I cannot take credit for coming up with this idea.

But I do take credit for passing it along to you!

Sweet or savory– and slightly terrifying –these specimen jars are fun to make and will give your dinner guests something to chew on.

Before we begin, let’s be clear about what we’re trying to accomplish, with a few ground rules for the project:

1. What good is a specimen jar if you can’t serve it at dinner? The contents of the jars should be genuinely edible, made out of real food. Plastic snakes and spiders are right out.

2. Make it tasty. While the appearance of the specimen jars may cause loss of appetite, the scent, by contrast, should be simply mouth watering. There are many ways to get there. Specimen jars can be prepared as an antipasto course (e.g., with preserved vegetables), as a soup appetizer, as a palate cleanser between courses, or a dessert course, depending on the ingredients chosen.

3. Work within the comfort zone of your guests. If your guests are super-omnivores, eager to eat the most challenging ingredients that you can get your hands on– whether that’s brains or balut or something far worse –then go right ahead. However, the point of this project is to make a dish that looks intimidating but actually consists of friendly ingredients. It’s possible to make a truly scary looking set of specimen jars that is (for example) strictly vegan or passes the even stricter dietary requirements that your child may present.

Here’s the original post.

This time of year is always tough for me.

The end of the baseball season.

Last night the St Louis Cardinals won the 2011 World Series by defeating the Texas Rangers in 7.

The season has ended and I am now without baseball for several months.

Baseball has always been more than a sport. It was a connection to my family growing up. And remains an emotional connection to that past today.

It was something my Grandma and I shared at her kitchen table playing cards and listening to games on the radio.

Something my dad and I played together in the backyard when I was little. Something I wanted to do for a living until I was told “girls don’t play professional baseball”.

I saved for years (or it seemed that way for a kid) to buy a George Brett glove. He was my hero. My dad used to play catch with me in the backyard after I bought that glove. Dad taught me how to hold the ball to throw a fastball and a curve and a slider. I could never master the knuckleball. I got good enough with the rest of the pitches to impress the local American Leagion coaches…the ones that told me I was better than the other pitchers who had tried out.

But I was a girl and couldn’t play.

My Grandmother and I would sit around her kitchen table drinking Cokes from glass bottles and playing “Flinch” or “Touring” while we listened to Denny Matthews call the Royals games on our local AM station.

When I got a little older and worked for that same station I would produce those same broadcasts. It was then I decided I wanted to be the play by play announcer for the Royals. Unfortunately Denny has stayed with the club so long I think it may be a little late! Plus this was back before there were any women even doing the sideline or anchor stuff for sports stations. The odds were stacked high against me.

I sat there with Grandma day after day during the summer. Listening to each call, listening to each game, listening to her slam her cards down when they made an error or the opposition scored we found something that went beyond the grandma/grandaughter connect to a bond formed by the love of a sport and a particular team.

She and I watched every All-Star game together. Sitting side by side in the recliners in her living room with those Cokes in bottles and popcorn she made on the stove in a pan with oil. When I went away to college I was unable to make it home one year to watch it with her. I called and we watched it together over the phone. That was years before free long distance on your cell and cost me a fortune. It’s a memory I wouldn’t trade for all the money in the world.

Every year my family would get tickets to go to a Royals game in KC. I chased George Brett around the mezzanine at Royals Stadium to get his autograph. I was almost too late to catch him that day. It’s a treasured momento I have framed and hung on my bedroom wall.

I accepted the job at KILT over a couple other offers I had at that time. Not just because it was a great station but because it was the only one in a city that had a major league baseball team. There’s not a game I go to where I don’t look up to heaven and smile telling Grandma I was at a game and wished she were with me.

Two summers ago a friend and I took a trip to KC to see the Astros play the Royals in interleague play. It was about 30 years since my last trip to Royals Stadium. Grandma had been with me that time.

We suffered through a cold and very damp rain delay before a huge rainbow appeared from one edge of the stadium to the other.

I knew the rainbow was sent from Grandma so she could be there with me again. I just knew it…

Baseball has a way of making me feel like that 11 year old calling out “Mr Brett! Mr Brett!” as he was walking away from the autograph table. The All Star Game every mid summer takes me back to those recliners in my grandmother’s living room. I have one of those recliners in my bedroom and often sit in it for the game. It still has the afgan on it my mother crocheted.

