it really is better

the husband made THE BEST supper tonight. baked copper river salmon (with capers), fresh green beans, and broccoli au gratin rice a roni. oh man -- it was heaven. that copper river salmon is soooooo tasty and unlike anything else you've had. mmmmmmmmmmm, just out of this world. next time we have some, you'll have to drop by!

bit o' blarney

the husband decided he wanted to have corned beef and cabbage this weekend. YAY! we love good corned beef. and he put it in the crock pot this morning before he left for the park. BOO! what?? well, i mean, come on. i've been sitting here at home all day, politely reading my book, and smelling that delicious smell. torture, i tell you!

but when he comes home ... YUMS!

this is how you do it

i'm sure you've noticed how they pack a lot of air in those potato chip bags. and you've probably had to get a pair of scissors to get them open. and you can forget about pulling the sides apart because the seams are welded together. well, it's possible to just push the sides together to get them pop open. and does it work? yes. and where do they open? on the bottom. what happens then? you get greasy salty chips all over your clothes. is it hard to shake the pieces of chips out of your clothes? no. will you do it that way again? no, i'll use scissors.

see the bad guys win

be careful what you eat -- it may be moldy. see this article about food companies who take food which really should be thrown away, and simply trim it up or repackage it and put it out there for purchase. it's called reconditioning.

but the thing which is really worse, to me, is the last paragraph: "The case ended five years later when ABC was ordered to pay damages to the chain because the producers did not make their intentions known, they misrepresented themselves, and they trespassed on company property."

i am so sick of that kind of response. the criminal does something bad, someone investigates or defends himself, and that poor poor misbegotten criminal gets paid lots of money.

this country is messed up.

it's a bpa issue

and then there's the canned soup problem. apparently eating a can of soup every day for five days drastically increases your chance of heart disease and diabetes.

how can that be, you wonder? read this and be forewarned.

the other side of the coin is that everything has an issue these days so go ahead and do what you want.

oh, but i need to tell you about the food we had on our little cabin outing. we stopped in anacortes at this place called Adrift. it is a restaurant which buys locally and organic, and uses that stuff to produce excellent dishes!!  my favorite is the wee beet salad, which is so beyond yummy as to stun the imagination.

another place, in langley, is called the Prima Bistro and is, once again, excellent!! and our waiter was just so fun -- good-natured, affable, spoke french eloquently, and a sweetie.

we were both surprised by how much a few excellent meals had us filled up for, supposedly, days. is that typical of good food? fills you up for a long time? if so, i've been doing something wrong. not that i cook anymore, but i'm just saying ...

the girlfriend and i did have a good weekend. we drove up to white rock and stayed in a really nice hotel with a view of the water and wind surfers. we walked to all the shops and ate delicious food.

in particular i enjoyed a restaurant called the Deluxe. it was soooooo excellent. if you want to check it out, it might be good to get reservations. we got lucky (twice) since we didn't have them.

another excellent place was Le Vol Au Vent and yes, it was french. and excellent.

next door to the hotel was this little sandwich shop which made an excellent omelet for mary and an excellent sandwich for me. i think it was called Look's Watts Cooking, whatever that means.

we ate at Iguana's Beach Grill and Pearl Restaurant, but honestly i don't remember them, so i would not go back to them unless i couldn't get in to a number of other places. there was one place called a something-something snug and it was run by a scotsman i believe. if there had been more time, and more room in my tummy, i would have checked it out.

it was a fun time and thank goodness it's just across the border so i can avail myself of that good food whenever i take a notion! eight minues my friends, just eight minutes to a little bite of heaven!

ah so ...

the husband and i went for thai tonight for supper. yeah, i know, we don't really like thai. i mean, lemongrass, cucumber, coconut, curry, and weird stuff like that -- yuck!!

but when we go there i get pad garlic. i mean, GARLIC!  yum!!! it's really great and it's fixed with chicken and spinach. just tooooo fabulous!

but that means i can't kiss the husband for awhile. he hates garlic.

manna from heaven!

looking through one of my recent catalogs, i noticed cougar gold, a cheese made by washington state university. i love cheese and this stuff looks really excellent. (buy from wsu, not any catalog you get.)

another thing this catalog had was tur-duc-hen. i'm not sure i've ever heard of that, but it's boneless turkey breast stuffed with duck, chicken and port sausage stuffing. it's $60 but doesn't it sound good?!

