Three Beautiful Things 02-13-2026: Blood Draw and Stable Numbers, Will Vincent Van Gogh Help Me Keep Track of My Checkbook?, Burgers at the Elks

1. Unlike yesterday morning, today I unfolded myself slowly to a sitting position on the edge of the bed at 6:45 a.m. and gave myself a little pep talk, creaked liked the rusted Tin Man to my feet, brushed my teeth, ran a brush through my hopeless hair, and talked myself into getting on the ball and driving to CdA for labs. 

I let Gibbs out, put food in his dish and Copper's, filled a water bottle, gathered up the other things I needed and at just after 7:30 I blasted down Cameron Ave, merged onto I-90, and continued to wake up as I drove over the 4th of July Pass, into Coeur d'Alene, and eased into a parking spot at the lab. 

I'd been fasting for twelve hours and once I was in the waiting room, I could see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: soon after the blood draw and peeing in a cup, I'd be seated at a window, having made my order at the titanic Big Blue Coffee Co., and I'd be eating a heavenly chocolate chip croissant and drinking a velvety 16 oz latte. 

All that happened but the really gratifying payoff was still to come. 

A couple hours or so later, my lab results started parachuting into my phone and I am thrilled to say that from my non-professional, amateur nephrologist point of view, the numbers looked solid and stable I rode the wave of joy I felt receiving that news on through the rest of the day. 

2. I didn't leave Cd'A right away. I had a few things to do: I fueled the Camry at Costco; I made some delicious purchases at Trader Joe's; I went through the car wash at Squeaky's; I drove home. 

I discovered yesterday that I have either misplaced my checkbook in the house or else it fell into the wastebasket near where I write out checks and is now in a plastic garbage bag deep in landfill somewhere. 

I had no problem determining what checks were unwritten in the book of checks I can't find and called the credit union and put a stop payment on those checks just to be on the safe side. 

Soon after that, a small parcel arrived on the porch. 

It was my new checkbook cover. 

My checks will now be in a cover decorated with Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night. 

My hope is that Van Gogh's bold colors and shapes will make my checkbook stand out in the midst of all the other mundane colors and shapes in the area where I pay bills and make it less likely that I won't be able to find it. 

3. Nancy, Ed, and I met at the Kellogg Elks tonight for burgers. It was a relaxing and fun time. We saw some longtime friends. We had superb conversations. And, the real topper? The burgers were awesome and I thoroughly enjoyed the fries. We strode across the street after dinner to The Lounge and had more fun. I saw Becky for the first time in ages. We had fun yakkin' with Bob. Men flew at high speeds on a tiny sled down a steep, curvy ice course on the television. 

Oh! And, by the way, after I returned home from CdA, Debbie called and we got to spend some time yakkin' and not figuring anything out. It's good we're both used to not having things figured out and can move forward not knowing what we're doing. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-12-2026: No Blood Draw Today, Updates from Debbie and *People* Interviews Our Niece, Tofu is Faithful and Came Through Again Today

 1. It's blood draw time again. I have an appointment with Dr. Bieber a week from today and, ideally, I would have gone to Coeur d'Alene this morning and had it done. 

I need to be finished with these blood draws by no later than about 9:00 a.m. because I can't take my 8:00 meds until the blood draw is completed. 

Haven't I explained this in other blog posts?

Starting in about July of 2025, I began waking up every morning with a mild headache and most mornings I was unsteady on my feet and my mind was foggy. These symptoms always diminished as the day progressed and didn't keep me from doing the things I needed to do: cook, feed Copper and Gibbs, shop, drive to CdA for blood draws and Spokane for appointments and specialty blood draws there, nor did these symptoms stop me from having fun on Winning Wednesdays! 

I did, however, discover at some point, that everything went better if I slept a little longer in the morning than usual.

For quite a while, it was my habit to be up and an 'em around six in the morning, sometimes a little later. 

That wasn't working any longer and it has helped me a lot to sleep until 8 o'clock or so.  

This morning I woke up around 7. It would have been a great time to get up, take care of Gibbs and Copper, and head to CdA.

I knew, however, I needed more sleep and I didn't get up until about 8:30 or so -- too late for labs. 

Therefore, I'll go to CdA tomorrow, no matter what! 

2. My need for more sleep turned out to be fortuitous.

Just as I was sitting on the edge of the bed, petting Copper, and clearing the cobwebs out of my head, Debbie called. 

