What is so difficult about buying a bag of dried pinto beans?
Everything.
The beans they say are “pinto” beans here are some of the smallest beans we have ever purchased. They are the size of sunflower seeds in the shells.
Okay, time out. That was a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.
The beans in the US are at least twice the size of the pintos here. Talk about flavor; there is none. The pintos up North make a luscious brown broth/gravy when cooked; no need for a coloring agent, like Magy, here, or Kitchen Bouquet, in the US. They have there own natural coloring agents within the beans.
We are searching everywhere, online, to find anything similar to the beans we had up North. While we search, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect yourselves.
It has recently been brought to my attention that, as “Matron” of our home, it falls upon me to meet, and greet guests, family, etc., when they are entering our home.
As we have had so few of the above over the past 10 years, it has fallen by the wayside for me, to remember my duties as La Dueña, or as Ivan has started calling me, La Alcalde. That always makes me laugh because I remember it from the movie we enjoyed watching with kids called “Zorro the gay Blade”.
There are few differences, really, here; I have just been lazy, truth be told. When someone comes into the home, it falls, normally, to the Dueña to answer the door, and greet said intruders with grace, charm, and aplomb. Hahaha. It is the duty of the “maid”, or housekeeper, to do thus. Don’t have one of those, so, I guess that leaves it to me.
That’s ok. I should know who is coming, and going in our home. Y biggest concern is my lack of fluency of the Spanish language. I am much better conversing in Spanish than ever before, however, without alcohol, (liquid courage,) it is difficult, at times, to perform this task.
That having been said, after having been gently reminded of this error, I have taken up the mantle, and am on my way to being “La Dueña del Año”, the owner extraordinaire. (A bit of poetic license was taken in the aforementioned translation; in case you were wondering if it was literal.)
Have a great day, week, month, year. Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect yourselves.
I just discovered that I can use the Uber app down here, and have stuff delivered from all of the stores we frequent.
I don’t know how important this type of delivery service is to any of you, but for us, especially, it means not having to get the car out of the garage, which is never easy, then drive through the recently renewed CDMX traffic.
People are even going without masks outside now; finally. Depending on where we go, outside, will determine whether we wear masks. If there are a group of people having a discussion, or eating, or what have you, we wear masks. If there is no one around, nope.
I am typing this after having discovered the Uber app for CDMX. I don’t want to spend too much time on it or I’m sure to order something we probably don’t need at the moment; just to see how it works.
I’ve got to go. I can’t resist seeing what happens. I’ll let you know.
Until then, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect yourselves.
A 6 pack of Aeonium Kiwi succulents to be specific.
Just the thought of them makes me smile. They probably will be tiny little things, clinging to dear life, coming to my home for sustenance. If that wan’t so sad it would be funny. My obligation has begun.
Really; doesn’t that make you smile? The beautiful pink edges? The light green smiling center? I prefer this to a rose.
It fills me with a bit of unease, receiving these, as I did not take care of them the first time they were in my care. I have done more research, and have concluded that this time I will get it right.
These little beauties grow to 3ft. in height, and can last for several years. When one of the rosettes begins to flower, the entire rosette dies. The plant remains alive, but that particular rosette will die. Therefore, one needs to propagate the rosette before it flowers.
That is simple enough, but I’m not going to go into all of that right now. Suffice it to say I will be doing my best to keep better track of the goings on with our newest arrival.
Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect yourselves.
We bought a couple of roles of double sided, reusable, washable tape.
IT IS AMAZING. I have already used it several times. First, we have a repeater, that we use to try to have internet available anywhere in the apartment, that was sitting on “S” hooks, on the front of a dining room chair. Tired of that, after we bought the tape I taped it to the wall in the hallway. The chair is freed up, and the signal is now consistent {(ly) bad, but consistent}.
Every wall in the apartment is textured, making things very difficult to adhere. This tape is so amazing that it can allow anything to be securely taped to said walls. There are a few framed pictures we have that I can’t wait to put up, but need to add them gradually. We have not had an earthquake in a few months, and I am no sure how this will weather one.
