Cop Car's Beat

Share, we must

The first photo shows what happens when I decide to let a cantaloupe ripen on the vine a bit more. I infer from the evidence that a raccoon was having a fine Midnight meal when something scared it off. The ants, flies, and butterflies took over in the light of day (the little butterfly flitted off before I snapped the photo.)

The next photo shows the next cantaloupe with which I shall play the balancing act of ripeness vs attractiveness to the wildlife. Our normal harvest is about a half crop for Hunky Husband and me and a half crop for the critters. That's acceptable since we moved into their habitat and not vice versa.

I should mention that I went out to harvest tomatoes this morning only to find that something had plucked every tomato from the Early Girl vine - ripe, semi-ripe, or green! I brought in several of the cherry tomatoes shown in the previous posting, to ripen on the kitchen counter. After all, we must have our tomatoes.

From last weekend

Cars

When Elder Brother stops in for a short visit, I clear out the garage enough that he may keep his car garaged. I started doing that one time when hail was forecasted to occur during his stay. At that time, it took some doing for me to clear the space because we had so much stuff in the garage. (One might recall that Hunky Husband and I combined households when I moved back to Kansas in 1990.) Over the years, I've managed to winnow our belongings, inside the house and inside the garage. Now, all I have to do is to place the garden cart and clippings bin out in the back yard; move the child's wagon with the two containers of gasoline for the lawn mower, the recycle and trash bins, within the garage; roll a small set of metal shelves and re-orient it within the garage; and park the lawn mower snug up against the wall out of the way - easily enough accomplished with a zero turn radius machine.

The first photo, below, snapped early Saturday morning (dark enough that the flash went off giving eery glows to the license plates and the rear reflectors on our cars) gives proof that the garage contents reconfiguration succeeds. Left to right, EB's 1992 W-124 Mercedes Benz, CC's 2014 Lincoln MKZ, and HH's 2018 Lexus ES350. 

Cantaloupe

Just before EB arrived, while clearing out the garage, I took the garden cart out by the woods for temporary storage. I noticed the nearly whole rind of a cantaloupe that had been abandoned by some wild critter(s) that had eaten the meat of the fruit. I didn't think much about it, but later noticed a couple of melons on the cantaloupe vines that had sprouted from the green garbage that I had buried some months ago. The next two photos show the two hills of cantaloupe vines that have survived. (I tore out one hill of vines that appeared, to me, to be some other melon variety - possibly squash - that I did not wish to have cross-pollinated with the cantaloupe.) Looking at the photos I found that I could not pick out either of the two melons among the vines in the first photo, but it does show a sumac sprout that I had failed to spot, in person! I've pointed out one of the two melons among the vines in the second photo.

 

 

 

For today's lunch, I cut into the melon that I had found was ripe on the vine. It was a strange looking melon, but it tasted good. Not great, but good enough.

More catching up

When one's life is consumed by pulling weeds and watching the grass go dormant from the heat, posting in one's blog is not very prominent in one's mind. Catching up on "where I'm at" doesn't take a lot.

Cooking

Night-before-last, I hadn't fallen asleep by Midnight, so arose to figure out something else to do. Ah...Elder Brother was expected (sometime) for a day or two, so why not do some cooking? Now, as everyone knows, I'm no big shake as a cook. Cooking is a domestic art, after all, and no domestic art has ever tripped my trigger. For the most part I dislike cooking to the point of hating it. At any rate, I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen and the photos, below, show the results. Apologies that the photos show the "after partial consumption" state of the blackberry pie and the slaw. I partook of the slaw for yesterday's lunch, and Elder Brother and I partook of the pie after dinner yesterday.

