I don’t think I would try it on ice cream. I picked up some cheap chicken strips last week and the first batch I made I was a bit underwhelmed. Today I loaded them up with melted cheese and Hot Salsa. Much better this time.

But really, I didn’t want to talk/write about cooking. Did you ever notice that some things are just better when combined with something else. A warm and sunny day is better than a cold and sunny day. Even though we like the sunny day part, the warmth adds something to it. Add to that a day off and the ability to spend it in the warmth and sun you get something better. Add in some good friends or family. Some fun things to do. You almost have a vacation…

Sometimes adding things doesn’t make it better. Sometimes it is worse. (try the salsa with Ice cream and let me know what you think.)

And there are the times you know what you want to add to something, but it just isn’t available. Things could be better. So much better. You know it would be, but the situation does not allow the addition of that item.

All this is life. We live with what we have. We take the good and the bad. Try to combine things to make it better. Try to tolerate when things don’t go quite right. And hope that we have the combinations that make life better.

Ok, some people won’t find this funny, but I did. I think my daughter the Star Wars fan should see this one.

Try this, it won’t embed. It is a 5 second film called “Mommy Knows Best”

This was fun too…

https://youtube.com/embed/MKdGaGuggw0

When I went to work this morning, I just logged off of a working internet connection. When I got home this evening, the connection no longer worked. After spending quite a bit of time on the phone with my provider, the only solution was to re-install the software. It worked (as you may be able to tell), but I really don’t know why it worked. I really don’t know why the connection failed in the first place.

It is a Cell Modem. Open it up, dial the number — Name and password are automatic. I can’t see what went wrong. Neither could the tech person. I think the software reload was grasping at straws. Anyway, I’ve updated to the latest version, so I hope it will be good for a few months.

Oh well, I still got my laundry done today.. I just wish I had self cleaning clothes. And of course permanent press that was actually permanent. Buttons that stayed on new shirts! I wonder why my dark pants (black and blue) seem to shrink more than the browns, tans and beiges. They all started out the same brand and size. For some reason they all seem to shrink in the length.

It is about time to start looking for the signs of spring in the area. I will have to keep an eye out for the early spring flowers. Some of the bulbs my wife planted years ago are due up as soon as the ground gets a little warm. I’m not sure what they all are, but there are some that will bloom when there is still snow on the ground. A little frost is nothing to these very hearty flowers. Then of course there are the crocuses, daffodils, tulips. Spring wild flowers and others.

By mid March we should start to see the return of the Buzzards. There should be a robin or two soon. Of course the early spring peepers (frogs) when the ice melts off the ponds and creeks. Will we see a Maple Syrup Festival in our little town this year? What about returning ducks landing in the flooded fields? Spring is just around the corner and I am waiting.

Other memories fill my head. Longer days, earlier sunrises are things that make me think of spring. I’ll let you know when I see my first sign of spring.

Second game night last night wasn’t. We had the wrap up from the last game we played and then we would start my little session. Nope, we needed some characters made up, and we were hoping to have a few other people show up. In the end, we sat around and talked a bit (a lot) and made up a couple of new characters. Maybe next week.

Today didn’t turn out as planned either. I had all sorts of things I was going to do, and ended up doing none of them Oh well, it will still be there tomorrow.

I really need to go food shopping tomorrow. I don’t have much left in the kitchen. I can’t get by on chicken or fish with nothing to go with it very long. I need spice, herbs, garlic and onions… Cheese please! Some vegetables. Taters?

Since my youngest went off to college, I don’t shop nearly as much. But then when I do go, I need everything. I just don’t want to have so much on hand it all goes bad before I can use it. Maybe I should shop every other day or so… I’ll have to think about that at least for the fresh stuff.

Game night 1 of this weekend is finished. Played a couple of fun games, had some fun food (brownies are always good), and fun/good friends. We played/talked well into the early morning.

