Category: cooking/baking

Warm. Damp. Supposed to get into the 90s, with overcast but no rain. Pretty much how yesterday went. Muggy. Grey. Too warm. The heavy rain got into my Ranger and the carpet and floor mats got wet. I can’t get them to dry because the humidity has been so high.

I did my home stuff, then did a pickup. It was too far away for what I got, but I wasn’t paying attention when the auction closed and didn’t win the second item that would have make it worth while. That’s a bummer.

Made it to my client’s house and did some troubleshooting. Gear failure. Same mode as 4 or more other times. Don’t know what to do to prevent it that we haven’t already done. We’ll replace the gear again, and see what happens.

Picked up the kid and there had been another fight at her school. That’s about 4 in the last couple of days. We finally got a vague note from the Principal about how they don’t tolerate safety risks, but they actually do as the kids involved are still in school. The video is at least as dramatic as any viral school fight video. Principal doesn’t want the kids sharing the video around… yeah, that’ll stop. Our cops were there, and they did break the fights up, but kinda too little too late. D1 doesn’t have any clue to the root causes, but now there is retaliation for the earlier fights happening. So much fun. Mostly invaders fighting, with a couple of white boys involved too. Girls throwing vicious punches too, not the clutching and hair pulling you normally see. It will be nice when school is out for the summer.

While waiting for dinner to cook I started assembling one of the 3D printers. It’s a small Creality filament machine. I got it together and was just about to turn it on and start the alignment and checkout when dinner was ready. I’ll try to find some time today to get it finished. I’ll try to find some time today to do a bunch of stuff that has been pushed back. Hey, it could happen…

I should prioritize, but it seems that grabbing little bits of the various tasks when I can is about the best I can manage at the moment.

Do what you can. Stack some food this week, and some ways to cook it. Or learn to like the taste of bugs…

nick

Cooler, clear, and still damp. But should be nice later. It cleared out yesterday and turned into a nice day. Sunny, a bit gusty, and low 70s. More of that would be nice.

I spent most of yesterday at home. Did some domestic bliss, and will do more today. Put a pot roast in the slow cooker, and fixins in the bread machine and ended up with a fine dinner 6 hours later. And for not much effort. I tried to test the goodwill bread maker, but I’m obviously missing something about how it works. When I hit “start” I got a 6 hour timer. Should have been about 3 1/2 hours, so I dumped the bucket into my tried and true maker, and proceeded. I should d/l the manual and try again. I made “honey french” instead of my usual “old fashioned oatmeal” bread, and it came out great. Could have used a bit more salt, but other than that, soft airy inside, crunchy outside.

I also hit Costco for gas and groceries. Gas was $2.99, so 32c cheaper than Chevron. That makes a difference in an Expedition. Maybe not so much in a Geo Metro. Spent $400 at Costco and didn’t even overflow the cart. Two bales of Charmin, not on sale. It’s definitely not going on sale with the old frequency as I’m running out before the next sale. I have backup at the offsite location, so I am letting the home supply get low, hoping for the sale to stock up. Didn’t work this month so I sucked it up and paid the $30 per bale. Worse, it feels like there are fewer rolls now. I’ll have to check against the deep storage at some point. USED to be $18 on sale.

Between Costco and HEB, I spent about $800 this week on groceries and sundries. That would have been a HUGE week back in the Trump era.

I found the bin of medical supplies I was looking for. It didn’t have the stuff I needed in it. I’ll have to do some more organizing of medical preps at some point. I need to sort, label, and separate home and away kits. My two main home medical bags need to be refreshed too. I built them when the kids were little, and that was some time ago now…

There’s always more to do.

My auctioneer waved me off as they’ve been working on an in-home estate sale this week. I’ll just stack the bins and have more for next week I guess. I didn’t win anything in the last couple of days’ auctions either so I find myself without any pickup pressure today. I still have a couple of things to pickup, but I won’t be rushing all over the place.

