Category: Initial post

Remember me telling you about the chicken soup I was going to remake? The one using fideo?

I made it, a couple of days after Christmas. I had a bit of energy, and decided to get in the kitchen, and just do it.

I typed up what I could remember from making it a few weeks prior, only needing to adjust the amount of chicken base when I made it again.

It’s still yummy. Although I feel there’s some spice eluding me, Ivan says it takes fine as it is.

Maybe one of you can tell me what would give it that WOW factor.

Anyway, here is what my caldron looked like when it was finished.

Here’s what I did.

My Chicken soup with fideo

- 500 gm chicken, roasted (I used 2 thighs, 2 legs, 1 breast, each with skin, and bones)

- 3 L. water, hot, or boiling (adding more as needed)

- 2 Tbs. Avocado, or Olive oil

- 1/2 white onion, peeled, and chopped

- 2 large carrots, cut into bite sized pieces (I used a dozen baby carrots because that’s what I had)

- 2 stalks celery, chopped

- 3 large cloves garlic, minced

- 3 Roma tomatoes, very ripe, chopped

- 1 green pepper, peeled, seeded, roasted, chopped (I do all of that when I buy the peppers, then freeze them.)

- 4c. mushrooms, cut into bite sizes

- 2 c. Raw spinach, torn into pieces

- 4 gm thyme, dried, crushed (I crushed the thyme, and peppercorns in a mortar and pestle.)

- 5 peppercorns, crushed.

- 1/3 -1/2 c. Better Than Bouillon Chicken Base

- 100 gm Fideo (If you have real egg noodles, use those. I don’t have them.)

1. Roast chicken pieces at 400ºF for 40 minutes. Set aside to cool.

2. I suggest mise en place. Get everything ready while the chicken is roasting. Prep all of the vegetables, spices, etc., then cook.

3. When cool, shred, or cut chicken however you like. (Remove skin, fry it in the Dutch oven, and eat it, before frying the Mirepoix. It tastes amazing.)

4. In a Dutch oven, on medium high heat add oil, and sweat onions, carrots, celery, (Mirepoix), until just transparent. Add garlic, and continue cooking another minute.

5. Add tomatoes, green pepper, and mushrooms, and cook another 5 minutes.

6. Add 3 L. hot, or boiling water, chicken, fideo, bouillon base, spinach, crushed peppercorns, and thyme to pot. Stir to combine.

7. Cover, and simmer 1 hour.

8. Check water level after 30 minutes, adding more as needed. Adjust seasoning, adding salt, or bouillon base if needed.

9. Enjoy.

This makes about 14 servings of 1 cup each. (More or less). I have put 8 1 cup servings in their containers to freeze, and will vacuum seal them when they are frozen. I have put 4 1 1/2cup servings in the fridge to eat through the week.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: we are making steady progress on cleaning, and, more importantly, decluttering the apartment. I’ll show you photos when I stop and take some.

All good things, the best things, must come to an end.

And they have.

My sister in law just informed me that she can’t send down our CARE packages anymore that contain food, and medications. Estafeta has changed their shipping regulations.

So have all of the other shipping companies I have checked. MyUS.com looked most favorable, but they, too, can’t ship food stuffs, or medications out of the US!

We can no longer have General Mills Cheerios, or dried spices, or Nexium sent to us. The US no longer allows those items to be shipped out of the country. WTH(F)?

I tried Amazon.com, and that was a “no go”. I tried Mercado Libre. Nope. Walmart.com? No, again.

What is an expat supposed to do? The only thing that really concerned me was the Nexium, but we can get a generic form down here, for an arm, and a leg.

Guess I’ll have to exchange him for someone less expensive, huh?

Just kidding. About the exchange 😉

Enjoy all of the riches the US has to offer, in our names.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script; We will learn to adjust, and become welcoming of the items we can acquire here. Be assured.

Who’d have thought it could do so much?

Millions of women wear make up daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.

Me?

Only when absolutely necessary.

Why?

Actually, I’m not 100% sure. I only know that it changes me; makes me someone I don’t, wholly in my heart, know.

Silly, I know.

It makes me think more of myself, more of who I would like to be, daily.

When I look at myself in the mirror, after applying even a modicum of makeup, the woman that reflects herself to me is, actually

Quite amazing; nice looking, even if I say it myself. A bit heavy, but not too much for her age. Happy, for the most part; no longer ambitious.

I can smile at the woman in the mirror, and she smiles back at me.

When I apply foundation, rouge, mascara- look out! She is unstoppable.

