★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
August 24, 2012

★~ Meet Bailey: (West Highland Terrier- Westie) Cute as a button, smart as a whip, and terrier through and through sums up Bailey’s pupsonality. No need for this little dog to stay on the porch; she can outrun the best of them, and when she bites off more stick than she can handle, she’s smart enough to high tail it back to your lap before turning to snarl and growl at her pursuers.

★~ Today’s Quote:  “Fresh peach pie can lift a bullying reprobate into apologetic courtesy; I have watched it happen.” ― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

★~ National Knife Day: 

My guess is that we celebrate knife day today because it is the anniversary of the death of Arthur Schiff (May 1, 1940–August 24, 2006), who ran his own marketing company for 23 years and played American capitalism like Hendrix handled the guitar. He never met a product he couldn’t sell, but his masterpiece of marketing, his personal Mona Lisa, came in 1978 when Dial Media, for whom he wrote ad copy, was trying to come up with a catchy, hard-hitting TV commercial for their new product, a line of kitchen knives called Quikut.

“But wait, there’s more!” about Arthur Schiff on Did You Know (under Today’s Birthdays).

Celebrate knife day buy cutting, chopping, or carving something.

★~ National Waffle Day:

Today is National Waffle Day (not to be confused with International Waffle Day, which the world celebrates in March). Now, of course you could celebrate today by whipping up a nice fluffy waffle or popping an Eggo in the toaster oven and enjoying it with butter and maple syrup, but I have another option for you: pour yourself an invigorating shot of waffle-flavored vodka, distilled in the United States by the fine folks at Georgi’s distilling who say they “used just the right combination of spices to replicate the waffle flavor.” And for the budget-conscious a 1.75 l bottle of waffle-flavored vodka costs only $11.00–$14.00.

Cole’s friend Pat brought him two shot glasses back from Poland, and he has been bugging me to let him use them with an “adult beverage.” Mmmm . . . this seems like an occasion to share with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law.  Cole can have a shot of waffle vodka, and then we can gift them the rest of the bottle. Cheers, however you decide to celebrate Waffle day!

★~ Peach Pie Day:

Peach pie is the quintessential American dessert in the Southern states. In countless surveys, it has been chosen as the favorite dessert in the South. It has also been recognized as a favorite dessert in Canada for hundreds of years. Peach pie was invented sometime around the 14th century in Europe.  The first printed peach pie recipe was by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1381, in England.

During the 19th century, many homes in the state of Georgia served peach pie and other types of fruit pie for breakfast, because it was considered a good, hearty meal to begin a hard day’s work.

To celebrate National Peach Pie Day, bake a delicious pie or pick one up at your local bakery to share with your family!

Or you could just have a shot of Peach Vodka…Just sayin’

★~ Today in History:

♥~AD79 – Vesuvius Day:  The residents of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae lived in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius, overlooking the Bay of Naples, Italy and had never been given a reason to fear the mountain slopes they farmed. However, around noon, on August 24, 009, without any warning, Mt. Vesuvius exploded. Vesuvius, the volcano, erupted, spewing stones and lava, burying Pompeii under 13 feet of ash, and covering Herculaneum and Stabiae with mud and debris.  Today Mt. Vesuvius, is a peaceful, beautiful mountain, but is still considered an active volcano. Vesuvius Day commemorates the historic eruption of Mt.Vesuvius

♥~1869 – A patent for the waffle iron was received by Cornelius Swarthout. 

♥~1891 – Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.

♥~ 1932 –  Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly non-stop across the U.S., traveling from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, in just over 19 hours.

♥~ 1944- La Tomatina: It all started in 1944 and has be going strong ever since: The world’s largest tomato fight takes place at noon in Bunol, Spain, near Valencia when around  35,000 people will  show up to  hurl 120 tons of tomatoes at each other for two hours in the‘World’s Biggest Food Fight.‘   The festival is in honor of the town’s patron saints, Luis Bertran and the Mare de Deu dels Desemparats (Mother of God of the Defenseless), a title of the Virgin Mary.

♥~ 1956 – Elvis Presley recorded “Love Me Tender.”

♥~1967 – The Beatles met the Maharishi Mahresh Yogi and began studying transcendental meditation.

♥~ 2002 – Petri Valta of Finland beat 90 other contestants from seven countries when he hurled a Nokia 5510 cell phone 219 feet to set a new world record at the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships in Savonlinna, Finland.

♥~ 2006 – Sorry Pluto, Astronomers meeting in Prague declared thatPluto was no longer a planet. The decision was made under revised guidelines that downsized the solar system from nine planets to eight.The planet Pluto was reclassified as a “dwarf planet” by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Pluto’s status was changed due to the IAU’s new rules for an object qualifying as a planet. Pluto met two of the three rules because it orbits the sun and is large enough to assume a nearly round shape. However, since Pluto has an oblong orbit and overlaps the orbit of Neptune it disqualified Pluto as a planet.

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1934 – Kenny Baker, Actor (R2D2 in “Star Wars”)

♥~ 1949 – Joe Regalbuto actor: Murphy Brown, Knots Landing, Writer’s Block, The Queen of Mean, Invitation to Hell, Lassiter

♥~ 1965 – Marlee Matlin Academy Award-winning actress: Children of a Lesser God [1986]; Hear No Evil, Bridge to Silence, Reasonable Doubts

♥~1988 –  Rupert Grint, British actor best known for the Harry Potter films

★~ Did You Know: 

Trying to write catchy copy for kitchen knives called Quikut was a challenge even for Schiff, but then, one night he awoke from a dream, said “I’ve got it!” and scrawled a word on a piece of paper: Ginsu. He went to work the next day and gave the paper to his business partners, who decided that the name had a Japanese twang to it that conjured up images of Samurais and Japanese steak houses (never mind that the knives were manufactured in Ohio). They hired a Japanese exchange student to film a commercial (“In Japan, the hand can be used like a knife …”). The kicker was a phrase Schiff added to the script at the last minute: “But wait, there’s more!” Dial then promised to throw in several smaller knives with each order at no extra cost. That tag line sold millions of knives and became the source of endless parodies.

A long time ago, back when I was a television advertising executive (that is what it said on my cards, anyway), I had lunch with Arthur Schiff and his advertising entourage. He was fun, charming, and as you might imagine, very high energy. I remember him telling us over lunch that he’d recently had dinner at Benihana’s and afterwards went out to the car and brought back a set of Ginsu knives for the chef at his table; he felt the chef’s performance was good but could be improved with a better set of knives. During lunch, he verbally punctuated his sentence with exclamation marks and the words “chop chop,” which made us all a little jumpy. One thing that came through loud and clear about Arthur Schiff is that he believed in his product.

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On Tuesday I made white sauce enchiladas and chocolate malt cookies; on Wednesday I made pasta with tomato cream sauce; and on Thursday, when Cole heard the hum of the kitchen aid mixer, he wandered into the kitchen and asked, “Mom, are you making MORE cookies? I answered, “No, Sweet Pea, Mom is just whipping up a sponge cake for dessert tonight, and then I flipped the cake laden beater on before I lowered it into the bowl and soaked us both in sponge cake batter. I think Cole was relieved.

I’m glad it’s Friday! How about you?

Odd Loves Company,