It was snowing and blowing in the area so I expected a treacherous drive on the way home. The roads were turning nasty on the way there, I only expected them to get worse. But since we didn’t have more than 2 or 3 more inches of snow, I thought I would be able to navigate all the roads roads I travel.

Not more than 1/2 mile outside of town, heading west, there was a car in the ditch being pulled out by a wrecker. I had to wait there for a while, since there was nowhere to back up and take a different route. Looks like I had to be a bit more cautious.

I finally headed off the main road and on to the back county road system. Drifts were piling up on the first North/South road I traveled on. Since it looked like they were straight across the road, I didn’t think I would have any trouble on the East/West roads. I was wrong, a bigger drift was on that road… Then an even bigger drift on the next North/South road. Obviously the wind was blowing in every direction.

Made it home in one piece. Happy I have the new tires on the truck. Happy I have good friends to talk to. Life while not perfect, for today it is good.

Being sick for three days threw off my already crummy sleep schedule. I was up way too late last night, and I got tired way too early this evening (5:30ish). I ate some dinner and got a second wind. I sure hope it lasts until a decent hour to go to bed, but not too late that I will need a second wind to get through tomorrow. Does that even make sense? Or are these the ramblings of an exhausted individual?

Someday I would love to get on a semi-normal sleep pattern. This stay up late, get up early, get to sleep earlier, get up even earlier pattern is not very good. Any hints that don’t involve some sort of medication would be appreciated.

I was strolling around the internet (I don’t surf, that just goes too fast), and I found a few interesting things.

On this site, I found two t-shirts I liked. The first was with Bela Lugosi as Dracula holding the head of a more recent movie vampire (yes, just the head). The saying was “Dracula never sparkled.” Struck my sense of humor today. The other shirt on the same site was “Meat is Murder. Quick eat the evidence.” So today, I guess my humor is heading toward the violent stage. “Here’s Johnny.” 😈

Ok, I knew somebody had the list of what emoticons actually works here. Ok, I found them, thanks again Derek!! Why can’t all of the various chat area, blog sites, bulletin boards, social networks, ect. use the same symbols. Why do they work sometimes and not others. Even being a technical person by trade, I get sick of technology… 😡

Are we headed for a new form of the WWW? Kind of discussed this last night with a friend or few. Mostly about if Facebook would start charging for use. Currently that is just a malicious rumor floating around, but as was said in the conversation, Facebook and other sites like that need some cash to exist. Now this article is more about premium content, but I wonder what premium content is. I already pay for my web access, about as much as I would pay for Cable/Satellite TV, Cell Phone usage ect., so I wonder how much more this would eventually cost. Like most people in the middle class, my budget is strained from all angles. I don’t have pay TV for a number of reason, but one is I really don’t want to pay for TV.

If it ever comes to the point that I have to pay for TV, I’ll stop watching. I’ve said before there isn’t much I want to watch, so it doesn’t make any difference to me. I have internet access to keep up with friends, family, work and news of the day. I pay for that access to offset other areas I no longer use or pay for. If the outlets I use start charging me, on top of my access charge, I may stop using them. Unless I become independently wealthy. I can always go to the library to pick up newspapers and magazines. My taxes go to keep those organizations functioning, so I will use them. I can use other means to contact friends and family. But then as I said earlier, sometimes the technology bugs me….

In what may be a good use for Ebooks, I found this article. Textbooks that can be modified or commented on by the professors/teachers. Cool stuff. I remember in school carting around a lot of books. And then in college pay tons of money for lots of books. Of course the teachers would always comment or add to the material present in the book. This forced the student to carry even more. I like the idea of getting this all on an E-book level and allow the students to carry around less material. Save trees and backaches. Now if they would only come up with a way to make that stupid textbook cheaper.

