So...whats for dinner?
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Night before last was leftover Chicken Divan and the French onion rice, last night a salad with goat cheese, roasted chicken breast, pecans, red grapes, and balsamic vinaigrette. DD drove up to TN to pick up a roof top tent from the manufacturer, so I will enforce a 14 day quarantine upon her return. She is camping, but she is around new people so I think that is smart. I have to head over to her house today to feed/check the chickens and tiny parrot, and the new giant tortoise she somehow acquired. Someone found him running loose (running, really?) I saved all of the outside lettuce leaves I didn't use in the salad for him, lol!
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special - what? No rabbits? no goat to keep the grass mowed? LOL
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minus - shhhh... don’t give her any ideas, lol! If given free rein she would have all kinds of animals. Have you seen that show on Animal Planet called Saved By The Barn? It’s about a guy who had a well paying job in tech in Texas and his dad called him to ask him what he should do with the family farm in Michigan, that has been in the fam for generations. He quit the job, moved to the farm, and now runs an animal sanctuary for abused and/or homeless farm animals. I watched an episode where he mentions that he would like to settle down but needs a girl that understands his life with the animals - I’m thinking, have I got the girl for you!!!
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The dream of my niece is to run a farm for horses that have been abused - on the race track or otherwise. She has the family land, but so far she still has a "real" 9-5 job. But also has goats & sheep & chickens and 3 horses & one donkey and ducks and 6 dogs. Maybe I've missed a few animals. I haven't been out there since the virus.
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Oh - and dinner was leftover rotisserie chicken breast with sauteed mushroom in brandy cream sauce over fresh noodles. Breakfast was the last of the shrimp fried rice. Salad tomorrow for sure.
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Here we go again...after last night's downpours, Bob wasn't able to get the garage door open this morning (he came home around 7 pm yesterday in a torrential rain but the door did open for him. He couldn't find the reset button on the new GFCI, so I have no idea how he was able to raise the door and keep it up long enough to get his car out. He didn't tell me, of course, till tonight. (!!!). Had he told me right away this morning, I could have thrown on some shoes and shown him how to reset the GFCI and re-engage the opener on its track. The electrician is flabbergasted: new wiring, with no breaks; new conduits sealed with copious amounts of "pipe dope;" new breaker in the basement and new GFCI in the garage (both buttons are white, which is why Bob couldn't figure out how to reset it, as the old button was red for reset and black for test). He will come out tomorrow to try to figure out what happened--but if it's dried out he will have to wait for more rain. He will remedy the problem free of charge, of course. And more rain we will get, starting perhaps tomorrow night, Mon. for sure. And starting Mon. night they're predicting another torrential storm with high winds, time and again all week...as the weatherman put it "like 'Groundhog Day." We got a little bit of water in the basement right under the sump pump (which means I have to call the plumber too--unless there's just so much a sump pump can do, and at some point flooding is inevitable).
As of 10pm tonight, Bob was still working and expects tomorrow will be the same--so it looks like this weekend will have been a bad one at Little Company of Mary (even though the city & state's infection & death metrics are going down, that ghetto-centric hospital is the canary in a coal mine because so many of its patients are minority people in essential jobs whose dwellings are too small for social distancing).
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One of the ways I "escaped" college with no student loans and a masters degree in electrical engineering was by being an electrician. The electricians' license is long expired, but I still have my propeller hat and I just put it on. :-)
Did the electrician replace just the GFCI outlet and the wiring up to the GFCI outlet? Or did they redo *everything* after the GFCI outlet as well?
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The electrician completely removed and replaced the old line (from the basement to the garage), conduit, and GFCI. He said the old conduit was full of water. Not sure what you mean by "after the GFCI outlet:" the entire garage door opener and interior garage wiring to it and the light switch/other outlet? If so, I doubt it. All I know is that as soon as I hit "reset" and flipped the switch, everything worked (opener, lights) again. Will have to show Bob how--I took a Sharpie and put dots next to the white "reset" button. (He grew up in a home with no garage and no car---his parents said they "didn't have a driving personality"--so all this stuff is alien to him. I'm the home-maintenance person, whether DIY or finding pros to do it).
