One of Dave's jalapeños is ripe. I'll leave it on the vine until I make chili or the last patch of green turns red.
I hauled a bucket of water to the peppers twice today. No other garden work done, if you don't count harvesting some mustard leaves to eat with the Boomerang pie I had for lunch.
They are good single-serve pies, but I don't see the slightest hint of an "Australian twist".
I was thinking "Hey, I'm not sweating all that much; for a change I won't have to wash my jersey in a bucket when I get home."
Just before I spilled tea down my front. I think I got the stain out.
I also thought that if I wasn't sweating all that much, I wouldn't come home in need of a shower — but I had to get all that sunscreen off.
I spent forty dollars and ninety-five cents at Spring Creek. After unpacking half a pannier of chocolate, Dave was surprised that I spent so little.
Today we hid all the candy that I bought at Spring Creek yesterday. And put some double-coated peanut butter and some milk-chocolate caramel bites into the little semi-disposable container I keep broken slabs of chocolate in.
I also bought bagel chips, toasted corn, a pound of Ohio swiss, and a wedge of goat cheese.
A pot of chili soup with pieces of red jalapeño floating in it is simmering on the stove. I used one can of whole tomatoes and one can of crushed tomatoes, and didn't add significant water, so it's more like sloppy joe.
I'm thawing a bagel.
The chili was perfect. I ate only half of my half of the bagel, preferring the bagel chips that I bought at Spring Creek.
Lunch and supper today were a "single serving" plate of broasted chicken that I bought at the Legion hall on my way back from the farmers markets.
When I carried out the chicken bones and melon rinds after supper, it was sprinkling rain.
I guess the people who claim that sugar can be used as "seasoning" are right. When I bit into the "hot honey pepperoni" pizza, I noticed that it tasted horrible long before I noticed that it had been slathered in sugar. Dave liked the change wrought in the taste of the tomatoes, so he gets all the leftovers. I ate my share by covering the altered taste with mini-sweet peppers.
Would have been a good time to cut into one of the two round peppers that I bought at the farmers market, in which case Dave might have wanted some too, but I didn't think of it.
We took the Rogue to the dealer yesterday. It's been a while since I drove the truck. I looked in the wrong place for the handle to haul myself in by, then once in, buckled up, and ready to go, I had to unbuckle and put my legs outside so I could get my key out of my pocket.
Once there, I centered in the space correctly, but took up two of them fore-and-aft. Those all-around cameras are as addictive as the mythical drugs that the ignorant fight by banning real drugs.
But I hadn't worried much about pulling forward enough because I planned to be there only long enough for Dave to come out and get in.
Having dumped some shirts and kitchenware, I was looking through Our Father's House for cotton pants when my cell rang. Dave needed me to drive the Taco home after he picked up a loaner. It took almost exactly as long for me to ride home from Our Father's House as it took for Dave to drive home from Nissan, and I got into the truck helmet and all — forgot to go into the house for my car keys.
When I was putting Dave's key to the Taco on my ring, I realized that the new car key is small enough that I could put it on my bike-key ring. Which leaves me with no use for my cute little key-shaped folding knife.
Then I found that my new lobster-claw clasps appear to be the same size as the old ones, but have rings too small to slide onto a split ring, and the claws are thicker, so that the opening is just barely big enough to force a ring into, so I put everything back the way it was. The new key isn't all that small anyway, and the plastic would soon get scratched up if I carried it mixed up with a bunch of tools all the time.
Dave took the Rogue in for what seemed like a trivial problem with the air conditioner, but nobody can figure out what's going on. On the way to the dealer today, Dave mentioned that the truck's air conditioner had been working twenty years without a hitch.
The replacement Rogue is a fancier model, with leather seats. Dave was right pleased; I didn't go over to sniff. [I did sniff when he came home just as I stopped getting into bed, put on a shirt (backward, it turned out) and went into the garage to fetch my bottle of tea and put it into the fridge. My tea is a rather elaborate concoction, and I didn't want it to spoil.]
I decided that as long as I was driving the truck, I'd go to Aldi and stock up on seltzer. One of each flavor is six cases at the moment. The stack was so picked-over that I didn't have any trouble collecting one of each. (They tend to stack them in a neat cube with the flavor that I want in the middle or on the bottom.)
