Ed, what time is dinner? Man, if I ate meat you'd be in trouble!
Hope its not toooo hot out there today.

Hi!
When I posted this morning I had not turned on the TV...The shooting at a church in Charleston SC is just beyond words terrible.

Roger, glad you were able to get your walk in, and that the garden seems to be 'recovering'. Too much work goes into a garden to provide fresh veggies to a critter!

Later..

Good Friday Morning!
Going back to my chiro...what we did Wednesday just didn't really fix the hip issue.
Its a little cooler here this morning, 70 on my back porch. The torrential rains from yesterday afternoon cooled things down, and because it was evening it stayed cool! Sweet!!!
I had to put my rubber boots on to take the trash to the street after it had stopped raining yesterday evenig...decided not to take out the recycles...wet paper, etc=ick, in my opinion. So I woke a bit before 6, and took the recycles out. The 'pond' was gone from the excess runoff rain, so no boots. Although I'm sure my new neighbor probably is still rolling on his floor laughing at my pastel multidotted black rubber boots to almost my knee, and my black bathrobe almost to the top of my boots. That had to be a sight! If they live there long enough, they'll get used to my 'just running to the curb' outfits!!! LOL!!

Going to eat some cereal this morning for breakfast, and then hit the shower. I may leave quite early, as on my way I pass a couple interesting shops, and today I may just go in and 'poke around' a bit!

Enjoy your Friday!!

Later...

Good Morning All,

Trying to catch up with everyone after being off the grid for nearly a week. We were in VA and NC (Outer Banks, in the dunes area) then back for a night in VA. Lovely, very hot!

It looks like we have a new buddy here, Millie. Welcome. You have some great ideas (the chic cake with thin coating of PB). I also appreciated your description of the affair you are having with the 12 grain bread. Hopefully you are breaking off that affair.

Time to get moving. A meeting all day today (yes, Saturday). Next week I will be at a conference. Eeek! I am speaking at that conference. It is the national meeting for my professional colleagues. The room they assigned me to has a capacity of over 400...again, I say EEEEK! Hopefully, I won't get that many attendees in my session!

Will check in tomorrow, I hope, and somewhat spottily next week. Wishing a good week to all.

Good Saturday Morning!
So glad I'm not at an all day Saturday meeting!! UGH!

This will be short, I'm trying to do the 'complete' backup on my new computer, Last Saturday I only transferred in 'works' to this new one, but left open the option of using My Passport exclusively here on the Air....so this is taking forever I wonder if its because I'm using the computer...will shut down directly.

ED!!! I looked ahead at the weather forecast...I have two apps..one the Weather Channel, and the other an app called Fahrenheit...both come in handy for various reasons,...but F.. says its gonna be 99 degrees Thursday and 100 for Friday??? I am not quite ready for those temps, especially in JUNE.

LeeAnn did you not just love the Outer Banks? My kids young years we went there twice a year...summer for the beach, and Thanksgiving for foraging seafood and assorted 'weeds'.... I would complain for at least 50 miles as we were leaving that we were going the WRONG way! Couldn't we find jobs at the beach??? Etc!! Sorry it was so hot, they've had an unusual hot spell. NC is really quite nice. (the other thing I loved, at least at the beach, Thanksgiving and peoples roses, etc were still blooming.)

Ok, I'm off to see if this process will hurry along. And I have about 30 minutes of time free before my next 'cold pack for 15'....this damn hip and I are about to have issues!!!

Later...

RogerToo wrote: »

parityanimal wrote: »

Howdy y'all. It's sensational Saturday! I've got the day off, but may get out to the hardware store or elsewhere to find a cheap table fan and extension cord to bring in to the fuel kiosk for the hot days of summer! We do have air conditioning in there, but it still gets pretty warm up in the front where the glass and the payment tray are.

I've been up for a couple of hours now but distracted by feeding Lilo, feeding me, and getting this big crock pot of beef stew going. It's got beef (d'oh!), onion, garlic, carrots, potatoes, herbs and spices, and water in there, along with some thickener, of course.

I made an amazing discovery too, while preparing dinner. I put in the first half of the beef and turned the crock pot on low. Then I added the onion and garlic, the rest of the beef, the carrots, the herbs, spices and thickener (all mixed with water) and then the potatoes on top. As I was chopping all along the way, this took about 15 minutes. Then I brushed my hands along the sides of the crock pot to make sure it was warming up, as I always do a few minutes in. Cold as steel. Crock Pots work better when they are PLUGGED IN!

I plugged it in and then checked in another 15 minutes and all is going well.

Dinner at 6ish.

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A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Herm Albright (1876 - 1944)



All mushrooms are edible. Some only once...

Hi Ed
I've done that too, sadly I did not catch it until I went to eat it. You got lucky!

Cheers
Roger

That's why I ALWAYS brush my fingers along the sides before I leave the kitchen, to make sure that it's not only turned on, but plugged in and actually working! Too easy to forget to plug it in or forget to turn it on...and end up with well soaked beans or ruined dinner.

At this point, it's in the "smelling wonderful but still has three hours or so to go - bwahahahaha!" stage...

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A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Herm Albright (1876 - 1944)



All mushrooms are edible. Some only once...

We had some storms too. The lawn guys got caught in it too! After the storm we went out for a minute to the hardware store and passed through a large area without power, which made me wonder if we still had power at home, but when we got home everything was fine.

The stew came out just right!

