Cop Car's Beat

Some days things go well

At about 11pm yesterday, I placed an online order with WalMart. They immediately sent confirmation with the information that the order would be split into two parts - one to arrive today, the other to arrive tomorrow. Good. This morning, I received another email saying that the item that was supposed to have arrived tomorrow would be delivered today. Well and good.

Hunky Husband and I drove up to Wichita to leave a box of stuff (mostly family's Xmas cards) on Dudette's front porch. As we were leaving her place, I texted her that we had left the box. (We knew that, although she works from home these days, she had wall-to-wall meetings today.) A few miles down the road toward home, HH's phone binged to let him know that he had a message. Dudette had acknowledged retrieving the box. (No, HH didn't read the text. He handed me his phone to pick it up.) A few miles farther down the road, there was a loud ding. I ignored it thinking it was a different type of notification on HH's phone. When the loud bing repeated a couple of minutes later, it dawned on me that the bing was telling me that I had received a voice message on my own phone. Digging my phone out, I saw that I had received a couple of phone calls from an apparently local number. I would have, as usual, ignored those calls were it not for the fact that I had also been left a voicemail. In order to pick up a voicemail, I must delete the phone numbers that had been displayed.

The voicemail was from a (young-sounding) woman saying that she was trying to make a delivery to me from WalMart, but had not been given my address; thus, she wanted me to return her call to provide the data. Oh, me. She was smart enough to not rely upon my phone to tell me who called and gave her phone number, verbally. The big question was: could I remember that number long enough to call her back. Victory! I contacted her, gave her our address, and our journey proceeded. I checked the front porch upon arrival and...there was the package - one bottle of olive oil. I shake my head that someone was actually dispatched to deliver that single bottle!

The photo at the top of this posting is one that was included in an email that I received from WalMart confirming delivery. Cool beans.

11/20/2020 - An idea from me, a poor cook

 

Hunky Husband must have his dessert after most lunches and dinners; so, I try to keep him supplied. Some years, I've made him a gift of home-made goodies, promising to make him a batch of cookies or a pie each month for one year. In parallel, I've been trying to sneak better nutrition into his foods - especially since he is prone to making breakfast bars his staple, consuming at least two each day. (I consider breakfast bars to be disguised candy bars.) Sneaking the nutritional ingredients into HH's foods has become easier over the past couple of years. HH is no longer a picky eater. If I put the food in front of him, he will eat it - wow! For instance, the other day, I made macaroni and cheese where the sauce for a 6-serving casserole contained one cup of a chopped salad (much kale and broccoli stems) and mushrooms. He liked it.

The idea I thought to push, today, is the addition I made to HH's pecan pie that I baked yesterday. HH prefers pecan to any other pie and prefers pecan pie to any cake in the world.

Prior to pouring the filling of the pecan pie, I put a layer of plumped raisins down on the crust. This comes under the heading of sneaking in nutritional value. As one can see in the photo, above, the raisins re-distributed themselves - floating up in the filling. The big surprise, though, was the taste of the filling after I baked the pie. My recipe calls for 1 teaspoonful of vanilla extract. I had absent-mindedly used orange extract, instead. It added a bit of extra tang.

I would love to have a slice of HH's pie; but, I just get to lick the knife. Too much sugar makes me ill. (HH says that there is no such thing as too sweet - that "too sweet" is an oxymoron.) Of course, it did not occur to me to photograph the pie while it was still whole and pretty. (Before you ask: I don't "do" pie crusts. The above crust is one put out by Marie Callender's, sold in the frozen foods section of food markets.)

Cop Car's Chow - Pecan Pie

                                         Beat, lightly: 2 large eggs

Add & continue beating, just to combine: 1 cup corn syrup (light or dark)

                                                            1 tablespoon wheat flour

                                                            1/4 teaspoon table salt

                                                            1/2 cup granulated white sugar

                                                            1 teaspoon vanilla extract

                                                            2 tablespoons molten butter

Pour batter into un-baked, 9-inch pie shell.

                                Top batter with:    1-1/4 cup pecan halves

Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream, cold with whipped cream, or at any temperature, alone.

Note: I use deep-dish, commercially produced pie crusts to prevent run-over.

Tip on keeping pie crust edges (or pizza dough edges) from burning: brush crust edges with plain water before placing the pie into the oven.

