Why do we have such trouble telling our loved ones that we love them? Do you have that kind of communication issue with your loved ones?
I did have that problem when I was younger, but I worked on fixing it and I don’t have it anymore. Probably proving that yes, some problems can be fixed.
Decorations for holidays? Spirit lifters or pain in the butt? Or a mix?
It used to be a bit of both, but I’ve sort of streamlined the process and it’s so easy these days, it’s pretty much no trouble at all. I don’t decorate for all the holidays anyway. Just Christmas.
Do you donate to charities? Of your time, do you feel money is the only true gift, or other?
I give a little when I have a little to give. I used to offer services, but it never seemed to work out the right way, so I gave up. I offer people posts if they think they can use them, editing if they need it. But if it gets complicated, I jump overboard. Mostly, I do what I can within the limits of financial means. It isn’t much, but it also isn’t nothing.
Are you too superstitious or have you ever played with an Ouija Board?
Yes, but I was maybe 10? I don’t believe they work so it’s just a game.
HARVEST GRATITUDE:
This week please share a photo or image of what ‘harvest’ and “Autumn” mean to you! Thanks!
I’ve always loved Waldorf salad. It was originally made at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhatten in 1893 and it has been really popular ever since,
It’s probably my favorite salad and the only reason I don’t make it more often (it’s pretty easy) because usually, I’m missing a key ingredient. Like apples, walnuts, or celery. In this case, I already had apples and walnuts, so I sent Garry to the store for some sour cream, celery, and raisins.
Some people serve it in layers with lettuce as a “cup” at the base, then the apples, nuts, celery, and raisins plus a big dollop of dressing on top and a drizzle of brown sugar on top. That’s too much like dessert for a dinner dish, at least for me.
It is a great light dinner for a hot summer day, though you really can’t get good apples until September. Crunchy apple are the difference.
What kind of apples? Green, red, yellow, but most important: CRISP. I’m not a big MacIntosh fan. I think they are a bit too mushy. I prefer Gala and Macoun. Even Empires which are maybe a little bit too hard, so you’d probably have to cut them into smaller pieces. You can also use a mix of whatever your favorites happen to be.
Also, I know my husband. He mixes everything anyway, even when I don’t want him to because I think he should taste each item separately. That’s when I’m being fancy, which gets increasingly rare as the years trundle along.
At least one person suggested adding truffles. I have never eaten a truffle. I think a truffle costs more than gold, so I’ll skip it, thanks. It’s not part of the original recipe either. There is an almost unlimited number of ways you can dress this up or down. I like it the way I make it, which is pretty much the same way as it was made in the late 1800s.
A few things have changed over the years, mostly the dressing. People get very creative with the dressing. I don’t get all that creative because I basically like the original recipe, which is mayonnaise. All mayonnaise.
These days, many cooks use vanilla yogurt or plain yogurt. Or sour cream. Or a mixture of sour cream and mayonnaise. I got funky and went with a combination of avocado-oil mayonnaise and sour cream (50-50), but that’s my choice. You can make your own choice.
Also, I used raisins because I prefer them to sliced up grapes.
So here’s my recipe, made the easy way because all of my recipes are easy to make and even easier to clean up afterward. You can serve this as a light dinner or as a side dish. It’s a nice lunch, too.
This recipe makes enough for 4 as a side dish, two as a dinner dish.
Ingredients:
Three apples (green or red or yellow or one of each). Cut them into small pieces. Don’t peel them but remove the core.
1/2 fresh lemon
1/2 cup raisins (dark or yellow, take your pick)
3/4 cup slightly crushed walnuts
Half a cup of very thinly sliced celery
1 egg white
Spice mix: Sugar, a pinch of cumin, a pinch or two of hot paprika. You can sprinkle the spices on the walnuts of put the walnuts in the spices.
Directions:
Cut up the apples. Put them in a bowl. Squeeze the lemon over the apples to keep them from turning brown
Put an egg white in a small dish. Mix the walnuts with the egg white. Pour off any spare egg white. You only need the egg white to make the walnuts sticky enough to put the spices on them.
In a small pan (line the pan with aluminum foil to avoid extra washing), mix the walnuts with the spices and put them in a toaster oven, put them in it for four minutes at medium heat. If you don’t have a toaster oven (doesn’t everyone have one?) you can put them in a full-size oven — or throw them in a pan on the stove (use a little olive oil so they won’t stick). Toast for three or four minutes. NOT longer. Don’t let them burn.
Slice a few small pieces of celery as thin as possible. Throw them in with the apples and mix. When you are done toasting the walnuts, mix them in with the apples too. Add the raisins to the bowl with the apples, celery, and walnuts. Mix.
Dressing:
I used 1 cup of 1/2 cup avocado-oil mayonnaise and 1/2 cup of sour cream.
You are supposed to serve it in a “cup” of Romaine lettuce. I didn’t have any lettuce and it tasted fine free of lettuce. If you prefer using yogurt, that’s okay with me.
We had it for dinner because Garry was starving and this was ready to eat. It was delicious. Garry got over-excited and bit his tongue. Ouch.
Some people serve this with cold cooked chicken and other people add salt and pepper. I forgot the salt and pepper and didn’t miss it. I also didn’t have any chicken. Someone weird suggested adding marshmallows but she must have had too many small children. Marshmallows do NOT belong in a salad.
