Nap for me–I feel like I’m trying to shake something off. <yawn>
This was, of course, for NoClueBoy and not for Bobbio, who snuck in while I was replying…
Extremely kewlllllll, Bobbio, both the laptop and the rewards for waiting an extra two hours.
I’m going…really…now.
GT
Well howsabout that, my very own nickname! Thanks!
kaiwik, you just ordered your seed catalogs? I got my seeds last week and I spent part of yesterday setting up the “germination chamber” in the spare bedroom. I even started some of my onion seeds just because I couldn’t wait. I got some of those purple carrots too, I ordered the “Kaleidoscope” carrot package, reds, yellows, oranges, purples…it will be fun harvesting them, “Hey look at THIS one!”
Saturday evening we went to our friend’s house for his 30th birthday, but it turned out it wasn’t really a party to celebrate his birthday, it was to tell all of us that they are having a baby! Which I already knew, but had to act surprised because my wife wasn’t supposed to tell me.
The rest of the weekend I just tried to avoid going outside. It was -15° on saturday at noon and really windy so I sat on my favorite chair with a book, a beer, and my dog.
Wow! think how many<snerk>butts<snerk> you could smoke!!! 
What? Like you weren’t expecting that.
ncb, awwwww, now we feel bad. You wanna be noccy?
Just finished building a batch of egg salad and a batch of chicken salad. As I was picking the chicken carcass, the cat was yelling at me, so I gave her a chicken bone - she had a ball with it!
I decided to make the sketty sauce tomorrow. My laundry is done. My dishwasher needs to be loaded. All of a sudden, I don’t feel like doing anything. But I do need to find the crab soup recipe. I think I may have it on my old computer - maybe I’ll fire it up and check before I retype it.
Now I want crab soup. Too bad it’s not crab season here.
How’s about we call ya Clu? The alarm guy is here to check out the burglar alarm system. Any second now he’s gonna set the dang thing off! And it’s set off! Daaaaaaaaaay-uuuuummmmmmm is it ever loud!
Some day, some day I’ll have a back yard, and then I’ll have a meat smoker. Your yark sounds cool, kai.
Hugs to NCB, who is not ignored.
Got the laundry done, and now I have to put it away. I picked up a few pounds of honey garlic sausage, but I think we’ll have them tomorrow. I’m going to do a chicken thing tonight. Either in tomato sauce or garlic, olive oil, and parsley. Yum. I desperately need to try an all-meat potroast based sketti sauce soon.
I’m hungry. I think I’ll make a quesadilla and then put the laundry away and tidy.
Good afternoon all.
I am a huge fan of using wine in both my sketti sauce and my gravy. A good red wine. I receive numerous compliments on both my sauce and gravy. I don’t have recipes; just a little of this and a little of that. Of course for brown gravy one must use the meat drippings, that is the rule. You get that good carmely flavor from stirring up all the brown bits from the bottom. Mmmmmm Mmmmmm Good!
Even better is when I add chanterelle mushrooms to my gravy. Unfortunately, I’m now out of them and will wait until fall when they are in season again to go harvest some from the woods.
Welcome Augie and great job on the OP Smitty!
It was snowing here for about half an hour. Then it stopped. What little stuck has already melted. However, I can “smell” the snow in the air and the sky is that sort of iron color that always signals snow here. I don’t think there will be any accumulation though. I haven’t watched the news today or checked the forecast, but I’ve lived here long enough to know what’s going to happen.
Bobbio, I don’t live in Detroit, but if I did, I would have hoisted one with you. If you ever get here to the Pacific Northwest (Tacoma/Seattle area), I’d gladly meet up with you to hoist a beer or three.
I must now clean myself up and do some laundry and such. I think the hampers secretly grow more clothes on their own for me to wash. I hate doing laundry.
I also need to do some cleaning up around here. We’ll see how much I actually get accomplished.
Oh! Drae, I think that what is happening at work is a further signal to get your resume out and GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE! No pressure, no nagging, just my humble opinion.
Yeay, I’m somebody! (the new phonebooks are here)
I’m NCB all over the board, here, perhaps I can be…
Marlene Dietrich?
I got the hat.
