Month: November 2024

This is how our dinner turned out.

How was yours?

I served us both the same amounts, as per the above photo, and both plates were cleaned.

Later, we’re going to have a small slice of pie after I whip the cream, and powdered sugar. Here’s the pie.

Not bad for my first “from scratch” pie. Hope it tastes as good. I’ll let you know.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy.

Update: I made a whipped cream for the pie, but discovered that the cream had turned. I bought a new box of heavy cream for whipping that was vegetable. It turned out deliciously.

Our celebration yesterday was small compared to years past.

We used to celebrate with a 15-20 lb. turkey, a ham, sweet, and white baked potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, glazed carrots, scalloped corn, cranberry sauce with whole cranberries, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and dinner rolls.

Yikes!!!

This is how we did it this year. All scaled down for just the 2 of us, with minimal extras.

I’ll let you know how this all turned out another day.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving with family, and friends.

Until next time, stay happy, and healthy.

I’m actually starting to cook pretty good, well, “better” food lately.

Using my weekly menu planner, I’ve made Mac and cheese with SPAM; liver, and onions with basmati rice, and mixed veg.; the best chile con carne I’ve ever made; roasted salmon with leftover basmati rice, and mixed veg.; the list goes on.

The following week I made enchiladas with a beef/pork mix, diced new potatoes, shredded carrots, and onions, and rice on the side. Tonight we had chicken tikka masala, with spiced basmati rice. It was delicious. Not the curry sauce I was expecting, but that will come next week. I hope.

For the rest of the week I’m planning on Albóndigas en salsa roja, and left over rice. I’m hoping to make a tortilla soup with enfrijoladas for Thursday, with fish tacos, beans, and rice for Friday.

Each time I read, and follow a recipe I take the opportunity to make it my own, cooking “by the seat of my pants” as my husband calls it. Improvisation is what I call it.

A really good curry sauce, if I can get that right, will be the first pinnacle in my new journey.

I’ll let you know how this continues.

Until next time, stay safe.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Our prayers have been answered.

Sometimes I have to go forward a few steps, then backwards a bit farther in order to appreciate what I already have.

Does that ever happen to you?

The other day, I was watching several episodes of Sorted Food on YT, and decided I needed to get out the cheap slicer/ dicer I bought on line several months ago, because it could cut up our Russett potatoes into French fries without much work expended.

Instead, I cut up a quartered purple onion to make pickled onions. It was terrible. The pieces were jagged, horrible little things that were not at all what I wanted. I washed, and dried it, and put it back into the “give away” box, where it belonged, and had been for months.

I then got out my amazingly sharp mandolin, which I had also purchased last year sometime, and cut up the other purple onion that I had into beautifully thin, symmetrical rings, and added them to the pickling jar. What a difference.

I, unfortunately, didn’t grab the guard until the moment after I thought “I really should be using the”, (pause for affect), guard. Of course I cut my finger! My hand, which was wet from adding the first half of the beauties to the jar, slipped off of the onion just as I was starting to think the word guard. Duh!!!

Lesson learned.

Until next time.

Be safe, be healthy, be happy.

El día de independencia de México de España; the day of independence of Mexico from Spain.

It took 11 years for Mexico to be free of the hold that Spain had on the people here. It was not a continuous, day in, day out sort of war, but more of battles here, and there. The effect was the same though; almost 1 million Mexican soldiers were killed, along with thousands of innocent civilians.

The celebrations started at 10am, with a series of jets flying overhead at 11am. It sounded like they were about a meter above the condo, but Ivan assures me it’s just the sound of them passing farther away, bouncing off all of the buildings in the neighborhood.

The jets flying overhead reminded me of the July 4th air shows of the Blue Angels in Bettendorf, Iowa, where we used to live.

The condo, however, is eerily quiet today. I’m guessing that folks are out, and about, with family members, enjoying their day off of work. We’re enjoying the peace, and quiet. 😉

Until next time, stay vigilant. That’s how I’m ending my posts for the next little while; stay vigilant. It encompasses all of the other things I used to say.

Stay vigilant.

You probably know it as parchment paper, but did you know that it’s reusable?

I found out that bit of information several years ago, but didn’t know if any of you knew it, so, now you do. The above piece I used when I made a delicious dinner of liver with caramelized onions recently.

The above piece of paper was where I had put the liver once it was seasoned and breaded. It was bloody, and had bits of flour with seasonings on it. I washed it in the dish pan with hot soapy water, rinsed it, and hung it up to dry.

The above photo is what it looked like the next day, after it was completely dry. It was back to its crispy state, and ready to be reused, washed, and repeated until it was either burnt beyond reuse, or torn in pieces.

I’m going to use it soon on at least one of the following biscuits: old fashioned, using the recipe as seen on the back of the Clabber Girl Baking Powder can, or the KFC biscuits, as seen in the 2nd photo below. We can’t get Clabber Girl Baking Powder down here but do have access to BP that works just fine.

I have tried, once, maybe twice, to make a decent biscuit but have yet to do so. I feel that, as a fairly intelligent person, I should be able to read either of these recipes, and come up with a good tasting biscuit. I’ll let you know when I try again, how they come out.

Until then, stay safe.

I go into the pantry about half a dozen, to a dozen or more times a day, most every day.

Over the past few months things have gotten crazily out of control in said pantry. Let me show you what I mean.