When I ordered our groceries for pickup, early this past week, I had ordered two 12-ounce (weight) containers of fresh blackberries, specifying that the shopper might substitute 24-ounce container if they were out of 12-ounce containers. I've found over the past year or so that the shoppers at Dillons are not as astute as the shoppers at the little WalMart. At the little WalMart, the shopper would have given me one 24-ounce container in place of the two 12-ounce containers. From Dillons, I received two 24-ounce containers. That's a bunch of blackberries considering that Hunky Husband eats few of them. That explains why I used them to make my first-ever blackberry pie. No, I did not make the crusts. I had a package of two in the freezer and I used both, allowing me to form a top crust. You might notice the appearance of the top crust. IMHO I had too much flour/sugar/cinnamon mixture to mix with the berries - and - I forgot to pour the molten butter over the berries before placing the top crust on the berries. I poured the butter and sprinkled a bit of the flour/sugar/cinnamon mixture over the top crust - concentrating on the slits, hoping the stuff would ooze in under the top crust. I actually found the finish of the top crust quite appealing. Who knew?

I made up the head of cabbage (that's been in the fridge for at least one or two weeks) into slaw. Incorporated were a couple of carrots, 1/2 of a green bell pepper, and 1/2 of a red bell pepper. As neither EB nor HH enjoys onion, I withheld them from inclusion.

Baked beans were next on my list. That's a 1.5-quart casserole in the next photo. I didn't wish to make enough to feed an army! The chunks of meat in the beans are left-over ground turkey with home-made taco seasoning.

The last thing I fixed was a pan of dessert that I don't know what to call. I start by beating a couple of eggs (with an old-fashioned eggbeater), adding 1/2 cup of vegetable oil and 1/4 cup of water. Stirring in a 15.25-ounce (weight) box of yellow cake mix, 6 ounces (weight) of milk chocolate chips, a cup of mixed raisins and Craisins and spooning onto a bed of unsweetened shredded coconut that I had placed into a 13"x9" cake pan. Over the batter, I scattered a handful or two of pecan halves, 6 ounces (weight) of semi-sweet chocolate chips, and 6 ounces (weight) of Heath chips. Baked for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees F, it produces a dessert that may be cut into bars of the desired size(s). This is a favorite of HH's that I vary each time I make. In fact, I had intended to sprinkle the flour/sugar/cinnamon mixture left over from the pie as the first layer upon the batter. I forgot! What the guys don't yet know is that I snagged a 3-pint container of cappuccino-chocolate chunk frozen yogurt to serve with this.

Crepe Myrtles

A few months ago, I transplanted a small, volunteer crepe myrtle to a better location. A few weeks ago, I transplanted another, as shown in Catching up. The last two photos show how those crepe myrtles looked, this morning.

Both bushes are looking good - especially since, as one may note, the ground is now wet. I broke down and watered the bush plantings in our yard, yesterday, and we received 0.22" of rain early this morning. Yay!

Week in Review - July 16, 2022

Old Friend

The most unexpected happening was hearing from an old friend, Dr J, with whom I worked in the mid-1980s. I've heard from him every few/several years since 2009 and I must say that, unfortunately, his is a tale of woe. (The link that I've given leads to an interview with him.) His education resulted in BS and MS in Physics and MS and PhD in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, his specialty being computational fluid dynamics (CFD). CFD is a highly regarded field but esoteric enough that it can lead to difficulties in staying employed. Dr J has been, basically, unemployed for some time. He has physical conditions that have led him to be wheelchair bound, living in the Puget Sound area.

Even back in the 1980s, Dr J labored under a dark star. He was just a youngster of 30 then who hired into the same company for which I worked, only to find that their need for a CFD specialist had evaporated. He was to have worked on one of the programs on which I was involved. As it happened, about that time I needed someone to deal with some scheduling software (this was the 1980s - software's being even less user friendly then). My job was putting together a USAF base plan for Edwards AFB. The scheduling assignment kept him gainfully useful to the company for a few weeks and Dr J's and my contact was rather spotty after that. 

