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Today is blackout day for those of us who care about dissemination of information via the internet. Tune in next week for our regularly scheduled program. If the internet is working then.

 

You’d think that a woman about to become eligible for Medicare would have learned how to cook by now, wouldn’t you? I present myself as the exception to the rule. Of course, there are a few dishes I can make to keep us from starving but I never really learned how to cook.

Until now. Meet my teacher.

This is so much more than a recipe book. It taught me how to prepare to cook. And it’s ready to teach me how to use spices to enhance the flavor of food. Yes, Dave is learning to eat spices beyond salt, pepper, chili powder, and those that go into his pumpkin pies. 🙂

Lesson one for me was “the cookup.” This is where you spend a block of time preparing foods in advance of the actual meal time to make the final preparations easy. Tuesday, Dave and I spent about an hour and a half in our kitchen preparing food for some time to come. At one point in time it looked like this:

The crockpot is full of vegetables with seasoned beef stew meat and a differently seasoned pork roast all being cooked without further assistance. The broiler pan sitting on the stove is full of bacon we just baked in the oven to a perfect level of crispiness. And the counter is being used to prepare a selection of meatzas

“Meatza?”, you ask. Yes, this is a wonderful way of fulfilling our cravings for pizza in a way that does not include the grains I have mostly eliminated from my life.

There are several recipes out on the internet for making meatza but I like Mel’s method best of what we’ve tried so far. You basically pat a half pound of lean ground beef into a pie plate and bake it 10 to 15 minutes.

Then you move it to a baking sheet, add your favorite pizza toppings,

and bake it another 10 to 15 minutes.

We made four of these at the same time. Dave’s is topped with ham, bacon, and pepperoni. Mine is topped with chicken and mushrooms. We will share the one topped with ham and pineapple. And my VERY experimental one is a bacon, ranch, cheddar burger with grape tomatoes. It turned out very well so will likely be a repeat.

In addition to all those cooked foods we have several containers of chopped meats, fruits, and vegetables ready to be used in salads and/or omelets.

So the rest of the week will be reheating, and/or assembling healthful foods whenever hunger strikes. I’m thrilled!

If you want to learn how to do all this go here, http://www.theclothesmakethegirl.com/wellfed/, and buy this book. Be aware that my meals don’t necessarily look like Mel’s meals. For instance, the cheese on our meatzas; you will find no dairy products in this cookbook. I’m OK with that because what you will find is tasty, real food from around the world made so simple even I can do it.

TTYL,

Linda

ps. In spite of skipping one weekly Weight Watcher’s meeting and not tracking everything I ate during the holidays I lost weight again. Down a total of 28.6 pounds so far and moving right along. All while eating things like meatza; yeah!

pps. No disclaimer needed. I bought my book and Mel doesn’t even know I’m writing this blog. I may send her a link to it, though. 🙂

Today is the start of a new year!

So?

What does that really mean? Are our day to day lives suddenly supposed to be magically different? I grew up in a family of magicians but none of them were able to make our lives magically different just by specifying a day on which it would happen.

If you are unhappy about some part of your life, figure out what change you want to see and what you need to do to make it happen. But, please, don’t make it dependent on a magic day. I know too much about the reality behind magic to buy into that.

TTYL,

Linda

One of the things on our move-in apartment condition report was the state of the master bathroom mirror.

 

As you can see in the photos above, the backing is coming off providing a freckled look to people viewed in the mirror. As I already have enough age spots, I was pleased when they said they would replace it. Doing so has turned into a comedy of errors.

Paul measured the mirror and discovered they couldn’t get one in that size. So, he brought up a list of sizes they could get, measured the wall, and decided to buy a mirror that is taller than the old one which would mean moving the light fixture up a bit.

They ordered that mirror. It arrived. They put it in a store room until Paul would have time to install it. It got broken while still in the store room.

So they ordered a second mirror. It arrived. They put it in the painter’s room until Paul would have time to install it. The painter came early and drove his cart into the mirror.

They ordered a third mirror. Paul said this one is supposed to be made of safety glass. It arrived. They brought it up and put it in my bedroom where it would be safe until Paul had time to come install it.

Today Paul moved the light fixture and installed the mirror. It looked great.

For a short while, it looked great. But, when no one was even in the room it self destructed.

 

I’ve left a message on Paul’s voice mail.

But the light still works.

TTYL,

Linda

ps. I haven’t weighed in yet this week but in spite of two Christmas parties, pizza, and Cheetos I took my belt in another notch this week so I think I’ll be fine at weigh in time tomorrow.

Dave lived in Minnesota for 60 years and I did so for 45 years. You’d think we’d know how to do this, wouldn’t you?

It’s amazing to me how much we managed to forget once we got out of here. And how much stuff we are having to acquire again. First was a snow brush for the car. Then Dave bought boots. We had to figure out how to wear layers all over again.

We probably should buy winter coats but we are resisting doing that. Instead we’ve settled for layering our lightweight jackets over fleece jackets. Which was a problem the other day when I wore a stretchy polyester suit since my fleece refused to slide over that. I couldn’t change clothes because that’s the only dressy thing I own and we were headed to a memorial gathering. I settled for wearing my full length raincoat and letting Dave drop me and pick me up right at the door. I don’t know if that would have been OK if we’d had an accident along the way so had to sit in the car without heat.

Maybe we need to buy some sleeping bags to put in the car for emergencies? We never carried those when we lived here but then we actually wore winter coats. And we did carry insulated boots in the car. Do we need to buy more of those, too?

How do you survive winter? How do WE survive winter?

TTYL,

Linda

ps. Another week with another Weight Watchers award. This one for losing 25 pounds. I’m on a roll here, folks, instead of BEING a roll here.