A Frostic raccoon Easter/spring adaptation by Dee; Kraft Mac & Cheese dinner converted to King Crab legs; 'The big short' / but can he tango?; Happy Easter again

Some of you

have over time received various greeting cards

and thank you notes

from Dee

who enjoys so much

making and sending them

via snail mail. (with a stamp)

This one, done last evening, 

involved a Gwen Frostic raccoon design,

which in a sticker form is used on most

official SRN correspondence,

as an envelope sealer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwen_Frostic

^,^

Kraft Dinner now,

Alaskan king crab legs later

We have been buying Kraft Mac and cheese dinner in the familiar box

since childhood.  It is a great quick and inexpensive meal in a package.

It is a kind of comfort food.

I remember when my grandmother gave me 11 cents

and sent up to Budzeins Grocery in the corner of Oakland

and Arcadian for my good behavior treat,

a box of the beloved and tasty Kraft Dinner.
That was in the 1940s.

Now if you shop around you might find a box for one dollar

but the usual price can run as high as $1.50.

Still, that is cheap eating!

http://www.kraftmacandcheese.com/

Wikipedia background

History[edit]

The prerequisite to creating packaged macaroni and cheese was the development of "processed" cheeses in which emulsifying salts help stabilize the product, giving it a longer life. James Lewis Kraft, originally of Fort Erie, Ontario but then living in Chicago, did not invent processed cheese but won a patent for one processing method in 1916 and began to build his cheese business.^[3]

The idea for selling macaroni and cheese together as a package came about during the Great Depression when a St. Louis, Missouri salesman began attaching grated cheese to boxes of pasta with a rubber band.^[3] In 1937, Kraft introduced the product in the U.S. and Canada.^[4] The timing of the product's launch had much to do with its success. During World War II, rationing of milk and dairy products, an increased reliance on meatless entrees, and more women working outside the home, created a nearly captive market for the product, which was considered a hearty meal for families. Its shelf life of ten months was attractive at a time when many Canadian homes did not have refrigerators.^[3]

New product lines using different flavours and pasta shapes and increases to shelf life were introduced over the decades. Kraft Dinner is still seen as inexpensive, easy to make comfort food, with marketing to highlight its value and convenience.

^,^

Another Kraft Dinner benefit

is what you can buy with the saved money after a while.

This Easter we are having a special dinner of King Crab legs
from our favorite fish store, EMPIRE FISH, in eastern Elm Grove
on Watertown Plank Road.

This festive fare does not come cheap!

We had an outing from Waukesha to Elm Grove Empire Fish  store this past Wednesday.

With Kraft Dinner savings accumulated, coupled with wise grocery shopping by Dee generally,

 we invested in 2 lbs of fresh-frozen just-caught crab legs.

They were packaged the right way - sawed on the half-shell for easier eating.

 Phil Kari and Laurie Dix Kari should especially watch this video on crabbing.

They live in Wasilla AK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxaMFIfIq98

Old-time crabber from the documentary link above.

Our total booty from Empire on Wed.

^,^

http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=6109505689318&source=jl999&utm_medium=internal_email&utm_source=pickup&utm_campaign=receiver2content

^,^

Titled by the magazine:  'The Big Short'

Yes, but can he tango?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv-5t_Wp0rc

^,^

Another Easter Greeting:

http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=6131441439318&source=jl999&utm_medium=internal_email&utm_source=pickup&utm_campaign=receivercontent

Recognize 'Morning has broken'?

Attn:  1st Congo Choir

one of your old standards

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X48weyESpec

Jack; Joy - (Dee serves at an 80th, whew); Janelle; Just waiting; Just looking; Just James; Just dunk; Just once more

a girl named jack

by Jacqueline Woodson

Good enough name for me, my father said

the day I was born.

Don't see why

she can't have it, too.

But the women said no.

My mother first.

Then each aunt, pulling my pink blanket back

patting the crop of thick curls

tugging at my new toes

touching my cheeks.

We won't have a girl named Jack, my mother said.

And my father's sisters whispered,

A boy named Jack was bad enough.

But only so my mother could hear.

Name a girl Jack, my father said,

and she can't help but

grow up strong.

Raise her right, my father said,

and she'll make that name her own.

Name a girl Jack

and people will look at her twice, my father said.

For no good reason but to ask if her parents

were crazy, my mother said.

And back and forth it went until I was Jackie

and my father left the hospital mad.

My mother said to my aunts,

Hand me that pen, wrote

Jacqueline where it asked for a name.

Jacqueline, just in case

someone thought to drop the ie.