another catalog had vermont maple syrup, vermont cheddar cheese (!), and vermont cider jelly. if i were going to buy some of those things, i would purchase from them -- they had a cute catalog.

there's another catalog that we're definitely going to order from in the next couple of weeks and they're from texas. midwesterners are our favorite people. this cheese and sausage item caught the husband's eye and the thing i'm wanting to get is this turkey/ham/beef trio.

yummy to all!!

oh yummy!

do you like peppermint candy? i prefer the kind which is soft and just sorta melts in your mouth. you can get a big jar of it here. it's actually the perfect peppermint stick and a jar of it can last you a long while if you can control your rapaciousness. not an easy task, especially with this stuff, but you can either have it all now or have a little bit for a loooooong while.

eat a little bit of everything

i'll bet most people do not realize how good cinnamon is for them. the husband showed me an article in aarp magazine which talks about a number of spices, but i like cinnamon and garlic so i'll go with them first.

> cinnamon helps you stay focused; eat a teaspoon on your oatmeal at breakfast.
> garlic is good for your heart but may also protect against brain cancer; put garlic in your tomato sauce.
> ginger helps keep migraines away; grate 3 teaspoons in a cup of boiling water, wait 10 minutes, strain and drink.
> saffron helps combat mild depression; add 1/2 teaspoon to the water when you cook 2 cups rice.
> turmeric might protect against alzheimer's; add curry powder to your chicken salad.

i still have an article the husband e-mailed me in 2006 which stressed the importance of eating a mixture of honey and cinnamon. the article makes simply outrageous claims, but whether they work or not, they're harmless. and as fast-food, tv dinners, and take-out has become so ubiquitous, a lot of old-fashioned eating-smart dogma has gone by the wayside. maybe it would be good to try some of the old ways.

the world at your fingertips

this study, that study .... it seems there's always some tidbit out there on the internet.

it's adviseable to eat a little bit of dark chocolate every day. we knew that.

it's adviseable to not kiss your kids on the mouth so you won't give them cavities. oh, the horror...

i've never been quite happy with facebook and i keep reading where they keep tweaking their stuff. i don't have time to check in again and again to make sure i've got my info safe-guarded, so i'm this close *ll* to just closing up shop. yes, it has allowed me to get e-mails from relatives and friends, but, no. i'm just not impressed with facebook. must be an age-related thing. and their options if you die? good grief!

eat, drink, and be sick

well, if it's not one thing, it's another. i just got an e-mail from a friend who told me about the latest salmonella scare.

it seems that food items which contain 'hvp' made by 'basic food flavors' have been recalled because of possible salmonella contamination. there are about 10,000 products affected by this recall.

here are a sampling of items to not eat: McCormick French Onion & Vegetable Dip Mix, Reser's soup and dip mixes, T. Marzetti soup and dip mixes, Trader Joe's Organic Creamy Ranch Dressing & Dip, Durkee spaghetti & Marinade Mix, Tim's Cascade Hawaiian style snacks, Pringles Restaurant Cravers Cheeseburger & Family Faves, Quaker Baked Cheddar Snack Mix, Chicken Quesadillas, Jose Ole Taquitos, Redskin Potato Salad, McCormick Corn Bread Stuffing.

there are more names and in the interest of your health, you may want to read the information. it's dated today, march 16, 2010.

and the next trouble is .....

we humans seem destined to go from one calamity to another. i was just reading about ug99 and its predicted ability to cause world-wide famine. a loaf of bread could become a true luxury.

that is just hard for me to imagine. i mean, i hate paying $4.85 for a loaf of bread, but at least i have bread. this new disease could make bread a sweet memory.

humans are tenacious, however, and hopefully we can come up with a decent plan to resist or eradicate this menace. good luck to us!

it's so special

my ex-boss makes this great christmas candy. it's mint candy pieces in this white fondant. it is sooooooooo good!!!

she willingly shared that she gets the pieces from this candy store in kalamazoo, michigan. i am going to have to call them and see if i can get some. all my little darlings will have a taste treat they won't believe!

thanks, ex-boss!!!

young people

honestly, my memory seems to get worse and worse. a young gal at work invited the husband and me to her housewarming which was to take place yesterday evening. she had sent the invite within the last 2 weeks and i had responded that we'd be there. we were to bring a dish, but no gift.

all this week i thought about what dish i could possibly bring -- the husband and i are not social butterflies and don't have a catalog of dishes to draw from. so i never did really figure something out.

