If you're creepy and you know it, clap your hands!
Vol. 15
It's creeping up on us. Displays of Halloween candy, Fall magazines, inflatables at the DIY, that Spirit banner across a previously empty store. That row of pumpkin beers in my fridge makes me happy. September is days away. Just like that cold sore on your upper lip, nothing will stop Autumn from arriving.
Something Sticky This Way Comes
Ahhhh, yeah, get that maple syrup outta that cupboard, baby. I see you pourin' it on those hot,
hot pancakes...Now lick that plate, go on, lick it...
I really like maple, so much so that I wrote a book about it. I like maple syrup, maple candy, maple coffee, maple ice cream, maple cake, maple frosting, maple glazed salmon, and maple cocktails. It's versatile and a natural sweetener. A tablespoon of maple syrup has 52 calories, 33% of your daily manganese and 2% of your daily calcium. There are also trace amounts of zinc, iron and potassium. I'm not going to call it health food, but it's certainly healthier than a lot of sweeteners, and it's a whole universe away from the chemical crap labeled as “pancake syrup”.
So, wanna see my maple books, baby? Yeah, you do. Just sit your fine self down here and look at what I got. It's a stack of sexiness.
The Maple Syrup Book by Janet Eagleson & Rosemary Hasner- A history of tapping and sugaring, from Indigenous people to New England pioneers and modern Canadians. Grading is explained and there's a brief section of recipes. Good photos.
Maple Sugar: From Sap to Syrup by Tim Herd-
A deep dive into the history of maple among the native tribes of New England. Provides an illustrated guide to the varieties of maple trees that produce sap and how this process occurs. Shows the sugaring process taking place, explains grading and provides recipes. A very good choice for explanations of the whys of maple.
Recipes from a Maple Queen by Doreen Lyon-
As a teen, the author was the Vermont Maple Queen, with a portion of the judging hanging on her knowledge of maple facts. This books proves that she's stuck with it, coming up with a large selection of maple recipes, some pretty unusual, such as using maple syrup in canning pickles and bacon wrapped scallops. The variety of desserts are worth the price alone: maple doughnuts, maple Indian pudding, maple oatmeal cookies and maple custard. Whoever gets to spend Thanksgiving with her is so lucky.
The Official Vermont Maple Cookbook-
This slim pamphlet sized book was first published by the Vermont Department of Agriculture in 1983 and has been re-printed many times over. It's a quirky little thing, with a recipe for beef tongue in a maple sweet & sour sauce and Vermont Baked Lima Beans, which I'm guessing has been sampled only by the person who created the recipe. To make up for these, there are recipes for maple nut brittle, maple marshmallows and hot maple peaches.
The Maple Motherload: A Guide to All Things Maple by Jennifer Morrow- I am shameless, because this is blatant shilling. I wrote this one. It's probably my favorite maple book.
You'll find an American state-by-state and Canadian region-by-region guide to maple producers and the products they make. There's a guide to shops and restaurants that focus on maple products, and a listing of maple festivals around North America. You'll find a section of food recipes and another of all maple cocktail recipes. I'm going to brag that it's carried at the Vermont Maple Museum and Zeb's General Store, and if you think that didn't give me a swollen head, you don't know me, my friend.
Now wasn't that a sweet, sweet look at maple, baby? All these books are available on Amazon. Yeah, you know I like it when you buy stuff right in front of me.
Here's a freebie from The Maple Motherload, the author says it's okay.
One of my favorite homemade desserts, this is basically a spicy, crust-less pumpkin pie.
Maple Pumpkin Squares
2 c. pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
½ c. sugar
1 tbs maple syrup
1 tsp maple extract
½ tsp vanilla
2 eggs
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 c. evaporated milk
1 stick butter, softened
½ c. flour
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8x8 baking pan with non-stick spray, then line with parchment paper.
Beat the butter until fluffy, then beat in the eggs. Add all the other ingredients and beat just until smooth. The batter will have small bits of butter throughout.
Pour into the prepared pan and bake 55-60 minutes, just until the center is firm.
True Crime!
The Tragedy of Shakespeare
It's clear that many of us are living for that day we hit the lottery. It's the dream of millions of people, a fact that's verified by the enormous jackpots that now reach over a billion dollars. Even a small lottery win will completely change the winner's life, but not always for the better. This story will prove that.
In November, 2006, day laborer and truck swamper Abraham Shakespeare was in the passenger seat of his co-worker's truck heading to a job site in Miami, Florida. The man driving, Michael Ford, wanted a beverage, so they swung into a convenience store in Frostproof, a town a little over three hours away from their destination. Shakespeare said he'd stay in the truck and Ford offered to bring him a drink, but Shakespeare asked Ford to bring him two lottery tickets instead. One of the tickets was a $30 million dollar winner.