Trimming Bushes

It is horrible giving bushes haircuts when they are being subjected to triple digit temperatures for an extended period of time, but other tasks took priority when the weather was a bit cooler. The bush that had gotten most out of hand was the Coppertina Nine Bark, one of two that I had planted behind the house in in 2015 (not, as it feels, in 2019!) The second bush survived but for one year or two. The next two photos show the "before" and "after" trimming views.

 

 

The next two photos show the three Crepe Myrtle bushes that I planted in 2002 - "before" and "after" a trim. What? You can't tell that I trimmed them? There's a good reason for that. The only trimming that I did was to remove the limbs bearing pink blossoms from among the limbs bearing white blossoms. I had bought a Dwarf Victor (on the right) at Hillside Nursery and the two "pink" standard-sized generic bushes from WalMart. The bush that is in the middle eventually proved to have been two roots in the same pot - one for white, the other for pink. I've been trying to kill out the pink for some years because I like the contrast of a white bush between the pink and cerise bushes.

The following two photos show "before" and "after" trimming of our three Little Devil Nine Bark bushes - planted at the same time as the Coppertina, above.

 

 

Dill & Insects

Our largest patch of Dill Weed has drawn female black swallowtails - more so than usual, this year. We have an abundance of caterpillars, and the blossoms draw all manner of insects - various flies and lacewings. The photos below are the best I could do. The caterpillars don't run about, but the flies and lacewings flit nervously, keeping me from focusing on them. (The sun reflecting off of the viewing screen doesn't help, either!) I can't identify the fleet of black specks in the photo on the left. I assume they are some sort of eggs.

Hummingbirds and Ants

Speaking of bugs: Below is a photo of the hummingbird feeder that I brought in after hanging a feeder with fresh nectar. Since hummingbirds feast on ants, I can't get upset that the ants are consuming some of the hummingbird nectar.

Tomatoes & Potatoes

I was at least a month late planting tomatoes, this year, so I've yet to find fruit even beginning to color up. The photo on the left, below, shows the bush with the fruit coming closest to being ready. It is an Early Girl. (I planted only three tomatoes, this year, the other two being Beefmasters.) On the right is a photo of our total potato crop for 2022. They came up from three different hills where I had planted green garbage. My dad planted potatoes on St Pat's Day nearly every year, but I've never planted potatoes intentionally.

 

 

 

 

We get to laugh at ourselves.

The other night, Hunky Husband and I were watching TV separately, as do we usually. I heard him coughing up a fit. Since it annoys me to have someone bother me while I'm having such a coughing spell, having a speck of pepper catch in my throat or some such, I listened carefully but did not rush in to see HH. I find that as long as I can hear the fit, breath is being had. Later in the evening, HH told me that he had coughed stuff up from his lungs, catching it in his handkerchief, and that he had rinsed it out in the sink, hanging it over the towel bar in his bathtub enclosure. He told me that he had coughed up blood. Would I please check that he'd gotten all of the blood rinsed out?

Coughing up blood is a whole 'nuther thing. Now I am concerned, but I don't really want to let on to HH and get him obsessing about it. I check his handkerchief and, finding a smear of pink, take it to my basement sink for rinsing. In rinsing, I note that there is more and more pink showing up as I rotate the handkerchief in my hands. There are grainy little dots of pink - only on one side of the cloth - each fact of which struck me as strange. Eventually I am satisfied that the handkerchief is clean and hang it on the edge of the "whites" laundry basket to dry.

I preceded HH to bed. As he was in his bathroom brushing his teeth, I lay in bed with my mind wondering. Eventually, my mind wandered over something to do with the watermelon that we had eaten as a late evening snack. Bingo! It was not blood that HH was coughing up, it was small specks of watermelon cellulose and juice. I feel so much better. HH and I got a good laugh at ourselves. The photo shows our next watermelon - on which we shall endeavor not to choke. It's in the bag that I used to carry it, the watermelon having been too large for me to otherwise manage while also carrying two smaller bags of groceries to my car.

