Uploads from Stephanie Warrior Princess

Gotta watch out for those watermelon seeds

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 02:48:11 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

When I was very young I was concerned with what would happen if I swallowed a watermelon seed. I was afraid that a watermelon would sprout inside my tummy. When I got a little bit older, I found out that it would not happen, but that many other kids believed the story. My girlfriend Leslie Anne often serves watermelon in the summertime, but somehow she never had the fear of swallowing a watermelon seed or even heard the possibility of sprouting one inside her.

There is also a joke in the South that when you see a pregnant girl we say. "She must have swallowed a watermelon seed."

Salad by Leslie Anne

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:15:01 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

My sweet girlfriend always fixes a good salad. She used to use green leaf lettuce but in the last year or so, she usually selects a mixed bag of several types of lettuces, baby spinach, and assorted greens. To this she adds cherry tomatoes, sliced cucumber or squash, baby carrots, celery, olives, sliced red onion, and usually two or three colors of bell pepper. We both enjoy each other's salad but have our own way of making it.

To another exciting dinner with my girl

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 01:23:18 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

.I raise a glass of Shiraz (which Leslie Anne says makes her wild) to celebrate the delicious salmon, squash, and Portabello mushrooms we grilled outside. Earlier we had a salad followed by fresh corn on the cob. I got this very thin multicolor top four years ago for hot summer days like this.

Leslie Anne bakes cornbread

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 19:50:11 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

This past weekend my lovely girlfriend baked a loaf of cornbread for our Saturday evening dinner at her place. Most cormbread mixes use yellow cornmeal (North American maize) and a little Eurasian wheat flour. Whenever I make cornbread, it is Southern style hot water cornbread that is entirely cornmeal mixed with hot water and (corn oil to hold it together) and fried in a cast iron skillet.

Leslie Anne greeted me in this hot outfit that had been sitting in her closet for years unnoticed. I'm glad that she found it. Her skirt has a built in black pettycoat that extends a little past the gray outer skirt. She also layered a black top over a red cami. With a bottle of Shiraz served with the main course, she felt a little frisky.

Scooping up the salmon

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 02:24:24 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

I am scooping up the two salmon fillets for dinner at Leslie Anne's a week ago. The short sundress is from Victoria's Secret last summer. We didn't grill any veggies outside because I had oven broiled some yellow squash at home before heading to my girl's place. She also served cheese, a salad, and some fresh corn on the cob.

Using a big spatula

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 02:24:22 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

I am using a really wide spatula that Leslie Anne recently got for her grill. The salmon fillets were slow cooking on a cedar plank.

Very pretty in pink

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 02:17:24 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

I haven't posted any photos of my girlfriend Leslie Anne since the newest, slupidest, slowest, most cumbersome version of Flickr has imposed itself upon us. The awkward nature of the Flickr homepage, photostream, and contacts' uploads (due to their excessively large size on what are supposed to be OVERVIEW pages) and its slow speed pulling up all those megebytes that just keep loading up have resulted in my view stats being half or a third of what they were until Flickr's ERROR. Let's see if Leslie Anne's photo brings up my stats.

I took this photo of her on a Saturday evening dinner date at her place in mid April before she went on her annual cruise. She is getting ready to cook some tilapia. I have already posted photos of that meal but delayed in posting this one because she was going to post it on her site. Well, she got too busy, so I'll post it here.

Noodles, catfish, and salad for supper

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Wed, 29 May 2013 23:29:32 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

My Thursday night supper included noodles with a butter garlic sauce, broiled catfish, a mixed green salad, and a slice of Ciabatta bread. I had the same thing for leftovers Tuesday evening just before I posted the previous photo of me serving up the catfish and describing how I prepared it. Avocado has been on sale quite a bit lately, so I usually include a few pieces of it in my salad along with the usual spinach, tomato, cucumber, cremini mushrooms, broccoli, and olives.