I wonder how long we'll go on not being surprised when the supply line isn't doing its thing?
It's amazing how much stuff you can fit into the footwell of a Taco. I put only one half-filled bag and the seltzer into the bed of the truck. The seltzer is still there because I've forgotten how to lower the tailgate. Putting a heavy object down behind a wall is easy; lifting it up out of a hole might strain something. [It turned out that I simply wasn't pulling hard enough.]
By the time I'd put away $140.35 in groceries, it was time for my nap, so I'll start the bike ride over tomorrow. This afternoon, I'll do the cutting out I'd planned for tomorrow morning.
⁂
This afternoon, I slept like a rock
They found the problem: very, very simple to the tune of about five hundred dollars. Squirrels had gnawed the wires.
Dave just set out a trap.
And parked the loaner in the garage.
Not much happening, but I still haven't found time to cut the fabric.
I bought fifty-six cans of cat food on Friday. And got to Penguin Point just in time to buy supper. Five o'clock is a poor time to buy takeout! Not to mention that the woman ahead of me was feeding twelve people, and didn't hear English as well as she spoke it. In a take-out line, hearing English isn't all that easy for us native speakers.
On Saturday, I toured a car show and the Old Jail on the way to the courthouse market. I'd bought two leeks at the fairgrounds market, so I might have porkaleekie hash for my bedtime snack. My last batch used up all the pork, but sausage or spamaleekie should be just as good.
I planned to go to A Taste of Kosciusko for supper, but when I woke from my nap it was already time to eat, and none of the announcements gave even a slight clue as to *where* the event was taking place.
It has always been at the fairgrounds, there was a rather suspicious-looking empty tent covering Buffalo Street from Center Street to the middle of the courthouse, and there are frequently events of this kind in Central Park — it would have been convenient to go from one site to the next, but cooking at home seemed more appealing.
It would appear that I last wore this shirt on August thirtieth. There was a Kroger receipt in the pocket.
⁂
On the way back from getting blood drawn, I stopped at Kroger and stocked up on frozen dinners. So I'll be washing clothes tomorrow, which is the only day this week that is predicted to have rain.
⁂
The evening paper says that the tent on Buffalo Street was, indeed, for the Homebrew Fest, and A Taste of Kosciusko was on Center Street, in the area that the farmers' market vacated at one o'clock. The festival, I believe, started at three.
There were nine stops at A Taste of Kosciusko. I'm sure there were more than that when it was held at the fairgrounds. Neither Maple Leaf nor Creighton Brothers was mentioned.
Wash day, Roomba day in the sewing room, tried to cut out some sewing in the afternoon, but the light was too poor. In the evening Dave and Kathy came by for a visit, and gave us a bag of apples to bait the squirrel trap with.
Yesterday I carried my cutting mat out to the picnic table and cut out two pairs of briefs.
Also helped Dave put away the groceries he had bought at Martin's. He's improving: only two kinds of fresh meat, both small packages. There were three kinds of fresh fruit, but oranges keep well, and we tear through bananas.
⁂
I'm sorting the cat food, having used up all the previous purchase and two random cans from the current batch.
Since Al likes variety, I make stacks with no stack containing two cans of the same brand. This is easy if I start with stacks that are all the same brand, and distribute them among the stacks that I'm creating. The number of stacks will equal the number of cans in the tallest one-brand stack. [Or one more than that; the stacks were too tall.]
Since the brands are segregated on the shelves, they are sorted in the cart, and this time I was careful to preserve that sorting when putting them on the counter, with the result that all cans of a given brand are in the same bag.
"Blissful Belly" was added to my don't-buy list after I went to PetSmart, so another can goes into the take-to-the-shelter bag. Anything the shelter can't use, they put into a pile that visitors can take from if they make a cash contribution.
I planted the garlic and giant garlic yesterday afternoon.
This afternoon, I made potato salad. Ran into delays, and it was time to feed Dave when I finished. We had two of the fresh "chicken tenders" left over, and they take only twenty minutes when the toaster oven is still hot from baking potatoes, so we had those with a side of zapped "cheesy potato bake".
The "potato bake" wasn't bad; I intend to have the rest of it for my bedtime snack.