She updated me on what's going on in her world, which I always appreciate learning, and I let her know that I was dong much better than I had been over the weekend. 

Adrienne and Jack will be away, starting Saturday, so for the following week she'll be taking care of Elloise and the dog and two cats of the house. 

Later in the day, I discovered, just as Debbie texted me about it, that our niece Allison is featured in a People online story. She just gave birth to her second baby and she had posted a video on Tik Tok about her postpartum meal prep -- 72 hours' worth of food. 

Someone at People saw the video. People reached out to her and the article is up. It's right here. 

If you follow this link, keep scrolling down. You'll see the video, a handful of pictures, and the story, about twenty paragraphs long. 

3. I hadn't had the wok out for a while. Today, I took a break from fixing soups and because I had tofu in the fridge, I fixed a vegetarian stir fry.

I tried something a little different in making this stir fry. 

I fried the tofu first and once it was lightly golden, I went to work on the white onion, celery, sugar snap peas, green beans, mushrooms, and yellow pepper. I also cooked a batch of basmati rice. 

Eating this stir fry, it made me very happy to know that my forty-two year relationship with tofu is secure and that tofu always comes through for me, even if I am neglectful and forget for months at time to buy some and bring it home. 

Tofu is faithful. 

Tofu is always in my corner. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-11-2026: Getting Out Again, Lunch and Reels, Dream Pop Group Luna Takes Me Back to LCC

 1. Driving to Spokane yesterday, navigating the night driving just fine, and feeling so much better being out and about than I had felt at home inspired me, on the spur of the moment, early this afternoon, to drive to the Coeur d'Alene Casino and enjoy lunch and spin some reels for an hour or so and drive back home. I felt great the whole time. 

2. I ate a simple and very satisfying lunch: beef stew, garlic bread, and a half a garden salad. I then had a fun time playing a variety of machines (low stakes, as always) and managed to come home with a little more money in my wallet than I left with. I did what I can to protect myself and others against illness. I masked up and wore vinyl gloves while on the casino floor. 

It was all very relaxing and I had an easy drive home. 

3. With some intensity, I've been listening to classical music daily, usually for hours at a time, and I've been listening to a lecture series, doing my best to learn how to listen to and understand this magnificent music. 

Today, I took a day off. 

I returned to a LoFi subgenre sometimes called Dream Pop and listened to one of my favorite albums, Luna's Bewitched. The subjects of several of the songs are low energy slackers. They actually remind me of some of the guys I got to know, especially at LCC, in the classes I taught starting 35+ years ago. Nice guys. Mellow.  Non-committal. Wanting to get along, enjoy music, play hacky sack, toss frisbees, smoke weed, eat shrooms, go to shows, play around a little with ideas in class, but, all in all, pretty much coasting. They were chill. Those with dogs treated them very well. 

Sometimes some of these guys would drop out and then reappear again and, in many cases, something clicked. They'd become hungry for something more than chillin' and slackin' and started to add some seriousness to their lives.  

They taught me a lot, without knowing they did, about being young, male, and a bit at bay -- cagey enough to find ways to get by -- get food, fuel, weed, digs, cds, cassettes, into shows -- and I found myself not wanting to set them straight with proclamations about "when I was your age", but actually you know, I envied them a little bit. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-10-2026: Marshalling Energy, Unexpectedly Superb Conversations, The Concert

 1. Today, for about eight hours, I fervently hoped that I would feel energetic and well enough to drive to Gonzaga University to attend this evening's Gonzaga Symphony. I ate a huge breakfast. I rested. I napped. I did all I could to charge my inward batteries.

I succeeded. 

By about 4:00 or so I felt a surge of confidence that I could make the drive, be awake enough to enjoy the concert, and return home safely. 

My confidence was warranted and I arrived plenty early to the Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, purchased a snack, drank a bottle of water, and found the seat I had purchased for this concert. 

2. My good fortune increased when the woman whose seat was next to mine asked me if I was connected to anyone playing in the Gonzaga Symphony.

I replied, "No. I just love music. How about you?"

She replied, "No. I play violin in the Spokane Symphony."

It was about ten or fifteen minutes before the concert began, and we had a superb conversation about the Spokane Symphony's program on Jan 31, books, theater, Shakespeare, music, movies, Slings and Arrows, and other stimulating and fascinating topics until the conductor strode to the podium. 

