Savoring Sunday

I'm savoring the last bit of my Sunday before I have to sleep. As always, the weekend was too short.

Yesterday (Saturday), I drove to Worcester to have lunch with Deb, Paul and Emily. We had wonderful seafood and lively conversation. Deb and Paul gave me my Christmas presents which included nice, soft socks and a series of novels signed by the author. The first one is called "Hens and Chickens" and it's by Jennifer Wixson. It definitely will be a departure from my usual murder mystery as it says this is " ... a story about love ...".

After lunch it was on to Emily's house where I got to have 3 cats snoozing on me at once while we watched the snow and TV. Actually, Worcester only got about three inches of snow and Amherst did not get one flake! That is a huge difference from NYC (about 20 inches) and Silver Spring, Maryland (about 28 inches!).

Emily and I watched "The Imitator" which is about Alan Turing who cracked Enigma -- the Nazi code during WWII. It was an amazing story and very sad at the end. He was treated very badly. In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II posthumously awarded him honor, but it would have been better when he was alive.

This morning I buzzed back to Amherst in time for church. I was a half hour early but I did not go home first because I was worried that I would be late. I have to use the elevator since my sacroiliac went out and the elevator has you walk past the choir. I feel it's bad form to be late!

Ann and I had a yummy lunch here. I made "spaghetti" using a spaghetti squash and it came out very well. The whole squash takes 18 minutes in the microwave. Of course, I had made meatballs and eggplant parmesan and a green salad. We feasted like queens. With tiaras. Not the other kind of queen.

After lunch, Ann and I watched an Indian movie on TV. As in tea and rajahs, not as in bow and arrows. I'll be darned if I can remember or replicate the name because it was the anglicized version of Hindi. It was very entertaining, especially reading the subtitles, and it was after the whole story was done (while the credits rolled) that they began the singing and dancing that is so characteristic of the Baliwood movies.  Wow, do they ever love color in their dance costumes! It was fun to watch and made us want to see a 'real' Baliwood movie because there would be more singing and dancing.  

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Last week I got a new garbage disposal. The old one had quit. I was very happy to see the shiny new disposal. It worked! Once. Yesterday, I tried to use it for the second time and it did not work. Yes, I tried the reset button and I stuck a broom handle in it. No dice. So I left a message for them to come fix it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the day before that, I had the beginnings of a new crown on a tooth. I was in the dentist's chair for two hours!! This is getting to be ridiculous. I spent 50 minutes in the chair for the root canal before that. And I have to go back in two weeks for the actual crown. Bummer, eh?

Very Relaxing Day

Thank you, Nova Scotia, for my luncheon mussels! They went well with a cup of Red Rose and some chorico on the side (and marinated mushrooms and peppers stuffed with prosciutto).

Above was actually yesterday's lunch. Tonight, for supper, I made homemade chicken soup with a bit of leftover chorico. The sausage gave it a nice zip. I added fresh green beans, cabbage, onions, etc.

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So today I decided to fix my garbage disposal. No, no go. I tried the re-set button several times. I have the fix-it people coming on Wednesday afternoon.

I thought I had been clever in putting the household cleaners in a cardboard box so that in this situation, I could just pull out the box. Well, yes, sort of. The sink had dripped into the cardboard box ... ick! It was a good opportunity to combine partial bottles of glass cleaner and throw out dried out silver polish. When I went to the grocery store, I got a plastic 'dish washing' pan for $1.99 to replace the gross cardboard. I already had a plastic one on the other side so now it's very neat.
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After hanging up two loads of laundry, I decided to go to the gym for a "strength" class. Nope, the instructor didn't advise it because I'm still sore from the bout of sacroiliac pain. So I did a bit on the recumbent bike and then hit the hot tub.  Wow! The hot tub felt SO good that I went into the pool and did my treading water thing. Then the hot tub again.

After that, it was off to the supermarket to return bottles.  No, Cyndi, the machines wouldn't take the flavored sparkling water bottles. I don't know if it was because I bought them at Costco and not Stop and Shop, but I left them there. 

Speaking of Cyndi, I had a fabulous time at her birthday dinner at Galaxy in Easthampton. Their food is fabulous and I told the chef so on my way out.

Half of the table with Cyndi the Birthday Girl at the head of the table next to George.

