Author: Serendipity

Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit

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Gennaro Gattuso

Woke up at 4A, starting the day in a real mood.

Speaking of shit, look at this in my Aldi parking lot.

In all my travels, I’ve never seen as much litter as I do in Louisville – everywhere in town, all along the expressways. My weekly metro newsletter notes how many tons are picked up by crews each week along with abandoned tires, furniture, auto parts etc. Thank you to all the workers for their never-ending thankless jobs.

As noted in previous posts, I originally wanted to make this a food blog; had I followed through, I might have been part of the OG bloggers time-wise; probably not in content and witty writings. I have a zillion recipes in my Google drive; I edit them for grammar, syntax and brevity – I credit the authors and/or websites & magazines. I planned on linking them in the posts to the drive – silly me, that would give anyone who opened the link access to my entire digital life. Luckily I realized that early on so if I really wanted to, I could just download the recipe and post in word format.

In retrospect I’m glad this didn’t happen. As I continue to enjoy reading recipes (lately many from Instagram), I have begun spending more time reading the comments since I probably already have the actual recipe but am looking to see if anyone actually cooked it and whether or not they enjoyed.

The negativity and ignorance of the commentors knock me out! Do people not know how stupid they sound? Unfortunately, I find myself amongst them as I’ve begun snapping back, mostly at the negatives – the folks posting took the time and effort to do so. If you need to substitute an ingredient due to many reasons, Google it! Don’t waste space stating why you hate it, have allergies, don’t know what it is, etc. TMI! I’d be kicked off the internet with my responses – I’ve already been blocked on Facebook LOL.

I’m glad to see more people posting on IG, I hate TikTok – platform, content, all of it. Oops am I sounding like the people I just mocked ? Now that I’m retired I enjoy IG while I eat lunch – have to use that as a limit or I’d be on it for hours. I don’t know when in my life I’ve been able to really laugh each day – the wit and ingenuity are good for my otherwise curmudgeonly attitude.

Good segue to my next bitchfest; a holdover from my career, I still spend time on email but I’ve had to unsubscribe from most of my news feeds. The doom-scrolling was taking it’s toll. Yes, I want to be informed of events in the world but no I don’t because it’s all so bad.

The WORST of it is Trump. There hasn’t been a day – not one day – without his fucking face popping up somewhere. If I could I would sue his machine for mental anguish I hate him so much. He is the absolute reason this country has turned to shit, him and his ignorant, negative twittering.

Biden is doing his best beating the dead horses to turn it around; no matter the evidence, people ignore it. There are jobs for everyone but nobody wants to work.

The economy has greatly improved from the nightmare Trump left behind. I don’t want to hear about high mortgage rates – in the early 80’s I had one at 15%, minimum wage of $2 along with gas prices that had doubled from the year before. Or how about waiting hours in line for gas for no real reason in the 70’s? Or the recessions of ’75, ’82, ’91 and ’09? We just kept on working.

I hope every day that Trump will fall ill. Or just fall. Down. On his head. Hard.

Meanwhile the day is breaking, it’s 8:30. Almost time to go to Aldi; it’s 5 minutes from my house, I go many times a week. Pitiful.

Can’t decide what to have for dinner – I usually have menus plugged into my Google calendar – I can attach my recipe links that way. I had front teeth implant abutments placed the other day so I’ve been slurping most of my meals (can’t bite due to stitches, etc.); whatever I cook I just throw into my Ninja and puree it – most of it has been pretty good lol! I was going to make this awful concoction I throw together in the crockpot when I have leftover pork – my husband just loves it I’m embarrassed to post it.

Add all except noodles or rice to a crockpot, cook on low 8 hours.

1-1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs, or leftover pork
8 ounces sliced fresh mushrooms or canned
2 celery ribs, sliced
Frozen pepper & onion blend or chopped fresh
1 can baby corn
1 can (14 ounces) bean sprouts
1 can (8 ounces) bamboo shoots
1 can (8 ounces) sliced water chestnuts
Optional:1/2 cup frozen shelled edamame, carrots, broccoli florets, shredded cabbage
Pineapple
1/3 bottle General Tso’s Sauce
To serve: cooked udon noodles or rice

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But I’m feeling chili-ish. White or red?

First little snowfall, barely any on the ground. All the bread and milk is probably gone from the stores by now. Going to be freezing this next week because it’s January, people!