Jacqueline,  just in case

I grew up and wanted something a little bit longer

and further away from

Jack.

Jacqueline Woodson, "a girl named jack" from Brown Girl Dreaming. Copyright © 2014 by Jacqueline Woodson. Used by permission of Nancy Paulsen Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

Source: Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2014)

^,^

Dee with grandson Mike and granddaughter Melissa

^,^

Janelle

Special birthday greetings

to an avid raccoon reader

^,^

JUST WAITING:

^,^

Just looking for a doormat

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=youtube%20raccoon%20stealing%20doormat

^,^

 James, steamrollin'

Probably not just for the St. Paddie's revelers
traversing the Five Points
here in downtown Waukesha,

yet the bar merchants must have appreciated it.

Now blacktop prevails, 5 Points open to traffic generally this weekend

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfzMLRzH2yw

^,^

Just dunk

preferably in hot chocolate

box sez "Since 1933"

been eating them all my life 

and you know how long that is

(my current screensaver)

^,^

SEWER RACCOON 

This poem was written in 2002.  Little did we know it was to become the name
of the SRN then.  But the seed had hit fertile ground, so that when Lee
suggested that I recover from my heart trouble with a bloggish  pastime
and helped launch this effort, the Sewer Raccoon News was fallen upon
for the name.  Founded in 2006, the SRN has been going now for 10 years.
While the city sleeps

(a redoux)

Waukeshans complacently enjoy their town-grown-to-city

With it’s well-policed, clean, safe streets

And the cerulean blue skies overhead;

Or when it rains

The rain washing everything anew and flowing

Away like dirty bathwater down the drain

Out of sight, out of mind;  oh yes,

We think of everything and take for granted

That the solid terra-firma plane on which we work and play

 IS as storybooked as it appears

And that the sky overhead here is relatively terrorless

That covers two of the three physical dimensions

But we never think about the seething subterranean world

Beneath the city where that dirty bathwater flows

Unless we happen to be with the Sanitation Department

And as far as I know, they aren’t talking;

My friends, we co-exist over a nether-world

About which we never think

And the Sewer Raccoons down there - that’s right - count on our ignorance;

Their profligacy festers beneath us

Growing daily, like whiskers becoming a dread-locked beard

But we don’t know it because we trust in our local government

And in what we see

The coons, woe to us!  phantoms of this opera are

Just a few feet beneath Waukesha in archen coves and caverns

Until nightfall when every storm grate at every corner

Becomes an open doorway into our elysian yards and gardens;

Marauders on velvet paws which they keep licking, masked,

They steal about under cover of nocturnal shadows, late,

When the windows of our proud houses show black; 

It’s then the Sewer Coons take over the town;   by day,

These slick creatures have free rein in their underworld

Bartering our garden produce in little shops and bazaars

In their sub-city

Where they swarm and reproduce like rabbits;

They have their own school district where all the little coons

Study burglary and ankle-nipping;

So far they are content with their lowly position, hence,

The Sanitation Department, the Mayor and the Aldermen

Only monitor them and do not tell us of their spreading presence

 An Amos or a Paul Revere I send this warning

For I live nearer the Fox River in one of the town’s ruder huts

And the Sewer Coons are, though proliferating

Concentrated only in our poorer neighborhoods at the present time;

By the railroad tracks and the Fox River waterway,

But the storm sewer web is beneath us all, free and accessible

And even now no one is safe

I have again lately seen the coons emerge from the grate at our corner

As has my wife;  we know the desolation

Of having our grapes stolen from our vines;

We’ve actually heard the coons’ little “chick-chick-chick” sounds;

Close-up, we’ve seen the phosphorescent reflection of their eyes

In our flashlight beams; they run, are not brazen yet – oh, no -

Carrying little bindles over their hump-ed shoulders

And make their dash back to their grated holes,

Furred hit-and-run warriors, in place,

Waiting for their messiah to come, perhaps from Milwaukee or Chicago

The Really Big 'Coon, to marshal them into an invading army,

Meanwhile waxing stronger in secret on grapes and sacked left-overs;

And sometimes we think we can hear muffled “tink”s

As they pound on their tiny anvils under Arcadian Avenue

Making suits of armor on foot-pumped forges; flaring

Light seems to flash from the gratings after the clock has struck twelve

And I go out and listen at my corner sewer entrance

And hear their “YO-OH, HO HO!” chants

Echoing softly up from below;

The Sewer Raccoons are coming, the Sewer Raccoons are coming!

[D. Zep Dix 9-19-2002]

^,^

 NEXT WEEK

Kraft Dinner (KD)

.....

IN TWO WEEKS
A new use for an Amish straw hat