when i got off work yesterday, i called the husband on my way home to see if he wanted to go to our much-liked chinese restaurant. he reminded me about our obligation. shit. since i was already almost home and wouldn't be able to figure out anything any quicker if i turned around and went to the store, i headed on into the house and opened the pantry.

i didn't have a whole lot of time to come up with something, so i finally cooked up some basmati rice while frying slices of ring sausage. i added a can of black beans and a can of corn to the sausage, then threw in a couple of handfuls of the rice. i added cinnamon, 6 or 7 dashes of pepper sauce, then sliced up some banana peppers and threw them in for good measure.

it was a really nice house-warming. i enjoy the people who were there and the new homeowner is just a neat gal anyhow. she and her husband had personalized their new home and had done a really terrific job. the interior colors were neat and up-to-date, and she had added artistic touches everywhere that were very effective.

it was a lot of fun. and my impromptu dish was tasty. thanks, husband, for remembering our invitation!

what a day!

it's interesting how time gets away from you. part of the time i'm too busy or distracted to blog, and part of the time i have nothing to say. but yesterday .....

the big boss is on vacation all week; one of the assistant big guys went on vacation for monday only, but had trouble with his truck and is still gone; one of the people on the 2nd floor retired; a pro-football has-been turned himself in at one of the crossings (he's wanted for numerous things, i guess); later in the day there was a bomb scare in the trusted traveler office. they shut down that office, then about twenty minutes later sent all the rest of us home. that was cool except for one thing -- they sent me home just two minutes before my regular leave time! ah well ....

but i live in this itty bitty town and never did hear a blast, so i assume everything went well and there was no bomb after all. i changed my shoes and went for a walk on the spit with a friend from work and that was, as always, just lovely. the perfect temperature of 68* to 72* and a teeny tiny breeze. the tide was going out and there were no other people or dogs to interfere with our ramblings. so we walked quite a ways and back, then i took him home and came home to eat some supper (a fabulous salad) and head for bed.

what a day! a little excitement, a lot of nature, and great food! perfect!!

yumyumyummy

the husband sent me an article talking about corned beef (which we had the other night) and something got a little mixed up in the transfer. here is part of the article:

"Corned beef, also called corned beef brisket, is a popular meat item which hearkens back to the days before refrigeration. Faced with the challenge of preserving fresh meat for the winter season, butchers would routinely pack beefbeefbeef or pork products in salt to prevent the formation of bacteria and mold. Meats like beefbeefbeef brisket could also be pickled in a spicy, salty brine. At one time, the word corn referred to a number of kernels or seeds, including the coarse salt granules packed around the brisket. Thus the meat was called 'cornedcornedcorned' beefbeefbeef in reference to the corns of salt. Even after modern refrigeration and preservation methods rendered brining and pickling obsolete, cornedcornedcorned beefbeefbeef continued to grow in popularity among the Jewish and Irish immigrants moving into New York City during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Specialized stores and restaurants called delicatessens served hot cornedcornedcorned beefbeefbeef sandwiches to a wide variety of customers."

i guess maybe they shortened the term to make room on their billboards! ha!

m-m-m-m-mmm good!

oooooohhh, i just made the best soup!! a pound of maple-flavored bacon, cut in 1-inch pieces; 2 cups of rice; a cup of green split peas and a cup of yellow split peas; a cup of lentils; a carrot, some cracked wheat bulgur, and some fresh mushrooms; a head of broccoli, cut-up stem and all; a can of navy beans and a can of black beans; about a cup of oatmeal; liquid smoke, worchestershire sauce, salt, pepper, cinnamon, tarragon, and oregano. but i totally forgot about the onions and garlic -- dangit!!! oh, but it is just yuuuummy!

clear the way ....

billy goat gruff got sick last week. he told me wednesday that he didn't feel very good -- his tummy was bothering him. and he was out thursday and friday. yesterday he told me he'd had food poisoning. from eating grapes. grapes from chile. i said 'didn't you wash them?' and he said, 'oh yeah, very thoroughly.' and then went on to explain there's some kind of fungus or bacteria or something that can be on the grapes and can get IN the grapes and no amount of washing can get rid of it and if you eat it -- bam!! you are sick sick sick. he said the doctor told him that throwing up nothing was hard on your body (and you always get to that point with food poisoning) so you should try drinking gatorade and keep drinking it until the problem goes away.

food poisoning is always an unpleasant experience and one which, ideally, should only be suffered through once. i wonder how many people are lucky enough to have that statistic?