Long time no see

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Not sure why I keep this alive. I think I’ll treat it like my first attempt at journaling – random thoughts, nothing profound; at the time I was unhappy with my life and decided rather than seek professional therapy I’d speak to a counselor at the state employment office. Turned out he was a professional in his trade; we discussed job options, this and that and he told me to start writing down my thoughts and focusing on little stuff. Huh. Thought it might be wasted time but with no other tools of my own, I started at the beginning. The writing part was drivel, I’m sure but I began to try to pay attention to bits during my day that made me laugh or feel good. We had a newspaper delivered at my work (paving company in New York’s Southern Tier). Part of my job was to look in the classified for posted bids for paving in the small surrounding townships. The boss would submit a bid and most often it was accepted. Along with the classified ads (never any enticing job listings, I had moved from Kentucky and a well-paying bank job in the real estate dep’t of a major bank) but they had a good comics section. I started clipping the ones I enjoyed – Opus, Doonesbury, Calvin and Hobbes, those with an ironic twist or some sarcasm. The workdays and life moved along and then I found out I was 3 months pregnant.

Not to say that was the cure as these mental moments returned many more times as life happened. However the son was born and after a few rough months life became happy again with new adventures, fears and looking forward once again to the future.

Originally I thought I’d be the author of a witty, popular blog; my first post was a bitch-fest about my hatred of packaging. That was at least 20 years ago LOL. I’m not going to blame my age on the troubles I encounter daily attempting to open any fucking thing but between physical ailments (arthritis, carpal tunnel, curmudgeonliness) I rage daily at the manufacturers. I’m sure it’s my imagination but since the pandemic, seems like there’s been a huge bump in the strength of adhesives used to package our goods.

My favorites are food product shrink wrap and blister packs. Wait, how about any health products sold in a box, tight plastic wrap around the bottle neck, glued-on tab on the bottle top, cotton in the bottle.

I do have tools in my arsenal;

an oil filter wrench for jar opening:

stainless needle nose pliers to grab the miniscule tabs on every bottle or jar or the plastic film on dairy products:

and my favorite, the Open-it tool to chomp through blister packs, zip ties and the like:

I’m winning that war but it continues to piss me off.

Two decades later I thought I’d be a recipe blogger, inspired in the early days by A Year of Slow Cooking by Stephanie O’Dea, Smitten Kitchen, Deb Perlman and Homesick Texan, Lisa Fain. I also liked Tasty Kitchen, I think started by Ree Drummond. I have an amazing recipe file that lives in the Google cloud, I discussed it’s humble beginnings in a previous blog. I don’t want any paper in my life so I spent a year digitizing my life after a brush with cancer and a negative complication. At this writing my file has 4k plus recipes culled from all the best (IMHO) websites in my personal word document format. I edit heavily, don’t like the use of the word ‘your’ i.e. ‘your dough’, and remove any anecdotal comments by the author. I thought I could blither away about my day or an event and intersperse the account with the day’s recipes via link. What I didn’t know at the time was I would have to make the whole file public in order for someone to open said link, or give permission which would allow the reader access to my whole cloud account that also stores a lot of personal and financial information. Also, I don’t write in a witty or professional style and don’t take the time to learn all the pretty tricks and tools of penning a blog.

Creating this giant compilation of old recipes from snippets of paper, in cookbooks and online became a hobby. At the time I was once again in a negative mental space (mostly job related, family issues etc.) . One piece of self-help advice often suggests to find something you like – problem was, there wasn’t anything in the world that excited me (also, no meds helped, every one I tried caused a different bizarre side effect). My world was meh. The eureka moment came, however, when I realized every morning while drinking my coffee and reading email I was reading food blogs or recipe sites, copying and pasting them into my file, and dare I say enjoying the process. A decade later I’m still at it and I don’t seem to get bored.

I do have to note that I cook and bake all the time (mindless activity, sort of meditative sometimes) and feed my family every Sunday. Thing about that is the aforementioned cancer and subsequent radiation treatments left me with hammered taste buds. I have to rely on taste memory and smell. According to the fam, I do well. The Sunday meals tend to be vegetarian (for 3 of the kids); we don’t eat a lot of meat ourselves but creating a protein besides beans can be a challenge. I make my own seitan and tvp products since i have a million herbs and spices but it’s hard to emulate the texture of the commercial products. I need some of those chemicals they use.