That said, we have gone as far as to use the tape to close our shower door. It has never stayed closed, to our recollections, since we moved in. It does now. Plus, I wanted it to stay open when it was open. A bit of the above tape, and both are now possible; virtually invisible.
No longer is there water coming around the 1” opening of the door itself. No longer does the door hit us in the head when we are toweling dry. It’s the little things, my friends, that can, sometimes, be big things.
Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect yourselves.
All day today, we have had only a trickle of electricity available to us.
I say it was 1/4 of the normal output, though I have no real idea how much we were receiving. The light on the exhaust fan was so dim as to be of little, or no use whatsoever.
The lights in the kitchen ceiling, of which there are 2, only one came on. Again, of no use, as it wasn’t even at full output. WTH?
Our air circulators, which you know really keeps the air moving in here, especially now that it getting really hot, put out the same amount of air on high as it does on low, normally. Ugh!
An odd day, for sure.
This afternoon, however, we made shrimp cocktails for the 4 of us adults, and it was delicious. The electricity went off completely only twice. However, even with the power back on, I am unable to start a flame on the stove by turning the handle to initiate the click, click, click of the electric starting mechanism. Bummer.
It makes cooking in the dark a bit more difficult, when one has to strike the tiny little match on the tiny little emery piece on the box, and hold it to the gas spewing out of the burner. Managed without incident I’ll have you know.
Anyway, the shrimp cocktails were excellent, even as a first endeavor. We had a huge container of Zatarains Crab Boil mix delivered, (yes, he thought it was a much smaller container when he ordered it), so we boiled the kilo of peeled, and cleaned jumbo shrimp in about a Tbs. of that for about 3 minutes, then put them into iced water to stop the cooking. Perfect.
We then took the shells, some carrots, cilantro, and celery, and boiled that for about 30 minutes to make a stock. Strained the veg, separated the shells, ground the shells with a bit of the broth, strained that, and pt a ladle full into the catsup mixture.
What catsup mixture? Ok, so I forgot to tell you about that. Simple. About a cup of catsup, 1/2 mango Boing, (a fruit drink that is hugely popular here, mostly natural), 2 tsp. Crab boil mix, a Tbs. of Salsa de Inglesa, or in the North, Worcestershire sauce. Mixed that together, added the 1 or 2 labels full of the stock, and all was done.
Not so. For the cocktail, we needed to dice cucumber, (peeled, and seeded), purple onion, diced, and cilantro, minced.
We put it in individual stemless white wine glasses, and it was thoroughly enjoyed by all. Try it. Let me know if you like it.
I didn’t think to take a photo until we were 1/4 way through the glass. Absolutely delicious. Our view of the cocktail. Most of what you can see, besides the tomato base, are shrimp, cilantro, and cucumber. Mmmmm.
Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth as needed, and protect yourselves.
It used to be such a chore, roasting the peppers, putting them into a plastic bag, peeling them, removing the seeds, and veins, all part of the process when roasting peppers.
No longer is any of that an issue. I have recently come up with a better way. Let me know what you think.
I have learned, after years of doing it the hard way, (as described above) to cut open the pepper, whatever kind you are planning to roast, and remove the guts first, then roast them. When they have roasted, and are ready to be used, there are no messy seeds flying all over your counter, or onto the floor.
I have also learned a way to make the removal of the seeds, and veins a bit easier. For a bell pepper, I cut into a “seam” from stem to base, usually 4 times, as we buy bell peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom. (These are, frequently, a bit sweeter, and have fewer seeds, and are considered to be “female”, 3 bumps are male.) I digress.
Back to my pearl of wisdom. If you cut it as indicated above, turn it so the stem is on the counter, by gently pulling down one section at a time, you need only cut the section close to the stem end, and voila, mission accomplished. Move on to the next section, smiling at the ease of this new way of doing a messy chore. All you have to do now is clean up the pieces to your liking, and you can continue on preparing your meal.
I took a few photos, so, hopefully, you can see the progression of what I just said.
All you are left with is the center core, seeds contained. Now, all I had to do was clean off the lighter “stuff”, I can’t remember what that “stuff” is called, drizzle a bit of olive oil, and finely ground oregano, and into the oven they went, to roast at 400ºF for 25 minutes. Yum.
