Saturday Share - Recipe - Oven-Fried Potatoes

Happy Saturday!

Here's a recipe for a dish just about everyone loves.

It tastes great, it's easy to fix, and it's economical  too.

The great thing about potatoes is that they go with every kind of main dish—well, except pasta I suppose.

The ingredients may sound like a lot of fat, but you drain off the excess fat. You can save it in the fridge for use the next time you make this.

OVEN-FRIED POTATOES

Ingredients

1 potato for each person dining

4 tablespoons melted butter

4 tablespoons olive oil

salt and pepper

rosemary, an option for a different taste

Directions

1. Wash the potatoes well, but do not peel them. Slice each potato into quarter-inch rounds.

2. Soak the slided potatoes in cold water for a half hour.

3. Melt the butter and olive oil together on a cookie sheet.

4. Drain the potatoes and pat each round dry. Then place them on the cookie sheet in a single layer.

5. Sprinkle salt and pepper over them then turn over so the other buttered side can be seasoned.

6. Bake in a 425 degree oven for 20-25 minutes, until lightly brown and tender when pierced with a fork. Serve hot.

TAKEAWAY TRUTH

Sprinkle with crushed rosemary in addition to the salt and pepper. This makes them even more scrumptious.

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Keyboard Shortcuts to Pick Colors

Last week I blogged about Keyboard Shortcuts for Punctuation Marks and Symbols.

This week I'm giving you Keyboard Shortcuts for Colors.

You can use select a text color by typing in the color code on newsletter providers like MailerLite, on your own websites, blogs, and on graphics websites like BookBrush, etc.

These HTML color names can be used with inline HTML styles or in a separate CSS stylesheet 

For example, you can change the color of a headline and/or the body text with a simple HTML code instruction like this:

<!-- In your HTML document --><body> <h1 style="color:IndianRed">Indian Red Title Text</h1> <p style="color:SlateGray">Slate gray paragraph text</p> </body>

I use color codes a lot because it's faster to type 6 characters than click on a color chart and find the one yu want to use.

You may know already that #000000 is the HTML color code for black, and that #FFFFFF is the HTML color code for white.

There are HTML Color Codes for every color of the rainbow. Here are a few commonly used color codes in a list you can copy and print.

HTML COLOR CODES

Black  —  #000000

White  —  #FFFFFF

Bright Red  —  #FF0000

Bright Pink  —  #FF1493

Medium Violet Red  —  #C71585

Magenta  —  #FF00FF

Orange  —  #FFA500

Gold  —  #FFD700

Bright Yellow  —  #FFFF00

Lime Green  —  #00FF00

Green  —  #008000

Teal  —  #008080

Blue  —  #0000FF

Navy  —  #000080

Beige  — #F5F5DC 

Chocolate  —  #D2691E

Brown  —  #A52A2A

Maroon  —  #800000

Gray  —  #808080

TAKEAWAY TRUTH

Visit and bookmark ColorCodes, one of my favorite resources.

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Auto Crash Into Power Pole?

A few months ago, I read an article in a local magazine that asked this question: "Do you know what to do if you crash into an electric utility pole?"

Well, I didn't know. I told my husband and other family members because you just never know when you might be involved in a freak accident.

I thought I'd share the information online too in the form of a list.

1. Always, always think of a power line or other electrical equipment as LIVE—meaning it can kill you.

2. If you crash into a power pole and the power line falls on your car, there may or may not be fire. If there is NO fire, the safest thing to do is stay inside your car and call 911. You never know if a live wire may be laying on the ground. Don't exit your car until help arrives.

3. If passersby run to your car, tell them to stay away until help arrives. They may inadvertently receive serious electrical shock in trying to get to you.

4. Don't touch anything metal inside your car because electricity might be flowing through the frame of your car and along the ground.

4. If the accident caused a fire, then you need to leave the car, but do it this way. Open the car door, rotate your body so you're facing out. Place both feet at the same time on the running board if you have one, or on the bottom edge of the door frame. Jump out, making sure both feet leave the running board or door frame at the same time. Make sure you land with both feet on the ground at the same time.

5. When you jump out, be sure no part of your body or clothes touches the ground AND the car at the same time.

6. In getting away from the car, you have 2 options. Option #1—Shuffle step which means keep both feet in contact with the ground, sliding your feet along to maintain contact with the ground. Option #2—Jump away, making sure both feet leave the ground and land on the ground at the same time. Shuffling or jumping decreases the risk of electrical shock.

7. If you see an accident where someone has hit a utility pole, do NOT approach their vehicle. Call 911 and shout instructions to the driver.

TAKEAWAY TRUTH

I never thought about any of this before. It's a scary scenario which is why I wanted to spread the word about it. Be sure and pass this information on to your family and friends.

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Think About This Part 3 - Beauty

Every woman wants to be beautiful...to feel beautiful. I think the desire to be perceived as beautiful exists in every culture.

The late great Tina Turner said something so wise about the quest for beauty.

I wanted to share it with you because I think there's a lot of truth in it. 

"My greatest beauty secret is being happy with myself. I don't use special creams or treatments—I'll use a little bit of everything. It's a mistake to think you are what you put on yourself. I believe that a lot of how you look is to do with how you feel about yourself and your life. Happiness is the greatest beauty secret."

Self-identity—the way you perceive yourself—can make you feel special and beautiful or plain and unimportant. Call it self-esteem, self-confidence, self-identity, or any of the other buzz words, but know that how you think about yourself is of greater importance than you may imagine.

Don't look in the mirror and say mean things about your appearance. Would you tell another woman that she looks fat or wrinkled or old? Probably not, but I've heard women say things like that when they look at their own reflection. 