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A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Herm Albright (1876 - 1944)



All mushrooms are edible. Some only once...

Howdy y'all. It's scintillating Sunday! Working a six hour middle today, but Sunday is usually not too terribly busy. We shall see.

Leftover stew made a great breakfast.

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Herm Albright (1876 - 1944)



All mushrooms are edible. Some only once...

Happy Father's Day to all...since it is a safe bet either everyone is a father, had a father, or knows a father.

Good Monday Morning!
Beautiful morning here. Been up for over an hour...fed cats, made coffee..and just fiddling around with this and that! Time to think about getting out the ice pack, and a repeat of the back stretches...(not in that order)
Need to make a quick trip to grocery store. Need Aleve, and spinach, Sobe Life Water if they have it.
Maybe a quick load of laundry, and that will be pretty much it for the day...oh, also a nap!

Hope we hear from Don soon.
LeeAnn, good to see you yesterday!
Ed, cats got you? I know they do! Feeding, lap napping and such. Happy to say I don't see those 100 temps on the weather apps anymore. Hot yes, stupid hot...no, not likey!!!

Later...

Cat boxes scooped already. Dishwasher is running. Clothes will be started in a while.

Pork chops marsala are started in a crock pot, for lunch AND dinner. Maybe breakfast too, depending on how piggy I am at lunch and dinner...

Pondering whether to dig out some frozen chicken thighs for making of crock pot coq au vin later in the week. I'll think about that for a bit.
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A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Herm Albright (1876 - 1944)



All mushrooms are edible. Some only once...

Good morning all,

Mmmm, pork chops marsala. I still have some of that marsala wine from the chicken about 2 weeks ago. Maybe if it isn't vinegar yet, I could try that with pork chops in the crop pot. But...it sounds like I better make sure the pot is plugged in to get things going!

All okay with everyone? Walking, cat box scooping, cooking...and whatever else we do.

I saw a TV ad yesterday with NS CEO, Dawn Ziers. It got me thinking about the decision to eliminate the NS boards...which got me thinking of an analogy. I envision the NS boards as folks who each have a booth at a flea market. You walk around the flea market and decide on any given day to go up to that booth and buy something/chat with the owner. Without a flea market, you don't know what exists. And you have to go to a shopping mall to specific stores and hope you bump into something unusual. The former NS boards were the flea market where I could just drop in on someone I might only engage with once a year, but they still were there. The current system (having to track folks down via FB, MFP, etc.) means I go to shopping malls looking specifically for someone/something.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoy you wonderful folks, but I don't like making special shopping trips to a mall, looking for a specific item. I kind of like moseying around to see what there is in a more casual setting. And we no longer have that. It comes down to...after I use my last 60% off NS cards from NS, I think I may drop off the NS rolls. I buy shakes from Wonderslim, and Zone lunch bars at the market. I get the social aspect from here. Why do I need NS?

Enjoy the day folks!

Howdy y'all. It's terrific Tuesday! Working a 5 1/2 hour or 6 hour middle today. It should be hot but I brought a small fan in and it keeps the air moving in the kiosk so it feels a lot more comfortable. The air conditioner in there works, but the back part (no windows) stays nice and cool while the front, glassed in part, with the cash drawer (a major air leak there) gets quite warm. I have the fan set up to keep air moving from the back to the front, and if needed I can aim it to blow right on the area where I sit. Even on LOW speed, it does an amazing job. I haven't yet had any need to try any higher speed and don't think I'll need to.

I'm with LeeAnn on the specialty mall thing. I don't even have any need to look at the NS site now. There is nothing there for me. I stopped buying their expensive, specialty (admittedly, VERY CONVENIENT) foods quite a while back. I did learn a bit about portion sizes from them but frankly learned more about that and overall nutrition from the dietitian at my endocrinologist's office. I had some fun playing with the NS foods to make them tastier or create unusual things from them,combining my add-ons with the packaged foods, but it's just as easy to browse local stores I'd be going to anyway and find things to create tasty dishes from. To be fair, 45+ years of cooking experience comes in handy for that, just as it did with making new, tastier things from the NS foods. And people on the now defunct boards offered hundreds of interesting recipe ideas, using the NS foods and using regular grocery foods. That important support layer has now been ripped out from under NS users.

Some of the newer NS foods do sound tasty, but looking at some of the stats on the new foods, compared to the old, I seem to see a move toward slower weight loss and less attention to detail on any specific food. It would be easy with some of the new ones for a person to make poor choices within the NS foods and overdo the calories, fat, and carbs, over a longer period, while still technically following the plan. Too many of them are lower on the protein, higher on the fat and carbs, etc. Anyone choosing just those most of the time would be slowing the plan or even eliminating it. They're all fine for once in a while, of course.

The original idea of NS was to make sensible choices and prepare healthy food yourself anyway, and some of us have gone back to those roots. When they started mass production of convenience foods, it made it easier for people to follow the plan, but the emphasis on people learning to do it without the convenience foods seems to have paled. A determined user can still find that on the site, and talking to counselors, but I have one of the original books somewhere with real food recipes, not convenience foods, and most of what's in it still makes a lot of sense.

I don't need those recipes any more because I know how to do it. Sometimes I choose to NOT do it, but that's not from lack of knowing how. Everyone needs to indulge once in a while.

And we can all DO THIS on our own, with support from each other. They can keep their expensive, tasty food.
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A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Herm Albright (1876 - 1944)



All mushrooms are edible. Some only once...