 

One of those days

I just returned from my trip to the butcher's shop, preparing for another spate of hunkering down with ice and snow. Mostly, I don't include meats in my order to the grocery store (for pick up) because I don't have enough trust in their shoppers to let them substitute if the store is out of whatever it was that I ordered. Today, for our hunkering down, I particularly wanted to buy a beef roast. Right.

My shopping at Sig's, today, was more pleasant than my previous foray. The co-owner was working (the only worker in the shop while I was there) and there were no other customers in the store. I timed my trip to make the chances of having other shoppers present minimized. I double-mask to go inside, but the workers and customers on-the-whole, do not.  Anne, the co-owner with her son (Sig, her husband, having died about 15 years ago) told me that she had to come back to work because they had been unable to find reliable help. I understand that. The last time I was there, several weeks/months ago, there were three men working - one butcher and two counter servers - none of whom I had seen, before. (There was a reason for that: Not one of them had been employed there for more than a couple of weeks, and the guy who waited on me said that it was his first day on the job.) 

Moving right along...this (below) is the treasure trove with which I returned home.

Hmm...let's see, now...taking inventory I find two 1.5-pound packages of ground Chuck, one hunk of frozen salmon, one package of pork loin, one package of young fryer chicken (that probably won't get fried since HH thinks that any fried chicken that isn't "extra crispy" from KFC can't be worth eating), and a pint container of ambrosia (a dab of fruit and shredded coconut with a whole lot of whipped cream) that HH will devour. What? No beef roast? Oh, yes. Instant flashback photo in my mind tells me that there were a lot of various steaks in the display case, but no roast. Drat! As it turned out, I should not have worried. In placing some of the packages in the downstairs freezer, I found this package (below) - "Beef Top Round Steak" that will substitute nicely for a beef roast. Note that it was packaged on November 16, 2020. It's about time that it be used.

Why did I need beef roast in the first place? Because Roberta X has, unknown to her, "talked me into" trying something that my mother couldn't get me to try after decades of pleading - parsnips.

As a child, age 8 or 10, I remember sitting at the dinner table (actually, our only table) dejectedly staring at the parsnips on my plate. The odor off of that root vegetable turned my stomach. I was forced by my (truly) loving parents to consume them - after which I promptly went to the bathroom to barf them up. I caught holy heck from my folks. but have never knowingly eaten parsnips since that day. 

Enter Roberta X of The Adventures of Roberta X. If you've never read her blog, Roberta is a techie who occasionally writes about her cooking adventures - such as here, here, or here. Those adventures frequently (as in the previously linked postings) feature parsnips. OK, Roberta. I'm going to give parsnips another try. It has only been 74 years (at least) since my last trial. Mother would be proud.

I think I have enough root veggies (below) to make a decent try at it. Having Idaho potatoes, sweet potato, onions, turnips, parsnips, tiny carrots, and radishes on hand, I may pare it down to just three or four of them.

 

Partial Week in Review - February 2, 2022

Monday - Started off with a bang rattle

At about 11am, standing at the kitchen sink cleaning veggies, I heard the dishes in the cabinets rattle. The rattling pulsed for a total of about 22 seconds.

Other than the earthquake and a bit of cooking, my day was taken up finishing up the watering of trees and lawn (oh, and a bit of leaf raking). The weekend had provided us mild weather, allowing me to strike out against our drought conditions by watering newish trees and grass. I'm assuming that, although we have had temperatures in the single digits in November-January, the grass has not gone into dormancy since about 50% of it is still green. So far, the local water companies have not levied restrictions on water use, but we've had a total of less than 3/4-inch precipitation in the past three months, so I let established trees and plants fend for themselves.

Tuesday - Adventurous cooking

Tuesday is our preferred grocery pickup day. I had ordered two 1/2-gallon containers of milk and a 4-ounce bottle of vanilla extract to assure that we had sufficient ingredients for the snow ice cream I expected to enjoy. We were smack in the middle of the band of Kansas forecasted to receive 6-9 inches of snow, Wednesday and Thursday.

