Love it Sue!!! Jgbm: I wish I had the time to learn!! Maybe someday when I'm not up to my eyeballs in kid activities and work. As for Miley, if you knew my friend who had the nerve to dress up in it, you'd find it a riot too! It wasn't quite as revealing as the real one and she wore a miniskirt with it. I didn't think anyone would have the nerve to do it. As much as I can't stand Miley, for an adult only party it was hilarious.

I almost didn't read that Kitchen thread, but I decided to open it last night out of curiosity. I loved it!. Anyone who is following along and hasn't read about the new toaster instructions needs to go take a look at the link above. Glad you got to see the photo this time. I have to be honest and say I'd never heard of stroopwafels before I went to Holland or I would have searched them out. I'd never eaten one when I decided I had to try making them. I don't know how authentic the taste is, but I know they aren't the "authentic" look, but after seeing the ones with the grid and so thin (so commercial looking -- ya know? ), I, personally, like the ones made with the pizzelle iron. Somehow the stroopwafels came up in a conversation between this attorney and DH (her husband is a great cook, and they wind up talking food and kitchens sometimes). She had had stroowafels in Holland and loved them and DH told her I made them sometimes. It was a couple of months later that she arranged her schedule to be here for meetings on another case so she could see our son in his high school musical (she's a former actress). That was a pretty special effort, so I decided to match the kindness (and make DH proud) with a bag of stroopwafels for her. She was the first person I knew who'd had them in Holland ad had mine and she loved mine, so I was happy. LOL They do keep pretty well, so they would be great in a gift basket -- and most people have never had them. I've seen one commercial brand sandwiched with dark chocolate and want to try that for my oldest son. If you decide to try them, let me know. I use an adaptation of two recipes and will share that with you. If you want to find your own, the cookie has many variations out there and they have all worked for me. I use mostly vanilla and a little lemon or orange flavoring when I make stroopwafels. Martha Stewart's cookie recipe is good, but I had a total fail with the caramel in her recipe. The caramel I use is from Willy Dean's recipe found somewhere on the internet years ago. It is 1-1/2 c light brown sugar, 1 C butter, 1 tsp cinnamon and 6 T dark corn syrup boiled until it thickens. That's a lot of caramel. For this last batch, I doubled the cookie recipe from Martha's recipe and still had about a cup of caramel left over. Let me know if you try them. As for the sourdough, I think it may have baked too long. The dough soft and slightly on the wet side, so I don't think it was too much flour. I was thinking the crust should have been a bit darker, so I left it in a few minutes longer. It was okay fresh, but it dried quickly. I have some other bread in the freezer for bread pudding, so I don't need this too -- hope it makes good crumbs. I like your idea about retitling the next thread. Even baker's kaffeeklatsch -- we could soon be starting a new one every week. That's okay. I do have AC -- can't live in the Houston area without it -- no natural AC like in CA. We used to live in northern CA and DS1 is now in LA and loves the weather. This is year 4 and grad school options are mostly north of the snow belt -- could be a shock to his system. I get the feeling you are in southern CA. I am going to tackle organizing my cookbooks before I do any major baking. It's driving me crazy to not be able to put my finger on books like I'm used to. That's going to bleed over into cleaning other bookcases. Could be worse......

As a small child in the 70's I can remember playing underneath a quilt in a suspended frame hanging in my Great-Grandmother's living room and playing in my Mom's bedroom where she machine sewed clothes for us, she is really good can just look at someone and make a newspaper pattern. And she does beautiful embroidery work. And I can remember her repairing an old hexagon quilt that was on her bed and a bit scrappy. We did not have a lot of money so she would make us Barbie Doll clothes. I learned how to use scissors by cutting out paper patterns my Mom drew by hand and then would pin the paper patterns on fabric and cut out the fabric that way - I have no idea what became of all that fabric I cut as a small child. My Mom has a younger sister, my Aunt Edie, who is very craftsy - she can tat, quilt, sew clothes, embroidery, crochet, a little knitting, and lots of craft projects, she loves to try new stuff. Sometimes I would stay at her house as a child and she taught me in 4 hours 1 night how to crochet when I was 9 and I spent the following 2 or 3 days at her house crocheting. Then in high school my mom finished detailed embroidery blocks of nursery rhymes, I believe it ended up being a full-size quilt for my older sister, She gave the blocks to my Aunt Edie who cut stripping and borders and made them in to a quilt top. She taught me how to quilt by hand when she quilted my sister's quilt on a suspended frame - that was in the early 90's. I took one home ec class in high school, I learned how to thread a sewing machine in that class and that's about it. Then in college I took a board drafting class and a drawing class - both of which I really enjoyed. Then went to work in design fields in manufacturing and for engineering consulting companies. After I got married I wanted to do like my Great-Grandmothers, Grandmas, and Aunts and make a quilt. After being married for a little while, I remember going shopping with my mom for fabric for my first quilt, a queen-size pinwheel quilt, I wanted to make a quilt I could use on mine and my husband's bed. I forget where I got the pinwheel pattern from, but I made pattern templates for it and then proceeded to cut out all the pieces for the quilt at one time. Luckily I was at least consistent in how I cut out the pieces, because I cut out ALL the pinwheels backwards. It took me over half a decade to completely hand-sew my first quilt and after retiring in 2006 I had more time at home and was able to complete this backwards pinwheel queen-size quilt. My parents bought me my first sewing machine a Singer 5050 for Christmas in 2004. Then of course came baby quilts that were gifts to friends and family and 2 queen-size quilts for family. And after crocheting for 20-something years I started designing and writing my own crochet patterns that will be passed down in the family. So my quilting and crocheting are hobbies to me, and most projects are gifts for family and friends, but what I love most about these hobbies are their design aspects, and getting to continually learn new things and getting to connect with past family members who also did these things. I do most of my quilting by hand, because it relaxes me to rock a needle and I like the fullfillment of having a tangible project come together completed. And I love to see the reaction's of family and friends when they get the gifts I make, it gives me a great deal of joy. Best to you, Sandra This post was edited by quiltingfox on Sun, Jun 30, 13 at 17:50

