Eddy’s Peach Mule

Deep Eddy is not a vodka brand I was familiar with.  But that didn't stop me from ordering a peach mule made with their peach-flavored spirit, ginger beer, and a lime slice served in the freezing cup cooper mug you see below.  Really hit the spot on a warm Fall afternoon.  A long list of Deep Eddy cocktails can be found at the link below.

https://deepeddyvodka.com/drinks

3-Way Outlet

Our house was built in 1958, and several rooms only contain a couple of electrical outlets.  An easy and cheap way to turn one plug into three is the Triple Cube Outlet Adapter you see below.  At $5.98 each at The Home Depot, I've expanded our guest bedrooms and provided our guests with more plugs for their smartphones, tablets, and watches.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Leviton-Grounded-Triple-Cube-Outlet-Adapter-White-692-W-R54-00692-00W/100356925

Blue-Tailed Skink

Hilton Head Island is a nature-lover's paradise, offering up everything from ospreys to eagles, dolphins to turtles, and alligators to manatees.  One of the island's smallest residents is the Blue-Tailed Skink, shown below.  Blue is not one of nature's common colors, and it might serve to warn predators that they may be poisonous, or conversely, to attract predators to their tail, which is expendable.  If the skink loses its tail in a confrontation, it has the remarkable ability to regenerate it, although the new tail will be a more subdued gray color.

A ton of information on Hilton Head's wildlife can be found at the link below.

https://www.islandlifehh.com/wildlife

Muddy Creek

Hilton Head Island is a hub for live music, and below you see Muddy Creek performing at the Tiki Hut.  They rocked us with their mix of rock, southern rock, country, pop, blues, and timeless standards.  And from our seats, we could see a perfect sunset.  The lead guitar player (far left in the picture below) was particularly impressive and one of the best I've ever seen.  As you can find at the link below, as many as two dozen bands play throughout the day at venues across the island.  

https://www.thisweekonhiltonhead.com/hilton-head-island-live-music-schedule-this-week

Hard Boiled Eggs

I mentioned last week about removing the background from a picture of a bowl of hard-boiled eggs, and that's what you see below.  The truly amazing thing is that all twelve eggs are already peeled and are still perfect, which I've never been able to do before.  Since I was making deviled eggs, this perfection added to their curb appeal.  I used the recipe at the link below, which adds eggs to boiling water, cooked for exactly 11 minutes and 30 seconds, and then transferred to an ice bath.  To remove the shell, I first broke the top and the bottom of the egg with a light tap, and then rolled the egg on its side back and forth a couple of times to further crack the shell.  Starting at the top, I just used my thumb to lift the shell pieces from the egg.

I'm not sure if I got lucky this time or if this method is the best ever.  I'll find out next time we're invited to a party.

https://www.southernliving.com/recipes/classic-deviled-eggs

Smoked Cherry Old Fashioned

Hilton Head Distillery is worth the visit, both for its eclectic cocktail options and its friendly bar.  The drink below is a Smoked Cherry Old Fashioned, which is made with rum, cherry syrup, and cherry bitters.  Instead of the normal Solera Rum, I had them make mine with their bolder Ghost Pirates Gold Rum, which has aromas of caramel, warm oak, vanilla, and a subtle hint of baking spices.  

https://www.hiltonheaddistillery.com

Merlin Bird ID

Merlin Bird ID is a cool smartphone app that can identify birds by their image or sound.  As you can see in the screenshot below (taken on Hilton Head Island), using my Pixel 7's microphone, it found four birds, with the American Crow being the most recent it heard, highlighted in yellow.  It also displayed the 222 different birds that Merlin users had identified that day on Hilton Head.  It's available for both iOS and Android, installable from the link below.

Big shout-out to Dan and Grace for turning us on to this awesome app!

https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org

Hot Sauce Vending Machine

Just in case you're expected to bring home a gift after a long business trip or just want to add some heat to your in-flight meal, the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky (aka, CVG) airport has the world's first hot sauce vending machines, one in each concourse.  They feature the award-winning Dude, Seriously brand hot sauce, other local sauces, and other top brands.  The complete list can be found at the link below.

https://www.dudeseriously.com

The Start Of Something Big

Gourmet Chef Elaine is a master at growing indoor plants.  They grow so big that they finally need to be replaced, and she does that by snipping a piece of the plant off and starting a new plant, as you can see in the picture below of her spider plant.  It only takes a week or so for the roots to appear, and then it's ready to be transplanted to a small pot of dirt.  And the cycle continues...

Mortadella

We watch a lot of cooking shows, and occasionally a chef will use mortadella in a recipe, which I've never eaten.  When I noticed our local Meijer's "Grab-and-Go" had prepackaged mortadella, I gave it a try.  While visually different than my favorite lunch meat, bologna, the taste is very much the same.  Mortadella is made using only pork, while bologna can have pork, beef, chicken, and turkey.  The fat in bologna is emulsified into the meat, where pork cubes are added to mortadella to give it the distinctive mottled look you see in the picture below.  They use different spice blends, with mortadella being more coarse and bologna very fine.  More info is included at the link below.

https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-is-mortadella-4777012