Ford filed a lawsuit, claiming that the winning ticket had been in his wallet, which he'd left in the truck with Shakespeare when he'd entered the store to buy his drink. He claimed that Shakespeare had stolen the ticket out of the wallet. Shakespeare said that Ford brought him the two tickets he'd requested and that he'd paid Ford the $4 cost. Shakespeare won the lawsuit, thereby allowing him to claim the lottery winnings. He chose to take a lump sum of $17 million dollars.
The outcome of this lawsuit made Shakespeare a millionaire, and that solved immediate financial problems, but it also brought a tremendous amount of stress, attention and danger.
He bought himself a million dollar home and paid off mortgages for family, but also gave money to people who asked for it, and it seems a lot of people did ask. Aside from the new home, he really didn't spend extravagantly on himself. He bought a Nissan Altima and a second-hand Rolex watch. But it was the incessant pleas for money from both friends and strangers that made life difficult, leading him to tell his brother Robert, “I'd have been better off broke.” Shakespeare knew very well that there were people who would try to con him, he certainly hadn't lived a sheltered life, but he thought he was savvy enough to recognize a con.
Dorice “Dee Dee” Moore contacted Shakespeare not long after he'd won the lawsuit, asking if she could write his life story. They met and liked each other immediately, and Shakespeare felt he could trust Dee Dee to write about him. But their friendship quickly expanded beyond the book project and Moore suggested they start a business together. Abraham Shakespeare LLC was set-up and Shakespeare deposited a large amount of money into a company account, which Moore promptly embezzled. She began taking vacations and bought herself a Hummer. People noticed her lavish spending and Moore explained that Shakespeare had been making gifts to her.
Meanwhile, Shakespeare's family couldn't get him to show up and he wasn't answering calls. He would send them texts, a big red flag to anyone who knew him as Shakespeare was practically illiterate. When they contacted Moore, she had several stories about her business partner's whereabouts, including that he was in the hospital, that he'd moved to Texas, or that he'd moved to the Caribbean. At this point, Moore had moved into Shakespeare's house. After seven months of trying to track Shakespeare, his relatives finally filed a missing person report.
The police began investigating and found that under another company name, American Medical Professionals, Moore had purchased Shakespeare's million dollar home at a substantial discount. They also found that Moore had previously been convicted for insurance fraud and filing a false police report when she claimed she was carjacked and sexually assaulted in a scheme that was actually meant to keep her car from being repossessed.
Investigators talked to Moore's circle of acquaintances and found that once the police were involved, a relative of Shakespeare had accepted a $5000 payment to deliver a card to Shakespeare's mother and say it had come from her son. They further found that the mother of one of Shakespeare's children had been offered a $200,000 home by Moore if she would tell the police that she'd seen the man recently. And Moore had let it be known among her own friends that she was looking for anyone willing to get rid of a body and that, in addition, she would pay $50,000 to anyone willing to tell the police they had killed Shakespeare.
Police searched Moore's Plant City home, the home she lived in before buying Shakespeare's, and noticed a new concrete slab in the backyard. They found Shakespeare's body nine feet down with two gun shots in the chest.
Talking to the police, Moore had another long list of what had happened to Abraham Shakespeare. She told them that she believed he had been involved with drug dealers, and at one point, she said her fourteen year-old son had done it. When confronted with her lies, she claimed self-defense. She was arrested February 2, 2010 and formally charged with murder February 19th.
Investigators believe Moore lured Shakespeare to the home and killed him on April 6th or 7th, 2009.
At her trial Moore stated that Shakespeare had just a million dollars left of his $17 million dollar win when she met him. The police found that whatever had been left at the time of his death, Moore had spent it. She was convicted of first degree murder on December 10, 2012, and received a life sentence with no possibility of parole. She also received an additional 25 years for possession of a firearm while committing a violent felony. She currently resides at the Lowell Correctional Institute in Ocala, FL.
She has publicly supported a bill that went into effect earlier this year that keeps the names of lottery winners of $250,000 or more private for the first 90 days, which gives the winner a chance to find reputable financial consultants or to move. Moore said of the previous policy of immediately releasing the winner's name publicly, “It puts a target on them.”
Look into my eyes! Look deeply!
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Now give me your money.......very good.
You're going to wake with a sense of refreshed contentment when I snap my fingers.
Oh dang, I've never been able to snap my fingers.