Livingthedreamwithdiana.com

Hi. My name is Diana, and I am an Instagram add freak.

Do not hate me; I am doing this so you don’t have to spend your hard earned money on the things advertised on that particular app.

Recently, I purchased a couple of kitchen “time-saving” devices, which have been delivered in the last few days. I will post just what they are, and how well they function- for me.

The first thing I have a photo of is this little mincer; you turn it, then turn it the other direction, and, it minces your garlic into lovely little pieces; 5 seconds, tops.

Yah. Well, that I am going to give a 4 out of 10, but only for a very small garlic clove. When I use it this weekend, for our pizza weekend, I’ll let you know if I think it worth the money. Here is what a very small piece of garlic looked like, after putting several small pieces back into the apparatus, after being flicked onto the counter.

Is it worth the however much it cost? As I type this, I’ll say Yes. I absolutely hate chopping, or pressing garlic. There are very few things that I do not like to use my burgeoning knife skills on, but garlic is at the top of the list.

Next thing: I bought one of those punching slicers, the one that slices on the angle, collects in a small container underneath, and can change from julienne to slices with the turn of a couple of tabs. Love it.

Lastly, I bought the best handheld slicer, julienne, grater on the market.

Not quite the truth. I haven’t tried the top blade, but the second two have worked fairly well. The middle one sliced semi hard cheese into nice thin slices, and the bottom one grated softer cheese quite nicely.

The top two blades are designed so you are able to go both directions to slice or grate your product, getting things done a little faster, if that’s your need. The bottom one only grates in one direction.

Would I buy any of those things again? Probably. These, however, we will take to our family in Los Altos, and, if they are interested, give them a bit of ease in their food preparations. They prepare everything by hand, and almost nothing from cans, boxes, or bags.

Stay happy, stay healthy, stay safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect your loved ones.

For the entire time I have been writing on this blog site, since August of 2019, I have not used contractions.

Why? I am not 100% sure, but I believe that I felt it was necessary to convey my thoughts, and insights with respect for whomever would be reading them. It is easier, I must say, to type an entire word versus a contraction of two words. That said, I believe that I may be done with the practice. I am not 100% sure.

I do not talk without contractions, so why have you read what I am thinking without using them? I am curious to know it using contractions would be bothersome to any of you following this blog? Please, let me know one way or the other. I will, if it is decided thus, to use the ‘ more often.

Until next time, stay happy, stay healthy, stay safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect your loved ones.

Let me know what you think about contractions. Please.

We have found a video on YT that shows exactly how to make a QC pizza: read Harris Pizza.

We kept the Harris Pizza place afloat in Bettendorf, IA the last year, or so, that we lived there. Large sausage and mushroom. Twice a month. Do not get crazy with the ingredients; keep it simple.

Last week, I checked out what we needed to make a decent tempura batter, and found that we only needed a malted barley syrup, so I ordered that. It was delivered the other day. Today we discovered that the QC pizza requires malted barley syrup for the crust. Score!!!

Tomorrow, we are “supposed” to go to Costco, as both of our families need milk, and toilet paper. While we are there, I will check out the fresh(ish) mozzarella, and the tomato purée, as that is all we need to make a real Quad Cities pizza. I can taste the pizza as I watch the video. Amazing.

We cannot get Harris Pizza, or anything close to Harris Pizza here. Heck, we cannot even get pizza with tomato sauce on it. So, next weekend, I am going to make a sausage and mushroom Harris style pizza, here, in our own little kitchen. You will have to come back, and see if I got the deed done. Until then,

Stay happy, stay healthy, stay safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect your loved ones.

It has just started raining, and thundering. I have not seen any lightening yet; that would be the trifecta.

It has been forecasted to rain for the past several days now, but, nothing. Very disappointing. Now, the whole apartment smells like fresh, and clean, like the rain. Besides wet soil, my favorite odor, rain is my next favorite. Listening to the rain on the window sill, or spattering on the window, is a sound like no other; hypnotic.

Last year, I decided that June through August seemed to be the rainier months, but this year, who knows? Maybe it will start in April instead.

I can hear the thunder rolling in the distance, so peacefully. I used to be able to open the front door of the house, stand under the roof of the porch, to feel, hear, and watch the rain, the lightening and the thunder. Now, by the time I could get downstairs, and out the double locked front door, the whole thing would be gone. Done. Over.

There is always the next storm. I wait with eager anticipation. In the meantime, stay happy, stay healthy, stay safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect your loved ones.

Well, best laid plans.

The New York steaks are now ground beef, and vacuum sealed, in the freezer.

One thing we have not been able to find here, is tender, juicy beefy beef. We have tried Costco, Walmart, (formerly Superama), Soriana, Sam’s Club, Justo, and, most recently, meat.me.mx. None of them have a decent cut of steak. I believe we are destined to have only distant memories of thick, hot, buttery, juicy, beefy rib eye steaks.

Until we can find someplace, where we can buy decent beef, we are going to have to continue to learn new ways to prepare chicken, fish, and pork. Not such a bad position to be in. All three are relatively inexpensive, and quite flavorful, not riddled with thick, gnarly gristle. Who wants to eat 1/3 gristle with occasional tough beef? Not us.

As chicken, and pork are the main animal proteins available, we will have to just get used to it. Done. Onward.

Stay happy, stay healthy, stay safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect your loved ones.

What have I been busy doing, you ask? Let me show you.

First, let me tell you that we received our first meat order from meat.me.mx this morning. I cannot wait to taste everything. Well, everything being 1 1/2 kilos of 80/20 ground beef, and 1 1.2 kilos of ground pork. Once they both thaw out, I am planning to mix them, equally, then vacuum seal them, and find a spot in our already stuffed freezer.