Sizzling broiled catfish

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Tue, 28 May 2013 23:31:06 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

I bought a pound of catfish and broiled it several evenings ago. First I poured a little olive oil over both pieces while the oven warmed up to 500 degrees F. Then I sprinkled lemon pepper, powdered garlic, and parsley on both sides. I broiled the fish a little over five minutes, flipped them over, and broiled them another five minutes on the other side. The fish were broiled uncovered in a glass casserole dish. My small yellow pot was used to cook some egg noodles. After I poured the water off the noodles, I added a little sea salt, butter, garlic powder, parsley flakes, and grated parmesan cheese, and mixed it up. I ate the smaller of the two pieces and saved the other piece and the other half of the noodles for leftovers.

The multicolor sundress is a new one that Leslie Anne bought me on her latest trip.

No GMOs!

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Tue, 28 May 2013 00:34:01 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

I am completely against allowing Genetically Modified Organisms into the American food supply, especially without any warning labels. MY bag of Central Market tortilla chips states that there are no GMOs included. Unfortunately, most of the corn (maize) grown and sold in the United States is a GMO. Humans have selectively bred plants and animals for thousands of years without ill effects, but the latest gene splicing techniques make possible more radical changes than simple breeding and can do so much more quickly than traditional methods. The new gene splicing techniques use bacteria and viruses to remove, add, or modify DNA sequences that can alter the biochemistry of the host organism.

The Big Agribusiness companies want to introduce GMOs without any restriction and sneak it into the US food supply without having to label it. Some states are fighting back and require labels when GMOs are fed to the public, so the agribusiness giants are trying to get federal laws changed that would overrule state laws.

The chemical giant Monsanto produces a hybrid corn that is Roundup resistant. Roundup is an herbicide, a poisonous weed killer related to the infamous Agent Orange used to destroy the jungle in Vietnam and the surrounding countries. Chemical farming uses fertilizers to put nitrogen compounds into the soil in heavy doses. That makes everything spout and grow like crazy. Then herbicides kill the weeds so that the cash crop can grow unharmed. Many high-yield hybrids have less resistance to bugs, so chemical pesticides are sprayed to kill harmful insects. The herbicides and pesticides kill beneficial soil bacteria, fungi, insects, and earthworms, so more fertilizer must be used. It becomes an addictive vicious cycle of chemical abuse with a heavy financial and environmental cost.

The heavy nitrogen fertilizers are never fully used up, so the residue seeps into the soil and is washed into ponds, lakes, creeks, rivers, and finally into bays and oceans. Excess nitrogen causes algae blooms that consume disolved oxygen in the water and create dead zones where no fish can live. The herbicides and pesticide chemicals kill their intended victim but also kill many beneficial organisms. Smaller amounts of these POISONS are absorbed by plants and animals that are food for humans.

Americans may enjoy a huge and varied food supply, but that food supply is tainted by environmental poisons, agribusiness poisons, animal growth hormones, animal antibiotics, and Gentically Modified Organisms. Big Business and their paid crooks in our government don't want you to question your food, but you can and should. For more information, go to: www.organicconsumers.org/ . The Organic Consumers website has lots of good articles, a weekly newsletter that you can sign up for, and links to petitions against GMOs. factory farms, animal waste runoff from processing plants, the herbicide that appears to be responsible for bee Colony Collapse Syndrome, fracking on public lands, and more.

Frijoles und Warsteiner

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Mon, 27 May 2013 04:18:45 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

Regardless of what financial shape I'm in at the moment, it is hard to beat a good pot of beans. They are inexpensive, filling, nutricious, and tasty. My version of frijoles includes pinto beans, an onion, several green chiles, a half pound of smoked sausage, several tomatoes, and lots of chili powder, comino, and garlic powder. The beans soak in water overnight and slow cook all afternoon. All the veggies and the sausage are sliced and diced so that each bite of beans has lots of extras that make my beans something special. I enjoy my frijoles with tortilla chips, a salad, and glass of Warsteiner Beer from Germany. When I first cook a pot of beans I tend to eat a couple of bowls the first night, then I store the leftovers and eat them every two or three days for about two weeks.

