Cathy (cacnurse1) said:

Fried cornmeal mush is one of my favorites(with maple syrup) but haven't had it in a long time.  I would have to eat it all myself.

No, you wouldn't, one of my favorite things to eat.

I make  Hot Water Cornmeal for breakfast sometimes.  Had it as a kid. Grandma would put blobs in hot grease and chunk it up a bit and fry until crunchy golden brown. It has to be crunchy.  She didn't make patties at all. Served it with butter and homemade syrup or Dark Karo.  Oh and she always gave me "coffee-milk w/sugar" too.  More milk than coffee, but I got hooked on caffeine early in life.  

Easy too:  Lard, Cornmeal,  tiny bit of salt, Boiling Water.    I usually use a cup of cornmeal, heaping TBSP of lard, bacon grease or crisco.  and pour the hot water over and stir it together to make a soft paste looking batter.  *You can add a touch of sugar if you want but not necessary as you'll use syrup as sweetener in the serving..

This is a fairly decent recipe

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/6953/hot-water-cornbread/

anyone have wood floors?  We want to remove the carpet in our den & living areas and had thought we were going to install some brick-look tile, similar to what we used in our mud room 7 years ago.  Well we can't find anything even close, apparently that style is not In Style right now.  Everyone is telling us we should do wood.  That we'll like it much better than tile, but I'm worried about our dogs and how well it will hold up over time.   I grew up in a house with wood floors & my mother HATED them, I still remember getting spankings for coming in the house with wet feet.  Paying someone to come polish them with one of those dual brush polishing machines.  

Hard wood floors are pretty good. We had them in our house up in Washington years ago and really liked them. They are really pretty. We had a dog and I do not remember having any problems. He was a med sized dog.

thanks Ami.  I do think we'll have to be better about trimming their nails.

Why do you want to remove carpet? 

DH and I love carpet mainly for the sound-deadening quality but also for the warmth and comfort on bare feet.  There are so many different types of carpet these days ....

We realize that wood floors are the "in thing" these days but they make a room so noisy ....

Primarily the dogs. We tore out the carpet in the den after Christmas and just have bare concrete right now.  Cleaner. Just going to do it in the public areas.

Dee, this is the stuff (Paradigm waterproof flooring) that we used in our family room when we switched from carpet.  I didn't want hardwood because of the maintenance.  I definitely didn't want laminate because of water issues.  The product we chose looks like wood planks.  It's slightly cool on the bare feet but not cold.  If you need to, it is possible to replace a "plank".  Lots of colors and looks to choose from.   We've been happy with it.


Paradigm Water Proof  Flooring.

judyinohio said:

We realize that wood floors are the "in thing" these days but they make a room so noisy ....

You are so right there .. the noise tends to bounce around.  BUT ... I am SO over wall to wall carpet.   High traffic areas get dirty incredibly quickly.  I do have runners but they shift around so much, they drive me nuts.   Even if you vacuum excessively, that carpet is never *really* clean.  Hard surfaced flooring is easier in that respect.

If I could, I'd replace the carpeting downstairs.  The living room (where you enter the house) is continuous with the dining room and hallway, which you need to traverse to get to the kitchen.  The path from the front door through the living room/dining room to the kitchen just gets so dirty so quickly.  Ick.

I've had both hardwood, wood looking porcelain tile and Pergo (or whatever brand).  I detest wall to wall carpeting due to the dirt factor and stains.  

We started with hardwood and had a sneaky leak that was going under the piano and we didn't know it.  Ruined the floor and it is very very difficult to replace just a few planks and get them to remotely match. Lived with it for about 6 years before replacing.  Busy house with kids and dogs and it really needed to be stripped and redone.

Because we lived in the country and had several dogs and loads of blowing dirt, we opted to go with the porcelain tile as a replacement.  It was gorgeous and indestructible.  Loved it.  Vacuum, mop, sweep, whatever and it always looks great.  Dogs can't scratch it, water doesn't hurt it, sun doesn't fade it.  We installed it ourselves (because we are just that cheap).  Tile is always a big job, but it isn't difficult....just serious manual labor.  Lived with it 10 years with the same kids and dogs (Great Danes et al) and it looked as good when we moved out as when we put it in.

In this house, we made it 1.5 years before we tore the carpet out.  We thought of going back with the tile again, but we don't have the same circumstances.  We live in town, the dirt doesn't blow, and we are down to 1 small dog.  So we went with Pergo due to ease of installation.  It wasn't much cheaper than the tile.  I would never entertain it before because I always thought it looked plastic and sounded hollow.  There have been significant improvements over the years.  It looks and feels like wood.  We got the higher end stuff so there is no hollow sounding parts.  We've only had this a few months so I can't really speak to the durability over the long haul.  However, we have 2 toddlers here every day doing their best to destroy it and so far they haven't managed to make a mark.

After having lived years with each product, my order of preference would be 1. Porcelain tile  2. Laminate tile  3. Hardwood.

Wood is high maintenance and expensive (don't even look at the cheap stuff).  Easily scratched, hard to repair. Will need stripping and refinishing at some point...the salesman is lying. Fairly easy to install.

Porcelain is low maintenance and expensive.  Very durable.  Installation difficult if you have never installed tile or don't have the correct tools.

Laminate is middle ground.  Low maintenance and affordable.  Durable and easy to clean.  Very easy installation for DIYers.  Probably fairly cheap to have installed.  We didn't check prices.  Easy to match.  I will be able to do my bedroom when covid calms down and it won't be obvious that the rooms weren't done at the same time.

So there you have a much longer opinion than you probably ever wanted. :)