Before that can happen, however, I have requested Jesús and Liz come down, each with a shopping bag, and help reallocate said freezer items to their space, upstairs. They just came, took about 5 kilos of chicken, 6 pork chops, a kilo of bier brats, 6 pieces of tilapia, and some veggies. Now, I can relax, and breathe again.

Back to the meat. We also bought 2 1/2 kilos of New York steak, but not already cut into steaks. It is not large enough to be considered a primal cut, but it appears to be worth 4 or 5 steaks cut to about 4 cm. thick. (I am going to stop doing the conversions.)

The other day, I spent some time cutting off the stems and leaves from 3 separate hands full of Italian basil that I had ordered, on 2 different occasions, from Justo™, one of my latest favorite apps. It was quite tedious, let me just say, and I hope not to have to do it again, anytime soon. That said, I gathered the leaves up, put them into a ziplock bag, reusable, of course, and put them in the freezer. Today, I transferred them to a vacuum sealed bag, in which I left quite a bit of space at the top to reseal the bag as I use some of its contents.

Let me see, what else have I been doing? Oh, I had 8 poblano peppers delivered yesterday afternoon, but could not get up the energy to deal with them, so today, I spent a couple of hours getting rid of the seeds and veins, and roasting them in the big oven, along with 2 beautiful yellow bell peppers. After they cooled down, I peeled the skins off each one, and vacuum sealed them. They are now ready to be used when needed.

I also spent a small amount of time dividing up a huge leek for freezing. I have never seen such a large leek, except down here. They do not sell leeks with the 1” or so diameter, no. They are about 3” around and 2 or more kilos in weight. Let me show you.

I think I will order a few kilos of potatoes, and make some potato with leek soup. Sounds yummy. I will be able to use up some table cream that I have in the fridge. Win, win.

In the meantime, stay happy, stay healthy, stay safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect your loved ones. Consider carpooling with fellow employees.

What the heck is going on in the states?

$6.99/gal. for regular gas? We are paying about $4/gal. here, and have been for quite some time. But that is just about half of what you are paying in the states. That is crazy.

I did not think I would voice my opinion about such things, but come on; that is ridiculous. Call, or write to your Congressional representative, and tell them to open up the Keystone XL pipeline, and restart pumping American oil, and natural gas. No one can afford such extreme costs.

The cost of your groceries, for one thing, is going to sky rocket, with truckers having to find the money to pay for their gas. Farmers will find it difficult to take their crops to market, etc., and it will just keep getting worse.

Find out who represents your county, and notify them, frequently, that this has got to stop. And tell them to leave Kamala at home; she is ignorant, and insulting. The world is laughing at the US. What a shame.

Stay happy, stay healthy, stay safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect your loved ones.

We have a new app down here called Justo™.

It is a food delivery app that allows you to place an order online, which is delivered to your door whatever day and time you schedule it. I have used it three times now, and absolutely love it.

Mostly, I order eggs, fresh fruit, and vegetables. The first time I placed an order, I order some different cuts of beef; sirloin steaks, coarsely ground beef, and short ribs. I will never do that again. The steaks were so full of gristle we could hardly chew it.

The second time I used it, I ordered, among other things, a bunch of celery. This is what I got.

I do not remember ever seeing a bunch of celery that large in my entire life. I gave half of it to Liz as I cannot think of enough ways to use all of that in a year. I cut off the tops, then wrapped it in the aluminum foil that you can see. It is supposed to remain fresh, in the fridge, up to three weeks. We shall see.

There is a fairly new chain of stores in the area called meatme ™, which sells mostly meat, obviously. They, too, have an app which one can use to place an order, and either have it delivered, or pick it up in the closest store. We are going to try that in the very near future, as well. There are several stores in fairly close proximity to us, so I believe we will have to go to one of them to pick up our order. We are hoping they have more quality cuts of meat, not just gristle. The prices appear equal to what we are used to paying, and if the meat is of good quality, we do not mind paying for that quality.

I think that is about all I have to relay today. Stay happy, stay healthy, stay safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect your loved ones.

Today, I spent the better part of two hours cleaning an old(er) keyboard that I wanted to use, now that Ivan has helped me find, and set up my previous MacMini; the last one I used while still in the states.

It was filthy to say the least. Unfortunately, I did not take a photo of it, but I doubt you would have been able to see much of the staining. Now, it is so pretty, clean, and white.

It was fun, actually, taking off all of the individual keys, putting them into the boiled water, with some Dawn dish soap, and cleaning each tab with a clean cloth. I set them out to dry, then replaced each tab to its rightful space on the naked, but clean, keyboard.

I had, fortunately, taken a good photo of said keyboard last night, while completely illuminated, and was able to use that as a guide when repositioning the tabs. I do believe it would have been more than I could have managed, trying to put them all back without a photo. Yikes.

However, as I said, we have the MacMini back up, and running. Now I can print my Google calendar which has all of our bills on it, the payment amounts, on the due dates. I add up the weeks payments, subtract that from our current balance, to get a better idea of how much money we do, or do not have. Always entertaining.

While I pay bills, stay happy, stay healthy, stay safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect your loved ones.

Every day, it seems, I learn something new.

The other day, I learned a new way to cut up melons. It leaves so much more of the fruit intact that I doubt I will ever cut it like I always did. Let me show you.

Easy peasy. I suppose there are myriad ways to slice melons; this just happens to be the one I saw most recently. Unfortunately it is not as sweet as I was hoping, but the skin was starting to look a bit dimpled and I did not want it to get too ripe.

Stay happy, stay healthy, stay safe. Wash your hands, cover your mouth, and protect your loved ones.