I do sense flavors, some are intolerable (citrus) and texture is important – need chewy, crunchy stuff. luckily some my favorites (coffee, dark chocolate and beer lol) are still enjoyable but it’s a bummer to bite into a smash burger and taste not much of anything. That begs the question how did I put on 15 pounds since I retired and survived the pandemic?

I think this time around I’m going to try to use this as a personal platform to try to once again drop a few pounds. I’ve done Weight Watchers in the past, still have a gym membership and walk a couple of miles most days of the week but I’m obviously going in the wrong direction. Need to keep a food diary for starters.

I also stopped doing yoga while quarantining. Why? I’ve practiced for 50 years and the last few have enjoyed classes at Gilda’s Club. The instructors offered virtual classes and I know the routines well so what happened? We didn’t have the hardships of many folks, I still was able to keep up my shopping and walking routines, took small trips to Air B&Bs, visited with the family (outside, distanced, masked).

One time suck is Instagram and I’ve returned to reading. Sounds like procrastination to me (the thief of time, said Edward Young, 18th century poet.

This year I began loading the day’s recipe links and possible chores and errands into my Google calendar – kind of a to-do list for the anal. Or the retired and not liking it too much person.

I am so enjoying the changing of the season; I seem to mentally wake up when the weather cools, leaves begin turning, the yard finally begins to leave me alone but the house beckons with items needing to be mended, cleaned, tossed, etc. We sealed the driveway, sidewalk and patio this past week. That required edging the landscape, moving all the furniture from the surface and refreshing all the outdoor doo-dads beaten to death by the sun. I love my Halloween décor! It’s been up since the beginning of September.

Amazon driver has a sense of humor 🎃

Tonight’s fallish menu is spicy vegetarian chili, slaw, zucchini muffins and a tomato pie (tastes like apple!). I need an appetizer even though I made a snack mix with chile crisp. Maybe just hummus and veg. I have 9 crockpots.

Sunday Dinner

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Life at this time is enough to toss anyone into a depressive state but I really don’t have any reason to whine compared to so many others. Recently I’ve have to mentally visualize pulling myself up by the collar and kicking my own ass to get myself moving. I had hoped with the election in the past, spring on the way, and family vaccinations almost complete I would feel much more optimistic. My only motivation these days is the Sunday dinner prep for the family. The first few months I would cook, pack it all up and dump it in their car trunks; as it warmed we could be outside (there are 7 of us). Come winter I bought extra fans, opened the doors, we masked and kept our distances. We are still being CDC compliant.

Having experienced a long bout of depression in the past and being unable to take medication (other than my nightly beers) I practiced all sorts of suggestions; yoga (still do), mindful meditation, and the like. The one self-help tip that tickled me was to find something I enjoyed (or used to); how do you do that when you don’t like anything? But I kept that thought in mind.

One day it dawned on me that the one consistent thing I did that gave me a bit of a thrill was collecting recipes; I wrote in a previous post about digitizing my life after my cancer adventure. It comforts me to know ALL of our photos, pictures, music, documents and more are safely residing in clouds and on portable drives. You never know what or where you’ll end up. My thought is if I’m disabled I want to be able to explore, travel or reminisce electronically. I am still able to do most of what I want i.e. cook, bake, garden, exercise and clamber up and down the stairs but I have various and sundry (love that redundant phrase) medical issues lurking in my mental background that help to lower the happy meter needle.

some of my spices

Back to the recipes…I began with my old legal-sized data binder full of recipe clippings from magazines, potlucks and copies from cookbooks. Many I could look up online, especially as so many are now considered vintage; I copy, paste and edit them (copyright rules observed) in MSWord and then off they go into the cloud. If I can’t find them online I re-type them. A few, like my mom’s handwritten favorites, I scanned. I currently have over 13K but some are cross-referenced, hence duplicates.

To this day I find at least 3 – 4 a week to add to my collection but I do come across more and more in my magazines that are being recycled lol. So I also hoard herbs, spices, food and kitchen tools.

I start planning next Sunday’s meal early in the week, it helps me to look forward to the coming days and even though my two freezers/fridges are full as well as the two pantries full of dry goods, I get to go and buy more. This shopping almost daily habit I think comes from the time we lived next door to my mother; my daughter was very young, I wasn’t working at the time and we would go off to the Pig or Publix most afternoons and browse around for this or that; I remember buying 21 green beans at a time because we had no money.

