Michael and Jaspenelle

Sharing my Weekend

Two Phrases That Destroyed American Culture - I ran across this article yesterday and loved it, so I thought I would share.

I also thought I would share some stuff from my weekend::

I made cinnamon rolls from scratch:

They were yummy! Next time I am going to use different icing though, maybe just a milk/sugar glaze.

Michael had to be at work from 4am to 8am on Saturday, so he napped with Damian while I made them:

I made labels for some things in the kitchen:

The olive oil bottle says “Olive Oil (now with extra virgins)” because… well, it just amused me.

I got some new shoes at ShopKo (on clearance and 50% off, so $30 shoes for $3!)

We also picked up my diaphragm from the midwives and bought storage bins for my 25lbs of bread flour and sugar. But you don’t need pictures of those.

I got some reading in.

If you are into herbalism I strongly recommend Family Herbal by Rosemary Gladstar.

Last night be went over to Shannon’s and she gave us some organic produce from her garden, yum! Five cobs of corn, lots of green beans, a couple Anaheim peppers, a cucumber and a few more zucchini! I think I am going to be making zucchini relish with them this time.

I’ll probably be dehydrating some zucchini as well, for future use in pasta sauce and maybe to take camping in a vegetable soup mix.

And to end my sharing post, I wanted to share an amazing speech by Archbishop Tutu! What will happen when the last of our great leaders die? Do we have new ones within our generation? I hope so. (On a slightly amusing note, Archbishop Tutu refers to “ubunto” in his speech, defining it is “the essence of being human.” The Linux distro that I use is also called Ubunto!)

Antique Bottles

If you keep track of my photoblog you might have seen the macro of the antique bottle I posted the other day. I love glass bottles or most any size or shape, though I prefer ones with functional corks or lids that are relatively smooth. My exceptions to this preference are some antique bottles.

I am not exactly sure where this love for bottles began but my oldest memory of being fascinated with bottles goes back to when I was quite young. I remember looking at an old orange cream soda bottle and being utterly engrossed with the embossing on the glass and wondering how it was done.

At the moment I limit my bottles to the ones I really love and I only buy ones (in thrift stores) that I currently have a use for. The bottles in the photo above however, were given to me on Monday. An elderly woman in one of my friend’s families recently passed away and my friend somehow ended up with the bottles above. She gave them to me as she had no particular use for them and knew I would appreciate them. And I do, very much so! (Thank you Michelle!) The two rows of bottles on the left have no writing, the middle row only have embossed fluid ounce readings on them and the two right rows have heavy embossing, (the further right are actually old root beer syrup bottles.)

The one I am holding in the picture for the right is my favorite. I have been trying to imagine what might have originally been in it. Obviously they all held fluid at some point, dry ingredient bottles tend to have wider mouths. The glass on my favorite one is quite thick and smooth except for a vertical seam on opposite sides. The only marking on the bottle is “192″ embossed on the bottom.

The reason I like smooth bottles the most is because they are excellent to relabel or paint, I usually fill them with spices. These bottles have narrow enough necks that I don’t particularly want to fill them with spices, so I am not quite sure what their eventual use will be for. I may even up just putting small matching “things” in them (like sea glass) for display, though I like functionality above all. It might be neat to put some of my cooking extracts in hand painted antique bottles, a shame to hide them away in the baking cupboard then… A use will come to me though.

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Something I recently found out that I think is really neat is that I can get coupons from WIC between June and October that can only be used at local farmers markets. I think that is really cool!