We visited more at the intermission, making this a most unexpectedly satisfying evening. I thoroughly enjoyed these two conversations completely focused on the arts and nothing else. 

We didn't learn a single thing about each other on a personal level, aside from learning about books we'd read, music we'd listened to, movies we'd seen, and a little bit about our professional lives -- mine as an instructor, hers as a musician. 

So rare. 

3. I loved the concert. 

The orchestra was, at least to me, huge, and most of the musicians were students, joined by some professional musicians to help fill out sections that needed them. 

I enjoyed the youth of this orchestra and enjoyed their verve and spiritedness as they played Mozart, Mussorgsky, and Saint-Saens. All three compositions, The Overture to Don Giovanni, Night on Bald Mountain, and Danse Bachanale, were energetic, fun to listen to (and must have been fun to play), and made the first half of the concert full of vitality and energy. 

The second half of the concert delivered not only profound vitality, but exquisite virtuosity. 

It featured one of the world's very finest violinists, Gil Shaham, as the violin soloist in Brahms' gorgeous Violin Concerto in D Major. 

I'd love to be able to describe Gil Shaham's command of the violin and his enthusiastic playing of Brahms' masterpiece, but I don't have words. 

All I can really say is this: over the week or so preceding this concert, I listened repeatedly to this concerto on Spotify. I wanted to gain some familiarity with it -- I'd never listened to it before -- and those many listenings paid off as I was able to follow the concerto fairly well and anticipate a bit of what lay ahead as the piece progressed. 

I felt especially profound job being in a concert hall, hearing this concerto live. 

I shook inside hearing Brahms' concerto filling the concert hall. The live orchestra in support of Gil Shaham's masterful performance made the whole experience rich, full, and gorgeous and I simply did not want this concerto to end. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-09-2026: I Live With a Mild Common Cold x 3

 Debbie read in my blog that I was living with a low level common cold and asked how I was doing. 

I answered:

1. No coughing. 

2. Infrequent sneezing and nose blowing. Breathing passages almost 100% clear.

3. Low energy. 

So, the most ambitious thing I did today was unload and load the dishwasher about three times, taking care of the dishes I used to prep food for the Super Bowl. 

Otherwise, I fed my cold, took a few naps, listened to music, worked puzzles, and read some articles. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-07-2026: Fatigue, Fixing Food for the Super Bowl, Seattle Wins and So Do I!

 1.I'm tired. I'm going to keep this one short. I've been living with a minor common cold the last couple of days: Some coughing, sneezing off and on, never quite reached sore throat level, but mostly I've been wanting to rest and sleep. 

2.I did my best to marshal enough energy to make a Greek Salad Layered Dip and chicken wings, both buffalo and naked, to take to our Super Bowl family dinner. I struggled in the kitchen with mismeasurements, dropped utensils, and a tired back, but I completed my assignments and Paul, Carol, and Christy all said they enjoyed what I made. I was anxious since I seemed to be sleepwalking while I cooked. 

3. I enjoyed what the others made: flourless crackers, spinach artichoke dip, buffalo chicken dip, vegetable plate, deviled eggs, and whatever else I've forgotten. 

It's been ten years since I've watched a Super Bowl. It, too, was a family gathering. Debbie and I watched Denver defeat Carolina with Molly and Hiram. 

So, even though I've lost interest in football, it was fun being with Christy, Paul, and Carol. I've always enjoyed strong defensive efforts by teams, and today, Seattle certainly scratched that itch. 

I also enjoyed winning the wager I laid down Wednesday and look forward to returning to Spokane Tribe Casino to pick up my $143.50! 

Three Beautiful Things 02-07-2026: Spokane Public Radio Appointment Listening, Preparing to Cook Tomorrow, A Sustaining Soup Tonight

1, On the weekends now, when I can, I have two appointment radio listening times, both on Spokane Public Radio's classical music station. 

On Saturday at noon, the station airs a program called "Concert of the Week" featuring a recorded version of a local classical performance from the previous week. 

Today, the featured concert was the symphony performance I attended a week ago at the Fox Theater.

Listening to it today moved me again. I enjoyed taking all of the music more deeply into myself. 

I also appreciated the power of having heard the concert live, in person. 

The music itself resonated in the Fox Theater powerfully, at times making me feel like I was in a cathedral. That particular experience couldn't, nor would I expect it to, be duplicated in our living room with the music coming over mediocre speakers. 