Week in Review - 10/30/2020

Our family members do not normally exchange greeting cards for Halloween. However, 2020 is not normal. I blame that fact for WichiDude's and Dudette's having sent Hunky Husband and me a really cute card. It lights up and it plays a recording; but, I did not make a video. A still photo (below) will have to do.

Within the past couple of years, our neighborhood has been gifted with a couple of new neighbors whom I've mentioned in previous postings. They are welcome additions to the neighborhood and have gone out of their way to bring a sense of community to it. For instance, Adam & Krista (next door - with the new fence) and their small children, distributed pumpkins throughout the neighborhood about 10 days ago. Krista's parents live on a not-far-distant farm and had grown the pumpkins, bringing them to town to share.

Unfortunately, I did not think to take a photo of the pumpkin sitting on our front steps, where the neighbors placed it; but, I did take a photo of some of the pumpkin sauce that I made from half of it. The other half has been cooked up and is being/will be used in various casseroles and breads. I cannot tolerate wasting food and the hard freeze that arrived last night was forecasted, so I beat it to the punch.

As you can tell by the update of contents and date on the lid, I am not only frugal when it comes to food, but also frugal with things. I re-use lids on jars of foods that I expect to use within a few weeks and to keep refrigerated until use, not really caring that the seal may fail.

Not failing, was another new neighbor from a bit farther down the street, Cathy. It was she who picked most of the cherries off of our little cherry tree this year. At the time, she left a lovely cherry cobbler on our front porch for us. Saturday, she left us a jar of cherry jelly and a loaf of her home-made, whole-grain bread on which to smear the jelly.

Although I have not usually eaten breakfast for the past several years, her bread and cherry jelly just could not be resisted. Sunday morning, I spread a little butter on a couple of slices of the bread, gently warmed them in a skillet to a nice, lightly-toasted state, and spooned jelly onto them. The bread tasted fresh-from-the-oven.

As we were expecting the deep freeze to move in, last night, I took a photo (below) of the tropical plants that had taken root from the pot I had over-summered in the basement escape window well. The photo also includes a volunteer redbud seedling and the two hostas that I had planted there in 2019.

This morning, the scene was captured in the photo, below. Soon, the leaves will die - as will the roots of the tropical plant, in all likelihood. The toads and frogs have burrowed into the sand for the winter.

Unexpectedly, we had just enough snow for me to be able to gather enough from our patio table for a bowl of snow ice cream. It was rather icy, so not the best; but, at least I got a bowl! (When I thawed the snow/ice in the rain gage, I measured 0.51" of liquid. We've had another two inches of rain since then.)

Speaking of beating the weather to the punch, I also gathered in our last two tomato plants during the past few days, placing them in the garden cart in the garage until I had time to strip the green tomatoes from those vines. I used very nearly all of those green tomatoes in putting together a batch of green tomato relish. Below is a photo of the three full 1/2-pint jars of relish. There was a fourth 1/2-pint jar that was nearly filled; but, I started using it at dinner, this evening (Monday).

Having never before made green tomato relish, I pulled two recipes from the internet and used them as a guide. Since it will be at least eight more days until I will make it to the grocery store (it only has special old-people hours on Tuesday mornings and the streets are rutted ice at this point), I had to make do with what I had on hand - part of a green pepper (substituting three banana peppers from our garden for the rest), for instance.

I was pleased to note that the relish is delicious!

Oh, yuck!

"Oh, yuck!" was what popped into my head when first I read the header of the item, below, from Slashdot.org. Of course, I would be in line to try out the product. I postulate that should I try it out on Hunky Husband, he would (not knowing its origin) pronounce that his portion was gristly.

 

3D-Printed Plant-Based Steaks Could Arrive In 2021 (engadget.com) 27

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday July 02, 2020 @06:00AM from the what-to-expect dept.

In 2021, Israeli startup Redefine Meat plans to launch a 3D printer that will allow customers to produce plant-based flank steak at home. Engadget reports: Redefine Meat says that through 3D printing, it's able to create plant-based meat with the same "appearance, texture and flavor of animal meat," according to its website. Texture specifically seems to be the 3D printer's hallmark achievement. "You need a 3D printer to mimic the structure of the muscle of the animal," Redefine Meat CEO Eshchar Ben-Shitrit told Reuters.

3D printing differs from other methods companies have used for reproducing meat taste and texture. Both Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat use combinations of plant-based proteins, oils and binders, like methylcellulose and potato starch, to achieve a realistic texture for their ground beef and patties -- though the texture of ground beef is arguably easier to achieve than that of steak. Atlast Food uses mushroom fibers to emulate animal tissue in its meatless bacon.

