Picture Sunday

Hello to all! It's Sunday night, and guess what - I'm not all frowny. Because my vacation officially starts tonight.

I won't be leaving till Wednesday morning, so there will be Picture Sunday (but maybe not one next week), there will be Acrochallenge, and there will be a Hucklebug podcast. This is because I love you. Well, actually, though I do love you, it's because my vacation event, that nerd's paradise known as Clarinetfest 2006, doesn't start until Wednesday.

I had a good weekend. Went to Mr M's yesterday, watched a movie, and didn't one single time get bent out of shape over playing the clarinet. It was pretty fun, even. I skipped the Community Band's Saturday morning concert, where we swelter in the streets of downtown B'burg every year, and today I shopped.

See, my mom, aka Granny, gave me $100. My mom's greatest joy in life is giving those she loves $100. Come meet her - she'll give you $100 too, I'll bet. So I bought things I needed, a few groceries and the dreaded ink cartridges for my printer, and with the rest of it I went on a spree. I found some massive summer sales and bought a blouse, two pairs of pants, some undies, and a skirt, all for under $50! It was great. Plus, our little state here is having some sort of extravaganza wherein this weekend almost anything you buy is sales tax-free. Extra savings.

But now let's go back to Friday. And I'll give you a small history lesson about B'field, my town.

Back in the 1940s, since apparently it's so cool where we live, and I know this was before the whole global warming thing and all, a man in town named Edward Steele came up with a honey of an idea. Well, actually, it was a lemon of an idea. (Mr Steele, btw, lived a very long life and I knew him in his later years. And what an incredibly lovely person he was.) The idea was that, if the temperature rose to 90 degrees, the town would give out free lemonade to its citizens. They got young girls to be Lemonade Lasses, as they called them, and they handed out the drinks.

So every summer it's kind of an ongoing thing around here. Will it be a Lemonade Day today? Hey! The bank said 90 degrees yesterday and there's no lemonade! (They go by the airport, apparently the coldest spot on the planet, because Lemonade Days are few and far between.)

Several years ago, our towns (the B'fields on both the VA and the WV side, we border one another) decided to take one day during the summer and celebrate this whole phenomenon. We call it Lemonade Days, and there have been parades, music (the Stetsons played on the VA side this year), and competitions. There's a competition for the best decorated lemon-themed hat, and one for the best decorated window in town.

And we at TheCompanyIWorkFor decorate our window every year. Unfortunately, we're the Oscars of window decoration. This is because we always go for comedy, and as you all know, comedy never wins at the Oscars.

This year, our window rocked. The judge, a local weatherman, stayed at our window and looked (and laughed) longer than anywhere else in town. He even told the people at another business they had to come up and look at our window, that it was great. But when the prizes were handed out, we at TheCompanyIWorkFor took only the First Runner-Up prize. Always a bridesmaid and never a bride. Oh, well. I guess if the winning window is unable to fulfill its duties as Lemonade Days Window of the Year, we get to step in.

Our window theme was "The Lemon Art Gallery." And here's what we had in our window. (You knew I was going to turn this into Picture Sunday, didn't you?) Please, step inside the gallery.

How about everyone's favorite, "American Lemon?"



Lovely. Now let's go to the Renaissance Section of the gallery and take a look at "Mona Lemon."



Try not to shed a tear as you look at the sentimental "Whistler's Lemon."



Now let's head over to the Modern Art section of the gallery. How about that classic, "Une Demanche Apres-Midi a l'Ile de la Grande Lemon."



And no Modern Art section would be complete without its own Picasso. Here's "Woman in a Blue Hat (Drinking Lemonade)."



And finally, just to prove we're not snobs in our art gallery, here's that tried and true crowd-pleaser, "A Lemon In Need."



In which Mr White Bulldog is not passing an ace to his buddy, but a packet of Wyler's lemonade.

The store that won the contest just had big lemons all over their windows. Tell me the fix wasn't in!

OK, that over, and let me tell you, I'm really proud of the above portion of Picture Sunday, but now it's time for the recipe du jour. Not so proud of this one.

You know, way back when I started making my own recipes for the cards, I spoke of a miserably failed experiment. I always knew I'd come back to it one day. And today I did. That first failure was to be "Egg Hats," but no matter how I tried, those Egg Hats just didn't want to get made. And so this week I've expanded it a little. From the "Snacks & Appetizers" file at cardland, say hello to Edible Hats.



OK, where to start. How about with the one that started it all, in the upper left. There's the Egg Hat, a half a hard-boiled egg on a raisin bun surrounded by Squirt Cheese and topped off with a festive green feather. To its right is the Fancy Onion Sun Hat, a slice of purple onion topped with a piece of peach, pimiento hatband, and fancy toothpick. Rounding it on the right is that American classic, the Tri-Corner Colonial Crunchy Hat, a Dorito topped with that summer classic, potato salad, and sporting a little American flag. On around, counter-clockwise we're going, is the Squirt Cheese and Town House Cracker Baseball Hat, complete with peppercorn button on top. To its left is the Egg Yolk Beanie, with fancy toothpick "propeller." On left again is the Weenie Boater, a peanut butter cracker topped with Vienna Sausage and an olive hatband. Left again, the dignified Weenie Top Hat, a baby Ritz topped with potted meat and a tall Vienna Sausage. Nice enough to be inaugruated in, I'd say. Then in the middle of it all is the Potato Chip Cowboy Hat, a Pringle's potato chip with a peanut-butter/chopped peanuts top.

Lord Have Mercy, the mess I got my kitchen into making those little fellows.

Happy week. (And it will be for me - I'm not working!)

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Really. We should have won that window contest. Our paintings had little gold frames around them and everything. We did get our window shown on the local news, though, where it was proclaimed as, "Funny."