TAKEAWAY TRUTH

I've often urged readers to dwell on optimism rather than negative thoughts. Today I urge you to think of yourself as beautiful. Tell your reflection that. See yourself as beautiful.

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The Color of Spring

"Happiness? The color of it must be spring green." —Frances Mayes

I'd be willing to believe that if happiness had a color, it would be the green of emerging leaves.

Yesterday, I spent a lovely half hour walking through a garden center. The most beautiful fragrance floated through the air, and the sun was warm on my face.

SPRING ARRIVED—LET'S TAKE A BREAK

While no one was looking, spring sneaked in, but I—and the hundreds of other customers at the garden centers—recognized the lovely visitor.

I'm always happy to take a break from the routine. No, I'm not going anywhere. I'm just going to garden a little every day because Spring is my favorite season. That's my way of dealing with spring fever.

Funny how the phrase Spring Fever has become the name for many things including college festivals, triathlons, mixed drinks, perfume, several movies, poems, and books. For thousands of years, spring equinox has been celebrated in pagan rituals. (I guess one could characterize  college spring break as a bit pagan too.)

Humans haven't changed much since cavemen hunted T-Rex. Even today, we look forward to similar pursuits that involve shedding winter wools and slipping on tee shirts, shorts, and sandals.

SEASON OF YEARNING

My grandfather always said spring fever is when "a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love." I looked up spring fever in the dictionary. It defined spring fever as "a feeling of languor or yearning brought on by the coming of spring."

Since I'm a romance author, I write about yearning all the time. In my novels, a man and a woman yearn for each other—often against their better judgment. That's what creates the push-pull in a relationship that can be quite funny.

In the end, all that really matters is that winter is over and spring is here. Hurray. Go forth and celebrate! 

TAKEAWAY TRUTH

By the way, if you don't garden, try it. It's like Luther Burbank said, "Flowers always make people better, happier, more hopeful."

Second Chance Reads - Health, Beauty, Success, Etc.

It's been a while since I caught up on my blog reading. There always seems to be so many things to do each day that I miss a lot of great content.

Here are a few I've gone back too that I think you'd like too.

I've roughly categorized them. There were a lot more that I could list, but I'm super short on time.

Hope you find some that interest you and will click on them. Here we go.

HEALTH & BEAUTY

Make your own Rose Scrub from Wellness Mama Blog.

Wake Up to Glowing Skin from Nyka

In case you're interested...How to Apply False Eyelashes for Beginners from Cosmetify (I found a new mascare that makes you look as if you have falsies on your eyelids. I'll blog about it another day.)

9 Desk Stretches for People Who Sit All Day

***

SUCCESS

How Not to Succeed (in case you missed this on New Year's Day)

If you think you're too old for social media, read It's Never Too Late to Become an Influencer

Beginners Guide to TikTok

***

JUST FOR FUN

12 Book & Reading Facts You May Not Know

The Changing Ways of Romance by Bea Tilton

An Open Letter by Liz Flaherty (the kind of letter most of us could and should write)

***

FOR WRITERS

A Few Questions for Writers from Karen Jones Gowen

Writers & Imposter Syndrome

Book Trends in 2024 from BlurbBlog

TAKEAWAY TRUTH

There you have a recap of some recent blogs I read. Hope they're helpful to you too.

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Cowboy Poets Offer Powerful Words About Honor

The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, an annual festival celebrating western life and creativity, was held last month in Elko, Nevada.

Cowboy Poetry has been around a long time and is more popular than ever. About 6,000 people attended this year's gathering. You may wonder who comes to this?

Anyone interested in western arts, music, and the lifestyle. After all the cowboy is an icon of the Old West—perhaps the myth of the Old West.

WHY COWBOY POETRY

The 1870s trail drives gave birth to Cowboy poetry. Cowboys herded cattle to northern railheads on the Chisholm and Goodnight-Loving trails. The work was exhausting and there was nothing to do when night fell and chores were completed. 

To entertain themselves and others and to pass the time, Cowboys wrote poetry about their work, the loneliness of long nights, and sang old folk songs they'd rewritten to fit their world.

Cowboy Poetry Book
In Texas, a Cowboy Poetry Festival takes place every year in Alpine. In fact, there are about 200 gatherings in the U. S. each year, and they're well attended.

WHAT MAKES COWBOY POETRY

In this lyrical poetry, you'll find traditional elements like rhyme, meter and narrative—not often used in contemporary poetry. 

Most of the long-time practitioners of the genre have actually worked as cowboys. There may be a few cowboy poets who've never had to throw a saddle over Trigger, but they probably had ancestors who knew how to cinch a saddle and ride the line, or they married into a family with that ancestry.

Baxter Black is considered the most famous cowboy poet in the world. He's published more than a dozen books, recorded more than a dozen albums, and appeared on TV and radio.

His poems are humorous, often satirical, as he tells about the struggle and joy of ranch life.

Another famous cowboy poet is Bruce Douglas "Waddie" Mitchell, sometimes called the Cowboy Poet Lariat.

Mitchell often performs his poems with a guitarist providing background music. You'll find CD's and books with his work on Amazon, like One Hundred Poems.

TAKEAWAY TRUTH

Most of us are disconnected from nature. We live stress-filled lives of constant frustration. Try Cowboy Poetry, the simple yet powerful words about living with honor and integrity, may offer a respite from the discord of the world.

Joan participates in Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, affiliate advertising designed to help websites earn advertising fees by linking to products on Amazon. If you click an Amazon link in her post, she may receive a small commision at no extra cost to you.

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