 

Cherry Crop 2020

I posted a photo of our North Star Cherry tree abloom this spring, here, and posted about the cherry crop of 2019, here. Today, I'll post photos supplied by our neighbor down the street showing the cherries that she picked yesterday, and this morning, from our little tree. She, Wonderful Hostess, had invited us to attend an outdoor pot-luck-style barbecue that she is holding in her spacious back yard this evening. In telephoning our regrets (my not having felt well for a few days, the horrible heat spell we are having - about which she didn't know when she planned the shindig, and our old-people-reluctance to tempt fate in even an outdoor setting), I mentioned to WH that our cherries had suddenly all ripened a couple of days ago and that she should pick any that she cared to have. WH took me up on the offer and you can see her bounty, below. Of course, we were totally oblivious to her presence at our tree; but, she emailed that she had disturbed the birds at their breakfast, this morning.

Yesterday's take:

 

This morning's take:

Hunky Husband just came in from his morning jog. He wouldn't be much wetter had he jumped into a swimming pool. I was smart enough to get an earlier start - carrying buckets of water to the dogwood trees. (I wasn't early enough to catch WH at her cherry picking, though!)

ADDITION OF 6/7/2020 2:01PM  - Payback

Wonderful Hostess left me a voicemail several minutes ago, letting me know that she had left us goodies on the front porch. Have you ever seen a finer looking cherry cobbler? (I'll note that WH was sharp enough to use a double, disposable, pan for the cobbler.) I can hardly wait to taste it; but, must wait, of course.

Wonderful Hostess included a thank you note in which she lamented that she misses being a farm wife as she had been for 30 years - before moving to town. She is a wonderful neighbor who has provided a sparkplug to our community since moving in last year. We are so happy to have her here.

HH BBs

Hunky Husband will put up with nearly any food I set before him - as long as he has breakfast bars (BBs) on hand. He alarmed me last week by declaring that he was out of the BBs that he preferred and he would be running to the grocery store to buy some. I was able to dissuade his hurried trip, in favor of buying them during our every-2nd-week shopping trip. He grumbled; but, I've put up with grumbling for enough years that it doesn't signal the end of the world to me. In the meantime, the CDC has recommended that we all wear non-professional masks AKA face coverings; that is, the kind of "mask" we can make ourselves - saving the N-95 masks for those who are frontline medical care/fire fighter/security force workers. Today, since HH is not one to don a mask, I did our weekly shopping, alone, going during the hour after the old-people set-aside hour, when I thought it would be (and it was) less crowded. People were sparsely dotted inside the store.

Yes, I wore a mask - the one that I had made for HH (similar to the one shown at New Project but with the backing comprising two layers of HH's old handkerchiefs), not having gotten my own mask sewn. I tend to judge such face coverings harshly; but, as they say, I guess one is better than nothing - if only to signal to others that the wearer is taking COVID-19 seriously. At any rate, my approach to shopping was strategic. First, I chose to go to one of the two Walmarts in Derby rather than to Dillons. There is a "Neighborhood" Walmart just one mile south of us that is smaller, quicker to get through than is the large Dillons store that HH prefers, a bit over a mile north of us. Then, I planned to leave all of the non-perishable items in the trunk of my car for a few days to allow any viruses time to disassemble themselves; thus, I would check out as two orders - one of the perishables, the second of the non-perishables. It worked like a charm.

This (photo, below) is the trunk of my car with all but one bag (containing HH's BBs) of non-perishables. As you can see, they actually had toilet tissue on the shelves - one package per customer. It did feel a bit peculiar, my not taking my reusable bags into the store; but, it had been suggested that COVID-19-wise, it would be better to use the single-use plastic bags for the foreseeable future.

The photo, below, shows five boxes of HH's favorite BBs (all that were on the shelves) and one box that I picked up, believing that they would "do in a pinch". BTW: It turned out that HH was exaggerating (or, perhaps he just didn't see them on our shelves). He still had three of his favorite BBs (not boxes, but individual bars) on hand.

Not only am I giving the viruses on the non-perishables time to disassemble, I'm giving the viruses on a package that FEDEX delivered yesterday time. It isn't obvious from the photo (below), but the side view of the box is wedge-shaped. Presumably, the box contains my long-awaited manual treadmill. I didn't really want to leave the box on the front porch, in case of rain and/or high wind. (We got the high wind, I can tell. The driveway that I had spent so much time sweeping clear of detritus from our cottonwood tree is, again, covered with such. Oh, well, I won't catch COVID-19 while laboring outside, will I?)