Be very careful of the cosmetics you use daily, weekly, etc. They can change your life forever.

More power to you.

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

As many of you know, I’ve been working, periodically, on my beautiful Celtic style woolen shawl.

For the past 5 years.

Here’s how it looked recently.

I laid it across the dining room table so you could have some perspective. I didn’t measure it at the time, for reasons unbeknownst to me, but going back, and measuring as the photo indicated, it is approximately 50” in length at the moment.

Not bad for this old girl!

I’ll keep you apprised of my progress as it happens.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Boring, I know.

You probably already have a wonderful, flavorful recipe that you use (though you’ve never shared it with me!!). I made a batch last month that I put in the silicon 1c. freezer containers I bought recently, to enjoy at a later date.

Christmas night was that later date. We were both under the weather, and Ivan asked it we had any soup, like chicken soup. I didn’t have any canned soup, except beef, then remembered the frozen yumminess I made earlier.

It was absolutely delicious, I’m here to tell you. Ivan said so too, and that, my dear readers, is quite the accomplishment. (I never add enough salt to anything I cook. I’m learning to be liberal with spices, salt especially.)

Anyway, I had put what I had used prior on my NOOM account, as an added recipe, so I copied it from that, typed it up, and hd chicken sitting on the counter, just waiting to be made into more chicken soup.

Why the “” in the title you ask? Because “noodles” down here are close to nonexistent. and to buy them online is not recommended- they’re too expensive. So, what did I have to substitute, you ask?

Fideo.

Yep. Those tiny, thin strips of vermicelli used to make sopas in any good Mexican household. You gotta use what you have. Right?

It was fabulous. As I said, I have printed my recipe, and will tweak it as I go. If it turns out as good as the first batch, I’ll post it here, sometime. Everyone needs a good chicken soup recipe.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: happy belated birthday to my favorite sister in law, Mayra.

Post post script: whilst recently looking through some online documents I have saved over the years, I found a copy of the recipe I made for Cream of any Vegetable Soup, and printed it. I showed it to Ivan, and we both got a good chuckle out of it. I wrote it on 9/30/2011. It was delicious. Someday, if you’re interested, I’ll share it with you too.

I want to share something I discovered recently.

You may already know how great it tastes, but it was new to me.

Bananas, chocolate syrup, unsalted peanuts, and cinnamon.

We got a fresh container of cinnamon recently that is so much more flavorful than its predecessor as to be an entirely different spice. Just one shake of the container, and the kitchen is perfumed with the rick scent of cinnamon.

So, I break up the quite ripe, probably too ripe for the rest of you, banana, sprinkle the peanuts, drizzle the chocolate syrup, then give 4, or 5 good shakes of the cinnamon powder, and off I go. Happy as a lark. (I used to say happy as a clam, but I’m confused as to what that might feel like.)

According to NOOM, this whole concoction has only 296 calories. Yay for me. I’m not much into sweets, but this combo is my new after dinner go-to dessert.

Either that, or papaya with Chantilly cream on it. Another gently sweet dish I could eat every day. I can have 2 cups of papaya, with 4 Tbs. Chantilly cream for only 156 calories. I usually only eat 1 cup of the fruit, with the cream so it’s even less. I more of a carnivore.

Hope you’re enjoying the weather wherever you are, as we are here. It’s getting a bit warmer both day, and evening. Makes walking in the park so enjoyable.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves. Please.

Cleaning.

I got so much sleep the other night that, when I got up, at about 10:30am, I was close to “raring to go”.

I had 2 cups of coffee, then I was raring to go.

I started at about 12:30pm, in the living room, just after a light breakfast, and didn’t stop until almost 6pm.

I’m sitting in front of our mid-sized TV that’s been in here for the past year, or so, but never used. At some point, actually, it was last year at Christmas time, I opened up the dining room table so I could decorate it. I never got around to putting the sides back down.

They’re down now. I’m hoping I can download the photo I took when I got finished with this area. I even cleaned the glass shelves on each side of the TV, though you won’t be able to see that. Just trust me that I did it.

I only have the 2 long, top shelves, and the other 2 shorter shelves left to clean. Hopefully I can get to them this afternoon, or, possibly tomorrow.

It’s still a work in progress, but it’s clean. I will soon have a bit more room to potentially do some low-key exercising. We’ll see.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: I actually did this the next morning so I could get my legs underneath the table. I raised the table edge closest to me, and have it held up with the 2 large luggage pieces that we’ll probably never use again. Win, win. Back using the Mac mini M1 processor. It’s been awhile so I have to relearn tons of things. I love it!!!

