Yes, I’ve been walking since I was a child, but recently, I’ve started walking in the park again.
The first few days, (I started around the 19th of March), I had to wear my abdominal binder because I couldn’t walk very far without it, as it supports my big belly, and my lower back.
But now, however, the 28th of March, I’ve been 2 days without it, and am walking 1.86 km, or twice around the park, twice a day.
It feels so good to get outside, smell the fresh air, have the sun on my very white skin. So many of the plants along my path are in bloom, and I’ll show you some of those today as well.
I’ve not lost any significant weight yet, but am getting more limber, as I have to do some hefty stretching in order to walk without the brace. And that’s ok with me. I can even get in, and out of the car without my hip flexors giving me much static. Win, win.
Without further ado, let me show you some of the glory I get to witness on these adventures.
I’ve taken this photo through a gated surround of the yard. An orange tree, on my way to the Mercado de Taxqueña. There are cast iron bars on either side of the frame. This red flower you may recognize; it’s a poinsettia. Down here, as you can see by the very large branch, they grow into small trees. These are blooming thistles on the same street as the orange tree, in front of an empty lot, only a few houses down.Don’t know what these are but they’re in the park where I walk. My all time favorite, bougainvillea. It’s not my favorite color, I’ll find a bush somewhere, and take its photo. It’s purple. Another variety of bougainvillea, but a pale pinkish hue with a few yellow stamen. Very delicate. Some sort of cactus.A close up of the aforementioned cactus. A jacaranda tree with its beautiful purple foliage during the day. The same scene when I am nearing the end of my walk, in the evening. Love the sun setting. I take a left at this corner, and our building is in the middle of the block.
Ok. That’s enough for today. I’m walking, and enjoying every minute of it, though I wish it would rain a bit. We’ve been without much rain this year, and the plants in the park are showing some distress. I wish I could give them all a good soaking.
Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect (I almost typed “repeat”) yourselves.
I ate a couple of small bites, hoping (against reality), that it might not be as bad as I was tasting it to be.
Nope. It was that bad.
It started out looking like it was going to be a winner, but, alas, it ended up in the organic bin. With our blessings.
Here’s how it started.
I had added oregano, dried basil, onion, and garlic powders, to no avail. This was straight up AP flour, no sourdough discard, or anything special.
It came out flat(ter) than a pancake, and tasted like cardboard. I couldn’t even take a photo of it, it was that bad. So,
The very same day, I found another recipe, online of course, and made another small pizza. These both had only homemade pizza sauce, which was outstanding, mozzarella, and Parmesan cheeses on them, because that’s all I had available at the time. Like I told Ivan, there was no point in wasting good products on a bad pizza, so I wasn’t going to add anything tasty until I got the crust the way I wanted it.
So, here’s pizza #2.
This little beauty had the softest, fairly flavorless crust I’ve ever made, so I still need to do some tweaking to it to give it some flavor.
I have a few ideas such as Barley Malt syrup, (it’s what they put in our Harris pizzas back home to give them their signature flavor), maybe more olive oil, oregano, and basil, to start. I’ll keep you posted when I do. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to a decent pizza crust. If you have a good crust, please, let me know, will you?
Suffice it to say the second pizza met with his one thumb up, so it was gone within the hour.
Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.
I was walking past the egg basket the other day on the way to do a load of laundry, and noticed the basket was almost empty. “I’ll have to put that on the shopping list, so we don’t run out”, I thought.
Duh!
We bought 180 eggs when we made the mega haul a recently. Since the eggs are not refrigerated at the store, neither do they need to be refrigerated at home.
Score!!!
That should last us a few months, I do believe.
Time to refill the egg basket.
I’ve had this basket close to 10 years, and have finally found something worthwhile with which to fill it.
Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.
The whole business with my iPhone didn’t do a thing.
I did a backup, complete system restore, and the ghost still lived.