The other appointment listening for me comes on at 10:00 Sunday morning. It's Leonard Oakland's two  hour program called. "Morning Classical with Leonard Oakland". 

I was a student of Leonard's at Whitworth and during the two years I taught full time at Whitworth (nearly forty-four years ago) he was the chair of the English Dept and an important mentor to me. 

We were also friends. 

So, yes, I thoroughly enjoy Leonard's choices of music and enjoy his poetry moment. 

I also enjoy hearing his voice, experiencing his mind at work again, and having the double pleasure of enjoying him in the moment and being transported to my days in his company  at Whitworth decades ago. 

2.  I lost interest in football about ten years ago or so. I enjoy making an ah what the heck wager on the Super Bowl like I did on Wednesday, but each year I no longer plan on watching the game. 

But, Carol is in charge of Super Bowl Sunday's family dinner and she decided to assign us all Super Bowl snack food to bring and we'll have the game on with the option of watching it or not while we nosh away.  

She assigned me to bring chicken wings and a Greek dip, so I spent some time today making sure I have party wings on hand (I do) and then filling out an order at Walmart to include items I need to make the dip. 

It will be an easy food prep day tomorrow and I look forward to enjoying our food and seeing how I respond to being in the presence of a football game again. It's been quite a while! 

3. When I was checking out our party wing supply in the basement freezer, I looked at quarts of turkey stock/broth Debbie had made and decided I would make a soup with one of the quarts tonight. 

I decided that the broth would be the only meat in the soup and that I'd like the vegetables to be in larger chunks than I usually fix.

So, I thawed the turkey broth. I cooked chopped white onion and celery together and then added sliced mushrooms and before long I added the broth/stock, chopped russet potatoes, and pretty good sized chunks of carrots. 

I salt and peppered the soup, let it cook until the vegetables were tender, ladled myself a bowl, and decided I'd like the soy goodness of Bragg's Liquid Aminos as another seasoning. 

That worked. 

The soup worked. 

It warmed me as I live with a low grade cold. 

I've been eating a lot of soup lately and it's definitely feeding my body and my soul. 

That works, too. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-06-2026: Quick Stuffed Pepper Soup, An Hour at The Lounge, Debbie Called and Sent Me Pet Pictures

 1. I had one red pepper stuffed with cinnamon, cumin, and cloves seasoned ground lamb along with onion, garlic, roasted slivered almonds and basmati rice left over from Sunday's dinner and I made a terrific soup with it. It was simple. I sauteed chopped onion and celery and added some sliced mushrooms. I took the stuffing out of the stuffed pepper, put the stuffing on top of the onion, celery, and mushrooms and then chopped up the pepper and added it to the sauté pan. 

In a pot, I fixed chicken Better than Boullion and when it was all combined and nearly boiling and when the ingredients in the sauté pan were ready, I combined everything in the pot and let it slow cook for a while. 

I was especially happy with the wealth of flavor the cinnamon, cumin, and cloves gave this soup and loved how the vegetables and meat worked together. 

2. Before dinner, I enjoyed a relaxing session with Ed at the Lounge. He'll be a volunteer official at the Elks' Idaho State Hoop Shoot in Wallace tomorrow and has a fun Super Bowl party planned with Darren, Erica, and other family in Post Falls. 

I found out today that our family dinner will be at least loosely connected to the Super Bowl and so we are all bringing snacky foods to munch on and we'll at least keep an eye on the football game. 

3. Debbie and I talked some more today. It was a great visit just chatting about comings and goings in Valley Cottage and I enjoyed reporting how much I enjoyed the Northwest Passages event I attended last night in place of the phantom symphony. 

Debbie sleeps in a room in Adrienne's basement and two animals, the cat Hazel and the dog Huckleberry like to join Debbie. Tonight Hazel, the cat was with Debbie until Huck entered the room. 

Debbie took a picture of each of them and texted them to me. 

They are lovely animals. 

I loved seeing those pictures.    

Three Beautiful Things 02-05-2026: I Came to the Symphony Five Days Early, I Stayed for Tonight's Event, Wow! What a Stimulating Accident!

1. I do not do well with the last minute. If I can, I'll arrive at movies early, finish my cooking for family dinner early, come to the airport really early, and so on. In that spirit, I arrived at Gonzaga University around 6:15 for tonight's 7:30 Gonzaga Symphony performance. 

