Facebook sent me a notice of a really-cool toy show "near you" on Presidential Drive. I don't think there is a Presidential Drive in Warsaw, probably in Goshen or maybe as far away as Columbia City.
So I clicked to see where it was — it was a city in Ohio.
Happy Groundhog Day. It's bright and sunny; well, we already knew there was going to be six more weeks of winter. I'm planning to go for a walk after I sew the hem I pinned yesterday.
Last Sunday I spent half an hour putting on layers before walking to church. This Sunday, I didn't even wear a coat. I did put on scarf, hat, and gloves. And I made frequent use of my cane crossing small streams and icy spots.
I've been feeling shut in, and not getting much sewing done either. I'm really looking forward to going on a dump tour tomorrow.
In a sense, I started laying out my clothes yesterday. When I cleared off the bed after Roomba ran, instead of putting my bike sandals back under the bed, I put them on the treadle of the sewing machine with the socks I plan to wear.
I clipped Gloria Yoder's recipe for ham and cheese soup out of the Amish Cook column, and today I tried it out.
With a few changes. I cut it in half, figuring that a pint of milk would give us a cup of soup each. Then I like my onions fried, so I thought that instead of putting them in raw, I'd stir them around in the butter for a while before adding the flour. And why bother cooking the carrot separately; grate it and put it into the butter a while before adding the onions. A cup of cooked potato? Two-thirds of a cup of potato flakes will do nicely. I haven't the slightest idea what "melting cheese" is, so I used aged white cheddar.
Since the potato wasn't in chunks, it was much too thick even after I added some extra milk. And it was very, very rich. I think that I should make it as a garnish for a dry meat such as baked turkey breast.
I had a couple of tablespoons on a serving of frozen peas for my bedtime snack, which didn't leave much in the saucepan.
But I didn't make much of a dent when I put some on an egg steamed in a next of shredded potatoes this morning.
I have bread mix ready to stir up and bake after I plug in the crockpot of left-over bean soup tonight. I substituted rye flour for corn flour in my cornbread recipe, and added a teaspoon of caraway seeds.
The coots have been getting bolder, and this morning came within a yard of the patio. They may yet discover the cat-food crumbs I've been putting out to attract critters to Al's favorite window.
Now is that cat spoiled? This morning I decided to start the washing machine before I did my morning exercises, and just naturally forgot about them until nearly noon, when I saw Dave's exercise list while cleaning up some papers. When I went back to the bedroom, Al was sound asleep in the middle of the bed, so I exercised on the floor.
Well, he's the last cat we'll ever have — we'd better enjoy him.
Now that I've had a close-up look at coots, with their little round bodies and abbreviated tails, they are shaped exactly like baby chicks. But they don't scratch-scratch while they peck-peck.
So I duck-duck-goed some images. Baby coots don't look as much like baby chicks as baby ducklings do.
Cars are driving sideways again. I hope conditions are better when I go to the dentist tomorrow.
A while back I bought a packet of peanut-sauce mix that turned out, on closer inspection, to be seasoning for oxtail stew.
Lacking most of the ingredients, I made it up with a can of New Zealand corned beef, a can of beef broth, and a cup of baby lima beans. Though the powder smelled of peanuts, I couldn't detect any peanut flavor in the stew, and it came out so greasy that Dave wouldn't eat it. I don't think the "Kare-Kare" sauce added anything but annatto, which is yellow food coloring.
Another onion might have helped.
Tonight we went to the Mexican restaurant at Rozella Ford Golf Course for a Valentine supper. The food was good, the service was excellent, and the bill was surprisingly small.
I found the cookie!
When I last ate at Panda Express, I didn't have a Kid's Meal, so I spent an extra eighty cents to buy one of their chocolate-chunk cookies to bring home. When I unpacked the bike at home, there was no cookie anywhere.
This morning I noticed that my bag of bags was torn and I needed to transfer the bags to another. I selected a Panda Express bag because I wanted a large white one, and when I pulled it out, there was a weight in it.