Electrician is coming over between 5-6pm today to troubleshoot--says he may have to run some "fish tape" and see if it's wet--if so, maybe he'll have to completely re-do everything, If the tape comes up dry, he will come by in the rain Tues. and re-run the tape and proceed accordingly. If the whole shebang needs to be redone, my landscaper will have a cow, having to re-dig the trench two feet deep. I'm sure he will charge me for that (unless the electrician can have his own crew do it). Good thing we didn't yet re-seed or sod!
Only thing I can think of is water getting in around the louvered window directly above the new GFCI outlet, but the louvers have been shuttered tight for two years now and everything around it was foam-caulked last year--maybe just extending the conduit to move the GFCI further on the wall away from the window (and any possible eave leak) will do the trick. Only other thing I can think of is rats gnawing through the underground metal conduit--they can even chew through concrete. If we need a re-roof, that will be a major headache (we would lose our DirecTV for the duration). And (heaven forfend) a new garage & opener would render all his work in vain (and our two thousand bucks--plus the $1200 for the trench and $400 for the gate to the alley--flushed down the crapper).
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aw man, ChiSandy! That sucks. I hope that everything will be dry now and ok. One thing, have you thought about the leak coming from the roof down the wires? I ask cause we had that happen to us, everyone looked down towards the bathroom for the leak, when the leak was on the other side of the roof, ran down the wall and the across to the wire and we actually saw it come down the chandelier. That was scary! Good luck!
Today was sloppy joe and fresh beans. Simple but good. My DD2 picked up 4 days last week so we had the kids 3 days. Her DH was applying for jobs and unemployment etc, so took the kids only 2 days. So I was cooking up 2 extra large meals of keto when they are here. For one day, Made a casserole of tex mex shredded chicken with cream cheese and topped with cheese. I used low carb soft taco shells (3 gram net carb) to line the bottom and top. So I used 5 in a 9x12 pan. Thats not bad. The bottom came out almost like a lasagne noodle, the top was crispy cheese. Served with steamed green beans. It was really good. I made a small 8x8 casserole of it for Stan and myself too. The next dinner was meatloaf with mashed potato and carrots. I made a 3lb one for them and a 1 lb for us. That made at least 3 meals for the 4 of them and 3 for us . It really adds up too. LOL. I always try to make enough for 2 meals and at least 1 lunch for them, DGD1 eats small, but DGD3 is a meat eater. If we make brats, she will eat a whole one, and still look for more! 2 hotdogs, whole sandwich etc, plus the sides, she lives carrots, potatoes, broccoli, green beans, etc. She's 16 months now, and constantly on the move, so she is actually smaller than DGD1 at her age. LOL, she's only in 18 month clothes, her sis was in sz 3 at that age. . But love having them here. Also love them going home! LOL.
Rains gave been crazy here. And we've had so many rainbows, I have to believe its Someone up there telling us to have HOPE! HUGS to all, and much love!
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Moon - great to see you.
Dinner was cleaning the fridge. 1/2 a bag of salad mix, leftover sauteed asparagus, leftover petite potatoes cut in half, half a cucumber, an avocado - forgot what else but it was HUGE. I may never eat again.
Tomorrow will be day #90 of my brisk 3-1/2 to 4 mile walks. I only missed two days (and I didn't count them) - one for a dentist appointment and one for a thunderstorm. I'll walk in the rain but not lightening. Count down to 100 days coming up - 350 to 400 miles. That's San Francisco to Los Angeles, but the scenery was no where comparable. Almost double the distance from Boston to NYC. Woo Hoo.
