Week In Review 1

Hahaha. This post was supposed to have been posted yesterday, BUT I fell asleep last night just as I was getting ready to upload the pictures. It was one of those deep, “I’m pretty sure that I am snoring” sleeps, but I just couldn’t seem to wake up out of it.

Anyway, I am going to be doing one of these “Week in Review” posts each week, on Satudays or Sundays. I would like it to be a recap of moments from my week – simple day-to-day things that go into making a real life, not just a “hey, I have a great recipe for you” post. I had a hallmark birthday this past December and I was deeply impacted by it. One of the things that came out of that birthday was that I wanted to document this year of my life. It is important to me to not let this one slip by without making an accounting of the life I live.

This picture is of my three grandsons and me on my birthday. My whole family and I went to a place here in the Salt Lake area called Alcatraz Escape Games. It was a blast! We did the Harry Potter escape rooms and totally rocked it. I have to tell you, it took every single one of us, adults and kids, using our best thinking and observing skills to escape from the rooms before our time ran out.

You see that four-year old in my arms? He was sporting a brand new broken arm. Earlier in the day he had taken a flying leap off of a table at his house and landed on his arm. He broke both bones in his right forearm and had to be sedated so that the arm could be set. He had come straight from the hospital to the escape games and was still pretty buzzed from the sedation. He’s doing just fine now. The bones mended well, the cast is off and he is back to his old tricks.

Sourdough Starters

Last Sunday (February 25th) I mixed up two sourdough starters. It has been a few years since I had done this and I had some dry powdered starters that I had not yet used. They were old, but I hoped that they were still viable. Usually the first couple of days with a new starter is uneventful, so I didn’t really expect much action. However, on Tuesday, I was pleasantly surprised when one of the starters went crazy and bubbled all the way up the jar.

For me, it was really exciting! I love it when sourdough starters suddenly spring to life erupt out of seemingly nothing more than flour and water.

I dutifully fed my fledging starter on Tuesday and then waited for the next explosion of yeasty goodness, but nothing happened. I waited and waited all day, but….nothing. Nothing at all. It was dead, Jim. The end. The other starter never even got off the ground. It smells like sourdough, but there has not been any bubbly action. Gotta have the bubbly action or else it means nothing.

I still have the jars of starter sitting around. I am hoping that they will pick up some of the wild yeast spores that are naturally roaming around in the air and turn into crazy good sourdough starters. Just in case, I have ordered some more starters off of the internet. I like to order from Ed Wood at Sourdough International. I ordered from him the last time I did the sourdough thing and his starters were great. I’m excited to get rolling again. I’ll tell you more about it once I get everything up and going again.

Muffins

 

This week I also decided to make some muffins. It was a new recipe that I found and it sounded great! I was so excited to have a new recipe to share with you, until I tasted the first muffin. Ummm…it tasted really bad. So, I ate two more of the muffins, just to make sure I wasn’t misjudging them. Nope. The other two tasted even worse.

When my husband got home from work, I gave him one of the muffins. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just having an “off” day on my tasting judgement. John kept chewing and chewing and chewing on his first bite. He did not swallow. Finally after some more lengthy chewing I said, “It’s bad, isn’t it.”

“Yea. Pretty bad,” was all he said and then he finally swallowed. There were no more bites.

I’ll have to get back to you with a different recipe. I have an idea brewing in my head. I was looking at one of my ice cream recipes and suddenly realized that the flavor profile would be outstanding in a muffin. Keep your fingers crossed.

Babysitting

I babysat Friday for this cute kid in the picture. Whenever I babysit for him on a Friday, he asks me to take him to McDonald’s for lunch. It’s totally about the indoor playground experience and the new 30 minute friends that he will make while we are there. Food is pretty much a non-issue in the face of so many new friend opportunities.

And speaking of opportunities, if you are in the market for a new spouse in the grandparent age range, I think that you really ought to hit up your local McDonald’s on a Friday around lunch time. But, only if the McDonald’s has an indoor play ground. I have spent many Fridays at McDonald’s and I have observed that there are quite a few grandparents there with their grandchildren at lunchtime.

For that matter, I have also seen quite a few single parents at Micky D’s at lunchtime as well. The way that I know who is a single parent and who is not, is by listening to the conversations between the children and their parent. At some point the child or children will ask the parent if they can stay longer and the parent will say something to the effect, “No, I need to get you back to your Mom’s/Dad’s house.” It could be an opportunity for single parents to meet each other. Just saying.

Later in the afternoon my other two grandkadiddles came home from school. My oldest grandson has two chameleons, Sweetie and Costa Rico Suavé. Those names crack me up. Sweetie is female and she is pregnant. Rico is the male and he is very adventurous. We lost him one day in December and after looking high and low, we finally found him halfway up the Christmas tree. LOL.

This past Friday, Rico had an adventure of a different sort. My grandson put him on the back of the family dog, Rip, and let him hang out there for a couple of minutes. Rip is a really great dog and tolerates an abundance of his human’s antics, even chameleons hitching a ride on his back.

Other Pets in the News

As long as I am talking about grandkids and pets, this is my dog, Lexi. She is a Golden Retriever and we have had her for about 2 1/2 years. We love her to pieces.

The weekly highlight of Lexi’s life is when my grandkids come for dinner on Sunday’s. Usually at about 4:00 PM Lexi starts hanging out around the front door in anticipation of their arrival. She has an internal clock that lets her know that it is Sunday and that the boys will soon arrive. Her greatest joy is when they bring Rip with them.

For some reason, Lexi was a day early this week with her anticipation of the boys. Saturday afternoon she kept staring out of the side light and whining, apparently waiting for the boys. Finally, she laid down by the front door and waited and waited and waited. It was so sad watching her hope for their arrival fade away.

She is looking a tad raggedy in these pics because she had been out in the snow. It adds to the melancholy.

Orchids

I’ll end on a really happy note. My orchids are blooming like crazy! I LOVE orchids and have ten different orchid plants living at my house. I don’t know why they are so happy here. They don’t get any special treatment, but are quite hardy. They have tolerated much neglect, yet most of them manage to rebloom each year. Sometimes they will take turns blooming. Some will bloom one year and some will bloom the next year.

From what I have read, orchids like a period of 50-degree weather. It triggers them to send out flower stems. I don’t have a room that can provide that climate, so I line them all up in my north facing kitchen windows during the winter. They get exposed to enough cold against the windows to trigger them to bloom. The blooms are especially beautiful AND plentiful this year. Aren’t they beautiful!?

Upcoming

There will be a recipe post later this week. I have several in mind; we’ll have to see what shakes out. It might be cinnamon rolls, or it might be those muffins that have yet to be born, or it might be something Vietnamese, or it could be Arab rice, or maybe even something other worldly like ham and bean soup. hahaha!

I have been working intensely behind the scenes trying to get this blog in shape. I am converting all of my recipes into a new format and holy cow, what a job! It is a happy job, though. It’s probably taking a whole lot longer than it should, however, because I keep stopping and reading my old posts. I have found some real treasures and am so glad that I took the time to write about my life.

I also sometimes get lost in reading comments from many of you. Some of them make me smile and some of them bring tears to my eyes. Thank you so much for leaving your kind words on my posts. You’ve shared your lives with me and I am so grateful for it.

Talk to you soon. 🙂