Food and Vintage Finds

This isn't a road trip but I thought I would show off how I use some of my finds.

The warm brown of Marcrest Daisy Dot Dinnerware is perfect for comfort food. On a cold winter's day, I decided to jazz up the tomato soup a bit. Instead of adding water to canned soup, I added a can of diced tomatoes and some fresh basil with a healthy pinch of cracked pepper. What a difference! Then I grilled a ham and cheese sandwich and added some apple wedges on the side. Perfect meal for a cold day made even better when served on vintage dinnerware!

On to the Great Grapefruit Adventure! We have a grapefruit tree in our backyard. Just one. We had already picked a number of grapefruit and enjoyed fresh grapefruit for breakfast and snacks. Then a hard freeze hit. Grapefruit can handle an hour or two of 32 degree weather but when it goes down into the 20's for two consecutive nights, you have to pick them all.

We started picking. And we picked and picked and picked! Eighty grapefruit off one tree and we had already picked 30-35! What can we do with 80 grapefruit at one time???

Well, you buy frozen juice in the store all the time so why not freeze the juice? I immediately thought of my mother's juicer attachment for her stand mixer. I had kept it even though I wasn't sure if I would ever use it. I wasn't even sure how to attach it to the mixer.

I figure the little metal pin with the slot in it had to attach to something that rotated. If you rotate the handle on top, the juicer sits right on top and the shoot allows the juice to pour into the mixing bowl below.

My little kitchen elf got busy and sliced all the grapefruit in half. Then he started in with the juicer. If not for the electric juicer, I don't think he could have completed the task all at one time. We ended up with four huge stock pots of juice and 18 quarts of juice for the freezer! That juicer is an oldie but a goodie!

Now on to the orange juice!

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New Job and Little Time for Backroads

I have a new job that I love. The upside is that I am learning new things everyday and wake up thinking how lucky I am to have a job I love. On the downside, I don't have a lot of time for weekend get-aways and the blog is suffering for it. Buster and I did manage to squeeze in a day trip.

Buster really wanted to leave the previous afternoon but I thought we had given up on that idea and didn't rush home from school. He patiently waited for me to drink my coffee the next morning. (This is a major feat for him to be patient.) He had the car pulled up to the gate and ready to pull out as I finally made it out the back door.

The day was great for a ride but not in the way you might think. The sky was overcast but not raining. The day was warm - which was great for February. When you are in a convertible, sometimes the sun can make it uncomfortable so the day was perfect.

We headed up Highway 45 and began to stop at some places that Buster had previously scouted out. Here's what we found...

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I was excited to find the square blossom plates. (Berkley, Trend, Syracuse) I had been looking for these for my daughter and I don't come across them very often. They were manufactured for railways to use in their dining cars.

The fifties green and blue patterns is one of my favorites. We found a stack of bread plates and a stack of bowls, plus a creamer! (Taylorstone, Cathay)

The funky double cone with fish was marked Japan and like nothing I had come across before. I had to have it.

And of course I had to snatch up two green planters - the rectangular one is one that I already had but for $1, I couldn't pass it up. (USA, 75) The round one is small and cute and I couldn't pass it up because I had not seen one like it before. (McCoy, USA) (I always can come up with a reason...)

The round trivet was Frankoma. Love the details.

The gray sugar lid was only twenty-five cents and you never know when you might need a sugar lid. Okay, that one was a stretch but I bought it anyway. (Homer Laughlin, Harlequin)

We ended up in Selma and crossed the famous civil rights bridge before heading over to the interstate and starting south again. The trip only lasted a few hours but was long enough to wash away all my troubles and have a fresh start to the week. Nothing like a weekend adventure On the Backroads With Buster!