I pull up a recipe and clip it to my Google calendar along with the link so I have a timetable that includes the week’s meals for Mr. Scott and I. I just retired mid-pandemic, I was really just taking up space in the department anyway since I nominated my protégé to became my boss (a happy ending to my tenure). People ask how I managed a 52 year marriage – I worked full-time for starters. Luckily Mr. Scott still works a couple of days a week so I get a respite as the closeness is mentally difficult for me. It’s not the relationship, I just need my alone time. For as long as I can remember I’ve been in a position of providing in both my career and personal life. We do spend a lot of time on different floors of the house as I’m not able to sit for long and he doesn’t care to be active for long (personal choices).

When I have the heebie jeebies, source not always known but often related to finance or health, or my very adventurous grown children, or my car-loving husband, or my doom-scrolling habit, I go to the food.

I do bake the bread, luckily I had enough stock when the pandemic began as I hoard flours as well (but use them up in good time baking for family). I’m not enough of a purist to grind my own grains, I do appreciate being able to use King Arthur flours. I also work with sourdough; I only feed it once a week and the discard goes into my favorite pizza dough recipe (makes great waffles as well). Also, sourdough bread justifies using one of my four cast iron pots. So much for my hoarding issues at least they have some value. It’s already a new month.

Ta

blue city in a red state

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Is it a function of old age to become much more interested in the politics of the day and a lot more vocal than good manners would allow? Do assume that my vocalizations contain obscenities. This is not good for one’s health hence this blog. Years ago I would journal my thoughts – it seemed to help put things in somewhat of a perspective and allow me to ruminate less. This format looks so much better than my scribbles plus there’s spell-check!

All of the feeds I receive via email are, of course, slanted my way; I love The Washington Post, the New Yorker and The Atlantic but am too cheap to pay for subscriptions; I do donate to NPR. I start my day with an awful lot of bad news although there’s often a Bored Panda article to even out the mood. Today’s news was so disappointing – don’t know what I was expecting after witnessing yesterday’s debacle. How could there not have been uber-security? Who didn’t think this would happen? These delusioned assholes were just waiting for the perfect bar fight and so they came. Why weren’t there more arrests? Don’t tell me it’s going to be difficult to find the ugly perps with all the selfies and media – c’mon Homeland Security – you’d have a drone over my house in a New York minute.

This AM I was listening to NPR while running an errand; the show was discussing the Kentucky Legislature currently in session passing all their tight-assed Republican bills in jig time; didn’t know they could think that quickly! Most seemed focused on removing our Governor’s ability to make executive decisions in emergency situations i.e. the pandemic. They recommend allowing restaurants, churches, schools etc. to follow CDC guidelines rather than the more stringent but rational requirements set out by the Gov. The CDC was a venerable organization until Trump came to town. It has consistently sent mixed messages while trying to get a handle on what the appropriate protocols to staunch the flow of new cases; hopefully our new administration will restore it to it’s former status. Our Governor has been the voice of reason throughout this awful year; he only wishes to keep us alive so that we are here to bolster our economy. He also does not want our health care system to collapse under the physical and psychological weight of too many covid cases resulting from super-spreader events and anti-maskers.

And of course at the top of the list, abortion. Nobody’s fucking business. End of story.

I live in Kentucky by default. Nice place to be from, lots of greenery. Not quite the deep south but too close for comfort. I’m too old to return to the NE (the place of my roots and ideals) and would never want to be away from my family so unless I win the lottery, here I’ll stay and not keep my mouth shut. Louisville itself has a more realistic mental climate than the rest of this hick-ridden state so I’m lucky I landed here.

I totally support my Governor, Andy Beshear; he’s a wonderful, educated, caring man with his constituents’ welfare foremost in his mind. I pray he can continue in his position, he’s the best we’ve had since his father was in office. Bevin was a fool – good riddance to bad rubbish.

All my other feeds and emails are food related. A welcome dichotomy.

hump day 6 January 2021

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This tweet from https://twitter.com/YousefMunayyer – “We spend $750 billion annually on “defense” and the center of American government fell in two hours to the duck dynasty and the guy in the chewbacca bikini”. Need I say more?

My greatest hope is that a way will be found to keep the orange one from being able to run in another election. Sedition, treason, surely the powers that be will find a reason and a way.

