Raige Creations

We had a nice break. Took a vacation and ended up in Durham, NC. We splurged and stayed at a great hotel, 21c Museum Hotel Durham . Found an art fair unexpectedly and just wandered and enjoyed. I love being a bit spontaneous like that. And coming across a great performance by the Silver Drummer Girl . A really great art fair. A really great trip. Some very enjoyable time with family. A nightmare of a trip back, but glad we went. The nightmare is a long story that I may never tell, but let's just say I started feeling like the character Victor Nevorski in a good movie, The Terminal . We were stuck in the airport for more than 12 hours, wandering and waiting. I lost hubby for a good hour and a half. He doesn't have a cell phone, so you can imagine how hard it is to find someone in a sea of people with a pesky security department separating you most of the time as it turned out. But, we did make the best of it after all and decided more breaks are a necessity. Bu...

Boy, did I jam. For the past week I have knocked out gobs of jam. I have even had days where I made 2 batches in one day! (which is a lot harder than it sounds, especially when you are making at least a batch a day.) With still plenty of mangoes to do more. It is why I haven't blogged much lately. I have been too busy cutting mangoes and measuring sugar and squeezing limes and mixing, and mixing, and, mixing, and mixing. Jam. And plenty more to make more. And of course I made some juice too, so jamming and juicing. So it should be no surprise if asked what I have been up to, well, JAMMING mon. Thus, there is no other song that has been going through my head. I found this video that also has the Spanish lyrics, which  me encanta ! (Have I mentioned I want to learn Spanish? I do. But that is another story. ) Cupboard Full of Jam.  Ooh, yeah! All right! We're jammin' I wanna jam it with you We're jammin', jammin' And I ...

It has been very hard for me to blog lately. I have started writing, thinking it would be therapeutic, but then it just hurt too much. It started really with a big life change, a sudden instability, uncertainty in my life. About 3 weeks ago. Then, a random terrible thing about 2 weeks ago. (A garbage truck smashed into a parked vehicle of ours in front of our house. Cue fighting with insurance company, about the worst thing to have to do.) Then a certain uncertainty. My life was truly upended. I was raw, hurting, lost. I just could not bear even writing about it. About anything. Then hubby showed me the news. Last week it was the environment. Las Vegas and the  grasshopper swarm , Greenland's Ice sheet melting . Biblical levels of scary shit. My nerves were fragile. I really could not bear writing. Then,  the shootings . Last week, California was terrible. Last Saturday, El Paso was horrific, I was glued to the TV in shock. I even sent my kids each a messag...

Along the lines of healthy eating, fresh herbs from the garden , and keeping busy in the kitchen, I am sharing some further busyness I have had in the kitchen. First, we found these GREAT herb cutting scissors . If anyone shares my dislike of chopping fresh herbs, these are for you. Lots of cutting edges with one cut. THE BEST herb chopping scissors I always had rosemary pop across the counter when I chopped it with a knife, and it felt like it took forever to chop the mint and basil, and to get the leaves in line for cutting a whole other struggle. These scissors make it, dare I say, fun to chop up, or cut up, the herbs. Gather herbs and put on the scissor blades and cut. Then keep cutting. I lay the scissors on their side and keep cutting the pile of herbs until it gets the desired chopped-ness. I think I go a little crazy these days with using the herbs and cutting them up. I do it nearly every other day. But what yummy results! Tomato Cucumber Salad, with fresh cut he...

If you are like me, I see all kinds of hypothetical pictures or memes meant to make us think, encourage, or help us be more thankful, or even provoke some emotions (good and bad). I may even have shared some of these questions, as sometimes they do help us see things in a different way, help us examine things we may not have done before. But sometimes, they do get tiresome. Or are even ridiculous. And sometimes we are just sick and tired of it all. So I found this brilliant. What if there were no hypothetical questions?  And now the loop of hypothetical questions is complete.

I have been so lazy this weekend. Some would say that is what weekends are for, but after two days of lazing about - I took Friday off to get a good long weekend in with Monday being a holiday - this morning I was feeling like I HAD to do something. I decided I just had to get a little bit busy in the kitchen. Hot pepper vinegar ingredients, vinegar not pictured. I got to cutting up some carrots and onions for our long planned hot pepper vinegar. We have been planning it for weeks. We have what are supposed to be ghost peppers   - my MIL planted and then left with us to tend while she is away. They have been getting bigger and turning from green, to orange, to a deep hot red color. Watching the hot peppers get redder and redder We have watched as day by day the get redder and redder, somewhat anxiously. Ghost peppers are supposed to be the 2nd hottest peppers on earth. The  deep burning red hot color perhaps an indication that these things are dangerously hot. Th...

I asked for suggestions, and a great cousin of hubby's said she was listening to  Led Zeppelin  yesterday. This request led to an evening of the band for me and hubby last night, and nearly all day streaming the band at work, until I found one that spoke to me, that fit. This one does, more or less . But seriously, so many good songs to choose from. So many! So many that brought back memories of my brother . He was the one who first introduced me to this band. Through his closed bedroom door. He was a musician, a true connoisseur of good rock music. So many hubby had stories about. He knows stories of the band members, and he introduced me to The Song Remains The Same movie . If you have a couple hours, check it out! It is worth it, I believe. The concert was at Madison Square Gardens, this video a part of it. They put on a great show, excellent musicians. And, story from hubby, Robert Plant didn't even realize he was rubbing his fingers through most of the concer...