Then, if that wasn’t enough, our electricity company cut our power at 1:00am the other morning. Our payment of $1032MXN wasn’t due until the following morning, but, oops, they cut our power early.
Why? Does it matter?
No electricity, no CPAP. No CPAP, no sleep. No electricity, no internet. No internet, well, that’s pretty much Hell on Earth.
So, I sat at my little desk, here in the living room, drinking my sugar-free RedBull, and typing this little post. We’ve been up since 06:30am, Ivan unable to do anything on his computer as he’s never downloaded anything, and me, unable to listen to my Audible books that I’ve downloaded over time on the iPhone that doesn’t work!!!!
Fortunately I downloaded several onto my iPad Pro, sometime in the past, and for whatever reason I have no idea. I’m just glad I did. I can still play some of my games, and listen to a couple of books.
When the business opens, away we’ll go.
Until then, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.
We’ve had our refurbished KitchenAid stand mixer for about 10 years at this writing.
Over those years we’ve purchased several of the attachments that go with said stand mixer. Actually, some, well most are still in their original boxes. However, I found, recently, that I had put the grating attachment in the cabinet next to the fridge, but had forgotten all about it.
Last month, when we mad the multi-million dollar haul from the big box stores, we bought 2.5(ish) kilos each of mozzarella, and Gouda cheeses. I had a small package of Parmesan cheese in the fridge as well, and decided to grate all of them, but had no energy to do it using a box grater.
Out came the attachments, in went the cheeses, and here are the results. Easy peasy.
Before. After.
You may be able to tell by the colors, and consistencies, that the smaller container, top left, is the Gouda; Parm next to it, and Mozzarella on the bottom.
I’m thinking lots of Italian, or quesadillas are in our future.
Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.
I’m not really sure what’s happening with my blog site here.
I have been getting upwards of 6 “new user registrations” to my site on a daily basis for over a month now. Today alone, I had 12 new users; 10 the day before, and 10 the day before that.
What is going on? How does anyone know about this site, and why would anyone that didn’t know me in my past life want to read about the silly antics I/we get up to?
The user names come across as encrypted, which is fine with me, but the email addresses come across as just that, their “supposed” email addresses.
Is this a scam? I don’t show that any of these names, associated with the addresses, are “following” me, as only one of my sisters, and 3 other people I don’t know, are the only 4 people who, somehow, come through my stats as “following” me.
I do have a few people, related, and not, that read my posts occasionally, as they contact me when something catches them a particular way, but they are not in my stats, as I just stated, as “followers”.
Why not? I have no clue. I don’t know if there’s something they need to do at their end to show in my stats, (which would be awesome), but I can’t help them. As I said, they contact me when they want, and I respond fairly quickly, (provided the internet is working above 144p, which isn’t guaranteed).
So, the mystery remains, and I am hopeful that, if any of these “new users” is interested in anything I post, they will contact me, and let me know what they think.
Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.
The first loaf was awesome, we both said so. The second loaf looked amazing, not sure of the taste as yet.
First loaf. Soft, light texture, great taste.Second loaf on the left, first on the right.
We haven’t tried the second loaf yet, but I don’t think he is going to like it much. It looks too wheaty. The one on the right looks more WonderBready, and that’s the only bread he really likes, or eats. Here that type of bread is called Pan Bimbo.
Good thing I like sandwiches, huh!?
Until next we meet, stay happy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.
Post script: the second loaf was “ok”, nothing to write home about, and, as I had just started walking every day shortly after that loaf, it ended up like this.
Sorry this is so out of focus; don’t know why. Croutons before they’re croutons, then the final product.
It’s the freshest, most wonderful smelling, with the whitest core, head of lettuce I’ve ever purchased.
They had just put this on the shelf, outside the store, when I got there. It was that fresh.
The above photo is the small haul I made recently at the Mercado de Taxqueña, as you know, less than a kilometer from our house. Bananas, papayas, mangos, limes, and the beautiful lettuce. I also bought a half dozen tomatoes, but had already put them in to disinfect.