I slept almost 11 hours the other night.

I took 50 mg. of Benadryl at about 10:30pm, went to bed at about 12:30am, and listened to 30 minutes of Better Sleep™ green noise hypnosis once I got settled in bed.

I just got up, and it’s 10:50am!! That hasn’t happened since I can remember. I have a Benadryl hangover, which I dislike as much as an alcohol hangover, but without the upset stomach. It’s a win, of sorts.

I signed in to the Better Sleep™ app some time ago, hoping it would help with my inability to sleep, however, I have since discovered that one has to actually use the app for it to work.

That said, I have also discovered that one needs to use it for multiple nights in a row to “train” your brain, or possibly, in my case “trick” my brain into relaxing enough to allow me to sleep.

What an adventure.

I’ll let you know how it goes. Stay turned.

Until then, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

How many countries in the world provide central heating, and air conditioning for family dwellings, do you think?

The US, and parts of Canada.

Almost every other country in the world needs to heat their homes, or a few rooms, or only one room at a time. They use gas, some use electricity, but almost no country uses “central” anything.

Here in Mexico, we use layers of clothing to warm ourselves. Some have electric heaters, as do we, though we never use them. Some have gas heaters, which have an actual flame, safety regulations are horrendous. Some have a small ”fireplace”, and I use the term very loosely, but most use some form of element to keep warm.

A few of the families we know actually sleep several people to a bed, covered by 2, 3, 4 layers of blankets. Imagine that. Trying to sleep with 3 other people in your full sized bed; not queen, or king, but full sized bed.

I won’t say that you should be grateful for the warmth you have when you wake up, and it’s 25ºF outside, and you have to shower, and/or shave before you dress, and go to work, but it’s actually 75ºF, just as you programmed your central heating to be when you get up. Think about getting up to 25ºF, and your house is actually 25ºF, and you have to shower, and/shave at that temperature.

We stay in bed until it’s about 60ºF. Period.

If you have to get up to pee in the night, well, that’s on you. You run to the bathroom, on the incredibly cold tile floor, do your business, run back to bed, and put your freezing feet on the legs of that amazing spouse next to you, with whom you sleep.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

No clue how I did it, but do it, I did.

I was dozing one night recently, when, at about 2am, I made to roll onto my back from a slight tilt to my right side when a pain, such as I had never experienced, shot through my right shoulder, and down to my elbow. It had me fully awake, and crying out in said pain.

I tossed, and turned for several hours, trying to find a position comfortable enough to take another nap, finally getting up to take 800 mg. Ibuprofen.

About 6:30am I decided sleep was no longer an option so, after taking the above Ibuprofen, went looking for our elusive heating pad. It was right where I remembered seeing it, but I didn’t think it was complete. I actually had, for a moment, both the wrap, and the electrical cord in my hand. I thought, however, that there was more to it, so I put it back where it had been, and went whimpering, back to the bedroom.

I sat up, watched some YT vlogs, (Trek Trendy, my latest fav), had a cup of coffee, took another 400mg. Ibuprofen, when Ivan came in to help me. He went right to the wrap, and cord, brought them in for me, and get me settled in bed where I stayed for the next 3 hours.

I must have overextended my right shoulder, possibly by letting my right hand relax passed it’s normal range of motion whilst napping, lying tilted to the side. It’s the only thing I can understand that makes any sense. However it happened, I hope never to do that again.

I’m am up, sitting at my tray in the bedroom, trying to get up the courage to leave the wonderful heating pad aside for a bit, and go make some avocado toast. We’ll see. Time will tell.

Hmmm. Guess I won’t be able to do the laundry today. What a shame.

Happy birthday to my younger sister, Nancy. Many, many more mi querida.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Keep your arms inside the ride until the ride comes to a complete stop.

Post script: day 2; after having 4 doses of 800-1200mg Ibuprofen with hours, upon hours of heating pad use, I have significantly more ease of movement (about 40%) in my shoulder, and was even able to move enough to prep chicken, and veg to make more chicken soup tomorrow. Yay!!!

Post post script: on day 3, I have about 80% pain free movement in my shoulder; the only movement that really still hurts is lifting it straight up in front of me, as if reaching up into a cabinet. Or washing my face. Or combing my hair. Or putting on makeup. Or turning on the exhaust fan. Or hanging anything on the clothes line.

Note: for the foreseeable future, I will be posting Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I have enough already typed for the next couple of months. See you soon.