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All the wiring in the garage is in sealed metal conduit (piping). Any possible "daylight" I can see through the eaves is nowhere near any of the conduit, fixtures nor outlets. The interior walls are bare oriented-strand-board, with vinyl siding on the outside, so what we see is what we get--nothing hidden. (Did I forget to mention this is a fully-detached garage, at the opposite end of the lawn from the house)? Anyway, after consulting with our own Eric, I thought to look at what things that circuit feeds, and discovered that the motion-sensor coach lamp high up on the exterior by the side appeared to be missing a pane of glass from its housing--so I pointed it out to the electrician (after he confirmed that the new conduit is bone-dry and waterproof). I told him I'm pretty sure that water had gotten into the lamp and was the culprit. He looked and discovered that the pane had been moved aside by the last person to have changed the bulb (which apparently was easier than getting up on a ladder and taking off the top cover). He noted there was greenish discoloration on the ceramic socket--likely algae, which confirmed water had gotten in during downpours and high winds. So he wiped it dry, and properly reassembled the lamp housing. Hopefully, that was the problem--though the mounting still appears a bit wobbly, perhaps letting water into the garage (though I haven't seen any). if the problem recurs, we'll get a new lamp which he will securely (and water-tightly) install. Meanwhile, the main motion-sensing light on the lintel itself is a stick-up solar-powered one, so if need be we can do without the coach lamp.
Bob got home a bit earlier than expected--it was a busy weekend at the hospitals, but only one COVID patient--and a "remote consult" via computer & phone from a different floor, at that. (Still made him change his clothes & shoes when he got home though). Ordered out from Cellars--crab cake and field greens for me, salmon Caesar for him; and we ate together out on our own deck. Lovely dry evening, in the mid-70s. Then after dark, the firecrackers started up again. Ugh.
He had breakfast (eggs Benedict) in the hotel's restaurant this morning, which was open with masks & social distancing. He feels that eating indoors at Cellars would be okay if it were only at 25% capacity with few tables. (Their guitarist will be back Tues. night, Bob gets home early, but the weather will suck, making patio dining untenable. We would likely have to tip the guitarist via Venmo or Zelle, rather than have him handle cash).
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Moon, you are a good mother/grandmother doing all that cooking.
We are dealing with heat and humidity and having to resort to turning on the a/c. DH cooked a small pork steak on the grill last night. We shared it. The sides were a tossed salad and cauliflower mash.
Tonight may be store-made brats. DH has requested the ones made with cheddar cheese. The cheese prevents dryness.
One dinner we had recently featured lamb chops I bought from a farmer/rancher at our farmers market. The chops were thinner than the loin chops I like to buy when I can find/afford them but they were very tasty.
This Saturday our setup was across from a young Amish couple with a tiny baby. I bought a loaf of wheat bread from them, a small bag of doughnuts, and a bag of home-made egg noodles. The doughnuts were delicious and I'm enjoying the bread. Their prices were low and they made a lot of sales. I resisted buying a pie but other people carried them off. I'm buying my eggs from a man who has large brown eggs for $3 a dozen.
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Dinner last night was beef and bean tostadas and corn. Not sure what tonight will entail, but maybe chicken..
auntie - how is the moving going?
It is hot and humid here, no surprise, but we have entered the phase of main dish salads for dinner - too hot to eat a traditional dinner.
Speaking of chicken and eggs - DD's chickens have started to lay eggs! There have been six so far, but they are very small. Her chickens are all different kinds so the eggs should look different depending on who laid them. We know for sure that one is laying, which is interesting because she is not the oldest. DD got these chickens when they were tiny babies - she was so excited by the first egg that she called me screaming on the phone, at first I thought she was having some kind of emergency, lol! Nope, just eggs..
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Sharon and I are (slowly) getting back into the normal routine....although DD is hoping we'll put the normal routine off for awhile longer to help her finish off her move from one apartment (essentially a privately owned college dorm) to a new (more family oriented) apartment, as well as help clean the old place where she lived for 3 years.
Hopefully the water getting into the light fixture was the cause of the problem.
