A Photo, a Triple 3WW, & a Recipe

I took the photo last July, while driving south of Mountain Meadows, heading toward Snow Canyon State Park in SW Utah. Note the prominent cinder cone.

Every week Bone provides a writing challenging. Giving us three words, he asks those of us willing to come up with something creative using the three words he provides. This weeks, our three words are “Original, Racket, and Skipping.” I often find myself immediately coming up with something to write—often using all three words in a sentence. This week I wrote three different pieces… “For what?” “I don’t know.”

1. Bill was proud of Ole Blue. “It has all original equipment,” he bragged as we walked through the parking lot. When we got to an older truck that looked like it was hand painted, he slapped the hood as if to let it know he was back, then crawled in behind the wheel. The doors were unlocked, so I jumped in on the passenger said, and he turned the ignition. After a misfire or two, the engine caught; he put in into reverse and backed out of the parking place. Shifting into first, we headed toward the street. “You sure it’s running okay,” I asked. “Its sounds like that the timing is off, like there’s a piston that keeps skipping.” “Nah, everything is fine,” Bill assured me as he pulled out into the street and gave it some gas and shifted into second. When he pushed the gear into third, the engine started making a big racket and then gave off lots of smoke, then ground to a halt, stranding us in the middle of the highway. “Don’t think I’d be bragging any more about its original equipment,” I said as I got out in order to push the truck off the highway.

2. Paula was proud of her record collection, especially the old 78. “It can’t get any better than listening to these originals,” she assured me as she pulled the vinyl out of its cover, blew on it as if to dust it off, and then carefully placed the disk on the turn-table, touching only the center and outside rim. As the record began to spin, she carefully lifted the arm and set the needle on the spinning disk. With such care, I was shocked at how much skipping the needle was doing. Such a racket came out of the speakers that I wanted to scream. “I think I’ll stick to CDs,” I said as I got up and headed for the door, hoping to quickly find a fist full of aspirin.

3. Although it was an original merry-go-around from the pre-OSHA days, the kids at the park preferred skipping rocks into the pond because the ride was so rusty that it made such a racket whenever anyone tried to spin it around.

Gingerbread Recipe

Jadedprimadonna (Angie from SC in my blog list) recently asked for my favorite molasses recipes. This gingerbread recipe came from my Great-Grandma. She was born in the 1880s and died when I was seven. Last year I wrote a post about her and my great-granddaddy. Even though she had a gas range, she continued to use a wood burning stove that sat next to the gas range in her kitchen, especially for baking, until the day she died. This is great with applesauce!)

½ cup butter
½ cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup molasses
2 ½ cups flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
½ tsp cloves
1 tsp salt
1 cup hot water
1 ½ tsp soda

Combine butter and sugar. Add eggs and molasses. Shift flour with soda, salt and spices and add to molasses mixture. Add in hot water and stir until smooth. Bake in a 9” x 12” baking pan at 350 degrees till done. I didn’t write a time down, but I start checking on it after about 45 minutes. (Hint: insert a toothpick and when it comes out clean, consider it done).