Wednesday Hodgepodge - Volume 196

Jolly good (as the English hunters would say) questions from Joyce. Here are my answers to the questions for this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge. Answer on your own blog, then hop back over to Joyce at From This Side of the Pond to share answers and add your link to the party...see you there!

1. My hubs spent last weekend pheasant hunting. Are there hunters in your family? If so, what do they hunt? Which of the following have you tasted-pheasant, rabbit, venison, duck, goose? Which of those would you most like to taste, or be most willing to taste?

My husband has never been a hunter, so I don't know where our son got his love for it. My Dad and Grandpa hunted squirrel and rabbit for food. Our son-in-law has been taking our grandsons with him since they were about 3 years old. I think what they really enjoy is the male camaraderie out on the lease and bringing home a trophy or two (they also stock the freezers with some great food). I'm not crazy about the idea of our grandsons being in an atmosphere where guns are, but I believe they are being taught gun safety with their Dad. I trust him. 

My Great-Grandma played a nasty little trick on us once by serving "fried chicken" and it turned out to be rabbit! It was upsetting to me as a child, not because I was a great lover of the cute little bunnies, it just seemed sneaky to me. I've tasted rabbit, venison and goose. Of the three, I think the venison as it was prepared was the tastiest. Pheasant sounds exotic and maybe that would be good to try. Since I'm not crazy about dark meat, duck and goose are both off my list. And no more rabbit, please! 

Vegetarians keep calm and Hodgepodge on.

2. What high spot have you visited that gave you a wonderful 'bird's eye view' of something below?

We have visited many high spots that offered a great "bird's eye view" and here is a photo of us with The Matterhorn behind us in Switzerland. 

This photo is of two mountain goats we saw from our fantastic bird's eye view.

The bird's eye view wasn't that great the day we visited The Eagle's Nest, the home and headquarters of Hitler. It was raining cats and dogs when we were there, which made the place seem even more chilling than it was to me. 

Photo credit

3. Do you have any birds in your home? These could be either real live pets or decorative, as in bird prints, knickknacks, fabric or pottery.

In my upstairs bath, I have a framed print of sweet little bluebirds splashing about and, in the same bathroom, I have a knickknack given me by a friend who loved birds. She was one of the sweetest ladies I have ever known and she and her husband were somewhat like Mom and Dad to my husband and I.

4. Tell about a time you 'killed two birds with one stone'?

I actually did that yesterday. Today my Bible Study Fellowship group will be getting together for lunch afterwards. It was my plan to make tuna salad and take my lunch rather than stopping to grab something on the way to the home where we are meeting. DH wasn't interested in a big dinner last night, so when he heard me mention the tuna salad, he asked if we could have sandwiches. So voila!  Dinner last night and lunch today. 

5. Your favorite song with a bird in its title?

I guess it would have to be Snowbird by Anne Murray, although I'm tempted to be silly and say "Well, everybody's talking about the bird. A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word." 

Weren't those some great lyrics? 

6. What most recently gave you goose bumps?

I can't think of anything recently that has unless it's the news.

7. Halloween is this Friday...any plans? Did you trick or treat as a child? Carve pumpkins? Share your most memorable costume.

We will hand out candy to the children who come to our house. We get a lot of trick or treaters in our neighborhood and mostly they are all under the age of 10. Occasionally, there are older ones, but they come later in the evening and we usually have run out of candy by then and turned off the lights. Our church will have a Trunk or Treat event tomorrow night and cars will be decorated and the trunks filled with candy. They said last year we had about 700 kids come by, although I don't know how that is tracked.

The most memorable thing to me about trick or treats as a child was going door to door with a paper sack collecting candy and then getting under the covers at home with a light to binge on candy. I don't know why we never carved a pumpkin.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Speaking of pumpkins (as we were above), our youngest grandson, Jack, got a pumpkin which he carried around with him for three days. He even carried it with him on a three hour road trip to visit his great-grandma. It was there that his Nana cut open the pumpkin and made a pie for him. I heard he had four pieces of that pie. (I also heard a rumor that the pie wasn't really made from Jack's beloved pumpkin!)

My really random thought (not so random since we are talking about Halloween) right this minute is that popcorn balls used to be an item that we liked seeing in our sack of candy and I sure would enjoy having one right now! Those were really good, but these days that kind of treat just won't fly. Halloween has become a little too much for me. Many in our neighborhood go all out to decorate their homes with orange lights, and all kinds of house and yard decorations. Enough said here because it isn't my intention to rant on. It just seems wasteful to me. Is there a bah humbug word to apply here? :-)