I’m weathered right out work today, so I actually got to post in the MMP. Where’s RueD?
As for gravy being sauce, howsabout some good mole recipes? I’ve got some chicken, some corn, some beans, and potatos. Plus all sorts of spices and thingies. I’m fixin ta go to the grocery store, so some ideas might steer me into a new recipe idea or two.
Mole’s ok, but in cold weather nothing beats a good old fashioned possum and sweet 'tater (NOT) bake.
Bobbio cool on gettin’ the free tickets and first class. Live it up! Order three Diet Cokes! And extra snack stuff!
You mean a mole is sumpin’ it’s not???
Oooo, I almost forgot. The Princess[sup]TM[/sup] is turning 25 on Wednesday. She has requested a strawberry cheesecake for her cake. I bought a plain little one on Sat and plan to top it with some form of strawberries. I desparately need suggestions for a strawberry topping for it. HELP!
I was terribly disappointed in my roommate when we got our phone book after moving into the new place last month and she completely didn’t understand why I kept saying that.
As for a nickname, I hereby christen you Col. Mustard. 'Cause of the Clue part, y’see. It’s how my brain works.
Nice walk, all sunny and crisp and the same damn song stuck in my brain the whole time. But, still, good exercise and fun to see what had happened to which houses since I last walked that route. Several have been sold, several have additions in progress, one is being built (there are virtually no empty lots nearby, so that’s a rarity).
Well, we can call you Marlene if you insist. We kind of like names that mystify others. Our friend donkeybear has several (including that one) that confound people from time to time.
::Ignores the animal jokes:: The best mole I’ve ever had was a green one made by someone in the town my grandfather was born in. It had Mexican zucchini (has a lighter, thinner skin), ground pepitas (roasted pumpkin seeds) and tomatillos. Probably onion and maybe a bit of garlic as well. I would add some cilantro and leave it at that. I would saute the onion and then add the remaining ingredients except the pepitas and the cilantro. Once the vegetables are cooked through, I’d throw everything in the blender, add some chicken broth, the pepitas and the cilantro, and blend till smooth. Once it’s smooth, you return it to the pan and heat it till it’s the thickness you like. I’ve poached chicken in something like this before and it was very tasty. You can add some serrano or jalapeño peppers somewhere along the line if you want some heat to it… Salt and pepper is up to you.
Oh, and Rue has re-joined the working-outside-the-home world and doesn’t have access from the vet clinic. He stops in from time to time with stories about the animals he’s learning to work with.
GT
Eureka - I found the recipe on my old Toshiba! Here it be:
Busi Julie’s Crab Soup
Cover with water and cook 45 minutes on medium heat:
½ bunch celery with leaves- chopped
4 large carrots – sliced
1 large onion – chopped
1 small head of cabbage – chopped
1 lb. fresh green beans – sliced
½ cup barley
½ lb. ham scraps and/or ham bone
6 beef bouillon cubes
Add:
1 - 28 ounce can tomato puree
1 – 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
Cook 10 minutes.
Add:
4 large potatoes, chunked
1 teaspoon marjoram
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon season-all
½ teaspoon black pepper
3 crushed bay leaves
3 cloves garlic – chopped
Cook 10 minutes.
Add:
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 lb. frozen mixed vegetables
1 - 1lb can great Northern beans
1 dozen steamed crabs – cleaned
1 lb. crab meat – claw or backfin
Optional - 1 to 2 lb cooked shrimp - either use small shrimp or cut up bigger shrimp.
Cook until vegetables are tender.
Add: 2 cans bean with bacon soup – undiluted.
Makes approximately 3 – 3 ½ gallons. Note: Taste for seasonings – may need Old Bay seasoning.
Before anyone asks - Busi is Polish for grandma, and Julie was my grandmother’s name. Also, my grandmother was my role model for soup making - just toss it into the pot! My mom got the recipe on paper by watching and taking notes. Considering it never tasted exactly the same twice, I think this version is pretty authentic.
As for the steamed crabs, cleaned, that’s a technique all its own, best demonstrated. But for those who know how to clean a blue crab, after you’ve removed the back shell and cleaned out the gills and stuff, you break the rest of the crab in half and toss the halves into the pot. And if you get a half in your serving, you just pick it like you would any blue crab. It’s messy, but yummy.