Plan for the day is continue cleaning the house and putting stuff away, as well as processing auction wins, and outgoing auction stuff. Maybe plant some stuff in the garden if the soil isn’t too muddy, and I don’t run out of daylight. The water feature pond pump needs to be fixed or replaced soon too. The thing is getting stagnant. It’s part of the house and yard that I’ve been neglecting in favor of the BOL. Too much to do, not enough time or motivation.

All I can do is keep plugging away. At least I don’t have livestock making demands on my time too. Oh, I do have the kids, and they do need an hour or more of ferrying around every day, and it’s right in my most productive part of the day too. Oh well. I’ll miss it when it’s gone, I’m sure of that. Time is flying by as it is.

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Stack, organize, refresh, build, renew, network, upskill, downsize, and monetize… while you can.

nick

It certainly wasn’t warm and overcast yesterday. Weather liars are liars. Dunno what it will be like today, but I’m hoping for more cool and clear, but not quite ‘cold’ and clear. We’ll see.

I did auction and kid stuff yesterday. Had my drop off pushed to today, but made a couple of pickups. Then it was Tuesday night, and for some reason that means a lot of local auctions closing all at the same time. I did manage to win a few preps. Couple more kerosene heaters and some propane hoses. Some bleach and cleaners. Couple small things for the BOL. Couple things for my non-prepping hobby. Another 100w solar panel. I passed on the beekeeper stuff. Keeping bees looks like a lot more work and trouble than I have time for right now.

I passed on the chicken stuff too, but there has been a fair amount of it. Waterers and feeders, incubators, automatic coop doors, water heaters for their water bucket… even chicken plucker machines. Nesting boxes and shredded bedding too. I think the reality of chicken raising led to a lot of stuff being returned. Some is estate stuff, but the majority is returns. My thanks to @stevef for his ‘slice-o-life’ tales from the coop. I’d like to have eggs, but keeping the chickens sounds like a million ways to screw up to me, and a big project. It’s definitely one of those things you should start BEFORE the need arises, but I’m already a bit past “maxed”.

Which is why you need a network and a community. No one can do it all by themselves. It’s why humans are social creatures who form groups and bonds- so we can work together.

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Dinner last night was a bit of an experiment. It worked out so I’m sharing. I’d previously cut some thin pork chops from the “dark meat” end of the pork loin, pan-fried them and served them to the kids successfully. I was looking at a pork shoulder roast (pork butt) in the fridge, thinking about breaking it down into my normal big chunks for pulled pork or carnitas, when I thought I could carve off a couple of big steaks. They’d be like the “shoulder chops” sold as cheaper alternative to pork chops, only sliced thicker. So I boned out the roast, and sliced off a couple of 1″ thick steaks from the biggest chunk of meat. Battered and put in pork fat in the big cast iron skillet…

Well, the batter was just panko crumbles, so really just ‘breading’ and it didn’t stick, but the steaks browned up nicely anyway. For sides I did instant potatoes (baby reds, mashed), and pork gravy from a packet. Probably could have used some more color on the plate, but it was all delicious, and I should have cooked a third steak. Kids were licking the plates. One more cheap meal in the rotation, hooray.

While I had the pan hot, I cut the rest of the roast into big chunks and browned them for carnitas. 2 3/4 pounds will go in the slow cooker today, the other 2 3/4 pounds got vac sealed and frozen.

Preps used- cheap meat, instant potatoes, instant gravy mix, cast iron cookware, and saved up bacon fat. A can of peas would have been nice too.

There you have it, another cheap meal that was simple and delicious. I used Adkins spice mix on the pork but it’s basically just salt, pepper, garlic, and maybe some citrus zest? KISS principle in action.

Cast iron cleaned up easy so I’ve got a decent ‘seasoning’ going on that piece too. Love it when I get a chance to use a piece in every day cooking.

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So, stack some stuff, but also try some new things. You might find a new fan favorite.

nick