Weather ~ Picture of the Day ~ Toilet Invention ~ Easy Chicken Bubble-Bake ~ National Chocolate Mousse Day

  

Good 34º morning.

 

Yesterday was another beautiful day and we topped at 77º for about 10 minutes then the temperature started dropping.

 

 

Picture of the Day....Bruce Willis, then and now

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting about the first toilets.....

It is commonly believed that Thomas Crapper invented the flushing toilet but this is not true - the first one came along nearly 100 years earlier.

 

Many different types of toilet have been invented over the ages, each with its own ingenious way of keeping humans and their effluent apart.

There is evidence of toilets with running water to "flush" them as far back as Bronze-age settlements in Scotland 5,000 years ago.

The Romans used running water to wash toilet waste into their sewers and clean the sponges they used to wipe themselves.

In Britain and many other countries we used potties and simply threw the contents into the street to empty them.

 

The commode came next - basically a potty with a lid.

In medieval times, posh Brits had a "garderobe", an inside toilet that emptied straight into a cesspit or moat.

The need for household toilets and widespread sewers was clear by the mid 1850s, especially after The Great Stink of 1858.

The first London sewer was completed in 1865, around the time modern toilets were being mass marketed.

Sewers did exist before though in many ancient cities, but were prone to blockages and gas explosions.

Thomas Crapper was a Victorian plumber who is often said to have invented the first flushing toilet in the 1860s. Thomas Crapper:

In fact, Sir John Harrington created a fully flushing toilet and built one for his godmother Elizabeth I, and one for himself, in 1592.

This toilet - or water closet - needed 7.5 gallons of water to flush, so the plan was to flush every 20 uses.

 

Crapper did not invent the flushing toilet, but he did make them, and was the first to exhibit his toilets in a showroom in 1870.

He was one of the first to mass-market the toilet, and he did invent the lavatory.

A lavatory technically means one room containing a basin and a toilet.

In 1861, Crapper was commissioned by Prince Edward, who became Edward VII, to build lavatories in royal palaces.

 

Oddly, a watch-maker named Alexander Cummings invented an important part of the modern flushing toilet with his S-bend to hide odors of flushed waste.

But Crapper patented the floating ballcock and the U-bend.

 

Cummings was given the patent for the first flushing toilet in 1775.

 

 

 

From Mr. Food

Chicken Bubble Bake

 

The creamy chicken filling isn't the only thing that "bubbles up" in this Easy Chicken Bubble Bake. When you set it to bake with the biscuits on top, you'll find that the whole casserole "rises" to the occasion. What's the occasion? A fantastic evening dinner!

 

2 (10 oz) cans cream of chicken soup, undiluted

1 cup milk

1/2 t. dried thyme

1/2 t. salt

1/4 t. pepper

1 (16 oz) pkg frozen chopped mixed vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots)

3 cups shredded cooked rotisserie chicken

1 (12 oz) can refrigerated biscuits, each one cut into 4ths

2 T. melted butter

 

1. Preheat oven to 375º. Coat a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray.

2. In large bowl, combine soup, milk, thyme, salt, and pepper. Mix well. Stir in vegetables and chicken. Place mixture in baking dish.

3. Bake 15 minutes, then remove from oven.

4. Meanwhile in a medium bowl combine  biscuits and butter, toss until evenly coated. Arrange biscuits over chicken mixture and bake 15-18 minutes more, or until biscuits are golden and casserole is bubbly.

 

*** Wanna mix up the vegetables? Go ahead -- use your favorites! Anything from peas and corn, to green beans and roasted peppers will work great. And to fancy it up, garnish with some chopped parsley.

 

 

 

 

Historically this date.....

1860 – The first successful United States Pony Express run from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California begins.

1882 – American Old West: Jesse James is killed by Robert Ford.

1973 – Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, though it took ten years for the DynaTAC 8000X to become the first such phone to be commercially released.

1996 – Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski is arrested at his cabin in Montana,United States.

1996 – A United States Air Force airplane carrying United States Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown crashes in Croatia, killing all 35 on board.

2000 – United States v. Microsoft: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust laws by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors.

And births this date include.... (there's a LOT of them!)

1893 – Leslie Howard, English actor (d. 1943)

 

1907 – Iron Eyes Cody, American actor (d. 1999)

..........can you believe it he was full blood ...ITALIAN!!

 

1922 – Doris Day, American actress, singer and animal rights activist.

Her story is very interesting! Click on her name. (d.2019)

 

1924 – Marlon Brando, American actor (d. 2004)

 

1926 – Virgil "Gus" Grissom, American astronaut (d. 1967)

... a tragedy I still feel very sad about.

 

1934 – Jane Goodall, English zoologist

 

1941 – Jan Berry, American musician (d. 2004)

Jan and Dean came to my high school. I was sitting in an aisle seat and could almost touch them as they walked to the stage. Fun!!!

 

 

1942 – Marsha Mason, American actress

 

1942 – Wayne Newton, American singer

 

1949 – Lyle Alzado, American football player (d. 1992)

.... sad how his life ended....

 

 

1953 – Sandra Boynton, American greeting-card designer, illustrator, and author

I love her drawings.

 

1958 – Alec Baldwin, American actor

 

1961 – Eddie Murphy, American actor and comedian

 

1971 – Picabo Street, American alpine ski champion

 

 

 

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

xo Sue Mom Bobo

Every April 3rd National Chocolate Mousse Day recognizes the decadent dessert that gained popularity in France in the 1800s.

Mousse is prepared by beating eggs or cream or both to a frothy, airy consistency and then folding the ingredients together to create a light, creamy delight.

While mousse can be either savory or sweet, for this day, we will focus on that all-time favorite, chocolate.

The words mousse and chocolate are derived from the French language, so it isn’t difficult to believe France is where to begin looking for the beginnings of this versatile creation. While we have no exact point in time when this might have been, we do know chocolate was introduced to the French around the year 1615, and they fell in love.

Then a century later, the French developed a method for making a mousse. Savory led the way, but it couldn’t have been long before the same approach was applied to chocolate.

In the United States, an advertisement in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1887 included classes on how to make chocolate mousse offered by a Miss Parloa. She also advised how to make potato soup, larded grouse, potato timbale, and corn muffins.

From dark chocolate to milk chocolate, bittersweet, or any combination, there is plenty of variety when it comes to chocolate mousse.

Make some homemade chocolate mousse. Give this recipe a try: Ghirardelli Chocolate Mousse recipe.