It's been hot here, but today and tomorrow will be "delightfully" (for us, anyway) cool, with temperatures in the low 100F/40C range. After that, it heats up again.
Last night we were kind of lazy and used jarred marinara sauce with a lot of bell peppers, mushrooms, garlic, basil, a couple of Serrano peppers, and some oregano added to it. This went onto some spaghetti
Three more eggplant fruit (I guess it's a fruit) are ready to be picked and it seems like I'm swimming in Serrano peppers. Sliced, peppers packed in vinegar and boiling water canned is on the list of things to do. I think we are going to go over to help DD finish up the apartment cleaning, so the eggplant experiments will have to wait until tomorrow.
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Eric - do you really have a choice about helping the move/cleaning? I quit helping with the actual furniture moving and bathroom scrubbing for my son by the time he was 30. But I'd still probably get talked into something like shelf-paper.
Seconding the call - Nance, is your move going OK?
Dinner 1/2 a cup of radishes, 1/2 a cup of wheat thins, 3/4 of a cup of Jarlsberg cheese 'sticks'.
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Picked my first black raspberries of the season, about 1/2 cup (left enough ripe ones on the canes for Bob to nibble on his way to & from the garage). Not a bumper crop in the offing this summer, but at least a quart. The last of the farm-fresh strawberries are about to be finished, more than a week after I bought them. Nary a moldy one in the bunch (unlike supermarket berries). Alas, my grapevines did not hold up well over the winter (but nobody in our house likes Concords anyway).
Dinner tonight was fridge-foraging: insalata Caprese and a choucroute garnie (seasoned with a slice of bacon, caraway seeds, juniper berries & a splash of white wine) with grass-fed beef hot dogs and organic chicken bratwurst.
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Dinner tonight was take away from Bonefish Grill (nothing but chains here) to celebrate 30th anniversary. Broke out the Wedgewood, Waterford & candles to set a pretty table. Crab cakes w/remoulade sauce for the appetizer. Warm, crusty bread w/butter, caesar salad (ho, hum but was nice & fresh), grilled shrimp with lime/tomato/garlic sauce, brocolli w/herbs and chocolate chip cookies. Everything but the crab cakes was part of a family bundle. It all tasted good to me. This is the first meal since early March that we did not cook. Plenty of leftover shrimp & broccoli & 1 loaf of the crusty bread for tomorrow. DH will polish off the salad. Will work my way through the 6 chocolate chip cookies as slowly as possible.
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celia - Happy Anniverary!
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Celia, happy anniversary and enjoy the cookies!
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Found a delicious new snack that is ridiculously expensive. Stacey's Cheese Petites - made with real cheese. Bite size, crisp, baked crackers. I had White Cheddar with Jalapenos. Cheese is the first ingredients so there's 6 grams of protein per serving. Unfortunately I ate the entire 4 oz bag. oops..... supposed to be 4 servings. $3.99 for this small bag - but worth it for a splurge. That and two hard boiled eggs was my dinner.
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Happy Anniversary Celia!
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Happy 30th, Celia! I like Bonefish--the closest one is up in Skokie, so no delivery; we'd have to pick up or hope we can snag an outdoor table (of which they have very, very few).
Last night, since Bob had to make rounds after Union Health, I went freezer-foraging, Pulled out a foil-wrapped frozen length of mystery meat I assumed was a leftover sparerib, so I reheated it in the toaster oven at 225F for 35 min. To my surprise, it turned out to have been a leftover half of a grass-fed bone-in strip steak--shouldn't have heated it that long, since it came out medium-well. Delish nonetheless--had it with the remainder of the asparagus in the crisper, pan-seared in EVOO and balsamic.
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Nance - hope your packing & moving is going OK. We're all thinking of you.
Dinner was more cleaning the freezer. I had a good sized chunk of leftover eye-of-the-round in the freezer, previously roasted rare. I cut some of that in bite sized pieces, added a small can of sliced mushrooms & warmed in butter. Then I nuked a package of "Seeds of Change - Mushroom Simmer Sauce". That is a really good sauce. Cooked a big batch of rice again for the week and served my beef & mushroom simmer on a scoop of rice with frozen broccoli on the side. I never got around to opening a bottle of wine.
