Weather ~ Picture of the Day ~ High School Prom at White House ~ Creamy Crunchy Onion Bake ~ National Margarita Day

  

Good 33º cloudy morning. 

 

Yesterday rain/snow was predicted... we started cloudy quite cold and as the day went so did the sun. Then we got rain. The only snow we got was up on the mountain....

 

We topped at 48º.

 

Picture of the Day .... decorate your house to look like this?

 

 

 

 

Interesting about a high school prom at the White House....

 

In 1975, spearheaded by 17-year-old First Daughter Susan Ford, students from the Holton-Arms school attended the first (and only) high-school dance to ever take place at the executive mansion. Forty years later, the lucky attendees recall the details of the night—Swedish meatballs, an intergalactic band, and a sunset cruise on the presidential yacht.

 

The White House was rocking on the night of Saturday, May 31, 1975, for the Holton-Arms School senior prom. Susan Ford, the 17-year-old daughter of the 38th president of the United States, did the bump and the hustle in the East Room until one A.M., along with her classmates and their dates.

It was the only prom ever to be held at the executive mansion, which makes it an odd event in White House social history, right up there with President Andrew Jackson’s cheese party of 1835, which saw some 10,000 visitors gobbling up a wheel of cheddar that weighed nearly 1,400 pounds, and John F. Kennedy’s more exclusive skinny-dipping shindigs in the White House pool.

Susan had been a student at the Holton-Arms School, an academy for girls in Bethesda, Maryland, since her freshman year. The members of the class of ’75 paid the cost of the prom

— $1,300—after raising funds at bake sales and school fairs.

 

Tablecloths were made out of floral pink-and-yellow sheets. The menu included those staples of 1970s cuisine, Swedish meatballs and quiche, as well as a nonalcoholic punch made of tea, lemonade, soda, grape juice, and sugar. Susan and her classmates assembled the centerpieces—candles in a setting of daisies, tulips, lilies, sweet peas, and ming fern.

“The girls wore long dresses, light makeup, casual hairdos, and, in many cases, orchid corsages,” the Associated Press reported. “Many of their escorts, in black or white tuxedos, wore boutonnieres and below-the-collar length hair.” An AP wire photo accompanying articles that ran nationwide captured Susan and her date dancing (butt) cheek to (butt) cheek, along with a caption noting that the young couple was doing “the new dance, the bump.”

“Susan, at that age, was strikingly beautiful,” says Sally Alexander, a retired English teacher at Holton-Arms, who was one of six chaperones. “And it’s a great deal of fun to watch a bunch of beautiful young girls with handsome young men, all dressed up. They were clearly excited about being where they were, but they were not uncomfortably awed. It was a beautiful affair.”

Lady, Betty Ford, were en route from Belgium to Spain as part of a diplomatic tour of Europe. In their place was the president’s sister-in-law, Janet Ford, “a small figure in a white lace dress, casting a tolerant but observant eye on the proceedings,” as The New York Times described her.

Security was not what it is now. There were no bomb-sniffing dogs or counterterrorism agents on the grounds. Still, those who planned to attend had to provide their names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers, for Secret Service review, by April 15.

 

 

From Mr. Food

 

It's simple. It's creamy. It's crunchy. It's our Creamy Crunchy Onion Bake, and it's going to impress everyone, including you. Oh yeah, we hope you're ready to get blown away by this deliciously easy onion casserole.

 

• 4 large sweet onions, thinly sliced
• 1 stick butter
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 sleeve (about 30) buttery crackers, crushed
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1 (10-1/2-ounce) can cream of mushroom soup
• 1 (8-ounce) can evaporated milk
• 2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

 

1. Preheat oven to 350º.
2. In a skillet, melt butter and saute onions about 10 minutes, or until clear. Add salt and pepper; set aside.
3. In a large bowl, mix together crushed crackers, soy sauce, soup, and milk. Stir in the onions then pour into a 2-quart casserole dish. Sprinkle with cheese.
4. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until hot and bubbly. Serve immediately.

 

 

Historically this date.....

1959 – Lee Petty wins the first Daytona 500.

 

1980 – Miracle on Ice: In Lake Placid, New York, the United States hockey team defeats the Soviet Union hockey

team 4-3.

 

1997 – In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly has been successfully cloned.

 

 

 

And births this date include...

1732 – George Washington, First President of the United States (d. 1799)

 

1857 – Lieutenant-General Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, British soldier, author, and founder of the Scout movement (d. 1941)

 

 

1889 – Olave Baden-Powell, English founder of the Girl Guide (d. 1977)

 

 

1907 – Robert Young, American actor (d. 1998)

 

 

1932 – Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy, American politician (d. 2009)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1934 – Sparky Anderson, American baseball manager (d. 2010)

 

 

 

1944 – Robert Kardashian, American lawyer (d. 2003)

 

 

1962 – Steve Irwin, Australian herpetologist (d. 2006)

 

 

1975 – Drew Barrymore, American actress

 

At only 46 married and divorced 3 times!

 

 

 

All I know. Nuff said. Have a good Tuesday. Ciao.

xo Sue Mom Bobo

National Margarita Day on February 22nd rims a glass with salt and serves up a beverage that tastes like the summer sun.

Known to be the most common tequila-based cocktail served in the United States, the margarita is a cocktail that consists of tequila, triple sec and lime or lemon juice. A key ingredient is the freshly squeezed lime juice.  In the United States, the most common lime is the thick-skinned Persian lime. When margaritas are made with lemons, they have a much softer taste.

When it comes to sorting out the legends associated with the origin of the margarita, there are many. Two things are certain; the cocktail included tequila, and the bartender edged the rim of the glass with salt. In Mexico, when drinking straight tequila (especially if the quality was bad), the best course of action was to down it in one swallow, suck on a wedge of lime and lick a dash of salt off the back of your hand.

It makes sense that the salt followed the lime and the tequila to the margarita glass. Today, lime is not the only flavor of margarita, and the specialists behind the bar have gotten creative mixing dried herbs, infused sugars and exotic salts to enhance both the presentation of the glass and the flavor of the cocktail.

Margaritas can be served on the rocks (shaken with ice), frozen (blended with ice), or straight up (without ice).

Legends

There are many different stories and myths, beginning as early as 1938, as to how and when the margarita was created.

In the December 1953 issue of Esquire magazine, the margarita cocktail was the “Drink of the Month.”  The recipe as printed was:

• 1 ounce tequila
• Dash of Triple Sec
• Juice of 1/2 lime or lemon

Pour over crushed ice, stir.  Rub the rim of a stem glass with rind of lemon or lime, spin in salt—pour, and sip.  (Wikipedia)

The margarita was further popularized with the 1977 release of Jimmy Buffett’s song “Margaritaville.”