One final note. I went to the oriental restaurant on Sunday with my daughter. My taste buds were so messed up, I left the fortune cookies in the truck. Since my taste returned today I ate the cookies. The first fortune I had was “Everything will now come your way.” The lucky numbers on this fortune just happened to be the birthdays (day of the month) of my four daughters, myself and my late wife. That is six numbers. The estimated jackpot for the Mega Millions jackpot is now 83 million for tonight’s drawing. I met my late wife in 1983… Is that a sign? I’m not sure I believe in stuff like that, but I bought the ticket anyway. I used my late wife’s birthday as the powerball and put the rest of the days in the regular numbers. One final little note: that combination of numbers never won the jackpot….

I’ve been under the weather the past few days with a cold that just wouldn’t give up. My nose has finally stopped run 24 hours a day, and my throat is allowing me to talk with a normal voice again. No fever, no body ache, just headache, sore throat and a nose that wouldn’t quit.

The worst part about all of this is that I lost my sense of taste. I realized with the stuffed nose, it would be cut down, but it is almost non-existent even today after my nose cleared up.

Went to a Oriental buffet today with my daughter and everything was bland. All the chicken dishes tasted the same. The lo mien was ok, but I think I liked the texture of the noodles. I couldn’t taste spice, salt or other flavors. I wasn’t sure if this was the restaurant or not. They had sushi bar, so I had some of that. Every piece I had tasted just like the one before. The ginger had little zip. The wasabi just cleared my sinuses more, but it had no flavor. Then I realized it wasn’t the restaurant. If ginger slices and wasabi have no flavor, it has to be outside of the food. It has to be me.

For someone who likes to figure out all of the different flavors that go into making food taste good, this is almost worse than the being sick part. I never lost my appetite, but the food since last Wednesday evening has not had any appeal. If this goes on much longer, I think I will have no problem losing weight. Why eat when everything is missing its flavor?

Here are some funny things that are happening with my taste buds:

Cola tastes like lemon-lime drinks tastes like slightly sweetened carbonated water.

Orange juice, cranberry juice, grape juice and sugar water all taste the same.

The only thing that made fish and chicken taste different was the texture.

Potato chips aren’t as good if you can’t taste the salt.

With no taste going on, mushrooms are nasty.

Noodles were ok, but I wasn’t expecting a lot of flavor from them.

Tea tasted just like it should today, before today with no sense of smell, I was drinking hot water.

If this lasts too much longer, I will have quite a list.

I noticed that I was getting hit by a lot of search engines today. They were all finding the same post. Last year around this time I started to review all of the fast food fish sandwiches in our area. Guess what, there is a big search going on for fast food fish. A new fast food place opened in our area, so I may have to review the Sonic fish sandwich. But for now, I’m going to go in a different direction or TANGENT if you will.

Eating fish during lent? Why?? I did a quick search and found out is was more out of ‘eating from the land’ than skipping meat. Apparently (I’m not sure about this yet, the web is full of useless information too), eating fish derived from fasting. Apparently you could eat the food you gathered during a fast. This included vegetables, fruits and the like. It also included fish, since anyone could catch fish. Meat from other animals was the province of the well to do or wealthy.

Other sites have said that this developed to allow the working people something to eat with a high level of protean, just to keep their strength and let them keep working the fields. I’m not really sure about the why’s yet, but I will continue to work on it. That question just got me curious.

And one more tangent…. Easy fish recipe. Works for most firm fleshed fish (Salmon, catfish, ocean perch, red snapper, walleye, ect.)

Aluminum foil
Fish fillets
Tomato slices
Onion slices
Salt
Pepper
Sliced garlic if desired…
Oil of choice or butter

Layer on foil (one serving per foil pouch) from the bottom up
onion slices, tomato slices, fish fillets, salt, pepper, garlic, tomato slices, onion slices. Drizzle with oil or add butter pats. Close up foil. Cook…

Over hot coals 10 -15 minutes per inch flip about halfway through cooking time.
(open one and see if fish is starting to get opaque on the first side, flaky on the second side.) Or use gas grill, or cook in oven preheated to 375.

Wonderful stuff…