Nothing to see here…

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I have to check and see what I’m paying for this blog, if anything. As much as I’ve read I’m still in the dark about owning my own domain, etc. Watching my stupid TV disconnect itself from the wifi I have little tolerance for these things I just start pushing buttons or disconnecting cords until it works. Since I’m old and recently retired I’ve joined the ranks of the cord cutters; should have done it sooner but now I have time to jerk around with all the idiosyncrasies of the platforms; I watch about 2 hours of programming a night max – usually HGTV or or DIY. I don’t like movies (no attention span) and spend a lot of time online reading news, food blogs and looking up words, places and spaces. TV is mostly for the husband.

This was only meant to be a diary of sorts, don’t think anyone would care to read my ramblings and that’s no longer any sort of goal. Maybe a couple of decades ago when the interwebs were catching on and I thought I had something to share.

I do have a kick ass digital file of recipes that I’ve kited from every esteemed blogger, magazine, food personality and all the recipes I’ve culled from 40 years of work potlucks. My older posts have lots of food references. Ironically, I cook and bake more now than ever. And yes, I bake all our bread.

I currently have yet another back crap-out, either a ruptured disc or a collapsed vertebra. End of week 2, some improvement; I can get out of the bed now but turning is still an issue – have to log-roll and I don’t always remember while I’m sleeping. My back is shit – looks like swiss cheese on x-ray, advanced osteoporosis but in the past I’ve been able to heal enough to tear it up in the garden and until now, the 3 stories of my house. All storage is either in the attic or basement. My kitchen is a 5 x 10 galley and I have tons of cooking implements and food items, none of which fit in the kitchen. Much cast iron.

Recently had oral surgery x3 – abscesses and bone infection caused by Prolia and my history so I have a large cavern in my jaw that draws every morsel of food into it. May have had a bit of medical mismanagement as I have a history of salivary gland CA with radiation Tx. I had concerns about the Prolia treatment and voiced them but apparently not strongly enough. Waah waah waah.

My point – so much real suffering happening – bad sickness, loss of job, money, human life so I feel shitty about whining but this stuff hurts and is worrisome. Not to mention trying to stay covid-free.

But so far I have a house I can still pay for, food, family I can still be with – a GREAT election outcome so I won’t allow any self-pity. I busy myself with my food and nit-picking. Since I have 8 more hours in each day at home I find myself even less tolerant of little items on the floor and on my counters. I don’t even care anymore if I’m obsessively vacuuming and wiping. My house is 90+ years old and I have a ton of wonderfully curated tchotchkes in every room/wall/floor/corner. As the sun moves around during the day the floor and surfaces show me things I missed in the morning that need attention i.e. removing. Certain areas demand absolute order, others can be totally derelict. IDK but it no longer matters as there’s no-one watching LOL!

Thing about it is we worked on this house for a year – every day I came home from work at the hospital and worked till 1AM or later. When we moved in everything was clean, painted, repaired, somewhat new. All the things we brought from the old house were washed, overhauled etc. before they came in. I’ve wanted to keep that feeling since then. I know it’s not reasonable but I try anyway.

On the flip side I can exist in total stupid chaos with or without all my ‘stuff’. One holiday family vacation our clothes were left upstairs at the house; I borrowed some from my SIL and bought Walmart undies. Another vacation all of our toiletries were left behind (notice how I kindly don’t lay blame); I wish that had been a lesson learned in how to travel lighter i.e. both trips were wonderful without the baggage. I saw a Michael Kosta clip from one of his comedy acts – packing the car for a road trip since folks aren’t flying as much; from the Detroit Free Press: “Bring it! We’re driving!,” shouts Kosta as he assumes the roles of a married couple packing an SUV. “‘Honey, should I bring the blender?’ Yes! We’re driving. I may want to make fresh tomato soup this weekend. ‘What about the treadmill?’ It’s already packed. We’re driving. We’re driving! ‘Two thousand and five tax returns?’ Of course! What if the accountant calls?” That be me. We either vacation in Airb&b, VRBO or my brother’s time share properties; I don’t like eating out other than a lunch or two so I bring crockpots, herbs & spices and all my favorite kitchen tools. Not to mention provisions, since my frugal nature doesn’t appreciate buying basics at higher cost.

Apropos of nothing, my little fruitcake is 30 years old this year. Dare I say Happy New Year?

Dang

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I won’t discuss the provenance of that but one of my favorite worker-bees drew that on the department white board and it is so him to think like that.

Seems apropos at this writing – not surprised to see that my last post was in February. March 12th we left for an Asheville getaway, my brother’s home in the town of Etowah close by; we usually go there over St. Patrick’s Day as the weather is decent and we need a change of venue by that time. I was helping my SIL Barb with some celebratory foods to serve at her salon for it’s 5th year anniversary.

