So...whats for dinner?

What restaurant, PatsyKB? Sharon and I get up "that way" on occasion.

One of these days we'll get up that way. Tomorrow Sharon and I are heading up to the Kendrick Peak fire lookout tower. Even though most of the state's forests are closed, that particular place is still open.

I grew up in the desert and tolerate the heat pretty well (at 5pm it was 110F/43C), but it kind of grinds on Sharon. So we do cool country stuff whenever we can.

For what it's worth, at 5pm the watch tower reported 69F/19C and it will likely be below freezing tonight. It's quite a change for a place that's only a 3-1/2 hour drive from home.

Dinner tonight is all the left overs from earlier in the week. So, it will be a "little bit of a lot of things" dinner tonight.

Happy birthday to the dh Carole!

Tonight was a Serious Eats recipe for French bread pizza. Amazingly I found whole milk mozzarella in my little town. It was pretty tasty. Cut into small slices it would make a nice appetizer. We had it with a fairly pedestrian salad made of home grown romaine (but not my home.) My garden is full of marble sized tomatoes however. I'll have to put wire on top of the cages to keep the critters from stealing them.

This morning while putting out jelly for the numerous Baltimore orioles that come to the feeder, the little fawn (so little!) ran out of the woods and scampered up around the side of the house. We spotted mamma deer there and they both strolled up to the garden without stopping, then on across the street to the woods on that side. All of our trees are full of apples so I figure they'll be coming around there soon. They really enjoy the green apples and will eat all of them on the bottom of the tree and those that fall on the ground.

Minus, I used to get the brownie bites from Costco. Terribly addicting! They haven't carried them for a while now about which I have mixed feelings lol

Checking in after a while...so, yes, this will be long....sorry!

HB to your DH Carole! Sounds like you two are off to a great start to your summer in MN. Good for you on the weight loss! I saw an add for an air fryer the other day and wondered if it was a compact enough item for you to bring with you. Am guessing not.

Special, I hope you are healing well....and not exerting too much, tho that’s probably a stretch (pun intended). My mother often served us cottage cheese and fruit salad in the 50’s/60’s. These days I sometimes enjoy having store bought cot chs with pineapple to which I add walnuts for some crunch.

Minus, we are all humbled these days with our “brain cramps”. I find that I really do have to pay better attention to things I hope to remember...otherwise the name, item, place, appointment, product, etc., just flies right through my brain with no landing. I have found, however, that my recall has reverted to its better functioning state since my PCP reduced my Pravastatin, which she had increased to 20mgs last year. Similar improvement when I went off tamoxifen. Obviously my brain is very sensitive to meds! I hope your bloodwork is fine and you can go to once a year appts.

Nance, I loved your wildlife report! We have tons of chipmonks and squirrels if you’d like to import any for the fox! Since we no longer have housepets, the chipmonks have taken over, and I hope they are not damaging the foundation of our house as some neighbors have reported on our town Facebook page. Every afternoon we also see one rabbit nestled in the middle of our lawn eating grass (or more likely clover, which abounds). She isn’t phased by our presence and I’m guessing is bulking up to feed her bunnies, probably under the shed which we have yet to see emerge.

While we have yet to truly experience any consistently nice warm weather days, I decided recently to start our summer tradition of having BLTs for dinner. I made them with some nice Farmer’s Market salad bowl lettuce and cut thick slices of a crusty loaf of Trader’s bread. Not so traditional, but Yum! Let the summer season begin!

A few weeks ago, I had my physical and the doc decided since we are not sure about the random lightheadedness I experience, I should wear an event (holter?) monitor for a month. Two weeks are complete, and I cannot wait to get this damn thing off! It is time consuming and annoying to wear. I did not get the most modern version since the cardio dept was out of them (I should have waited!), so I am constantly needing to apply, and change these sensors to my chest and wear the not small enough sensor appliance around my neck, remember to change the battery of that, and keep the separate larger monitor right near me at all times, keep it charged, etc. Ugh! I do hope some valuable info comes from this. End of rant!

On Tuesday I celebrate my 73rd birthday, and we are going into town, first on a duckboat ride/tour since I keep promising DH we’ll go on one since he never has been. I have been on a few....as a special chaperone accompanying some of my more behaviorally challenging students in my school days. Ha! This will be a bit more relaxed and the weather looks promising.

After the tour, we are thinking about having a drink at the Top of the Hub (Prudential Building) since it’s been many years since I have been there and the city of Boston has changed dramatically in the past 20-30 years, sporting a very different skyline. We’ll close our little outing with a stop at Eataly (with no homage to MB!), probably avoiding the most expensive restaurant (only one that takes reservations) and enjoying something more casual. Next Saturday DS2 and wife will take us out for a combined birthday and FaDay celebration.... a tour of the new places in the Seaport area of Boston, and then at Tuscan Kitchen Seaport, new to that area. I should be able to consider myself familiar with contemporary Boston after this week.

We head to NJ the following week for DGD’s Kindergarten graduation and for DGS’s piano recital. Looking forward to seeing them! I’m busy coming up with ideas for activities we can do together if there is ANY down time during the four days we are there....and of course researching vegan recipes I can make for those docvegans! If only they ate cheese

Eric, I would concur with the observations of others here that you seem to be adjusting to retirement quite nicely!