I can’t tell you how much more relaxed my brain is, just looking at these photos even. When I walk into the pantry, I take a moment to just smile. It makes me smile.

Having the things I use most frequently at hand, easily accessible, is going to be amazing. So much more efficient. For me, as busy as I am, (hilarious), I can get so much more done if things are organized.

The few hours it took me to get the pantry cleaned, and organized, again, was well worth the time, and the effort.

Until next time, you know what to do, so, please, do it.

I’ve been “naked” for the past week, and didn’t know what to do about it.

Well, as it turned out, not much.

By naked, I mean that my Apple Watch died, ran completely out of charge, (though it was connected to the charging cable), was recharged, and sort of resurrected. When it was recharged, however, it no longer recognized the correct time, and no longer was paired with my phone.

As I have become quite dependent, well absurdly really, on the immediate information my watch allows me, it has been devastating for me not to have access to it.

I have been doing research on why it doesn’t charge correctly anymore, how to reset it to the phone I’m currently using, how to “unpair” it from my original phone, (if that was the problem), how to

Well, you name it, I tried to figure out how to fix it.

I was disparate, and am unable to afford either a new watch, or phone at the moment so something had to work.

After much prayer, and deliberation, I found a quick fix on the watch itself. By now, however, the charge was only at 26%, and decreasing, on the charging mechanism, as I watched it.

The info on the watch asked if I wanted to reset the watch without the paired phone. Well hell. I didn’t know what I wanted to do much less how to do it. So, I gave that a shot.

The watch was of no use as it was so why not give that a try? What could it hurt?

I followed the instructions, deleted all of the information I had on the watch, and thanks to God, the watch started pairing with the phone.

Mind you, the phone is the phone we bought Ivan before we left Iowa, so it’s 6, maybe 7 years old, and way out of touch with my needs, but it’s all I have so I had to make it work.

The only other problem I had was the charging cable. It just kept discharging, and the phone was now down to 15%, and in low power mode. How else could I charge it?

I looked on Amazon to find another charging mechanism that would get here ASAP, and, as it happens, I saw the trifold charger that I bought 2, or 3 years ago, the one that I used in Los Altos when we’d go. Well, damn. I had that in my pouch that’s attached to the side of my chair. Got it out, plugged it in, put the watch in the proper place, and Bob’s your uncle.

The watch is at 34%, and climbing as I type this. The phone is next to it, also charging, and giving the watch an update. Sometime this afternoon I should be back to using both. Thank you Jesus.

Until next time, enjoy the peace the recent election has afforded us.

Post script: not only has my watch been restored to good health, but I have been able to re-download the Audible app. to my phone. It has seen fit to pair the phone, and my cheapo earbuds to it (the watch), so that I can control whatever I’m listening to, as well as adjusting the volume! Yay! What a day. Now I can, once again, walk and listen to my books.

Doubtful.

Here’s a thought, why don’t you just leave now, and leave all of your houses, and properties to all of the illegals that have been welcomed into our country without being vetted, and given more sustenance than our military veterans, our homeless people, or our own underfed, undereducated citizens!!

These individuals are in no certain order as I have compiled this list by listening, and reading several different websites, and YT channels over the past few weeks.

All of them have said in the past, that if Donald J. Trump were to be re-elected as President of the United States, they’d move out of the country. Have any of them fulfilled that statement?

Enjoy.

Robert DeNiro, Rob Reiner, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Bahar, and several others from The View, Rachel Maddow, Mark Ruffalo, Mark Hamill, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Richard Marx, Alec Baldwin, Pink, Ron Howard, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah, Cardi B, Lizzo, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Barbra Streisand, Cher, Hillary Clinton, Amy Schumer, Lady Gaga, Bill Gates, Madonna, Jane Fonda, Kim Kardashian, Hunter Biden, Samuel L. Jackson, Miley Cyrus, Travis Kelce, Bobby Althoff, Rashida Tlaib, Stormy Daniels, Anthony Fauci, Eminem, Ellen DeGeneres, Sean Penn, Sharon Stone, Meryl Streep, Kevin Spacey, Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee, Billy Joe Armstrong, Bono, Jennifer Garner, JLo, Andy Cohen, Brian Cranston, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kathy Griffin, Michael Keaton, Richard Gere, Rosie O’Donnell, John Stamos, Stephen King, Eva Longoria, John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Spike Lee, Sean Astin, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, John Stewart, Bill Maher, Alyssa Milano, Bruce Springsteen, Mark Cuban, Nancy Pelosi, Tom Hanks, and AOC.

GOOD RIDDANCE.

Whatever will we do without all of you?!?

I, for one, won’t even know when you’ve gone.

I hope you all have wonderful lives somewhere else in the world other than in the country that has tolerated you, and your ridiculous behavior, and given you whatever modicum of success you think you’ve achieved.

Good luck with that.

Until next time, be happy, and hopeful again.

Post script: ok, so I’m not quite back to regular scripting. I’m still too angry at the lying individuals in the Democrat Party. There are so many of them.

I am in need of replacing the plastic seals around some of my glass containers, but I can’t find them on Amazon.com.mx, or any other site.

I don’t know what to call them, so if you know what they’re called, or where I can find them to order some, please let me know. They are 3 1/2” x 3 1/2” each. Some of them are getting all chewed up with years of use. The photo you’ll see in a moment is of a container we’ve used for the past 10ish years. It’s in definite need of replacing.

Until next time, be happy.