I think it was a mistake to put both jalapeños into the potato salad. Dave likes it.
I like it diluted with a little mayonnaise dip — the one I think happened when an apprentice chef mistook a bowl of shredded Jarlsberg for a bowl of shredded lettuce when he wanted to make cole slaw.
I hunted all over for my favorite mask yesterday morning. While sorting the wash this morning, I remembered that I'd washed it last Tuesday, and spread it out on the ironing board to dry.
I didn't want to wear the orange niqab to church, so I got a disposable mask out of the car.
It's been over sixty years since I had strep throat, but I'm pretty sure there was more to it than a little pain on swallowing for several hours, followed by hoarseness. "Pretty sure" isn't good enough to risk lives on, so I hung out in the library during the service even though it was Celebration Sunday and the message was sure to explain who the other church was and how we came to merge.
It looked like a very nice dinner. I filled my plate before people started coming down, and ate in a sunday-school room. This got a little lonesome, so I fetched "On the Run" from the library.
The Mystery of the Missing Comb: When I cleaned out my larger go bag so that I could use it to carry potato salad to church, I discovered that there is a dressing comb in it. It's been ages since the attaché case hasn't been big enough, so the carry-on had filled up with magazines and books.
Which didn't make it any heavier, I noticed when clearing it out of the parlor for Roomba, than it was with potato salad in it. I'm lucky that it has a shoulder strap.
I should study the list of bags — a few years ago, I had them all out of the attic for some reason, and made a list of which bags are inside which other bags — and see whether we have a backpack that is big enough to hold potato salad and smaller than our frame packs.
And I need to find a place for the duffel bag that came with a lifetime subscription to a magazine. It's big enough that if we chose carefully, Dave and I could both put enough clothes into it for a trip around the world.
But not if there are formal dinners.
I made taco meat yesterday, and that used up all but one of our tostadas. That last one has a piece broken off the edge, and another had a chip out. Usually so many tostadas are broken that we have to hunt to find a whole one. I've no idea what happened this time.
Tonight, hot dogs baked in the toaster oven for half an hour. I am definitely going to do this again. I might butter the bottoms of the hot dogs next time.
I cut my finger while chopping onions; I can't remember the last time I was that careless. It was a very small cut, but keeping my thumb on the end of my pinkie put that hand pretty much out of commission — and I had to open a new can to feed the cat before it clotted. I managed by pressing the cut against the handle of the can opener.
Later I discovered that our fingertip bandages are meant for much larger fingers than mine, and impossible to put on neatly with one hand. I probably could have found a better band aid if I'd had two hands to fumble around in the drawer with.
Right now, I've just discovered that typing pounds on the cut. Took it quite a while to complain.
There are two backpacks in the Lady Baltimore case. I'm pretty sure the red-orange summit pack is too small, but the "tactical" backpack might work.
I feel as though I've clicked on at least forty of the twenty notifications that Facebook said that I have, and I still page down and down and down to find the end.
It is annoying that they erase the count as soon as one has opened the panel. I suppose I *could* count the unread notices by hand.
This evening, I ground up the almonds I put in the fridge to soak three days ago. It's in the fridge dripping now — I bridged my half-gallon tea strainer over my twelve-quart mixing bowl.
It looks as though I have more wet almond flour than milk — I'll have a better idea when I pour the milk into a jar. (I think maybe we'll have almond pancakes for breakfast.)
I think I could have ground the almonds finer if I'd soaked only half a bag. Our blender is rather mini and light-duty.
Dave tasted the milk and said that it would be pretty good chilled.
I mixed some of the residue in the strainer with two eggs and fried little patties in butter. No flavor, gritty texture. Dave wouldn't eat his. He drank a glass of almond milk and said that it needed carageenan.
It also doesn't have calcium or vitamin D. I probably won't do this again.
One $4.15 bag of almonds yielded almost a quart of milk. Ninety-six fluid ounces of Silk costs $4.39.
Neither the milk nor the residue has the slightest taste of almond. But then, *almonds* don't taste like almonds. When they bred out the cyanide, they bred out the flavor. Since cyanide is said to smell very strongly of almond, this is not a surprise.
But teeny-tiny doses of cyanide are good for you. Manufacturers could put one bitter almond in a batch of milk.
