Saturday, December 23, 2017

Three Beautiful Things 12/22/17: Breakfast at Sam's, Conscientious Contractor, Home Cooked Dinner After a Long Absence

1. I sprang up this morning at 5:30, fed Maggie and Charly, and walked through the fresh snow down to Sam's where Buff, Scott B., Ed, and I had breakfast -- as we regularly do on Friday morning.  It had already been a tough day for Ed plowing snow at the post offices in the Kellogg/Cataldo end of the Silver Valley. But, he seized a few opportunities to pick on our server -- and she gets him right back -- and it sounded like everyone has a pretty good weekend planned with Christmas around the corner. Buff's plans are the most ambitious: he and Kathy will visit their son and his family in Baton Rouge and spend some time enjoying the holiday merriment of New Orleans.

2. We had a problem with the electricity rear its head after Shawn and Trevor buttoned up the job on Wednesday. Shawn looked at things first thing Thursday morning, but he had a full day scheduled, and couldn't fix it right away. No problem. This morning, he and Trevor came by the house to see if Shawn's idea for a solution would work.  It did. Now the ceiling lights in the kitchen are back on and so is the juice in the garage. Shawn will be back in early 2018 with an electrician to further improve some funky features of our electric system.

I appreciate Shawn being so conscientious. Technically speaking, his work with us was finished when Trevor and he buttoned things up on Wednesday, but when I contacted him very early Thursday morning to tell him we had this electrical problem, he came right to the house and devised a plan to address the problem and carried out the plan this morning.

3. Both the Deke and I were tired after working out at the Wellness Center this morning. Later in the day, however, we mustered up the oomph to talk with each other about dinner.  I dragged myself out the front door, scraped ice off the Sube, and slipped and slid over to Yokes and bought a few grocery items.

I returned home and fixed dinner for the first time using our new gas range. I lightly oiled chicken thighs and, at the Deke's request, made a return to her childhood days and I perked them up with some Johnny's Seasoning Salt and baked the chicken in our new oven. I cooked some rice and boiled some broccoli for a few minutes to get the cooking going and then I finished cooking the broccoli on the stovetop griddle.

This was our first cooked-at-home-with-a-stove-and-oven meal since about a week before Thanksgiving. I loved cooking again, even though I could feel how rusty I am, and the Deke and I loved eating at the dining table in our new roomier kitchen, deeply grateful that we will be enjoying many home cooked meals in our Kellogg home once again. 

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