Balancing Act

Gainesville

Great post, Sandy. Of course I'm always interested in details of what you cook-- please do talk about your newest chili. I've grown dissatisfied with the various pre-fabs I use. I used to make the Silver Palate one, but it takes much too long. The only one I still like is Super Chili, from Desperation Dinners-- it's made with ground turkey, is simple, and seems to always work. It's named Super as in suitable for Super Sunday-- I've made it for for that celebration the past 5-6 years. Thanks for the tip about McCormick chili powder. I tend to buy whatever brand strikes my eye first.

Could you give me a pointer to that wonderful rustic apple tart you made while I was up there? I've taken it into my head that I want to make that for Turkey Day. I'll wimp out and use pre-fab crust, of course. I'm thinking I'll try FC's Tnx meal for a small crowd, the stuffed T-breast. I still have leftover turkey in the freezer from last year, so am discouraged from making another whole bird and all the attendant fu.

Tonight was one of those meals that seemed fairly simple on paper (mini-meatloaves and FauxTaytoes) that turned out making a huge mess of the kitchen and taking twice as long as I thought they might. The loaves required shredded zucchini, meaning the Cuisinart shredder had to do double duty, and the steamer was involved too. Not sure it was worth it. In the process I got the rest of the cauliflower shredded for Spanish Rice later in the week. Will do a pork roast in the crock pot tomorrow, a chicken thing on Wednesday.

Got 4 of the 6 weekly blessings done today-- a first, and on the right day, too. Gold Star time. It will be a huge upper the rest of the week to know this has been done. Also did 3 loads of laundry (including towels) so THAT is done for the week. Tuesday is a Free Day, and one of these I'll actually take a bubble bath-- the hall BR is in such good shape now that I don't use it daily that it would actually be a treat to bathe in there.

Ah God, what a terrible Monday night game. But even worse was realizing that my DirecTV football schedule had let me down, and that there WAS a Sunday night game, probably the best game of the day: Bears and Giants. D'oh!

Your cooking sounds good, Mom. I still don't understand what the induction burner is all about, but then I'm way behind on cooking technology-- I still don't understand convection ovens.

Reading about how many letters you used to write is amazing. Even when you started "patching" them, that is still a huge amount of mental effort to sort all that out. I know, because even with the further convenience of email, I am shamefully behind on correspondence even with the few people I try to keep in touch with. A long way to go before reaching equilibrium with this new life cycle.