutant mushrooms in the yard. That would explain it monstrous size and ferocious nature. Now all I have to do is electrify some railroad tracks or design a gun that harnesses all of the sun's energy in order to destroy it. Well, at least that works in the Godzilla movies. In this case, a tennis racket might suffice.

















This will be the last of our mutant mushroom pictures. I hope. I mowed them yesterday. It was very gratifying to see the ragged chunks spread all over the grass shrivelling in the sun. Unless the ominous black cloud that exploded from one of them when I ran over it means anything...

Fungus Fanatics Unite!

Past experience has taught me that the folks at the county extension office weren't going to be too successful at identifying the mushrooms overtaking my yard. They are nice people and try to be helpful, bless them, but I can thumb through antiquated books with a blank stare on my face with the best of them.
So when some of the shrooms tripled in size overnight, the finding of information became a more pressing concern. Would the dog turn purple and swell up like a balloon if he sniffed one? Would the girls shrink and carry on conversations with caterpillars if they licked one? Then I found these lovely people over on the forum at http://www.mushroomexpert.com/ and quick as a wink they had several of my monsters identified. The whoppers above and the small, cottage cheese-like ones in the last post are both types of puffballs, and are edible. Cream of mushroom soup anyone? Me neither. But it is good to know that I don't have to worry about them. The others look like the common ones that you see growing in mulch and they are already drying up.
The internet may have it's draw-backs, but I love how quickly you can find the information that you need on any given topic from British pipe fittings to the micrathena gracilis. Now you know you won't be able to sleep until you look that one up!

Unidentified Flying Fungus (UFF)

Just for the record, we live in northern Illinois on 3 acres of farmland. No shade to speak of in the yard. And lots of wind. With that in mind you can imagine my surprise when I mowed the grass today and found legions of evil mushrooms stalking their way across the lawn. I counted at least five separate armies. I can guess that they are here trying to take over because the cloudy, muggy days and more than 4 inches of rain over the last week or so gave them an opportunist's foothold.
Here are some of the culprits:











I don't know what any of them are, but they all had one thing in common: They all get chopped up nicely and come flinging out of the mower just like the grass!
Here are a couple of other things I found today while mowing:


This baby bunny isn't much bigger than a field mouse and doesn't even have it's eyes open yet. The rest of his story is sickening and quite pathetic so if you want you can skip down to the tennis ball.

The bunny is currently in a shoe box resting. I had seen him from the mower and avoided his patch, but when I checked it out later, he was sitting at the top of his nesting hole--on top of several dead siblings who had drowned in the rain. He stunk something hideous, but has had a gentle rinse and now only smells slightly like fish. I won't say what he smelled like before. I have a friend who is a forest ranger and wildlife rescue-er (??) that I hope can help.


About 16 Eastern Tailed Blues were "puddling" on one of Kirby's tennis balls. The whole time I was mowing, there was a thick cloud of these and other butterflies around me. It was too cool.

Chicken Cordon...Whatever

Every once in a while I get a bug in my britches to make a specific dish for which there ends up being no recipe. Then I get inventive. This usually happens when I am running on very little sleep, have had more sugar than I should be allowed and get in a strange mood where I use phrases like "bug in my britches", actually want to eat asparagus, and write really long run-on sentences.
So after several sleepless nights~one which included vast amounts of derogatory calories~I found myself yesterday hankerin' for something not quite Chicken Cordon Bleu; which I have never made anyway. So after J's EEG, a foraging trip to Jewel, and a make-it-up-as-you-go sort of plan, this was our supper last night (and I might add, it wasn't too bad!):

Chicken Cordon....Whatever
4 fat boneless, skinless chicken breasts halves
8 thick slices deli ham
6-ish ounces good Swiss cheese, sliced
2 bunches fresh asparagus, trimmed
1 can cream of celery soup
1/2 cup white wine (give or take)
1 1/2 T. mayo/mustard stuff (Okay, I went and looked. It is officially "Durkee's Famous Sandwich and Salad Spread-a tangy mustard and mayonnaise dressing"-happy?)
1/2 T. dried Tarragon

What I did...
Since I didn't feel like waiting for the whole thing to cook in the oven, I grilled the chicken on the Foreman and blanched the asparagus. Then I layered the chicken, ham, asparagus, sauce(the soup, wine, mayo/mustard stuff and tarragon) and cheese in a 3 qt. casserole dish and baked it at 450, covered for 15 minutes and uncovered for 15 minutes.

What I'll do next time(which indicates that it was good enough to try again)...
Put one cup of uncooked wild rice in the bottom of the casserole, than add the chicken (uncooked this time) and everything else (except the cheese) in the same order. Bake at 350, uncovered until chicken and rice are done. Add the cheese and bake until golden and bubbly.

I should add that while DH did like it, he also said that this was probably the first time in culinary history that Chicken Cordon Bleu had ever been made as a Hotdish. I took it as a compliment, mostly because I was too tired to decide if it was an insult or not. If you don't know what Hotdish is, then you have never spent any time in Minnesota.
This only relates to the laundry in that my laundry still remains unfolded because my family got a home cooked meal instead.
Maybe if you're good, tomorrow I'll post my poem about the laundry. Wait...don't all leave at once!