Desert was a slice of lemon pudding/pound cake, topped off by 1/2 a cup of Spanish Peanuts. Not together - separate dishes sequential times.
Made it to early voting today. I was pleasantly surprised that the polling location was very clean and the people were all masked & behind plexiglass. Lots of sanitizer sitting around.
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I helped with the moving of the larger stuff that wouldn't fit into her car. She took care of the cleaning and moving the small stuff herself.
I did have one "old normal" return. The Blue Bird brand flour, milled by Cortez Milling, is back on the store shelves (but only in 20 pound bags) and my sourdough has returned to normal. During the flour shortage, the flour most commonly available was from a company that used a spring wheat with a fairly low gluten content...which isn't so good for making bread. I could have fixed it by adding bread flour or wheat gluten, but neither were available so the bread was very dense.
Even though I will go through 20 pounds of flour in about 6 weeks, I don't like buying that much flour at time because I have to keep it on the pantry floor. Gypsy, our yellow lab dog, loves flour and if we're not careful about keeping the pantry door closed, we'll end up with a white faced yellow lab.
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Thanks for the anniversary wishes.
Dinner last night was a stir fry of leftover anniversary dinner shrimp & broccoli & some of the crusty bread. Still have more shrimps leftover after DH made a curry dish for his lunch today. Will mix up remaining shrimps/sauce into a cold shrimp salad & have this with diced avocado, plus polish off the remaining crusty bread. I rarely eat bread, but am unable to resist warm crusty bread w/butter. Still have 3 choc chip cookies leftover, so dessert will be one of those.
Wow, Eric - that is a lot of flour. I can just picture your white faced yellow lab!
Minus - Glad you were able to vote safely. Lemon cake sounds delish. ALDI carries "crisps" similar to the Stacy's you mentioned. I love the Parmesan ones - made from 100% parmesan cheese, oven baked & 9 grams protein per serving. They also have a Cheddar/Jalapeno one. $2.89 for a 2.11 oz package, so $3.99 for 4 oz sounds like a good price to me.
Sandy - What a find on the black raspberries. One of the talks at my local Cancer Support Center advised they are a good cancer preventative. but hard to find. Is the organic chicken bratwurst the one that Whole Foods carries?
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I've been growing black raspberries every summer since we moved into our house in 1987! Yes, the chicken brats are the Gilbert's brand from Whole Foods. Last night after my inner ear & brain MRI--and a very harrowing drive home, having had to detour around the scene of a drive-by shooting & crash--I had instant cauliflower rice with curry sauce for dinner because Bob had already eaten. I'm dining home alone again tonight, since Bob will be down at the hotel near Advocate Christ Hosp. because he has a 7am echo-reading start; will likely nuke some frozen wings and accompany them with celery & carrot sticks and blue cheese dressing.
Tomorrow night is the MRA (brain arteries) and MRV (brain veins). I will take a (hopefully) safer route home. Hope Bob will bring food, either from his office or from Cellars.
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Wow - over 24 hours. I don't ever remember a time when NOBODY was cooking - or at least eating. Maybe everyone is getting ready for a big holiday?? FINALLY the Texas governor has made masks mandatory, closed the bars again and most of the beaches are closed for the weekend. But supposedly 200 police have the virus, so who will make the macho dudes wear masks? I'm staying home.
Tonight was a big salad with lots of extras & avocado/ranch dressing. Not wild about the dressing. I think it has Cilantro. Tomorrow will be another fried rice concoction with all the dark meat from a smallish rotisserie chicken. Don't know yet what else I'll toss in. Sunday will be ham hock & beans, but made with the yellow split peas that a neighbor gave me instead of navy beans + carrots & celery & onions.
