★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
May 10, 2013

★~ Today’s Quote:“Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Know what I mean?” Monty Python

★~ International Monty Python Status Day:

Participating is easy; think of one of your favorite Monty Python quote, and share it on Odd, with a friend, post it as your facebook status, or twitter it.  It can be from the TV show, the movies, the musical, the live shows, Graham’s funeral, etc… or you can make it up yourself!

★~Tidy Up Day:

I met a little dusty gnome. He said it’s time to clean our room. Round. Round. Round. Whish. Whish. Whish. Time to clean our room!

Today we must tidy up our disastrously messy bedrooms, or any other rooms in our house that need to be picked up, straightened out, and cleaned up. Who knows? Under that stack of papers you might find $10, or a camera memory card, or your pet hamster, or maybe even a gnome!  Beware though: the hardest part is just starting, and then one rooms leads to another and another and before long—your cleaning is done… Whish. Whish. Whish. Time to clean our room!

★~Shrimp Day:

Let’s keep the shrimp dish simple. Just toss a few of nature’s lovable, pink, bite-sized crustaceans into a salad or pasta, or munch while dipping in cocktail sauce.

~ Americans eat more shrimp than any other seafood, beating out even salmon and canned tuna in popularity.

Summer Shrimp Cocktail
Shrimp Bisque
Coconut Shrimp
Yaam Goong (Thai Spicy Shrimp Salad)

★~ Today in History:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/Ud_JZcC0tHI[/youtube]

♥~ 1893 – The Supreme Court ruled that the tomato was a vegetable, not a fruit

♥~ 1869  – Charles E. Hires began selling his root beer mix  during opening day at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Hires sold his mixture in tiny packets that contained the various herbs, barks, and berries. You still had to boil these ingredients, strain the mixture, add the correct amount of sugar and yeast, ferment the brew, and then bottle it. But you didn’t have to collect the ingredients and buying the ingredients in one package was cheaper than buying all the ingredients separately. The pre-mixed ingredients were primarily sold to housewives, but were also marketed to druggists and soda fountains.

♥~ 1954 – Bill Haley & His Comets released “Rock Around the Clock“, the first rock and roll record to reach number one on the Billboard charts.

♥~ 1960 – Around the world in 80 days … uh, make that 84 days. That’s how long it took the U.S. nuclear-powered submarine Triton to circumnavigate the globe.

♥~ 1963 –  The Rolling Stones produced their very first recordings this day. The session included Come On and I Wanna Be Loved. The Stones would make it to the American pop music charts in August, 1964.

♥~ 2006 –  Oklahoma was the last state to make tattoos legal.Governor Brad Henry signed legislation on this day to license and regulate tattoo artists and parlors.

★~Born Today:

♥ ~1850 – Sir Thomas Johnstone Lipton- had it not been for yachtsman and entrepreneur Thomas Johnstone Lipton, you may not be enjoying an affordable cup of tea. The man whom Queen Victoria knighted in 1898 introduced affordable tea to working class families in the United States.

♥~ 1899 – Fred Astaire (Austerlitz) dancer, actor: Funny Face, Silk Stockings, Finian’s Rainbow, Daddy Long Legs, Easter Parade, Let’s Dance, That’s Entertainment, The Towering Inferno; died June 22, 1987

♥~1946 – Donovan (Leitch) singer: Mellow Yellow, Sunshine Superman, Atlantis; composer: film: If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, appeared in film: The Pied Piper of Hamlin, Brother Sun, Sister Moon

♥~ 1960 – Bono (Paul Hewson) singer: group: U2: Sunday Bloody Sunday, Pride [In the Name of Love], With You or Without You

♥~ 1966 – Jason Brooks actor: Days of Our Lives, Baywatch

★~ Good to Know:

♥~ The invention of tea is credited to a Chinese emperor who lived  4,700 years ago, when he discovered that tea leaves falling into boiling water make a refreshing drink. Alas, the emperor — credited with numerous discoveries in medicine, pharmacy, agriculture — is likely a myth himself. The earliest authenticated record of commercial cultivation of tea is found in 4th century Chinese documents. However, it’s generally accepted that people in East Asia were brewing and drinking tea hundreds of years before. In those early days, tea was drunk mostly for medicinal purposes. Green tea leaves were formed into small cakes, roasted, then pounded into small chunks. Brewed tea must not have tasted very good because the drink was typically flavored with ginger, onion, mint, and orange. Infusing tea leaves in a teapot became a widespread practice in China early during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Thus “modern tea drinking” is probably less than seven hundred years old.

♥~  Conventional wisdom holds that iced tea was invented in 1904, at the St. Louis World’s Fair, by a British tea merchant named Richard Blechynden. However, while he may have helped popularize iced tea, “tea punches” — alcoholic ancestors of the drink — were served decades earlier in the United States, and at least one late 19th century cookbook includes a recipe for iced tea. Interestingly, about 80 percent of the tea served in the United States today is iced tea.

♥~  Legend has it that a New York City tea importer named Thomas Sullivan became annoyed at the high cost of the tin boxes he used to send tea samples to customers. So in 1904 (or by some accounts, 1908) he switched to small cloth bags. One of the recipients brewed a pot of tea by simply pouring hot water over the bag — and the rest is history. It’s a nice story, except some tea experts point out that a U.S. patent for a “tea leaf holder made out of fabric” was granted in 1903. Regardless of who was really responsible, many tea lovers consider the teabag one of the worst inventions of the 20th century. Tea brewed with loose tea is generally much tastier than tea make from dunked teabags.

♥~  Green tea studies show that drinking one cup a day is helpful in the fight against heart disease, certain forms of cancer and diabetes and will will help  lower cholesterol.  While some of the findings are disputed, most doctors agree that a cup of green tea every day is good for you.

♥~ The most expensive tea in the world is grown in the mountains of Ya’An in the Sichuan province of China. Workers fertilize the tea bushes using the waste from local pandas whose bodies take in only a small amount of nutrients from the food they eat. The tea costs the equivalent of around $200 for a small cup.

♥~  One pound of loose tea leaves will brew more than 200 cups of tea. That works out to ten cents a cup for quality home brewed tea tea.

♥~ Tea is the second most popular beverage in the world — second only to plain water.

♥~ Tea and Caffeine: A cup of brewed tea contains less than half the caffeine of a cup of coffee. However, if you like your tea decaffeinated begin by brewing it as usual, removing the leaves after twenty seconds, discarding the initial brew and start again with fresh boiling water and the now-decaffeinated tea leaves.

♥~ Tea Songs: The two most hummed tea songs are “Tea for Two,” written by Vincent Youmans and Irving Caesar in 1924 for the Broadway musical, “No, No, Nanette,” and “When I Take My Sugar to Tea,” penned in 1931 by Sammy Fain , Irving Kahal, and Pierre Norman.

♥~ English Afternoon Tea was invented by  the Duchess of Bedford — one of Queen Victoria’s Ladies in Waiting — who came up with the idea of a late afternoon meal of tea, thin sandwiches, and small cakes to overcome the “sinking feeling” she felt. The notion caught on, with Queen Victoria’s enthusiastic support.

♥~ Teapots? Check out Beth’s collection every Tuesday.

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I’m still without power. I’m not amused. However, I did haul our generator out of the shed, read the instruction booklet and set it up. I was able to get the fridge on, one lamp, the sump pump, and internet. I am ache all over from  pulling, pushing, climbing, and reaching, but I will admit to a feeling of accomplishment when I finally managed to pull the cord and the generator roared and the connected appliance lit up and began to do their thing.

Monty Python fans feel free to share your favorite quote!

Odd Loves Company!