It’s called the “Monday Morning Post”. If’n I post after noon, it’s not Monday morning. Hence I have a deadline. Strictly self-imposed.
Dad was down for five days. Drank a lot of beer at night, and did home projects during the day. I now have a new garbage disposal and drain piping under the sink, recessed lighting in the kitchen ceiling above the counter to chase away the shadows there, that damn bi-fold door between the kitchen is up (three hours of sanding. He laughed at me when I described trying to make the angled rip up the side of the door), my chain saw I got for Christmas is up and running and ready to use for taking down the hedges and trees that have gone wild, and a few little things I can’t remember. Oh, and we have a definitely plan in place for replacing the people door in the garage when it warms up.
It started snowing last night, and continued into the morning. Good thing it was a holiday around here, because with even no military base traffic, it still took me 1-1/2 hours to get to work - usual commute time 20 minutes. And my Dad drove up to SW Pennsy this morning, and said I-95 was closed from Richmond to Fredericksburg.
Crab and ham? I’m gonna hve to try that now.
When I lived on the Gulf Coast of Texas, we would regularly go out with an old retired shrimper on the small boat he kept. While shrimpin in Galveston Bay, we would pick up loads of crab. He taught us how to clean them as they came out of the net with a little flue (sp?) of salt water that kept running in the aft of the boat. Then they went right into the ice chests along with the still heads on shirmps. Any fish that looked good enough to kepp out of the net got put on the ice whole and then we deheaded, gilled, and gutted them all in one fell swoop when we got back to the dock.
That was always a good time, both the catchin and the eatin.
Of course, not many oceans in the OKC anymore because of that stupid climate shift of 55 million years ago, so I have to buy stuff off of the airplane now. A day old at the oldest, but still not the same as right out of the water.
I’m gonna go post in Unca Rue’s LJ now. Make him miss us so much more.
I might have to go pick up some wine to put in the chicken. Oh, poor me. We’ll have to get drunk tonight. Shucks.
We started our tax stuff last night, and apparently last year we made a decent amount of money. I am having trouble adjusting to this idea. We have been terminally broke since we got married, and I can’t wrap my head around being above the poverty line. The other half of that is- where the heck did all the money go? On the very bright side, we’re no longer really in debt, and have a functioning computer. This should have tipped me off to the “no longer broke” thing, but it didn’t.
So weird. We have money. Weird.
Kaiwik, I bet you got some good stories to tell, eh? Yours or your husband’s.
Hey! A toast to the world’s fishermen! Thanks, y’all.
I am up from my nap and convinced I need psychotherapy. I had a dream involving rubber tires, sex classes for people younger than I am, snow on the itres and the tires covering large swathes of hillside, hiding money and the transporters at work. :eek:
I won’t bore you with how this all went together. Just appreciate that I woke up and said, “WTF?” and proceeded about my day.
Now I have to go help #2 son with homework. And make dinner. And iron my uniform. And-you get the idea. This is why I don’t take naps! I have too much to do…
This must be national dream weird stuff week. I had a bizarre (although really not competitive with yours, rigs) dream as I was waking up yesterday.
I’ve been looking at the kitchen too long today. After mentally taking inventory of everything, I decided to make tuna noodle casserole. I make it with cream of celery soup instead of mushroom and add a little can of mushrooms, some dill and sour cream or equivalent. Today’s sour cream equivalent is greek yogurt (used 1/2 in oatmeal this morning), a couple of tablespoons of Mediterranean yogurt, and about 1/2 a cup of buttermilk (leftover from Saturday’s biscuit-making). The pasta du jour is gemelli (little double corkscrew thingies) because the box was open. I also have a bag of potato chips conveniently open so that I can crush some and top the casserole. Their salt & peppery ones, so it’s a little non-traditional, but they’ll be great, I’m sure.
I want to clean up the living room yet tonight, but I think that’s pretty much all the work I’m doing. Then I’ll probably watch a movie while I’m cleaning up my work e-mail.
Yet another life to be envied. Well maybe the tuna casserole part…
GT