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minus - the last two nights have been assembled salads - not really cooking, just combining, lol! Last night was thinly sliced cabbage and romaine with previously grilled chicken, toasted crumbled ramen noodles, sliced almonds, sesame seeds, scallions, and a sweet and sour type dressing. Tonight was romaine, more chicken, halved red grapes, pecans, goat cheese, balsamic dressing. No big holiday plans, we are having a fence and gates built at the downtown house, so supervising that. DH just left to go up to our community center to watch the big fireworks in the golf cart, I am home with the dog - who is not a fan. Not going out and doing anything over the holiday weekend - too many positive cases here in FL. This is the first night I have really just not wanted to cook, can’t put my finger on why, other than I have cooked, or assembled (lol!), every bite of food I’ve eaten since March. Bleh
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Because I was getting home from my MRIs too late to dine out with Bob (and would have been too tired to cook for myself), he went to Cellars and brought me home bourbon salmon with broccoli & julienne carrots/peppers/red onions. This morning I had guacamole toast and a small egg. Tomorrow morning I will make us frisee salads with Dijon-lemon vinaigrette, lardons (from thick-cut bacon) and sunny-side up duck eggs. (Bob will also get croutons). Tomorrow night Gordy is coming over to dine with us on the deck (Leslie is staying home with their dog) and I will grill--probably steak or pork chops. Haven't figured out the sides yet.
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I keep wondering how Nance is faring with her move. Hoping it is going well and that she is defying Mercury Retrograde! I don't really pay much attention to that (It rules my sister’s life), but was not happy to see that it started the day before DS2 closed on the new house...and was felt mightily! It even went through yesterday when the closing for his condo was delayed a day due to a screw up by the new buyer and his bank.
Last weekend we were very busy with Amelia who was happily exploring every nook and cranny of our house. A danger to herself and others! When she was last here, she wasn’t walking yet. Anyway, other than old folks exhaustion, it went well. Minus, I can so appreciate how hard the distancing must be for your great niece. I feel so badly for the little ones...as well as you! Our little one went back to day care on Monday, which means that we may be again distancing from her for a long time now.
But she is a happy camper being back in that social setting...tho with only four other kids now. And her parents are so busy, it’s great for them that she has a good social caretaking option.As far as dinners, I’ve been cooking a lot (again!) this week. Special, I totally agree with taking aN occasional night off from the task! Imagine if we didn’t know how to cook!? Tho I guess those folks keep the restaurants sort of solvent. I finally got to making my turkey/kale meatballs with light red sauce which we enjoyed over whole wheat spaghetti, along with my tossed salad. Last night we were going to have chicken marsala, but we got home too late from a neighborhood “Pandemic Porch Party” (a socially distanced performance by a twenty something gal who just spent the year entertaining on a cruise ship before landing home, along with her musical theatre brother and her Not musical sister). It was a riot! And all the neighbors sat on the medial strip grass or their driveways as audience.
Anyway, I wasn’t going to start making chicken marsala at 6:45 last night, so DH grilled the chicken and I made salad and farro. Tonight, we had leftover chicken and I used the fresh mushrooms which were needing to be cooked to make a mushroom/onion white wine sauce that I used to dress a bowl of delicious herb pasta that I found in the pantry....a leftover holiday gift from DDIL1 who buys specialty pasta in the town where she practices. I had no idea how it would turn out, but It was delicious! We had a baby spinach salad with pear, carrot and red onion. And I have lots of leftovers from a few meals now, so I hope not to cook much for several days after tomorrow when we plan to grill steaks, here at home...all by ourselves.I have no strong desire to get back into circulation even tho MA is doing great statistically with Covid. We are even passing on our P-town week which starts This Sunday. We may make it up to the lake at some point. But I really do not feel cavalier about this virus, and even here, some folks are acting that way. For the most part up to this point, most people have been compliant with the Gov’s orders, but now that we are starting Phase Three, I can see people letting down their guard. Worrisome....
Hope you folks in the surging states can stay home and safe!0