Among the items we brought home from the grocery store was a package of thick, boneless pork chops. I had really wanted lamb chops, but Dillons had none on hand and I didn't feel like making a run to Sig's butcher shop. I decided to try a new recipe (below) for making lamb chops, on the pork chops. (I don't recall the name of the source of the page shown. It was an unsolicited advertising publication.)

Girding my loins, I dived into making the chops for lunch. Immediately, I had to make a substitution - the only lemon on hand was not suitable and I didn't consider a lime to be a good substitute, so I used balsamic vinegar. Other than that, I followed the above recipe, using HH's 2019 Georges-Dubɶuf Beaujolais-Villages, his pre-dinner wine. It was a lovely meal, each chop complemented with a really small baked potato (with sour cream) and fresh cherry tomatoes.

ADDITION of a few hours later, because I forgot to include it the first time.

This is what the pork chops looked like while being cooked.

Wednesday - The white stuff came & Hair today, gone tomorrow

Snow: As usual, not being a good sleeper, I arose for a couple of hours in the early hours of Wednesday. It was snowing. It wasn't heavy, it wasn't blowing, it hadn't accumulated very much. By mid-morning, the wind had come up and although it didn't appear that we had received much snow, it had drifted a little. Our rain gage had trapped about four or five inches of snow. My attempt to take photos were met with a "Battery too low to take photos" message. The photos, below, were taken at about Noon. In the first photo, the rain gage is shown with the snow trapped inside. (I had removed the "funnel" and "measuring tube" to allow snow entry.) At 9pm, the depth of the snow in the rain gage was 8.5".

The second photo shows a pan of snow scooped up from the back porch for my Noon-time dish of ice cream. Each meal, that day, comprised a bowl of snow ice cream. Yum!

The snow was a skier's delight - dry powder. Fortunately, despite the wind, the snow is clean. It is late enough in the season that leaves and bits have already fallen from most trees. The snowfall was preceded by very light rain (think Seattle rain) for a few hours, knocking the dirt particles from the air and off of the trees. The snow kept well because the temperature was in the high teens (Fahrenheit).

Hair: (Important stuff - there will be a test - oh, yea.) The history of my life includes eras during which my hair was long, and eras during which it was short. Only because I could not maintain a schedule (from lack of proximity or lack of money) of having my hair cut often enough did I wander into a few weeks' time of wearing medium length hair - and during the two years that I lived in humid Florida. I wore long hair until age 14, short hair from then to age 31, long hair from then to age 57, short hair until COVID-19 made me too chicken to go to the hair cutting shop. It takes about one year for my hair to grow out so, now after two years in which to grow, my hair is long, again.

Early in the process of letting my hair grow out this time, and recalling that my Great-grandmother S wore her long hair up in a bun, I consulted Wonderful GrandDaughter (WGD) and Rachie. Being nurses, they have tended to wear their long tresses up in buns for the past several years. They are talented at making it look effortless, neat, and attractive. How did they do it? They told me. I practiced. I could never get the hang of it - until this past week. I got it! My bun looked effortless, neat, and mostly tidy. To memorialize the event and to be able to send them evidence of my feat (I cannot see them in person, after all), I had a passport-type photo taken at our local Walgreens (below). What an eye-opener. I shuddered looking at the too-honest photo. Obviously, WGD and Rachie looked wonderful in their buns because they are young and good-looking. Who would have thought?

I used the above photo to update the photo at the top of the blog page for a couple of days; but, Wednesday, I did something that I had not really been able to do, before. I took a selfie. It shows me with my hair down (below) and conforms more to the mental image I hold of myself. I may never be able to wear my hair "up", again!

Writing that last sentence reminded me that my mother had worn her hair in an "up-do" for some years in the 1940s and 1950s and that I had worn mine in an "up-do" on special occasions (photos of each, below). Had I remembered the photos of my own up-do in 1969, I might have been spared the trauma of going through my more recent up-do attempts. I must admit that the 1969 up-do had looked a lot better before the Kansas winds assaulted it.

