Three Beautiful Things 09-05-2023: Walking Uptown, Making Fish Chowder, "A GREAT Day!"

 1. Included in my errands today was a trip to the post office. I parked the Sube near the Inland Lounge and walked to the post office to buy stamps. I continued south to Market, turned west, walked north on Main to its intersection with McKinley and then strolled back to the car. Did I accumulate a ton of steps? No. Did this walk help snap me out of a low grade funk I've been in over the last few weeks? Without a doubt. Did I feel the benefits of this walk in my hips and legs? Definitely. 

I experienced the benefits of this, by most measures, short walk through the night. I slept great.

2. I had taken crab stock (thank you for the shells, Kellogg Elks) out of the freezer to thaw toward the end of last week, fully expecting to make a fish chowder over the weekend.

For good and fun reasons, I delayed this project, but today I made this, for me, much anticipated dinner.

I was going to start by cooking some bacon, but, alas, when I unzipped the ziplock bag and took out our last bacon slices, they were turning green. 

I dumped them and, instead, I melted a good hunk of butter in our new pot.

Before melting the butter, I had chopped up a white onion, most of a small bag of baby Yukon golds, half a dozen or so celery sticks, and a handful or two of baby carrots. 

I dumped all of these chopped foods into the melted butter and seasoned it all with Old Bay Seasoning, Unami, salt, and pepper.

When the onion bits were tender and translucent, I poured a quart of crab stock over the vegetables and slow cooked them until the carrots and potatoes were tender.

I had thawed a couple handfuls or more of raw shrimp and cooked them in butter and I opened a couple cans of clams.

I added in the shrimp and clams, including the clam juice and the buttery liquid left over from cooking the shrimp.

I salted the chowder a bit more, added a few splashes of whole milk, and heated the chowder up a bit with smokey red chili flakes. 

All the chowder need now was to warm up a bit and then Debbie and I dove in.

I'm thrilled to report ---

It worked! 

3. When Debbie arrives home from school, sometimes she says five words that are awesome to hear. Today was her first day with students and when she walked in the door, she said, "I had a GREAT day!" 

I enjoyed hearing her good news even more than the chowder we had for dinner!