The end of the season brings all those memories to clarity. The feel of the Coke bottle in my hand, the sound of the cards being shuffled, the pop of the ball when I threw a good fastball into my dad’s glove in the backyard, the smells of the yard and the whoosh of the breeze coming through my grandma’s open kitchen window.

They were with me for the last seven months just like they were then…those sounds and smells and feelings. I didn’t really notice them when they happened then but they became part of me without my noticing.

Thank you, baseball. I’ll see you in the Spring and we’ll bring them all back out again.

Again next season I’ll share you with my Godson. Hopefully one day he’ll have memories like these that keep him close to me long after I am gone.

I will admit I was a bit shocked to see Toby Keith show up on The Colbert Report. I had always seen Toby as a right wing nut, hawkish, ultra conservative guy who would think Colbert was a left wing nut, sheepish, ultra liberal guy.

Ne’er the two shall meet. I was mistaken and will say it now in public.

“Sorry, Toby Keith. I was wrong about you.”

And the bonus kicker is the two did a kick ass version of the National Anthem.

See it after the break

It could be the cutest puppy video ever!

Trust me…click this link.

Run your curser over the guy’s face.

Do it!

Whether you agree with the protesters or not – I do – the police using some fairly heavy tactics against a few unarmed protesters to get them out of the park and off the streets seems a bit much.

If we saw this happening in another country – and we HAVE recently – we would be rooting for the folks who are protesting a government they do not trust and does not recognize their needs or legislate their will.

As it starts in the park before the set curfew…

I agree if there is a curfew they should vacate the park. But to hog tie and tear gas them to make it happens is too much for this American. The tear gassing and rubber bullets from the police…

Some folks who decided to protest with civil disobedience should have been detained. I believe the protesters should follow the rule of the law of the cities. I will not go as far as to say they have a right to be unlawful. But I’m not sure flash bombs are really something you should throw into a crowd – especially one trying to help a person already down from a flash bomb!

My concern is the police response can and did go to far in this case.

The aftermath…

I ran across this video, a commemoration of the anniversary of Bloody Sunday. May we never forget our past and how it leads to our future, and may we never forget that we hold the power to change things.

One of my most favorite things to do when I am home in Missouri is to lay on my friend Dale’s sidewalk and look up at the stars. (We call them the “schtarrzz” when I do because it’s usually after a few cocktails at the local VFW).

Living now in a huge city I rarely get to see them in such abundance from my porch. And besides they are the same stars I watched as a kid. It’s just a thing…

But never before would I have thought about the Northern Lights above me as I lay on Dale’s sidewalk.

The northern lights came to the Deep South on Monday night, making them visible hundreds of miles farther south than they normally would be. Including El Dorado Springs MO – about 25 minutes east of my hometown.

KY3 – a TV station out of Springfield MO – compiled a great slideshow of photos from the lights in nearby Lebanon MO.

Scientists call it a coronal mass ejection. To the rest of us, the brilliant shades of green, orange and red that danced across the night sky might simply be called beautiful or eerie.

The northern tier of the United States — places like Seattle, Minneapolis or Boston — is normally the southern limit for the solar flares, meteorologist Jim Branda at the National Weather Service office in Memphis, Tennessee, said. But on Monday night, the display — also known as the aurora borealis — could be seen as far south as Oklahoma City, Memphis and Atlanta…and the skies near my hometown!

The light show was caused by a solar outburst.

“A storm on the sun’s surface was blown off, and the solar wind scattered it,” Branda said, explaining what created the natural light show. “The energy and magnetism interact with the earth’s atmosphere and the magnetic field.”

The Twitter universe lit up with comments.

Some said the display was “stunning,” while others called it “wonderful.”

Enjoy it while you can, Branda said.

The southern light show normally only happens once every three or four years. If the sky is cloudy, it might be seen only once every 10 years in southern states, according to Branda

Gosh, I’m kinda glad we’re getting out of Iraq by the end of the year. I’m kinda glad that 70+ percent of Americans think this is a good thing and the President is not backing out of an agreement President George W signed with the Iraqi government.

And I’m really glad we have Jon Stewart to put it in persepective for us.

Last Friday President Obama announced the U.S. will be withdrawing from Iraq by the end of the year. So, you can imagine what Jon Stewart’s biggest segment was about on his Monday night return to “The Daily Show.”

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