  

                                                                                                                        December 1969

Skinning Cats

Elder Brother was considered the brightest of us three siblings, regardless of the fact that he completed the least amount of formal education - a year of graduate school in Chemical Engineering. Thus, I am always confident in asking advice from him. It is bound to be great - right? Ah, yes. Sometimes we agree on the approach to solving a problem; there are times when we are far apart. A few days ago, during a phone call, EB gave me input that was somewhere in-between. 

Trying to get more junk out of our house, Hunky Husband had allowed me to relieve his den/workout rooms of 8-9 empty cardboard boxes. While I was at it, he threw in a couple of boxes full of junk. Among the junk was an external ZIP drive, about which I was ignorant. I had known he had, some years ago, used an external hard drive: I had not known that it was a ZIP drive, nor would I have known what that was. I'm still not clear on the concept, but it is obvious that the 3.5" floppy disks that the drive uses are slightly different from the standard 3.5" floppy disk (see photo, below.)

Problem? I intend to box up the drive and the unused floppies and take them to the electronic recycle people in Wichita. I wanted to destroy the floppies on which HH had backed up his hard drive. What's the easy way to destroy floppies? It's having been at least 10-15 years since last I destroyed floppies; I don't recall what I did at that time. I do recall that we shredded floppies with an industrial shredder on classified programs, then burned the bits of confetto. HH suggested that I remove the sliding metal closeout of each floppy and put the medium through our cross-cut shredder. Hmmm...I don't know. That leaves the metal disk at the center. I don't wish to put our residential shredder to that task. I'll go with the brute force method of getting at the medium.

First disk: Insert screwdriver through the central hole, pry up at each corner to separate the two plastic halves, and shred the medium.

 

 

 

Second Disk: Insert screwdriver through central hole, pry up, insert long needle-nose plier through the central hole, pull out medium and shred it.

Third Disk: Insert screwdriver through central hole, pry up at the two corners away from the sliding metal to break attachments, insert needle-nose plier into gap in the side, pull out medium and shred it.

I've one more disk to shred* but have yet to come up with another way of brute forcing the medium out of the case. (Perhaps use a hammer?) Mom always assured me that there were multiple ways of skinning cats. Unfortunately, she's not around to see me apply her adage.

The photo, below, shows what will be taken to the e-cycle people.

There was a price for all of the fun I had devising different ways of destroying stuff: my unattended spaghetti sauce made a mess in the kitchen.

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*ADDITION of 1/24/2022 - OMG

One box among those HH gave me for disposal, the innocent looking box in the photo below, contained a surprise: more disks.

These disks are just regular 3.5" floppy disks, rather than ZIP disks. Fortunately, only four of them need to be shredded. Some were blank. Most were used by HH for benign information concerning his volunteer service with an NGO providing disaster response. [HH served on over 50 disasters, including the responses to several hurricanes, among them Hurricane Katrina and to even more tornados, among them EF-5 tornados in Greensburg KS (1.7 miles wide, wiping out 95% of the town of nearly 1600 people - 2007) and Joplin MO (ranked as deadliest tornado in US history at the time - 2011- with 158 direct deaths and 8 more related deaths). HH was supposed to have been the originating director at Greensburg KS but came down with a virus just a couple of hours before he was to leave home - not before he had dispatched me to Topeka KS to provide liaison in the State Emergency Operation Center - my first large disaster. HH did, indeed, work in Joplin directing the operation - just not as the originating director. When the original call came, he was tied up in Reading KS on a small disaster training a new director of operations. OTOH, I was sent to Kansas City MO to provide liaison with FEMA.]

But, wait...there's more! That thin, long, black "thing" is the battery to a laptop. At first, I assumed it was the "lost" spare battery to the Toshiba that I shipped off to Elder Brother a few months ago; but, no, it is to HH's HP Envy laptop. That made me give the box another look. It was the box in which HH's Envy had arrived - back in 2015. The battery is now appropriately bagged in its anti-static sleeve, labeled, and ensconced in a storage compartment above the said laptop.