At the party, I learned that they are not oxen until they are trained. I said, "You mean they are cows?!?!" And Cyndi said, "No, because they are boys. Steer, actually."  Sheesh, who knew? I thought an ox or oxen were a whole different kind of beast.

Now I have to google moose, elk, and reindeer all over again. Maybe I just need an animal crib sheet. Although, I have to admit that I have never used oxen in a sentence before. Sure, crossword puzzles, but that's about it.  But my friend, Cyndi, apparently has a blossoming relationship with the oxen at Old Sturbridge Village. Who knew? (I wonder if they sent her a birthday card.)

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I'm thinking baby bok choy is my new favorite. I don't care if cauliflower is the new kale, I can't pay $6/head -- and the store was out of it again. I made chicken and bok choy tonight for tomorrow, but I fell in love with it with shrimp from my favorite Chinese restaurant. I think they had sauteed everything in chicken broth. So the rest of the veggies will go with shrimp. 

Sorry that so much of this is about food. I am determined to make things that I can bring for lunch. I plan to make meal-sized containers so I can just grab something in the a.m. That goes for salads too. That reminds me: I should make some crustless quiche for breakfasts ...

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She did it again. Nancy beat me by over a hundred points at Words with Friends. And then Mom goes and beats me. I would go in the back yard and eat dirt, but we got a dusting of snow last night and there's none available. And then, then, to add insult to injury: the darn game trumpeted a 30 point word for me.  Ahem. No, that was a 55 point word! Sheesh. I'm still losing. Sigh. Maybe I'll find someone who doesn't speak English ...

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Okay, have potted up the pre-cooked food and one salad for tomorrow. Have washed 8 zillion dishes. I'm going to bed! I wish you all a happy week!

Is That All There Is?

So the holidays are over. Thank goodness! I won't tell you how ridiculously late it is, but I'm still in pajamas. I will get dressed to go to the movies in a bit.

But as I watched stale TV (reruns of Law and Order), I remembered how embarrassed I was yesterday when I couldn't find a can of Redi Whip in my fridge. I quickly put the chaos of the refrigerator out of mind and began channel surfing.

O.k. It only took one show of Hoarders for me to tackle the refrigerator.  Oh, Lord! Who knew it could hide so much ... er, garbage? It's all better now but I had to make a crustless quiche and some cauliflower "bread." Both are in the oven now. Yeah, yeah, I'll give you a picture. 

The quiche has sweet red peppers and mushrooms.

I know that this doesn't look like bread, but l'm supposed to gently remove it from the pan and make a cheese sandwich. So when I grill the "bread," it should make a yummy grilled cheese sandwich. I have my doubts, but it's worth a try. I'll be doing that on another day because we're going out to eat after the movie.

Happy New Year's Day!

Cyndi, Emily and I had a fun and relaxing day. Two of our friends couldn't make it at the last minute, so we will have to do this again soon.

As we began our marathon watching of "Mozart in the Jungle" on Amazon Prime, we put out some hors d'ouevres.

That's 3 different cheeses with crackers on the left, Cape Cod potato chips to go with onion dip and the far right is lettuce leaves and crackers with salmon and cream cheese spread. (I mixed cooked salmon into cream cheese. The lettuce was for me so I didn't eat the crackers.) The top right is pea pods (raw) and to the left is broiled eggplant slices with a bit of sea salt. In the middle is Whole Foods' green olives with garlic and lemon.

Before Emily arrived, I gave Cyndi her happy new year gift. (O.k., it's true it wasn't done for Christmas.)

Cyndi really liked her new cow bag and I'm really proud of myself because I figured out how to put in a magnetic clasp.

After a couple of episodes, we got to work cooking. Cyndi and Emily (mostly Emily) made won tons with crab, bok choi, and carrots inside.

Emily grumbled about being a slave in Mama Tina's won ton sweat shop, but we all enjoyed the fruits of her labor. 

In the picture below, Cyndi seared the tofu for the stir fry on the left. This stir fry included red peppers, broccoli, water chestnuts, onions, green beans, bok choi, floor sweepings ... no, I'm kidding. 

And in the middle of the picture above, is the lo mein that I made using whole wheat noodles.

Cyndi brought a wonderful fruit mix of strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. The fruit was wonderful!

While it's true that I vacuumed and washed a fair amount of dishes, I haven't done anything else. It has been fun! Although I had planned to make low carb pumkin bread. But tomorrow is another day.  Cheers!