We watched and listened to news of the virus, not paying particularly close attention until we went for a grocery run to the small local store and found the shelves half empty. Ironically I was looking for specialty flours as they are hard to source in Louisville. I actually found some but all the plain old white flour was wiped out along with the yeast! I have a hoard I’ve had from Costco that will last me till the end of time.

In short order the news became frightening but it was time to return home – I irrationally thought I needed to make it to Kentucky before making a pit stop as Tennessee was quickly ramping up their covid cases. That was, in retrospect, stupid as the first place we stopped (by that time I couldn’t wait much longer) was very busy with lots of folks closely mingling, laughing, etc. Obviously we survived but we were armed and ready for our next trip back to Etowah.

I always pack a nice picnic lunch (I rarely eat out much to the chagrin of my husband) so we just needed a safe place to pee. The Tennessee welcome center is spacious and always clean; fairly good mask compliance.

I’ve not been on FB much in the past but the witty postings of others is worth some trolling time – I’m happy to share much smack about the anti-maskers and all the glorious negative Trump memes, etc.

Here carby carb carb…

IDK

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My flea brain is in such a manic state these days; the juxtaposition of the beautiful sights of Spring, the uplifting and humorous stuff all over the interwebs vs the nonstop barrage of negative media, virus and weather updates. I also feel guilty for having a nice little comfy safe house, lots of food and at present, some financial stability (not for long unless the market rallies) and, notwithstanding reasonably good health.

If I remember to meditate, I can clear the cobwebs for a bit and if the weather isn’t too crappy, a walk helps.

Audubon Park

I’m lucky I like to cook but that’s becoming a dangerous pastime according to my scale. This past Easter Sunday with the family was courtesy of Zoom; I happily cooked the meal and did curbside delivery;

some of my wonderful children via Zoom

I just finished watching our wonderful new Governor Andy Beshear deliver his daily 5PM status report of covid-19 in the state of Kentucky. He has done a wonderful job being proactive rather than waiting (like the great orange one) and being reactive and has done much to make our endeavors to stay at home, not mass gather, observe social distancing and up the hand washing game have great value as is shown by our statistics. This state is at the bottom of the heap health-wise; we have some of the highest rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes in the country but as of this writing we are leading the pack in low numbers of virus cases and deaths due to his quick decisions and mandates. During the broadcast the Lt.-Gov was making an announcement from home; I could hear some muffled noise in the background, I thought it might be her kids playing a video game in the next room but it became louder and more repetitious and logic told me she wouldn’t have allowed that to happen. I switched to a watch party to continue listening and also to see the comments and find out what was going on. It was a loud, obnoxious group of protesters demanding the Governor open up the state to business and then quickly segued to right to life issues which shouldn’t be on any table, docket, legislative referendum or discussion whatsoever IMHO.

The Honorable Andy Beshear and Virginia

Many folks remarked if they wanted to work there was a great need in the essential worker sector i.e. grocery, fulfillment centers, food shoppers, & healthcare. They are much kinder than I as my thoughts were much more vulgar; I do have the sense to keep them to myself, especially on social media., although I do share a lot of posts that state my political views only much better than I ever could.

Some humans (metaphorically speaking) are so selfish, they care nothing for anyone other than themselves; they continue to gather in groups and ignorantly state this pandemic is ‘blown out of proportion’; I fear the militant extremist a-holes particularly in the deep south and northwest US who are all about their rights – to be what? to do what? These are not the folks who are racially or ethnically downtrodden who do have legitimate beefs with those who are too stupid to realize that none of us Americans are pure whatever they think they are but are all descended from some other blend of people who never owned this land anyway!

*sigh* I donate to the Team Kentucky and our local One Louisville funds, think I’ll go make some more bread.