No Keystone XL pipeline!

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Fri, 24 May 2013 01:05:48 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

I am totally against building the proposed Keystone XL pipline from the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta across the United States border, over the Great Plains, and to the port facilities in Houston, Texas. Sure, there are a lot of hydrocarbons locked up in those SOLID tar sands that can be converted to oil, but it is an environmentally DIRTY process to dig them out, and it ends up burning about 10% of the solid hydrocarbons to make a thick liquid out of it. That mining and retort process pollutes the air and water and requires a lot of water to process it in Canada.

Then the proposed 2000 mile pipeline must cross sensitive grasslands used as grazing land, farmland to grow wheat and corn, and some preserved as nature reserves of various kinds. The proposed pipeline would cross very sensitive aquifers that supply scarce water in the semiarid west. A pipeline leak would contaminate those aquifers and quite a few creeks and rivers and put our grain supply in danger. A recent pipeline leak in Mayflower, Arkansas (that was largely hushed up by Exxon) spilled enough oil to ruin a large neighborhood. The proposed Keystone pipeline would be much bigger. Good farmland with thick, rich soil and reasonably dependable water is harder to come by than energy sources. At the end of the proposed piplline, it could be refined into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, but the very heavy grades made from the tar sands will mostly be loaded onto ships and sent overseas to China. That means farmers, ranchers, Native American tribal lands, and local communities would bear the environmental risks but would receive no benefits. Only the Big Oil companies would profit.

We should be moving away from fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal as fast as possible. Extracting, transporting, refining, and burning fossil fuels pollutes the air and water. Wind powered electricity is a proven alternative. We should be building electric powered mass transit systems in ALL of our cities in the US and connect those cities with electric powered railways for both intercity passengers and freight. The railways between our cities already exist. but we first need to upgrade the track capacity, improve the signal systems for safety, and replace highway crossings with overpasses and underpasses before installing the overhead electric power system. See: www.steelinterstate.org/ . Most of Europe and much of Asia has electric railways, but North America is becoming a backward Third World continent thanks to our corrupt oil companies.

I come from a Texas oil family, and I have known since grade school that the production, processing, transport, and burning of oil and gas is DIRTY, and that the politics behind oil is even dirtier. The Republican dominated US House of Representatives recently passed a bill to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built. The US Senate has an opportunity to stop the bill, and President Obama can veto it IF he has the guts to stand up to the corrupting influence of Big Oil.

If you live in the United States, please follow this link and sign the petition against Keystone XLP: petitions.moveon.org/sign/secretary-kerry-go-see.fb28?r_b... .

Staying in practice

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:06:39 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

Sometimes it is fun to run some trains, and other times I do it mainly to stay in practice and keep the equipment in running condition. Here I am pulling a westbound freight train out of the east yard and heading past my wheat farm for the town of Cimarron, New Mexico and its passing siding.. My camera instructions gives me no clue on how the camera determines range for focusing. I am slightly out of focus, but the buildings of Cimarron are in focus. With old 35mm cameras, setting the focus and field of depth was easy.

Just running some trains

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Sat, 04 May 2013 18:47:08 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

Some people haved asked whether my model railroad layout is still up and running. It is, but since I haven't added anything new lately, I have not had much incentive to take many new photos of it. A typical operating session of three passenger trains and one freight train in both directions running over the entire layout takes me about 20 to 25 minutes.

My next major task is to build another westbound staging and reversing track on the east end of my layout. That will enable me to store and operate another train. I have the cars and engines for several more trains but need the track space to run them. As soon as I can spare the money for another #6 right hand turnout and dual DPDT electrical switch, I'll install the fourth WB staging track.

