Friday, December 30, 2022

Three Beautiful Things 12-29-2022: Break in the Weather, Comforting Goulash, Party Time with Sleuths and Perry Mason

1. The break in the weather today energized me, motivated me to complete one chore in particular that I love (no sarcasm) to be able to do. I loaded up the Sube station wagon with broken down cardboard boxes and took them to the transfer station to be recycled. When I returned to Kellogg, I drove up to the aluminum/newspaper-magazine/plastic container recycle station to see if I could get in there, but the county closed the station's parking lot.  

No problem. 

I returned home, loaded up the Sube with our cans, bottles, milk jugs, and newspaper/magazines and drove back to the transfer station and recycled them there.

The always smiling transfer station attendant told me I could go down to the office and get a sticker for the windshield denoting that I'm a county resident and can leave off most garbage and recycling without charge. So, I took care of that, too.

2. I further developed my plans for Monday's family dinner food preparation and went to Yoke's to buy groceries for this meal and other things. I had also decided to make an easy goulash for dinner tonight, so I got the goods I needed for that and came home, browned some ground beef, added chopped onions and garlic, cooked them until tender, and then added diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, V-8 juice, basil, oregano, seasoned salt, water, soy sauce, fennel seed, bay leaves, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a cup of elbow macaroni to the pot and simmered it for half an hour and the let it cool, with the lid on, for another thirty minutes.

The goulash was awesome: flavorful and comforting, just what Debbie and I wanted. 

3. After dinner, I freed the Vizio from captivity in the Vizio room and set it up in our newly rearranged living room. Debbie and I watched two episodes of Perry Mason, an episode of Columbo, and the movie, Murder at the Gallop (1963), featuring Margaret Rutherford (whom I love) as Agatha Christy's sleuth Miss Jane Marple. I had fun spreading three cocktails over the course of our nearly five hours of viewing. I started with a Brandy Alexander, continued with a gin screwdriver (with fresh squeezed orange juice), and capped off the evening by combining rum, Creme de Cacao, and boiling water in a mug. 

It was a great party. 

Gibbs, however, was not enthralled by either Perry Mason, Lt Columbo, or Miss Marple and we had to pause our entertainment from time to time because Gibbs wanted to play fetch or have Debbie dig one of his meat bones out his toy chest. Gibbs is small. His bark is not. It is impossible to hear the television when Gibbs lets us know his immediate needs and desires are not being met! So we meet them! Ha! 

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