Since I'm only going to Lowery's for nine inches of hook-and-eye tape, I'm in no hurry to get off, but I *would* like to get there in time to have lunch downtown.
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And I did. It was a late lunch, but I had had a late breakfast. I ordered a footlong sub, brought half of it home, and between that and the box from the Mexican place, I didn't have to cook supper. And there's a piece of tamale left for my bedtime snack.
I also picked up some canned goods, a box of bouillon-powder packets, and a bag of peanuts at San Jose Carniceria. And milk at Owen's.
According to yesterday's Times-Union, the latest fad in new homes is two kitchens: one to work in, and one to show off to your guests.
When we were living in the Colfax place, Mom had two kitchens. I recall that she put a turkey in the trailer to keep the stove in the house available for the side dishes. I don't recall whether that happened more than once.
Which reminds me that the Colfax place was adjacent to the forty acres that Dad inherited from his father. I inherited that field from Mom, and have always regretted that it will have to be sold out of the family. Our financial advisor says that now is the time to do it. I've often thought that selling it would simplify our estate — I'm sure that our executor would prefer not to have to hold an auction — and the advisor pointed out that it would simplify things for *us*.
We have eaten most of the cookie.
The clock at Grace College chimed ten o'clock just as I set foot in our driveway on my way to church. I checked my pocket watch (cell phone) when I got to the coat rack in the church, and it was eleven minutes past ten. It usually takes me at least fifteen minutes to walk to church.
There's something to be said for being slightly underdressed — walking faster makes me warmer. I should start timing myself every Sunday morning, and practice walking fast.
If I recall correctly, I bought thirty-three yards of the muslin I made my sheets from, which means that there must be about twenty yards of it left.
Today I spent a lot of time thinking that I should make enough more sheets that I can save them up for a good drying day. Drying a sheet indoors gets the edges so pleated that I have to iron them. That beats having to iron the entire sheet, which I'm pretty sure I've had to do at least once. (If so, it was before I started washing king-size sheets.)
But the kicker is that folding a sheet that doesn't start out pinned to a line requires a few more hands than stand to my account.
Alas, I can get only one muslin sheet into the washing machine at a time, and it takes the machine at least an hour to cycle. (Mostly because it refuses to open the faucets all the way up when filling.) So I wouldn't wash very many sheets before I ran out of drying time.
Zale's has +4 magnifying glasses. I didn't buy any.
Tonight I served the last of the potatoes that we grew. A surprising number of them were snowman-shaped, with an oval body and small round head. I zapped it a minute, cut the head off, zapped the body another minute, cut both pieces in half and put them cut-side down under a mess of baked vegetables.
The last couple of times I baked mixed vegetables, instead of tossing them in olive oil, I cut a strip and a half of bacon into pieces that covered the little skillet. Only one slice of raw bacon left, so I won't be doing that again soon.
I've bought quite a few potatoes while using up the home-grown potatoes, particularly when making potato salad.
And I run through frozen shredded potatoes; there are so many ways to use them.
Ink Free News' poll of the week asks where will you buy your coffee. I did not participate.
When I went to International Foods and found it gone, which I think was last Tuesday, I thought that I'd check out the new Dunkin Doughnuts for lunch. When I got into the parking lot, I wondered "If it stinks like this in the parking lot, what's it going to be like inside?", but the atmosphere wasn't at all bad. But I glanced at the menu on the wall and didn't see any sandwich I'd prefer to waiting until I got home, so I left and bought my groceries.
Owen's, which is across the street, has a Starbucks, but I don't think you can build anything that isn't across the street from a Starbucks.
The Spring Interpretive Hike is this coming Saturday, but I don't think I'll feel like getting up early enough to get to Syracuse before ten O'clock. Not to mention that Weather Underground says it's going to snow changing to rain. Only a fifteen percent chance of the rain, but I won't face even that much chance of getting wet when the high temperature is to be 26F. Not to mention rain on snow driving there.