Meh

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I live in a small, 1930’s bungalow a block from a beautifully landscaped bird sanctuary of a neighborhood. My daily walks take me past all types of architecture and foliage. I consider it a form of forest bathing as I stop to admire and photograph a grand old tree or new cluster of seasonal flowers and ground cover. Folks wave as I pass by – I’m definitely taking advantage of my good fortune to live nearby, my self-care ritual.
This was a comment I posted to an article in an Apartment Therapy by Emma Balter titled I’ve Never Lived in My Dream Home, But I Did Live Next to Whole Blocks of Them. I appreciated our common thoughts as I’ve been blessed to live in the absolute best, sought-after neighborhoods in my city, whether I fit in according to financial or social standards or not. I made the most of these experiences and now continue to enjoy my life on the outskirts.
tree toes…so old

So….our current state of affairs. Most of my fear is for the health of my young family; minimal co-morbidities on my daughter’s side; my wonderful son is asthmatic and is alternately uber compliant or stupidly not and my husband who has the weirdest, worrisome pain in the ass reactions to any ailments. I’ve worked in an infectious disease environment for the last 20 years and that fact plus my OCD tendencies and rituals afford me a good amount of infection avoidance that I hope might get me through this because I’m effing old.

I hope I live long enough for my retirement financials to recover.

Not depressed or anxious, I only sweat the small stuff. I live in a safe little house; I have enough food to feed us and probably the neighborhood forever. The weather has improved (not so allergies but otc stuff helps); I can work in the garden, we have great neighbors and plenty of beautiful places to walk. I also just get in the car and drive, lots of things to look at in Louisville.

I’m lying about the anxiety but that’s present pandemic, tornado, financial ruin or not so besides my nightly few beers (quit smoking when I had the cancer surgery) I cook. And cook. And bake. Mostly carb-based yummies.

Today the boy-chick went off the rails and drive to Indiana because Mendard’s screwed up his deck stock order delivery so I baked chocolate chunk coconut oatmeal cookies.

Went to Aldi this am, early access for seniors; had my gloves and Microban to clean my cart. A few other folks lined up for the opening, we shared the cart cleaning. Ended up with a large haul and bleach-washed it all after I got home. Whew – load it in the cart, unload it at the check out; reload it into my car then unload it at home; clean it and put it away.

Headed to Total Wine to pick up my quarantine stash, wish they had curb pickup. Order was ready, locked and loaded but to exit I had to stand in a checkout lane behind a chatty customer who was leaning too close to the cashier, and dealing with paper money. Disturbing but I had on my gloves, had sprayed the cart with Microban and headed to the car; I had the husband glove up to load then sprayed the cases again with Microban. Removed my gloves, used hand sanitizer and enjoyed a leisurely drive home through our beautiful, eerily void of humans park.

Overkill? No, the major transmitter of this beastly virus is our hands touching our faces, which is an almost subconscious habit.

Glad no-one reads this, apparently I’ve lost the real focus of my reasons to begin this in the first place, I’d so love to share my thousands of recipes culled from the best periodicals, websites and blogs but it’s just turned into a therapy session. PM me if you would like a recipe. I need to not pay for hosting next year lol.

Beauty all around, forest bathing today!

Bread etc.

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So many things flit about in my flea brain; few, if any, worthy of discussion. I get busying around, more like nit picking to the casual observer and next thing you know another day shot to hell lol well, not totally. The place sure is clean. I’m enjoying my recent foray into bread making; I apparently have a viable sourdough starter but being me, can’t bear to throw away the discard so many wonderful carby fermented products are being created, along with the size of my waist.

Fabulous sourdough cornbread, focaccia, artisan no-knead loaves and herby samich breads. So many recipes and opinions on the interweb. I do rely heavily on King Arthur Flour and the folks that have kindly shared Tartine recipes. I downloaded a lovely e-book , Artisan Sourdough Made Simple by Emilie Raffa. Every recipe seems like a new craft project.

Mr. Einstein stated “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” so that suggests that I’m not insane as I want the same results when I perform my little rituals over and over (when I think no-one’s looking); they calm me and allow me to go forth and do well.

Conversely, the bigger more productive part of my life can’t abide repetition. I used to do a lot of craft work; people would tell me I should sell some of my wares but the thought of reproducing them was awful. The last assembly-line project I completed was creating 25 centerpieces for my son’s wedding reception – a labor of love that won’t be repeated. Almost killed me. Luckily my later-in-life career change to the health care industry found me in a place where I could experience something new every hour.

As long as I don’t tire of the recipe acquisition from print or online to my personal digital file I’ll continue to enjoy cooking but for now, I’m lovin’ the breads!

I ordered some bags of flour from Target this week so I could get my order up to the minimum amount for free delivery (not everything ships free with the RedCard); when my husband brought the large, heavy box in I noticed a trail of white following him – one of the bags of flour had burst, covering the whole order and a fair amount of my dining room floor in flour. What an effing mess.