at the Brushy Mountain Apple Festival, today. I only saw about a third of it, but that was plenty for my old legs.
I caught up with friends and former students! I smelled some good smells and saw some awesome arts and crafts.
There was a band stand set up in the little corner park. I got to hear my friend, Eric Ellis, pick a little banjo.
The only creative thing I did today was take the leftovers from this
and added some leftover pork tenderloin bits. It was so good heated over and stirred lightly. This is the Louisiana Style Shrimp Skillet, a new dish from Cracker Barrel. (We know how to celebrate an anniversary! 😋😉)
The dish is not photogenic because they forgot the rice. The original dish was a skillet of shrimp in an oily-looking roux. I added the requested rice and stirred it in before thinking to photograph it. ‘Still not attractive, but very delicious. It was even better with the congealed fat removed and the tenderloin added.
I found a photo of what it’s supposed to look like online.
And, speaking of photos, I took this one of a little pitcher of wildflowers I brought in, intending to gel print with them.
Now, I’m sorting through craft books and magazines. Most of them are keepers, though a few will go to the lending library of the local senior center.
So despite kitchen cleaning and fibromyalgia exhaustion, today has not been a total waste after all!
In the words of grief counselor/artist Karen McKoy, “I showed up.”
I want to share the beautiful job she did on my grandson’s birthday cake that same year: 
She bought a basic white cake with white buttercream, then added vanilla wafer crumb sand and colored blue Cool-Whip waves. She molded that shark from fondant herself, and beached it on the cake!
My daughter also embedded red gummy sharks in blue Jello and added Cool-Whip waves. I was able to give her a couple of tips because of something I tried with my students. I poured warm blue Jello over gummy fish, using only one orange one (for finding Nemo!) When the Jello set up, the gummies rose, belly-up, to the top; they took on a rubbery texture, and their color bled into the “water!” I covered the whole dish with whip cream waves, and it was edible (hungry eighth graders will eat just about anything!) Unless you want your creation to look like a toxic waste dump, let Jello set, and then push in any gummies you choose to use! Serve them soon, before they “bleed out!”