Good thread. As confirmed many times above, there's no shame in growing older. I'm 72. My mother died two weeks after her 38th birthday, and I've long been aware that every year--every day--is a gift. My role model for aging was a woman named Emilie, whom I met when I was 30 and she was 85. Cataracts prevented her from driving, so she hitchhiked to work at the library every day. She had six sons, and lost her only daughter to pneumonia when the baby was 18 months old. She said, "If I could survive that, I can survive anything." In her 80s, she gave up housekeeping (her daughters-in-law "mucked out" occasionally) and enjoyed her garden, baking, and listening to whale song records. When I met Emilie, my first child had just been born, and we became close friends. I don't hitchhike and I do my own mucking out, but I hope I have Emilie's youthful spirit. These days, my three best friends are aged 62, 66, and 86. I also have several friends in their 30s whom I see on a regular basis. My son has said about them, "They can't be your friends--they're my age!" :-) I grew up in NYC, but have lived for the past 40 years on an old farm out in the country in Pennsylvania. My husband died in 2005 after suffering with dementia for 10 years. My middle daughter died in 2001. I'm happy to say my surviving children live near me. My daughter and her family live on a lake 17 miles away, and my son and his family built their house within sight of my own. I have a 24-year-old granddaughter and two grandsons, ages 4 and 22 months. Family health history is a hot topic with me, and I've brought up the subject so many times my children probably tuned me out long ago. I've written down much of it so that some day they'll have it if they need it. I grew up knowing that "all the women" in my mother's family died young. I wish I had more details on that, but I know my mother's mother died of a heart attack in her early 40s. My mom died from cleaning a rug with carbon tetrachloride. One of my first cousins died of a heart attack at 49, and her sister had unexplained liver failure in her early 60s. When I head my DNA tested I learned that my liver is more susceptible to damage than most, and I also learned I have a gene mutation that impairs the processing and elimination of toxins. I suspect this is why I have a serious reaction to foods containing solanine (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, etc.), as solanine is a poison. It is present in foods in a small enough quantity not to be a problem to most people. I wonder if this is why my mom died from breathing toxic fumes (chlorinated hydrocarbons). Carbon tet made a lot of people sick, which is why it's off the market, but I don't know how many it killed. On my father's side, we have lots and lots of heart disease and diabetes. In fact, just last night one of my cousins in Germany sent me a copy of my great-grandmother's death certificate. Yes, heart disease and diabetes. Her son, my grandfather, died of a heart attack at 61, and one of her grandchildren lost a foot to diabetes. I've told the story at the KT before about how my dad had such blocked arteries in his 40s that he couldn't walk up a subway ramp without taking nitroglycerine. He wasn't overweight, but he smoked and had high cholesterol. A doctor, clearly ahead of his time, told him to quit smoking and stop eating saturated fats. So my dad gave up cigarettes, ice cream, cheese, sausage, and on and on, and completely reversed the condition. He lived to be 90. I've inherited his "fat clearing genes"--which don't do a very good job of clearing--as well as blood sugar issues. I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic at 22. My diet is limited, and can be a royal nuisance when dining at friends' homes, but I've staved off these two family curses, and am pleased to say I require no meds. Now, if I could just get rid of all the ticks on my property, I might have some energy and stamina. :-)