I did the same thing with 2 poblano peppers that were getting old. Here is what they looked like.
Easy peasy.
Now, go out, and cut a peck of peppers. Pickle them, roast them, or do whatever you want with them, but when you do, try the above cutting method, and let me know what you think.
Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect yourselves.
Liz, and I have been walking around the park, baby Brandon in his covered stroller, and Gabi running all around the place.
We started walking once around the park, which is .75km, sometime last week, Thursday, maybe. Started on Monday past going twice around same park. Fortunately for me, (large Marge), Gabi keeps us stopping for this or that, and I have a chance to catch my breath.
We are determined to lose weight. We are determined to lose weight. We are determined!!!
My back is so tight on our first go round I can hardly stand it. With the heat of the afternoon, though, things turn around fairly quickly. In the middle of the second round, things in my back have loosened up, and it becomes easier to walk.
The other day, while walking, my back had felt so good at the end of the second round, I felt we could go a third time. So, we did.
That worked. Once.
We are back to going twice around, and are hoping next week, if we have dropped a bit of the old tummy love, it will be easier to go the third time around from then on.
We shall see.
While we are waiting for said miracle, please, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect yourselves, and your loved ones.
First, let me start this days gab session with well wishes to my best friend, confidant, and lover extraordinaire, for 46 years of wedded bliss. Well, not all 46 years have been blissful, for either of us. We are, however, getting to know one another, and are working out the kinks. Check back in to see how things are progressing.
Now, for the main plot.
Skin tags, and moles, and more skin tags; oh, my!
We bought an Auto Skin tag remover kit, online, and have just started using it. There are both tiny, and small round silicone bands, with an applicator pen that, when loaded, places the band around the aforementioned skin tag, or mole, and chokes the life out of it.
Which is lovely, as I have had 3 along the front of my bra edge most of my life. No longer. The first one, I tied off with a piece of thread; the second one came off yesterday, having used one of the tiny bands. The third is taking its sweet time, however. As the band has come off while taking my last 3 showers, I have, therefore, had to reapply the blasted thing 3 times. It looks terrible, smells worse, and refuses to give up the ship.
So, be off with yourself already. I am sorely tired, (no pun intended), of having to keep reapplying the dang band. I am tired of the whole business. The results, however, are worth every minute of the above whining.
The moles get so sore having my sports bras rubbing against them all day, every day. Now, I have only one left. Soon, I will be celebrating. Actually, I think I will start celebrating in about 10 more minutes.
Shower first, brandy second. I have standards.
While we wait with baited breath for the last &%^# mole to die, and fall off, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect yourselves, and your families.
Post script: happy 25th birthday to the newest baby mama in our lives, Liz. Hoping she has 75 more.
Is there anything worse, when learning another language, than verb tenses?
No. Emphatically, No!
It is horrible, trying to figure out how to pronounce the future tenses of “I want to”…… No less important is the past of “I wanted to”….
These are the bumps in my road, every day. Fortunately, I have Liz, who helps steer me in the right configuration of sentences that I think are correct, but, alas, they are not. She understand me, thanks to God, and I understand her. She corrects me, and vice versa.
We speak in a language, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes English. I learn from her Spanish, and try to teach her our English.
Gabi, however, is an entirely different child. We bought him thirty 6 sided wooden blocks for his recent birthday, and he was ecstatic. We, and his parents, showed him the different sides of the blocks; the alphabet, in both English, and Spanish, both lower, and upper case; numbers; shapes; veggies, and objects.
The alphabet, in Spanish, has a few more letters than in English; ch, ll, ñ, rr. These are all on the blocks of wood that he has to play with, and from which to learn.
The 3 of them were so excited to have these blocks, they played with them for over an hour. Really, we can all learn from these simple blocks. They are bilingual, and very helpful for Gabi, and me.
Actually, Jesús, Liz, and Ivan can learn from them as well.
Until we can all learn Spanish, and English, stay,healthy, and safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect your loved ones, and yourselves.
Post script: these blocks are manufactured by a company called Kids Korner. They have lots of educational items for kids. Enjoy.
