1. I was making some morning insurance calls. In the midst of my inquiries, Ed called and said today would be a good day for him to go see our classmate, Goose, in St. Regis. Goose owns Stang's Food Center and Liquor Store. At Stang's, customers can buy groceries, rent a U-Haul, gas up on Sinclair fuel, secure hunting and fishing licenses, grab a quick bit to eat at the deli, get fish bait, choose from a wide variety of liquor, and buy a firearm. Ed's mission? Buy a couple of bottles of Bartenders Hot Sex, a pre-mixed cocktail in a bottle featuring ginger liqueur, vodka, dairy cream, chocolate flavor, ginseng, and other natural flavors. Ed tried to find Bartenders Hot Sex in Idaho, but no luck, so we piled in his Camry and traveled 57 frosty and beautiful miles to St. Regis and Ed completed his mission -- and he bought a fifth of Boodles Dry Gin.
We had a great time at Stang's. Goose saw us in the store and we got to yak with him for a while and got caught up on all kinds of stuff, including that his life as a store owner is going pretty well.
It was a great trip. Ed and I shot some good breeze and we enjoyed the beauty of a clear blue day, dry roads, and mountains of frost tipped evergreens.
2. Back in Kellogg, I decided to make spaghetti with a version of Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce. We don't have a kitchen yet, but we have a hot plate in the basement. I learned that the hot plate doesn't generate a lot of heat. I tried for about an hour or so to get a pot of water to boil so I could cook the pasta, but it wasn't happening. So, I got a small pot, transferred water from the big pot to the much smaller one, and boiled batches of water in our hot pot. Still, water would not reach a boiling point in the big pot. Then I remembered that water would boil in the small pot. I knew this from having prepared oatmeal. So, I put hot pot boiled water in the small pot, brought it to a less than robust boil, broke spaghetti strands in half, and after about an hour and a half of trying to cook spaghetti, I succeeded. I fixed a batch of pasta for the Deke and another for me. It took a long time. I learned more about the limitations of our hot plate. But, I persisted. The dinner might not have been so good that it was worth the long wait, but it was just fine.
3. I washed the dinner dishes in the small bathroom sink in the basement. I'm doing all I can to make sure I appreciate having a kitchen sink and a stove to cook with when the kitchen is completed next week. I went to bed happy that we were well fed and that the dishes were clean and that cooking with a hotplate and a hot pot and doing dishes in a bathroom sink is a small inconvenience.
By the way, before you ask: we don't have a microwave or a crock pot or an outdoor grill. We also have been offered access to Christy's and Carol's kitchens. So, we have ways to make things easier on ourselves! Maybe we'll try to make it easier as the week goes on.
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