Happy "All Souls Day", y'all. Thanks for the afternoon cuppa. Glad to see all seem well, relatively speaking. I'm keeping Stu in my "good thoughts basket"; hope your new battle scar heals up ok, Arcey.
Our weather has been mostly spectacular, if a little warmer than normal. but, it is "scheduled" for a change as early as this evening; temps are gonna drop, wind is gonna blow, might rain, and there might be s**w on the mountains. Had the a/c off most of the time the past week, but some afternoons, the temp inside gets up around 80 and stagnant, and I have to shut the place up and turn on the electricity eater for a few hours.
Reading about your gustatory adventures has my appetite piqued, at least in my head. I like okra in most forms, except boiled alone, or cooked to goo. In my estimation, the biggest problem with okra is that many folks just cook it too much; there seems to be a fine line, and it is real easy to cross it. On the cornbread line, my preference is for mine to have just a touch of sweet to it, not so's it tastes like cake, but just a faint dulcet touch. I think my late other-in-law was one of the best "from the shoulder" cooks I have ever known, and one of her specialties was cornbread. One of her favorites was to finely chop red and green chilis, sweat them off in bacon leavin's, and add them to the batter. She sweetened with sorghum, molasses, or Mexican piloncillo, a form of sugar they use down there, and only in her truly savory batter did she "not" add a touch of sweet.
I hope your evening goes well and that the candy gobblin's don't get you down. Since we moved to this house, we've taken to setting ourselves up in the driveway and doling out the goodies a bit to each one. There are a lot of kids in our neighborhood, and it is a regular tract style habitat with curbs, sidewalks , and streetlights, so a lot of folks are out and about on this evening each year. We sort of got "spoiled" when we lived in the Sierras because our place was so rural; our nearest neighbors were nearly a quarter mile away, and all of us had relatively large pieces of acreage, and many miles from town, so there were seldom any trick-or-treaters out and about. I think maybe two or three times in the years we lived there we got surprised on halloween; the dogs would go nuts, and we'd hear a few squeals of childish delight from out in the dark; I'd turn on the floods, and there would be a few kids standing out in the drive trying to keep the hauls they already had from the dogs, or a car would come down the road and the same scenario would occur. Our other place here in Las Vegas was very similar, but not on the same grand scale, lots an acre or less. Over there, the they would come in busses, with a lot of adults and flashlights, and they would "blitz" a block at a time - the blocks were a quarter mile long, no streetlights or sidewalks or curbs. We would only stay "open" until 2000 hrs, and then I would close the gates and turn off the lights; those crowds could be real rowdy.
Well, I guess I ought to go see if I can do something somewhat productive. Y'all take care and I'll see you sometime next month.
Later.