So, all of the above fruits, minus the bananas, and papayas, got disinfected, put into storage bags, and into the fridge.
I forgot to buy a pineapple, but have some in the freezer that I can use when it’s time for the kombucha’s second ferment. That should be soon.
Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.
I haven’t shown you anything of the Kombucha that I made a while back. (As I’m typing this, it was just last week.) So, without further ado, here’s what it looked like just a week after being refreshed.
Can you see that SCOBY floating on top of the tea? Maybe you can see the bubbles as well. That’s the SCOBY having digested the sugar in the tea. It’s fermenting, which is exactly what I need it to do. The colony digests the sugar, making the tea virtually sugar free in the end, and as a result, ferments to become Kombucha.
I’m hoping that within the next few days I can start a dozen, or so, bottles to a second fermentation. As I wrote in an earlier post, I’m going to use pineapple, mango, and guayaba, (passion fruit). I can’t wait.
Kombucha is one of those food items that you like, or you don’t. It took me a few tries to like the flavor, but once I did, wow; it’s now a favorite of mine.
I think, to start at least, I’ll do 4 bottles of guayaba, 4 pineapple, and 4 combined mango, and pineapple. I know I like the mango, and pineapple, and I really like guayaba flavored juice, but I’m going to try the guayaba separately the first time around.
Anyway, I just wanted you to know I hadn’t killed the SCOBY. It’s alive, and well in my pantry.
Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.
I believe the above title is now what is commonly called “click bait”.
Though some of what I am going to ramble on about may, very well, be of interest to some, it will not, probably be very interesting to everyone.
For example, I have restarted my fermentation processes for both the kombucha, and the sourdough. Ok, you’ve already read about both of those.
What you don’t know, is that I started an actual physical journaling of both of those endeavors several years ago, using a very stylish leather-bound diary, if you will, and a handsome, though practical fountain pen!
My leather journal, about 6” x 8”, and trusty Pilot fountain pen.That is August 16, 2020.
Honestly, I have not seen, nor used either one since the end of April, 2021. What a shame.
I decided that since I’m getting back into fermentation, I need to document what goes well, and what doesn’t, in kombucha, as well as sourdough.
I got up in the cabinet in the bedroom, found the journal, opened it up, and there was my fountain pen. (I have 5, or 6 beautiful fountain pens now, 2 are antiques, the others are well named, and beautiful. Too bad I don’t use them.)
Now, having been dormant for 3 years, the pen was dry. Duh! So, what did I do? I figured that if I dipped it in a bit of hot water, Bingo!, it would be fluid again.
Not so much!!!
The metal part of the nib fell off; the ink was still dry in the pen, but what little was dried on the nib leaked all over my hands, the granite countertop, well, you get the image.
Starting at the beginning of the reparation, I dried everything off with paper towels, put a touch of Gorilla glue on the metal nib, and reattached it to the tip of the pen. I really do some dumb things, don’t I?! (More a statement there than a question).
I had already spiked a new cartridge at this point, having found the pen I thought adding the new cartridge might reactivate the pen. Nope.
So, now I have the “just glued” nib, drying on my “desk”, and an open cartridge in the body of the pen, open to air, and hoping nothing tips it over. (It spent the night in one of my candle come glasses, upright. You’ll see what that’s all about in an upcoming post.)
The next morning, ready to take on the world, or in this case, the dreaded fountain pen debacle, I put the nib onto the body of the pen, thinking it would seat itself into the cartridge, but alas, it hadn’t gotten the memo.
Can you guess what happened next?
Of course, it leaked all over. I had to start all over again with cleaning the pen, blah, blah, blah.
After about 20 minutes of cleaning the ink off of my hands, and the pen, everything is back to rights. I was able to, once again, document what was happening in my kitchen to both ferments, and have placed the pen back in the spine of the journal.
Thought you might get a kick out of what happens when you least expect it. Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.