Finished!
You can add sunflower seeds. You can use pecans or almonds instead of walnuts. Just not peanuts — they have the wrong flavor. You can get very fancy, but I have no patience for fancy anymore. I’m just glad when things come out well and we enjoy eating it.
If you want more, you can double the recipe, or just add more of each item. It’s easy to make, it tastes great and it’s sort of like a desert, but without all the sugar and fat.
The forecasts have been promising weather in the low 80s tomorrow, so I’m refusing to turn on my boiler today … especially since I haven’t gotten a tank fill since I think May, but it might have been April. We aren’t out of fuel, but we don’t have much and until Wednesday, I don’t dare buy anything. We are in the hole we have every month during the week when I have to pay the mortgage.
If we are careful, we’ll be fine until the next social security check arrives. Meanwhile, our anniversary is tomorrow. We wanted to go out to dinner. Feeling as we do, that’s not a good idea anyway. I think we’ll wait until it will feel better. Right now, everything I eat makes me feel a little bit sick.
In fact, my granddaughter is having a birthday party today and we were invited, but with the way we feel, a pig roast does not sound alluring. To be fair a pig roast never sounds alluring. I like pigs. They are smarter than most animals including a lot of politicians.
I’m not a vegan or even a vegetarian. I sort of tried vegetarian. Then I had to go on a heavy round of iron pills and they really don’t agree with me. I don’t seem to absorb iron well. As my body craves it, red meat is where to find it.
Sunset through clouds
I feel guilty eating meat and ironically, it’s not to save the planet (though that would be a great sidebar) but because I like animals. I hate raising them so we can slice them up for lunch meat. For completely illogical reasons, I don’t have the same warm and cuddly feeling about fish. I also don’t worry about whether or not vegetables are unhappy when we cook them. We do have to eat something. If we exclude everything, I don’t think we’ll fare well.
We were created as omnivores and while I have had many a Vegan pal give me a heartfelt lecture on the benefits of the diet, all the Vegans I know are too thin and pale. They don’t look healthy to me.
So I stay on a basically well-rounded diet and it seems to work out okay, guilt and all. Besides, guilt is my primary emotion.
Meanwhile, it’s cold. Garry says it’s a little warmer outside, but it’s gray and dark and it looks like rain is on the way. What a shock. That never happens around here.
We went to the eye doctor today and we’re glad to know that although he needs glasses (bifocals), he can see 20-20 with glasses and the prescription has been the same for four years. So even if his eyes are no longer those of a fighter pilot, they work.
Even without glasses, he can see a solid 20-40 which is good enough for most stuff including driving, most of the time.
Bonnie barked me into wakefulness at around 5 this morning. While I was in the kitchen, I noticed Garry had forgotten to put up the morning coffee. No big deal. I can put up the coffee.
Except he hadn’t actually looked into the machine in a long time. Under the brewing thingie was about a month of coffee muck. I cleaned out the machine, but this morning, it would not brew anymore. Some small plastic item that controls the drip mechanism had died in my cleaning frenzy.
Oh, world, you have destroyed my digestion and my spine is deteriorating (though the new meds really ARE better). You gave me cancer twice, but my hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is more or less under control. One of my dogs is dying. Our blood pressure is peaking. Climate change is battering our house and this country has become a trench of evil. And the Red Sox won’t be anybody’s champions this year.
PLEASE! DON’T TAKE AWAY MY COFFEE! I’LL DEAL WITH EVERYTHING ELSE, BUT I NEED MY COFFEE.
Tea won’t do the job and I don’t care how many people in England think it’s grand.
I was out of lunch meat, so Garry went to the deli. It was Monday and they were out of everything except (sigh) turkey breast. Not my favorite, but I’m betting today is a delivery day.
Garry asked the newest lady at the counter for 3/4 of a pound of turkey breast.
Like a deer caught in headlights, she was lost. She could probably “do” a pound — or half a pound. But what was 3/4? She obviously didn’t recognize it as 75% of a pound, or even that it’s likely the line between the half pound and full pound markers.
Schools don’t teach math in any way that might be useful to those they have taught. They have gotten into systems so complicated that no one under 40 can do any math in their head. They need a calculator. Even to subtract one number from another. Oh, and they can’t count on their fingers.
Eventually, the boss stopped what he was doing and came over to rescue her.
Garry came home. He commented that there’s a scale and surely the young women (in her 20s) could tell that there was a line between half a pound and one pound and that would be the three-quarter, right?
Wrong. She doesn’t know that 3/4 (of one) = 75% (of one). Have you ever tried to explain to a clerk how to turn 99-cents into a dollar?
“Look, I’ll give you a penny and you can give me a dollar.”
“It says 99-cents.”
“So that means that if I give you a penny, you can give me a dollar.”
“It says 99-cents.”
This is because she doesn’t understand that 100 cents (pennies) equal one dollar. We are worried that our “below age 40” youngsters aren’t going to vote. I’m beginning to worry that they can’t think. Apparently, thinking is no longer taught in any school. So if you don’t get a head start at home with the whole “thinking” thing? You’re doomed.
Vote? If they don’t know that 99-cents plus a penny equal a dollar, how can we expect them to vote? Or have a grip on the issues? Or even know what kind of government we have or want?
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