Today's Wichita Eagle carried a photo of a safe hay bale.

ADDITION OF 4/8/2020 - Logical Explanation

Unfortunately, I don't recall which news network carried it last night; but one of the TV news teams aired a short piece on the toilet tissue shortage. The investigative reporter told us that, although there may have been a small amount of hoarding at the start of our taking COVID-19 seriously, the real reason for the shortage follows this logical path:

1. During "normal" times, employed people spend about one-third of their time at work and non-employed people spend time at gyms, stores, restaurants, and such. The toilet tissue that people use in those locations is, in general, single-ply, thin, and made from recycled materials.
2. During CORVID-19 times, many of the employed people are spending 100% of their time at home. The toilet tissue used in homes is, in general, multi-ply and made from virgin materials.
3. The toilet tissue demand from homes cannot be replaced by the toilet tissue excess available due to lagging sales to businesses.
4. Toilet tissue is a low-value, high-volume product; thus, in general, no one in the supply chain stocks a bunch of it in warehouses. In fact, toilet tissue is one of those "just-in-time" products.
5. Because of #4, manufacturers pretty much produce "exactly" the right amount of product. They have no excess manufacturing capacity to open new production lines because that would tie up capital in such equipment and the low-value, high-volume toilet tissue would "never" pay back the investment.

It had, when I first stopped going to the gym, occurred to me that toilet tissue use at home would increase by a tiny amount; but, it didn't occur to me that there would be no excess production capacity to fill the increased demand, nor did I give thought to the effects of so many people's now being sequestered at home. I suppose that the same sort of logic applies to many of the other items that are on shortage in the stores, today, be they paper products or other products. The investigative reporter mentioned the glut on the market of frozen French fries.

Week in Review - 2020Feb22

We had just enough snow a couple of days ago that I was able to enjoy two bowls of ice cream before the sun started melting the snow down. The snow ice cream didn't turn out as well as had the one bowl that I enjoyed the week before; but, poor snow ice cream beats even Häagen-Dazs® in my judgement. It surprised me that this later snow ice cream was NOT the better of the two. The differences were two: this snow was powder snow gathered at 22 degrees Fahrenheit (previous snow was wet, at 32 degrees), and I had to use whole milk (had previously used 1% or 2% fat milk) The photo, below, is from five years ago; but, once you've seen one bowl of snow ice cream, you've seen them all.

This past week I've concentrated on data mining the "diaries" left by my parents. (This is not a short project. During the week I managed to complete data transfer for two years. Of course, I'm still working on Dad and Mom's diaries from the 1930s!) The data are then recorded in my Excel records. I don't know why I do this. When I die no one will look at those Excel files and I can hardly expect to live long enough that the worth of the records is all that great, even to me. (I do refer to those files, on occasion, to see when something occurred or where someone lived at a given time.) I am being reminded/told of stuff that I had forgotten, gotten confused, or never knew. For instance: I asked Elder Brother during his visit a few weeks ago, "Since Mom never had headaches, how was it determined that she was deathly allergic to aspirin?" His answer was that he thought our mother did have headaches and he was unaware of her allergy. Well...I was on firm ground about the allergy. It was on her "Medic Alert" tags and in her records. But, she wrote in her seventies about having bad headaches - sometimes for a few days at a time; so, I was wrong in my "remembering" her telling me that she never had had a headache in her life! Perhaps Mom merely told me that she had never had a migraine. EB agreed that Mom was the only member of our family who did not suffer migraine attacks. Below is a photo of the "diaries" (actually, most of the books are "planners") in one of the boxes - after I had removed a fist full of papers and newspapers.

Below are a couple of photos showing the sorts of notes that my father left in one of the "diaries" (from 1960) that he had used in which to keep miscellaneous notes to himself. On a very few of the pages, Mom had made entries of actual "happenings" of those days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The page on the left is seen to be the legal description of a piece of property - on which stood the house in which Dad's mother lived in a tiny village in southwestern Missouri. The two pages shown in the photo on the right are notes that Dad took while studying the private pilot licensure kit that I had given him for his birthday in the late 1970s or early 1980s (on the left) and a sketch of the platting of the area in which Dad and Mom lived in Kansas City MO. On other pages are notes that Dad took about using my HP-19C, which I got in the same 1970s-1980s time frame. Since the "diary" is dated for 1960, one can see that Dad used that book for note-taking over a goodly number of years.