When I arrived, the scene around the Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center puzzled me. 

The parking lots were nearly full. 

More people than I expected were strolling into the building.

Once in the lobby, the number of people hanging out and the number of people walking into the performance hall to be seated gob smacked me. 

I took out my phone. 

I opened my Google Wallet. 

I checked my ticket. 

I laughed at myself. 

I arrived for the symphony concert several days early. 

The Gonzaga Symphony will play on February 10. 

My sometimes confused -- maybe addled? -- mind was at it again. 

2. I asked a person wearing an official looking pair of slacks, vest, and name tag on a lanyard what was happening this evening. 

"It's a book event," she answered and when I joked that I had come early for the symphony, she chuckled and said, "Well, why don't you go over there and buy a ten dollar ticket and attend. It's supposed to be very good."

So I did.

Then I realized what I'd stumbled into. 

Tonight was the next in the Spokesman Review's series of conversations with authors called Northwest Passages. 

I attended two Northwest Passages events in 2025, I'd seen publicity for tonight's event, but I'd forgotten <clears throat> that it was tonight. 

So, I purchased a bottle of water, found a seat, and prepared to listen to Spokane writer Jess Walter interview David Guterson, the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, about his new novel Evelyn in Transit. 

3. I can't remember <clears throat> ever having my sometimes scrambled mind work in my favor so well. 

I loved this event.

Jess Walter interviewed David Guterson with wit, intelligence, insight, and generosity. 

He led Guterson to talk about his book as if they were members of the ideal book club.

Guterson discussed his lifelong engagement with the eternal questions of life: What is the meaning of life? What is a well-lived life? How do we make our way as flawed persons in a fallen world? I understood his low-key, humble, unassuming ponderings to be spiritual, existential, and ongoing. He asks questions of himself and the world we live in not looking for answers, but as a way of continuing to search, to dig, to remain open to possibilities, self-revision, and surprise. And he works to keep it light. Guterson discussed that he is careful to compliment the seriousness of his writing with humor, hoping that his readers will never think he is imposing either certainty or a way of seeing the world upon them, but is opening the way for readers to join him in his searching, through the stories he tells. 

To my utter delight, Guterson and Walters discussed the inseparable relationship between the characters and worlds they imagine and bring to life and the music of their language, how the music of their language, that is, their writing style, changes to meet the demands of the characters they develop and the worlds these characters inhabit. 

If you'd like to read a summary of Guterson's novel, a quick online search can take care of that. 

Before too long, this program will be available on YouTube along with most of the other Northwest Passages programs, including when Kenton Bird discussed the book about Tom Foley he co-wrote with John C. Pierce. That event is here:  Northwest Passages: Kenton Bird, author of "Tom Foley, The Man In The Middle"

Three Beautiful Things 02-04-2026: A Fortunate Comeback, Reservations, Preparing for the Gonzaga Symphony

 1. Three times a year, Ed and I head over to the Spokane Tribe Casino to put down modest wagers on the Super Bowl, March Madness, and both of the NCAA basketball championship tournaments. I won a wager in 2025 by betting on UConn's women's team. 

Sometimes others who like to wager and play machines join us. One year it was Buff and Darren. Today, it was Jake. 

I had a very relaxing, fun, and even a delicious day today. Once I laid a bet on the Seahawks to win on Sunday, I scrambled over to the coffee stand and ordered a terrific latte and a most pleasing thick slice of banana bread with nuts. 

Then I hit the machines and they humbled me. After a while, I'd spent the money I brought to play with. 

I hadn't heard from Jake or Ed and figured they must have been doing better and I decided to take a chance. I decided to go from playing to gambling. I withdrew some added bank from an ATM machine. 

My luck reversed. 

After a while I got a text from Ed that he and Jake were in the sports bar area.

I figured it was time for lunch. 

And guess what! I dug myself out of the hole I'd been in and was now actually ahead.

My decision to throw a little caution to the wind, luckily, panned out.

My smashburger, fries, and zero alcohol Heineken beer all tasted especially good in light of my comeback and good fortune! 

2. Speaking of casinos, today, the guys and I who join up twice a year for two or three nights at the Wildhorse Resort and Casino in Pendleton were able to nail down dates for this spring's trip. That casino has become a very busy place and we couldn't get rooms in late March or early April. But we learned rooms were available at the end of April and so we will make our trip then. 