Guilty Secret - culinary

In seeking a posting that I had made having to do with re-using jam jars, I ran across this posting - not yet published - that I had written on 7/2/2019. Why it didn't get published, I can't say. The only thing that comes to mind is that COVID-19 had just gotten to the point where I wouldn't wish anyone to think that Hunky Husband and I still ate out in restaurants. We still don't, but I'm going to publish, anyway.

As one who was raised on beans and potatoes, I never really learned to appreciate fine culinary arts. It's just not in my DNA. I enjoy food; but, it tends to be low brow. Despite its reputation, low brow doesn't always have to be unhealthful. The low brow food that I put together for Hunky Husband (whose taste in food is even more low brow than is mine even though his sister is a professional chef and his mother and grandmothers were gourmet cooks) and me is, on the whole, balanced and not high in fats and sugars. However, when we go out to eat, it will more than likely end with our having less than healthful foods. Here are some of my favorite meals when we eat out.

Village Inn tilapia dinner shown in the photo with green beans and rice, but which I order with mashed potatoes (no gravy) and steamed broccoli. The dinner also comes with Texas toast (for which I ask to substitute one slice of regular whole wheat toast), and soup or salad (for which I ask to substitute a small dish of fruit which HH will consume for me). This is one of the more healthful meals that I enjoy eating out.

ADDITION of 1/13/2022 - (Toasted) Texas Toast

Jason's Deli Pacifica Salmon Salad with cucumber vinaigrette dressing, another healthful meal, is large enough for two meals; so I take half of it home for dinner that evening. One can tell that this was written some time ago. Jason's no longer offers the salad, or so I'm told.

NuWay crumbly burgers with deep fat fried onion rings and, if my essential tremors are under control and I've not had one for a while, a Diet Dr Pepper fountain drink. Hunky Husband has curly potato fries with his burger, and root beer in a frosted glass mug. The burgers are loose meat served on a bun with finely diced (and slightly cooked) onions, dill pickle slices, and yellow salad mustard. This meal is obviously not at all healthful; but, I do ask them not to add salt to the burger and rings.

Addition of 1/10/2022: Every few weeks, HH's "low crumbly warning light" comes on in which case we are apt to go through the drive-thru window, picking up our meals to bring home. As the nearest NuWay is a 30-minute drive away from our home, I usually warm HH's curly fries in the toaster oven to re-crisp them, but the crumbly burgers stay hot. At some time since 7/2/2019, I have switched from ordering onion rings for myself to ordering garlic salad. It's an acquired taste, but I enjoy this slightly more healthful side dish as much as I enjoyed onion rings. Garlic salad at NuWay is a very finely chopped slaw with much garlic in it. For our take-out meals, we do not order drinks to go, preferring to drink our tap water when at home. I've gotten to the point where I no longer have a Diet Dr Pepper, even occasionally.

This photo of Nu-Way Sandwich Shops is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Freddy's Steakburger and French fries are not healthful; but, we enjoy them on occasion. I order single burgers (their "standard" is a double!) with tomato, onion, and pickle (hold the cheese), and (again, depending upon my tremors and previous drinks) a Diet Dr Pepper fountain drink. HH orders a single cheeseburger with pickles and mustard. Generally, we share an order of French fries.

This posting results from an email conversation with a blog friend. I don't normally photograph a meal before consuming it. You can see that I've relied upon photos that the restaurants (or others) have taken of the above meals.

This one's on me

One should never air their dirty laundry in public...or so I was taught. Despite Mom's & Dad's best efforts, I am breaking the rule. Below are some photos showing our pantry.

 

 

 

The other day, there was a reason that I was delving into our pantry: I needed ingredients for making Seafood salad - and the recipe called for capers. Aha! See the closeup, below, with the cap to the capers circled*. There they were.