As I mentioned in a comment, on the 17th the neighbor set metal posts for the back part of his fencing. This morning, he brought in rolls of chain-link fencing to set on the post (photo, below) - which will probably be done, today, since the weather is supposed to be sunny and in the 50s.

 

Fences, snow, & juiceless limes

The neighbor to the northeast of us (we are on a jog in the street) moved in several months ago and let it be known that they would be putting in a fence around their backyard, for the protection of their children (ages 4, 3, and yet-to-be-born in March). The previous owners had taken their fence down as the fence was a constant maintenance issue and their children were old enough that they needn't be fenced in.

A few weeks ago, surveying stakes appeared and, several days later, construction began. The owner and his father-in-law have been doing most of the work although an extra guy or two were around the first day on which they worked. I suspect the extra(s) were from the fire station at which our neighbor, an EMT, works. They used a power auger to drill the rough holes, post-hole diggers to refine the holes, and sacks of pre-mixed (dry) cement to fill in the holes around the treated wooden posts. Below is a mosaic of photos showing the status following the first day of work.

It was about a week later that the neighbor finished installing posts in the large gap between the post near our tree and at the far right-hand end. I was smart enough to take a single photo showing the entire expanse, below.

A day or so after Super Bowl XLV, the dog-eared boards went up, below.

This past Monday, the whole side of their fence that is along our property line was completed, below.

The fence was finished just in time for the snow that we received on President Lincoln's birthday, the 12th, as shown below. The second photo shows snow on the table from which I had scooped snow to make the snow ice cream that I had for breakfast. I had to act fast because the temperature was 32 degrees Fahrenheit while the snow was falling and was to warm by a degree or three before the snowfall ceased. Although our "rain" gage accumulated 0.55" of water, most of the accumulated snow was soon melted.

    

It will be interesting to see how the new neighbor's fence fares. The fence extends to at least 60 feet nearer our creek in addition to which the previous fencing that had gone beyond our tree (next to the fence) had been black chain link fencing. When the creek rises up out of its banks, it will probably come close to reaching our tree, as has it done in the past. Our prevailing winds will tend to blow the boards into the supporting structure, but the creek flow has previously been such that it would tend to pull the boards away from the supporting structure. The neighbor had been told of the periodic creek overflow, and he did use screws rather than nails in attaching the boards, so I will be interested in seeing what happens. In addition, it will be interesting to see how the spacing of the boards works. I've not been up close enough to see what kind of gap, if any, was left between the boards; but, they were installed at 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit and they will be subjected to afternoon sun and temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Hopefully, there is gapping that I can't see.

Then there are limes

Never have I heard of juiceless limes; but, that is what I cut into, this morning, when I attempted to extract juice from the limes that we bought a few days ago. I obtained exactly one drop of juice.

Grapes

Several months ago, Hunky Husband and I changed our regular routine, a bit. HH had, for the previous 28 years, handled the chore of shopping for groceries, by himself - usually on the Thursday morning of each week. I no longer recall what caused the change, but we now grocery shop, "together". (Usually, now, in deference to my gym schedule, we shop on each Friday morning.) I put "together" in quotes because we confer, decide what he is going to seek and what I am going to seek, and split up until we've each found the 3-5 items to which we were assigned. This happens 3 or 4 times in the course of gathering one weeks' groceries. Together, it takes us about 12 minutes to finish the chore while it had previously taken HH 30 minutes or more to chase things down and he was apt to call me once or twice during his tour, asking clarification about what I had put onto the listing or asking where an item might be found in the store.

We shopped, today. The models of efficiency, we find that we can spend $100 in the 12 minutes that we spend gathering items. It always falls to me to buy the fresh produce. As I had 6-8 items to scoop up, today, I grabbed a bag of black grapes without paying much attention to them. I grabbed a bag that was about half-full as we sometimes end up letting the grapes become raisins for our not having consumed them all in a short enough period of time.

As it neared lunch time, I grabbed a small, lidded container into which to place some grapes for HH to have for lunch after finishing his bowl of chili. Strange. Most grapes are, in my experience, ovate. These are elongated.

 

The source of the grapes was Peru. I'll have to pay more attention to see if all Peruvian grapes are so shaped!