Last note....Minus those lemon bites sound amazing!!

Nance, sounds so delicious!!

And could you possibly teach me to “abbreviate" ?! )))

Lacey - thanks for all the news. It's NOT too long. Sounds like a great couple of weekends. I too hope the 'halter time' goes quickly and you get the benefit of some report or other that is useful. Please do let us know from the wilds of New Jersey.

My blood is OK except for cholesterol. It's jumped up since cancer. This is in spite of all the exercise, skipping beef, the weight I've lost and doing other healthy stuff. I've about decided those raised numbers are caused by one of the vitamin supplements I'm taking post BC - like maybe the two different "B"s that were supposed to help my chemo induced nephropathy (not). I plan to discuss cutting out everything with my PCP to see what happens. Except I don't want to cut the magnesium that really helps my leg cramps - so with my luck it would be that. Still - the numbers are border line so I won't have to take statins.

Nance - as usual your meals sound delicious.

Mommy - you'll have to report back on the graduation party fare.

Last night's dinner suited my taste buds. Canadian walleye fillets lightly breaded with Louisiana fish fry breading and sprayed with olive oil spray and baked to crispness in the grill/oven at a high temperature. One side was cauliflower mash. A second side was our usual romaine tossed salad but without avocado.

Tonight will be turkey burgers without buns, carrots and salad.

chicken kebabs marinated in Italian dressing and pasta salad

I have the 3 envelope pot roast in the crockpot.

Newbie to this thread and am enjoying it.

Phoenix - welcome. I give up - what are the 3 envelopes? Maybe Lipton's Onion Soup?

Ate at The Pepper Twins with my nephew, niece and baby. Delicious organic Asian food. Best green beans I've ever tasted - sauteed w/garlic & salt but no batter. Spicy shrimp - good taste & nice veggies but the shrimp was a bit dry. Chicken with root vegetables - tasted fine but nothing spectacular. Hot Diving Fish - an excellent steamed fillet of sole ordered with the sauce on the side. This is the one the 3 year old really likes - without the 3 alarm chili sauce. They usually order lamb with cumin, but decided to try the chicken instead.

We had a last-minute invitation yesterday afternoon to have dinner with John, an elderly Texan who rents one of the two condos here at Pinehollow Resort. He's a bass fisherman and is trying to convince all these walleye devotees that bass is as good a fish to eat as walleye. He fried small lightly-breaded pieces of bass after we walked over to his condo and served the fish with his home-made tartar sauce and two store made salads, coleslaw and a broccoli salad with peas and beans and peanuts in the mixture. Both salads were good but the broccoli salad was delicious. So was the fish. And the tartar sauce.

So the turkey burgers are still uncooked in the refrigerator.

Later today (a rainy day) we're headed north to Bemidji to a WW meeting. The Tuesday meeting in Walker doesn't work because I play golf at noon on Tuesdays and would be rushed to make the meeting. After the meeting in Bemidji we plan to go to an excellent pizza restaurant, Dave's pizza. It doesn't open until 5 pm so we never get to eat there when we're in Bemidji at lunch time.

So thin crust pizza at Dave's for dinner!

There are some other good restaurants in Bemidji so a weekly ww meeting there would open up dining out opportunities.

Oh my...pizza. One of my friends & her grown daughters & grandson are in a VRBO house on the beach in Alabama. She asked me to try to pry her husband out his recliner while they were gone, so tomorrow we're going to a local hole-in-the-wall family Italian place. I was going to have pasta, but they have a good thin crust pizza. I think you both have changed my mind.

Today was giant salad & two very small slices of toasted sourdough roll. Water Aerobics tonight. Otherwise I'm doing NOTHING today. Silver Sneakers class in the morning.

Patsy - looks delicious. Thanks for sharing the recipe.

Tonight I was on my own for dinner since DH had a day golfing and cooking out with former colleagues on the Cape. So after teaching the 5th graders, I stopped at the food store and picked up fixings for caprese salad, and veggies for an interesting omelette. However, since I’m dealing with some back spasms, and they were acting up by late afternoon, my culinary creativity waned and I ended up eating some crusty bread with hummus and poached a couple of eggs. Was perfectly fine, if odd. Minus, you and I would have a ball making “creative” dinners, or dunches!

Tomorrow we will eat downtown, but I will have my vine ripened tomatoes and burrata (and some basil from a lovely plant my next door neighbor gave me) on hand for Wednesday’s dinner with marinated grilled chicken.

I have never had walleye and am always curious about it when I see it on your posts, Carole.

I’ll be really interested to peruse the food options at Eataly tomorrow. Hopefully, lots of other than pasta choices.

Magari, cuminspice rubbed lamb steaks sound sooo good, and I have never had a sand dab. Better look it up!

I made the mistake of ordering thick crust pizza where we went. Wasn't really thick and it was greasy. Should have ordered thin but I was with a friend from Chicago. I love their ranch dressing so the salad was delicious. The pizza will be better cold later this week.