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Recipe - Lauren's Chicken Pasta Salad

Lauren ’s Chicken Pasta salad (Kuddos to my friend, Lauren, for sharing her family recipe)   Ingredients:   Cooked chicken (we used a rotisserie chicken, but you can pan sear, grill or bake 2-3 chicken tenderloins)  Bow tie pasta (16 ounce bag) Red onion (yes, they actually look purple) Celery (3-4 stalks) Black olives (not for me!) Cherry tomatoes Cucumber Italian shredded cheese pack that includes (Romano/Asiago/Parm cheese) Basil (dried or fresh leaf) Lettuce Croutons Lite Mayo Caeser Dressing. (This can be substituted with Ranch dressing instead of Caeser) Olive Garden Italian Dressing Garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper   Get the water boiling for the bow tie pasta - cook it all the way - took about 12 minutes after we added it to boiling water. Chop up the red onion - not finely chop (I only used half of a onion) Chop the celery - not fine (Lauren showed me how to devein the celery, but that’s an art I haven’t perfected at all) Chop the cucumbers - bite s...
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Recipe - Lauren's Potato Salad

Lauren ’s Potato Salad - to serve 10-15 people   (Giving kuddos to my friend, Lauren, who shared this recipe - it’s a family recipe handed down generation to generation)   Ingredients   5 pounds of russet potatoes (I went over 5 pounds, which ended up being a good thing) 9 hard boiled eggs  1/2 green bell pepper (put this as a side to add, because a lot of people won’t eat it with the bell pepper- finely chopped) 1 small white onion - finely chopped 2 tbsp parsley flakes 1/8 tsp minced garlic or a few cloves finely chopped 6/8 ounces of dill relish 6 ounces of olive salad (okay, I didn’t add any olives and was good without this) 6-7 stalks of celery - not finely chopped Lite sour cream Lite mayo 1 tbsp of mustard Garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper and paprika   Directions:   Get two pots of water going to boil  (And a third smaller pot of water boiling for eggs)   Peel the potatoes (this will take a while with 5 pounds, but it’s good to go ...
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Warning - Give Me Space

  I was exercising financial prudence by using our left over Christmas wrapping paper.  You know those “it has just enough to wrap one more gift” rolls.  All was going well, having completed using 3 past Christmas supplies, until I got to the last gift.  It was a big box for my husband.  There was no way around it; I needed fresh non-opened decorative paper.  Would it have to wait until the next day (given it was 1am in the morning by this time), to make a store run?  (Are any stores open 24 hours again; those were the days!)...  But no!  I found it in the back of the closet- a never before opened blue wrapping paper with snowflakes on it.  Score!   The pattern was so lovely! I did, for a second, wonder why we never used it, but shrugged and figured we didn’t see it in the back.  As the clear cover came off, the sparkles should have been my red flag warning.  It took half of the roll to cover the heavy box.  I ca...
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Warning - Content not for young eyes

There’s this  story of an artist who used mixed media in her art, only to later (after the top coat was sealed)  find  the f-bomb in the background  from a page she used in a book .  I remember laughing and th inking  I learned from her lesson.    After finishing  the painting  of the Native American Indian woman , something told me not to put the sealing varnish on it.  I was excited to hang up the two panel painting. I kept hearing music while painting it and imagined her dancing as God  draped  the landscape into t he  beautiful  spectrum of warmth . Then one evening, after the painting was up for about a week, my husband walk ed  into my art studio and exclaim ed , “YOU HAVE PORN IN YOUR PAINTING!”  I looked at him and calmly said, “No .  I do not.”  He quoted, “He had intercourse with her.  It’s in the painting!”     And I thought, “Oh, that’s right.  I looked for...
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A Poem and a Painting for Ireland

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Before we left Ireland, I knew I wanted to create a painting for our trip, but the painting didn’t speak to me right away.  It was always there, though, a whisper not to be forgotten.  A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about the lovely Irish music that welcomed us to the Cliffs of Mohor.     A lady was singing in that beautiful lilt at the start of our walk to the cliffs.  She had red hair and wore a white and green dress.  We listened for a while, enchanted.  Wanting to place something in the hat on the ground, but having no change, I gave what I had in my purse.  I knew we wouldn’t be buying much, as our days in this second home was coming to an end, so why not share the euros.  It was a 10 dollar bill.  I handed it to the singer, so it wouldn’t blow away in the wind.  She broke out into a smile and as her song ended, she thanked me much.  My husband, on the other hand, was livid for the amount that I gave her.  But ...
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