It does promise me a dry, moderate-wind day tomorrow. I'm hoping to dump some unwanted clothing at Goodwill. It says the weather will stay good through Friday. Then dry again Sunday through the end of the forecast.
Ride postponed until tomorrow — today I'm going to Grossnickel's. The appointment clerk didn't say who my appointment was with. I'd prefer Dr. Hicks or Dr. Knight, but I suspect some new guy is most likely to have a spot on his schedule.
My eyelid doesn't hurt much, and I can't see anything in the mirror, nor can Dave see anything looking direct, so I can hope that this is a waste of everybody's time. I'm going by car to save on dressing time. (Besides, I don't really want to be seen in my old ratty jersey.)
Ink Free News's poll today is where do you want to see the new limited-access highway: North of 30, South of 30, right on top of 30, forget the whole project.
Those last two aren't honestly options, but they got 31% and 18% of the votes. Since I hardly ever go south, a chinese wall cutting me off from the southern half of the county is preferable to one cutting me off from Leesburg, but when the existing bypass goes north of the town, it makes sense to put the bypass of the bypass north of the existing bypass.
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It was the doctor who followed up on my surgery. He pulled out a hair over an inch long; in retrospect, it's odd that I was so calm about letting him fool around in my eye.
He thought it was an eyelash at first, and was increasingly surprised. He finally had to go after it with tweezers. The first thing he did was to put a numbing drop in the eye, which might have something to do with my calmness.
I'm pretty sure the hair was one of Al's.
After lunch, I considered cutting up an orange or an apple for dessert, then decided that I was in the mood for canned pineapple. Reaching into the cupboard for a container to put the pineapple in, I reflected that I always add and remove containers from the bottom of the stack to avoid fooling around with the smaller containers stored in the top one, and decided it was time to rotate the stash.
This led to a prolonged wrestling match with containers that had become glued together. Two of them I gave up on, put the pineapple into the upper container, and vowed to throw both of them out instead of washing them.
And I'm home all day. Weather Underground says that tomorrow will be equally dry and less windy. Besides, I wanted to finish hemming up Dave's new pants. I also searched RUFFTEXT for links to the defunct Comcast web site, found none, and took that off my list of things to do.
March done snuck up on me.
I went to Goodwill Thursday, and found a four-sided grater, which I promptly bought. It's considerably smaller than Mother's was. (On the other hand, I hadn't got my full growth when Mom quit canning and pickling.) The sides are coarse, fine, nutmeg — who wants to grate *that much* nutmeg? — and a single slicing port. Not wide enough for anything bigger than a carrot, but I think that if you scaled it up to the size of Mom's, it would slice cucumbers.
I tried to find the conversation we'd been having on Facebook about four-sided graters, and couldn't.
After unpacking the bike, I smeared palm oil on the patches of label stickum, planning to wipe it off with a paper towel in a few days. Today, Dave absent-mindedly washed it without wiping the oil first.
There was rather a lot of palm oil left from Dave's soap-making experiments, and it's solid at room temperature — ideal for sticking to vertical surfaces.
Yesterday, we went to First Friday in Warsaw. First Friday didn't show, but we walked around the courthouse for exercise, after sharing a philly-cheese-steak "unwrap" at Mad Anthony's. We plan to try one of the other flavors of unwraps some time.
Today I drove to Aldi for fizzwater, and after stowing it in the car, I went back in and spent $173.91 on other stuff, including a frozen unwrap labeled "Mexican-style pizza".
I'd like to try it tomorrow, but we have three sausages that should be cooked soon.
The sausages were delicious, and so was the cornbread. Several days ago, I put half a cup of cornmeal and a cup of milk into a mixing bowl and put it into the fridge, to see whether soaking overnight would make porridge-grind cornmeal make decent cornbread. Then it wasn't until today that I served something that went with cornbread. The prolonged soak had made the corn meal absorb most of the milk, so that instead of batter, I got dough that had to be patted out in the skillet. And it came out very good; I think I'll bip over to the cookbook and type up the recipe.
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