I don't have room on the west end of my railroad for more than the one existing EB staging and reversing loop. To add more tracks (in order to store and run more trains), I will not only have to buy more track and electrical components, but I will also have to elevate then entire EB yard about 2 inches up and partly overlapping the WB yard. Building a small wooden deck to hold the EB yard ought to be fairly cheap and easy to do; however, the mainline and passing siding in the middle of my layout will have to be on a 2% grade constructed of Woodland Scenics SubTerrain styrofoam components. I also plan to install three bridges over some creeks which will have epoxy "water" in the creekbeds, and a tunnel cut into a styrofoam mountain. The mountain will have lots of trees, many of which I already have.

I am sitting on a barstool at my control panel running Train #18, the eastbound Super Chief made by Kato.

Squash casserole for dinner

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Fri, 03 May 2013 18:50:20 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

My new squash casserole turned out to be pretty good, but I also downloaded several other squash casserole recipes which I may try. I am eating it along with my usual mixed green salad.

Serving my new squash casserole

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Thu, 02 May 2013 17:29:58 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

First I dumped 3 cups of cornbread stuffing (like I use for my turkey dressing) into a small mixing bowl and poured about a half stick of melted butter onto the stuffing and stirred it up. I put the 4 cups of yellow squash, 2 cups of onion, 1 cup of tomatoes, and a little can of green chiles into a big mixing bowl. Then I added a can of concentrated cream of chichen soup and a little milk. Next time I may use cream of muchroom soup instead. The soup is there mainly to hold it together and add some flavor. I added about a cup of shredded cheddar cheese and about half of the buttered cornbread stuffing mix and then stirred everything up before loading it into a big pyrex casserole dish. I added the other half of the stuffing on top of the casserole. Then I covered the dish with aluminum foil and baked it for an hour at 350 degrees F.

Quartered and sliced yellow squash for my cassarole

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Thu, 02 May 2013 17:29:56 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

First I cut each squash in half lengthwise, rotated it 90 degrees, and cut it lengthwise again. That quartered the squash you see on the left. Then I sliced each quarter into smaller pieces as shown by the squash on the right. Three big squash that I cut up measured about 4 cups. A sliced and dice onion measure about 2 cups. I also sliced and diced a couple of Roma tomatoes that measure 1 cup.

Cutting up yellow squash

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:23:22 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

I am cutting up some yellow squash for a new casserole I made last week. This is my first time, so I am measuring everything to see how much volume each item takes up. The recipe I found online is merely a starting point. You don't really think I'll blindly follow someone else's instruction, do you? I have my own ideas and will combine and modify recipes as I see fit, until I get the results I want.

There will be several more photos in this series.

Tilapia and Liebfraumilch

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:45:04 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

The good news is that my sometimes zany girlfriend Leslie Anne did not fix "ham & m-----f---ers" for dinner. She cooked her version of Tilapia Almondine with noodles, and I cooked some carrots with a honey butter sauce. Liebfraumilch is a good German white wine that my Lady served for the first time and an old favorite of mine. While my girlfriend is gone on her annual cruise, I plan to experiment with a squash casserole. I've looked up several recipes online, and when I get it to turn out right, I will serve it to my sweet Lady.

The green strapless dress is another old favorite. In a few weeks I hope to be swimming and getting a bikini tan.

Her first Liebfraumilch

nobody@flickr.com (Stephanie Warrior Princess) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:55:40 -0700

Stephanie Warrior Princess posted a photo:

Leslie Anne did not go through with her plan to serve me "ham & m-----f---ers." Instead she fixed Tilapia Almondine with some noodles. I brought carrots with a butter and honey sauce.

The week before she asked me about a German white wine that she had bought. I explained that beer would go better with Bratwuerst und Sauerkraut than wine, but that particular wine would be perfect with fish, chicken, or veal. Liebfraumilch is one of the first wines I tried when I was stationed over there 40 years ago. Has it really been that long?

And look at that hot pink dress my girl is wearing. She made the blue necklace and bracelet.