Less Hustle More Coffee

Sunday night, George fixed an amazing set up for Fondue! The meats included chicken, steak, and kielbasa. Veggies were broccoli, carrots, and mushrooms. We each had 4 fondue forks. It was best if we each used 3 quite honestly. There were 3 of us and so anywhere from 9 to 12 sticks at once. Having only 9 worked better than 12! lol.

The sauces left to right: “Granda sauce” which is really ketchup and Worcestershire sauce mixed, mustard and horse radish, barbecue sauce, creamy horseradish sauce, and curry sauce. My favorites are the curry and the creamy horseradish.

I dip my kielbasa in the mustard and horseradish mix. The chicken and veggies are best in the curry sauce, and the steak is awesome in the creamy horseradish – which is usually sour cream and horseradish I believe.

It’s broth that we cook it in. Usually he has a beef or chicken (or combo) with scallions floating in. Very simple and easy. Just broth, raw meat, veggies, and it’s a very low fat way to get to protein and veggies in without a lot of carbs. The sauces are important but you can also go light on the sauce. These sauces weren’t too horribly fattening anyway. The creamy horseradish probably the worst.

This is often a New Year’s Eve meal for us. If we have all day and don’t have to work we start early around 2 or 3 with the cheese fondue (with special gourmet cheeses melted with white wine) with cubed lightly toasted French bread and apple chunks. Broccoli also can be good in it. Then about 6 or 7 we do the meat fondue. Then about 10 or so we’d have champagne, and dark chocolate fondue (Hershey’s syrup and a flavored liquor of your choice- like Cointreau for example. My favorite is to drizzle it on cheese cake bites – but usually we dip in strawberries and bananas.

I was worried that Mom wouldn’t take to this very well but she did great. At 77 and with macular degeneration, she was still able to see if things were cooked properly and could get the meat on the fork. We all lost meat off our sticks a time or two, lol.

So you DO have to be careful with the raw meat. Make sure that people use the long forks only for the raw meat cooked in the pot and the regular forks for actually eating it after it’s done. And no regular forks can go in the fondue pot. That way no one gets bacteria and no one’s fork goes back into the pot after eating with it spreading germs.

Relaxing but Productive Sunday

Well, I slept in til 7:11 yesterday as I had mentioned in yesterday’s blog. So going to bed last night was not easy. I played candy crush until my eyes got heavy. This morning I missed my alarm somehow and the back up alarm didn’t go off. My third back up (George) woke me up 45 min later. So running a bit late but was able to recoup some of the time by not making coffee (George did), hurrying in the shower, and only reading one chapter of the Bible instead of two – the only way I got away with that is it was a really long one chapter! lol

I was able to get all my notes consolidated. Not really sure I’m happy with using Evernote for it, but for now it will work. I want to get a few things into “Numbers” which is an excel sheet – for organizing some of my thoughts for blogging and vlogging, but that is for a snow day I guess. Right now Evernote works great. Just “free fields” of typing and the free version works across two devices.

Felt good to get all these little pieces of paper off my desk. It’s all those little papers you write down when you have thoughts and don’t want to forget them in the mornings when the mind is awake but fresh. About 15 of those notes had accumulated plus a bunch of things I wanted to do research on and such. So all that cleared up.

Hurricane Ida

Mom and watched Hurricane coverage yesterday. We watched Reed Timmer as he drove around in the eye wall (yes, he is labeled as crazy and used to hearing that as he is daring). He was wearing a helmet in the car. He was driving around trying to find the best place to be for protection. Roofs were being blown off in front of him, signs being blown out, tin roofs blowing by him, and telephone poles snapping beside him. The wall turned north and he decided to follow it and then the coverage started going out and then dinner was ready. But that was crazy. I used my cell phone to capture a few seconds and posted on instagram. But you can find him on Facebook and on YouTube (both at different times of the hurricane) and see what we saw. I follow him because he also does live tornado intercepts. He keeps me on the edge of my seat. I read his biography, earlier in the year. He gets an adrenaline rush from all this. He sells some footage. He tapes exclusive segments for various stations. He often got out of the car to tape some segments to sell later. There were more exciting parts than what I caught on video with my cell- but you can follow him if you want! He is a meteorologist and a very knowledgeable one too. But too daring for me.

Fall Phone background

You can also find this on Canva. I am starting to change over to “fall”. I ordered a cheap but cute fall phone cover -it’s actually a pearly leopard design. And also some plastic placemats as mine are cloth and we are very messy! So since we are eating at the table every night with Mom here! I’ll use the other ones in the sun room and the new ones in the dining room. They are reversible but a cute design. I’ll take pics when they come in.

I changed my purse over to cowboy leopard type look – it’s supposed to look like cowhide I guess. My purse from Marleylily (if I spelled that right). This weekend I’ll do the switchover to fall decor.

Better head off to work now. I will not be blogging tomorrow so I can go in early to kinda make up for Momma eye doc time one afternoon a month. I’ll also have to work longer some this week as she has a doc appt one day for her heart test.

Here’s the To Do List. I left check marks on things so you can see I actually made some progress! I even made our 30th anniversary plans. Pretty much only done by be. George didn’t really show a lot of interest in helping to plan ::sigh:: But we’ll go and eat. I was thinking since it was our 30th it should be something special – more than just eating out. I don’t really think he wants to spend the money though. I was thinking an overnight would be fun. He pretty much just left it to me to choose: an overnight with a less fancy dinner OR a nice fine dinner out and excursion by day. Well ok. A day excursion it is! How romantic does all that sound? It is what it is. We’ll go on a day outing and come home like always. We never do gifts so I guess we won’t do this one either. We have just about anything we want except I don’t have an RV, lol. So it doesn’t sound like 30 will be extra special anniversary as I had imagined- just an average anniversary, and it seems he has taken very little interest in it – at least in the planning. So I just planned it myself. We will go, eat, get it done, and come home. Simple. Done. And it will be just like all the rest of them. Just like it always is. Why be different at 30 years? You are what you are. The same. lol. Why should I feel any different on the 30th one?

That said I will be back mid-week. Lord willing and the Creeks don’t rise – and they might as Tropical Storm Ida is headed our way! We can get a couple of inches out of it – so maybe not too bad. But strong storms may be a threat with spin off tornadoes. The last tropical storm of any significance, brought us Maisy. I miss having a dog but now is not the time. Anyway, God will provide the timing too.

Right now we have to put our lives on hold a bit and focus on Mom, and without help from my sister, I might add. They are still estranged and so it’s up to us to be the Atlas that holds her universe together. And that is fine. I’ve learned to try to understand and forgive what is mine to forgive. God holds the rest. He may not be as kind as me in the issue but that will be up to him. I will not judge. I will say that we really could have used the help. But it was not to be. It’s all on our shoulders and we will honor her and get things done. And then we will get a dog. One day and go on about our dreams, whatever they are.

Ya’ll have a great day. See ya midweek!