To clarify, I’m not referring here to the decade of the 90’s, with Dolly the sheep (the first cloned animal), or the Beanie Babies craze, or VHS tapes and Blockbuster videos. I hate to even mention Chucky Cheese and “Wack-a-mole!” And what about those crazy, “digital pets” from Tamagochie. You got them for your kids’ entertainment, and then the pets “died” because the kids got bored, or they left their “pet” out in the rain. That was a challenging time to be raising young kids. There were so many “collectables.” I knew a lot of moms who drove through the McDonalds drive-thru MANY times, just to get a full collection of the mini Beanie Babies in the kid’s “Happy Meals.” I guess they were eating (or throwing out) a lot of Happy meals, and they probably weren’t happy about it! (But those toys were going to be crazy expensive collectors’ items some day and have you living the good life of retirement, from all the money you’d make on the resale of those useless toys. Ha, ha, ha, ha! That crazy mess made me give up McDonalds entirely, and I’ve never gone back, so beanie babies were at least good for my health! And if those things I’ve already mentioned don’t curl your hair, how about mullets, and The Spice Girls?! 🤮 Recently I’ve read that mullets are back in style, but the Spice Girls, thank God, are not!
Anyway, forgive me for that long digression. I’m realizing that there are many things from our past that are best forgotten. Getting back to my point, I’m referring to the continuing hot air mass stuck over the Midwest and stretching up into Canada. We have to guess that by now, Canada is fighting many forest fires, because that has been a nasty trend for that country for the past few years and we get all of the nasty smoke down here, thanks to the jet-stream.
Our extended forecast is for at least another week of the 80 & 90 degree temps. I’ve had to restock my deodorant supply already this summer, which is unusual for me. I can usually make it through the summer on one deodorant dispenser, but not this year! With our late summer campout, I might be needing more before summer is through with its taunting miseries. I refuse to use antiperspirant. I still get sweaty, but I smell good (minus the cancer causing aluminum additive!) I know that all of you, my faithful readers are interested in these sordid, personal details of my life….. suddenly I’m going all “Kardashian” on you.
And so, we all are doing our best, here in the USA midwest, carrying hand fans in our pockets, keeping a hanky handy to wipe our brows, and cranking the AC in our houses and our cars. We’re cutting our grass early in the morning, and working in our gardens late in the evenings. And I will say, one good thing about the heat is that my cucumbers are loving it. Those plants are thriving better than I’ve ever seen, and before too long, I’ll have my own “Little shop of horrors,” with overgrown, intertwining cucumber plants, with their pokey skins and their tendency to hide their fruit from me. But, before we know it, we’ll be sitting in the comfort of our cool kitchen, enjoying our home-grown, homemade, cucumber and onion salad, every day for several weeks…and never getting tired of it!
My recipe:
Mix together in a bowl, 3/4 cup white vinegar, 1 & 1/3 cup of boiling water, one cup sugar (I now substitute stevia, using the replacement values printed on the container) 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, 1 tsp dried dill. To the liquid mixture, add 3 to 5 sliced cucumbers (depending on size of cucumbers and size of storage bowl) and 1-2 large vidalia (sweet onions), sliced thin. Refrigerate for at least two hours before serving. Will keep for several days in fridge.
grandma's coffee soup 