Upon opening the little jar, I thought that the capers smelled a bit different, but merrily measured out two tablespoons' worth and chucked them into the bowl. Only when I started to put the remaining capers into the refrigerator did I discover my error. The jar had been in the correct spot in our pantry. The lid was the correct size and the bottle was the correct shape. Why in the world would I have purchased Green Peppercorns?

It tasted dreadful. The result was that I pitched the whole bowl of seafood salad. Fortunately, I had not yet included the shrimp, only the less expensive fish.  

I frequently fail to follow my hand with my eyes, leading me to pick up something that was adjacent to the desired object. I am left-eyed and right-handed. The only time that I remember my hand/eye coordination's being great was after my first cataract surgery. I wore a protective device over my left (surgery site) eye, forcing my right eye to dominate. The right-eye/right-hand combination worked well.

_______________________

*    Obviously, the photo is a re-enactment. I was not prescient enough to take the photos beforehand.

Week in review

The photo, below, hit my funny bone.

I know how Carlos feels. I vividly recall in the mid-1980s being plugged into a short-term (six week) assignment by my bosses at The Little Engineering Company for lack of availability of other, more qualified, people who had been identified in the proposal for doing the work. The first time this happened, I filled in for a PhD materials expert whose Special Access Clearance (SAC) was too slow in coming. As I already had two or three such clearances, my additional SAC was granted within hours of submitting my request. To this day, I don't know how badly I screwed up "my part" of the project or whether that project ever saw the light of day.

Another time I was a "plug-in", the guy who had been identified in the proposal just flat did not wish to spend a few weeks in Seattle. (We were never notified when proposal writers identified us as principal staff in a proposal and we were required to keep detailed resumѐs on file for their use. My own resumѐ ran eight or nine pages in those archives.)

This project was a somewhat better fit; but, the timeline for accomplishment was far short of allowing adequate time for developing a good product. In order to fulfil the job, I loaned my SOCAL apartment to a coworker, and lived in a motel in Seattle for six weeks. I chose to ride the bus while in Seattle rather than using a company or rental car. It was during that stint that I was notified of a pickup truck's having rammed into my house in Albuquerque. Ah...good old days! [BTW: The above photo was stolen from Oddball Observations where it had been posted in 2013 with the comment, "Don't blame me.  This is a food truck in Houston.  The picture was sent to me by a (to be kept anonymous) friend.  Thanks, Frank."]

Hunky Husband took his car into Wichita for its annual servicing. Why is this big news? Because I did not go with him to navigate. Fortunately, there are only three changes of street in the 15-mile drive from our house to Lexus of Wichita, and HH was confident that he could get there and back. (He did!) We celebrate small victories. 😊 It helps that the car dealership is a straight shot north from one of the local golf courses, Hidden Lakes, at which HH used to play.

Early in the week I worked up the green tomatoes that I had picked before our first hard freeze. Green tomato relish is a good substitute for sweet pickle relish when one wishes a piquant touch on hot dogs or Tex-Mex chili. As one can see in the above photo, some of the tomatoes had started to turn color (and I added a bit of orange bell pepper). In all, I worked up about two gallons, only jarring four half pints and one quart. Without lid flats, their still being unavailable in our area, I decided to freeze the relish. Our downstairs freezer is pretty well stuffed with normal frozen foods and the Tex-Mex chili and baked beans that are awaiting pickup by Elder Brother. Refrigeration would be sufficient, with the sugar and vinegar included in the relish; but, the downstairs refrigerator is still packed with ripe tomatoes and sweet banana peppers that I put up in 2020 - at which time we were already lacking lid flats.

As one might guess, much of my time has been spent in keeping the new grass hydrated. The front lawn doesn't take much work. Three or four placements of the sprinkler suffices. In back, it takes more effort. At any rate, today will find me watering all the little trees in the back and between our driveway and Fred's fence. I've been negligent and we have several projected nights in the 20s (Fahrenheit) coming up.