I ate the left-over patties for lunch cold, with cheese mayonnaise ("jarlsberg dip"). They were pretty good.
And a serving of potato salad to which I'd added chopped pickled giant garlic and ham. It was zingy.
Headline: Stock+Field is now R.P. Home & Harvest. I'm going to go right on calling it "Big R".
After my nap, I drove to Kroger because we are down to a week's worth of Fancy Feast Classic Paté, which I use to get Cosequin inside the cat. Kroger had only one flavor left, and only three or four cans of that. I bought two, which will hold us another week.
That'll larn me to substitute "JIT" for stocking up.
Perhaps I'll do a dump tour when the weather clears up on Friday. If Meijer doesn't have it, I can go on to Walmart and PetSmart.
I dried out the residue in a 250F oven. Dehydrated (and slightly toasted) it has some flavor. I think I could use it like cornmeal.
Grumbly-gripe. I thought I was over my sore throat, but I'm still hoarse, I had a sneezing fit in mid-morning, and as the sneezes were winding down I noticed that the pain on swallowing is back.
I don't think I'm lethargic, but with cats and eighty-year olds, it's hard to tell.
⁂
When I was getting ready to drive to Kroger yesterday, my bike keys were not in my pocket. Since I had just barely enough time to shop before supper, I decided that instead of hunting for them, I'd get a new Kroger card. I'd been wanting to do that for some time, since it's inconvenient that my only copy is on my key ring.
This evening I dumped everything out of the drawer where I put key rings when they are not in my pocket, and found the dressing comb that belongs in the dop kit, which I thought was the one that I'd put into the larger go bag.
Also found a lot of fingernail clippings, yuck! But the clipper in that drawer is for *toe*nails!
Still no sign of my bicycle key, but I'm still hoarse, so even with a mask on, it would be rude to go into a crowded place.
It's good that I couldn't stock up on Fancy Feast. For some time, Al hasn't been finishing his Cosequin. On Friday, I tried reverting to giving his serving of Fancy Feast to him in two installments, and that didn't work either. On Saturday, I opened a fresh new can of his regular food, and that did it. He not only finished it, when I came into the kitchen to give him his eleven o'clock, he rushed to the dish to make sure it was empty before I took it.
I don't know whether he got tired of Fancy Feast or they changed the recipe. I don't think the texture used to be so grainy.
I was disappointed that there was no bicycle key on the spare-key hook, but this morning I remembered that there are a lot of keys in the little drawer, and — Ta Dah! — one of them was tagged "bike", and it opens my cable lock.
I clipped the flashlight that was in my goody bag at the Tour des Lakes to it to make it tangible in my pocket, then found a bead-chain key ring and attached my new Kroger tag. I don't use many of the other frequent-shopper tags; I'll replace those when I feel the need.
The folding scissors and the knives will be hard to replace — the pocket knife on the old ring was the culmination of years of search, and the keychain knife/screwdriver was a lucky fluke — but I have folding scissors in my wallet, and there is a blade on one arm of my folding pliers. I can get a new tape measure the next time I visit Lowe's.
But lobster-claw clasps to attach the tools may be impossible. The last batch that I got from The Beaded Peacock are quite un-usable.
⁂
When I brought my blue gardening capris in off the line, I hung them in the back of the closet. By the time the brown ones get dirty, it will be time to start wearing long pants.
I didn't get to my sewing until almost naptime, but did sew a couple of seams.
After supper I walked up to Kathy & Dave's house and picked the tomatoes. It was *much* easier in jeans than in my Sunday dress! If I go shopping tomorrow, I must get some hamburger or bacon, because there is a big fat tomato that will probably be ready on Thursday.
After picking, I reflected that the funeral dinner had probably used up ice and I had time before sunset to change the ice trays. About halfway there, I remembered that I hadn't brought my church keys, but I got the exercise of climbing down Ninth Street.
The last time I was in Our Father's House, there was a sign on the door saying that they had no space to store contributions. Fortunately, I hadn't brought any.
An advantage of the new Kroger card: an envelope of coupons came in today's mail. I'd been missing those; I presume that they gave up on me when I spent a year not going into the store and, therefore, not redeeming any coupons. Most of them are on things I actually buy, and one is for a free half-gallon of almond milk.