Right now the resort has one tower hotel and are in the process of building a second. 

Good thing! 

It looks like there is plenty of demand to make having two hotels a worthwhile development. 

3. I didn't just wager, play machines, and book myself a Wildhorse room today. 

I also bought a ticket to hear the Gonzaga Symphony play on campus on Thursday, Feb. 5th. 

The concert will close with legendary violinist Gil Shaham as the featured soloist joining the symphony for a performance of Brahm's Violin Concerto in D Major. 

As I've mentioned before, I started listening to classical music in the 8th grade by repeatedly listening to George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in my upstairs bedroom. I also loved listening, on that same album, to his American in Paris. 

So from way back then, in about1968, to the fall and winter of 2025 into 2026, I had paid little attention to Johannes Brahms. 

Therefore, this evening, I've begun to do my best to familiarize myself with Brahms' Violin Concerto in D Major in preparation (maybe anticipation is a better word) for (of) the concert at Gonzaga. 

I'll listen to this concerto some more at home before I leave for Spokane and I'll listen to it some more while I drive over. 

It's a stirring concerto and the other compositions are also full of vitality. 

I'll hear: 

Mozart Overture to Don Giovanni

Mussorgsky Night on Bald Mountain (You might remember this piece from the movie Fantasia.) 

Saint-Saens Danse Bacchanale 

Three Beautiful Things 02-03-2026: Dental Cleaning, Talked with Debbie, Slowing Down

 1.  Without a trace of irony or sarcasm in my voice, let me say that I started the day on a high note. I strolled down the street to the dentist's office. Today's cleaning went beautifully. There were no problems with my teeth. I had the pleasure of having my mouth feel sparkly and fresh. 

2. Debbie called and I had an uncomplicated tax question for her and she updated me on how the first three weeks of February are shaping up for her and Adrienne's family. We shot the breeze about this and that, very enjoyably. This morning that started off so positively got even better, thanks to this phone call.

3. I slowed down my listening to The Great Course I'm taking to learn much more about listening to and understanding classical music. I listened again to Prof. Greenberg's first lecture on Beethoven's 5th Symphony. I might go back and listen to this lecture yet again. The lecture I'm trying to absorb focuses on the first movement of the Beethoven's Fifth. 

Beethoven composed the first movement in sonata form and as Greenberg presents his analysis of this most famous first movement, he draws upon terminology that he explained in a previous lecture. It's all new to me, words like exposition, development, recapitulation, cadence, and others. I'm trying to become more familiar with these terms and gain a deeper appreciation for how Beethoven follows the demands of the sonata form and how he bends the form, improvises, and composes music being more faithful to his own self-expression than to the form itself. 

Three Beautiful Things 02-02-2026: It's a CD Set!, Big News in the World of Wordle, I Created a Fun and Tasty Soup

 1. Upon closer inspection today, I discovered that the discs I bought from Better World Books were not DVDs. They are CDs. Ha! Now I can listen to the lectures about understanding music by either clicking on my audible app or putting a cd into my Blu-ray player. I guess I'll keep the CDs around in case audible buys the farm one day. 

2. I decided quite a while ago when playing Wordle not to use words that had already been solutions. Every morning, I created a tab that opened up a website featuring a list of all past Wordle answers. I vetted all my guesses using this list. 

Today, word came across the ticker tape of the World Wide Web that, starting today, Wordle will start reusing past solutions to be solutions again. I assume recycled solutions will pop up irregularly. 

No problem. I'll enjoy playing this version of Wordle just as much as when the game didn't repeat answers. 

I just need to always keep in mind that sloving on the sixth guess is a win and continue in my mission not to judge myself if I don't solve the puzzle quickly and need as many six tries. 

3. I had leftover chicken soup in the fridge that had no chicken pieces. Last night, I didn't have enough filling for six peppers, so I stuffed the sixth pepper with some of the surplus basmati rice I cooked. 

I decided to make a soup combining the chicken soup, leftover rice I put in a container last night, and the steamed red pepper, sliced, that was filled with plain rice. I put the pepper's rice in the soup, too. 

I seasoned the soup with liquid aminos.

It worked and made me think I might invent a soup using the one stuffed pepper I still have, one stuffed with the lamb mixture I made for family dinner last night.