birthday rainbow in the morning

But wait! Wasn't this photograph shown yesterday???
Yes, it was, but it's pertinent once more. You see, this was breakfast today! I heated that lovely rainbow in the frying pac, then placed it on a bed of fresh spinach, and put all of that between two slices of lightly toasted bread. While I waited for it to heat, I nibbled the rest of the corn.
What an awesome way to start the day!
After consuming the rainbow, I decided to mow the front yards.
Yes, that plural was deliberate and not some odd slip on the keyboard.
Front yards.
Mine and my next-door neighbor's.
By coincidence, he and I have the same birthday, but in different years, with him being just a few years older.
It's been my habit of the past few years to mow his grass for his birthday.
Well, let me amend that.
Around the time of our shared birthday, whenever I cut my front yard's grass, I also cut his.
His work schedule is quite erratic, allowing little time for such inane chores as mowing the green carpet provided by Mother Nature. My schedule is all over the map, too, but I'm in the neighborhood more often than he is. So, one year a couple of years ago, when I was out in the sun making my yard presentable again to the world at large, I chose to surprise him with conquered weeds.
And so I did.
Then I went off and did whatever was on my summer schedule for the day.
The next day, he made a point of coming over when he saw I was home. "Did you mow my yard?" He had asked his yard guy and he had spoken to the neighbors, trying to assess how he had been graced with a lovely yard after a hard day at work.
I admitted I did so, as his yard was so small and my mower had plenty of charge and I had been caught up with the opportunity to do him a favor.
He was quite touched.
That weekend, while I was gone, he edged my front yard when he did his.
And so it has been ever since. I mow his grass, he edges my yard.
Just the front yards, please. Who cares how the back yards look? Right?
So, today, almost two weeks after our birthday, I finally had the opportunity to keep up my end of our gift exchange.
Between my schedule and that of the rain, I simply have not had the combination of time and dry grass needed. Today, the forecast called for rain in the afternoon, but there had been no rain yesterday. That meant the morning grass was dry.
So now the deed is done!
We both have manicured lawns fronting our houses!
I am clean and heading to Bluffton for the day, so... later!!!

carcass o'plenty

Today, I ate the last of the meat I had garnered from the carcass of one of the Thanksgiving turkeys my biggest little brother had prepared for the family feast this year. On that day of thanks, I had waited too late to prepare a to-go plate. By the time the rest of the family had gotten some of this and a bit of that, there were just carcasses, some cranberry jelly, and some s'more cookies my eldest niece had made.
My sister-in-law helped me bag, and then double-bag, the largest turkey carcass. I had said I would try my hand at making broth with the bones. I rightly thought that would be all I do with it, as the bones had been picked pretty clean.
So, she sent me home with the bones, the jelly, and the cookies. I put them all away when home, then settled in to watch a marathon of "Monk" and to psych myself up for making broth.
I knew I had seen a recipe for New York Penicilln in my worn copy of The New York Cookbook. This is one of the best cookbooks I've ever had! The recipes are those of (mostly) famous people, accompanied by stories and anecdotes - quite entertaining, especially for a book of recipes! As it happens, the soup recipe I recalled reading was from Guardian Angel Curtis Sliwa's elderly aunt. (How appropriate! A guardian angel led my memory to that recipe!)
Sure, I hear you now: that recipe was for chicken broth. To you I say: Fowl is fowl and poultry is poultry.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. It was already approaching 8 PM and the recipe called for all of the ingredients to simmer for four hours.
FOUR HOURS.
Good thing I'm a night owl. Hoot, hoot!
So, I grabbed my largest pot, poured in the gallon of cold water, submerged the bird remains, and set it to heat. The recipe called for garlic (got it!), an onion (whole, peeled, but not sliced: got it!), and two carrots ("peeled, cut into hunks": got baby carrots!). It also requested celery, a bay leaf, parsley, salt, peppercorns, and chicken feet or chicken wings or a turkey wing.
Oh, and it started with a whole chicken, not just bones.
Hmmm... nah, didn't have it, so didn't add any of that. I was cooking turkey broth, so I figured I was free to make other alterations.
(By the way, that's fairly typical for me to use a recipe as a springboard, not a rulebook. Used to drive my ex crazy.)
It was well past midnight before the broth was done. Then, the decision to be made: go ahead and strain it and gather the bits of meat and discard the bones - or, close it all up, put it into the fridge, and tackle the onerous task of picking some other time?
You mean, when it would all be cold?
Nah, that didn't sound appealing. At all.
So I took care of it then and there.
Pulled out and discarded the larger bones and the onion and the carrots, as the recipe said to do.
Fetched my strainer and pulled up spoonfuls of meat and gunk, drained them, then picked out the meat.
Repeat, Repeat. Repeat.
By the time I was down to just broth, I had about four cups of meat.
WOW!.
I had thought I came home with no turkey and here I had four cups of ready-to-use meat!
It was also 4 AM and definitely time for bed, after covering the broth and setting it in the fridge to cool, so I could de-fat it later.
I ended up with about six cups (1500 milliliters) of broth!
Quite impressive. Especially as I thought I took home bones.

Since then, I've eaten quite a bit of turkey. Sometimes (four days) as breakfast sandwiches, made with dill pickle dip mix in "sour cream", on hearty white bread (4 grams of fiber per sandwich). What a grand way to start the day!
I've also had turkey and mayo sandwiches (twice), turkey with pasta and vegetables (twice), Italian ribollita (twice, made the quickie way with a pint of my broth, some fresh onions and chopped broccoli, and a cup of stove-top stuffing mix), fajitas (twice, using leftovers from a veggie fajita lunch with my first niece and some Ro-Tel of my own).
Today for lunch, it was the last of the turkey meat, fresh broccoli florets, leftover red rice (from the Post 36 fundraiser on Friday), and some of the cranberry jelly. Oh, and toast points, for a little crunch.
I still have two pints of broth in the freezer, too.
Not a bad haul from bird bones.
It just shows to go ya: Appearances can be deceptive.
Don't count something as worthless before it truly is all used up.
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

before and after pics

I had meant to post this last week, but I forgot/got busy/was lazy. You decide!
No, really. This should have been an addendum to the post last Thursday. Well, actually, it should have been the following day.
But it wasn't.
Better late than never!

Anywho, as you may recall, I had gone over the border to visit with my stepmom. We'd done our meal-and-a-movie thing, catching up on life, then she had returned home to responsibilities to others. I did not have any such things, so I stayed and had another movie. Actually, "The Way Way Back" had been our alternate choice that afternoon, but we had opted for age before youth.
Now, I was passing time before the concert film I wanted to see at 7:30 PM. It's been a while since I went to a concert and I had never been to one of their concerts, so this seemed a prime opportunity. Who? No, I wish! I'm talking about The Grateful Dead. I was never a stoner, so, even though I liked their music, I never felt compelled to shell out the money to see them.
So, long story short: I enjoyed seeing Steve Carrell play a twisted jerk in the movie about the teenager. I enjoyed seeing naked young folks in the Sunshine Daydream. I did not care for the extended and discordant guitar jam (in the latter) that went on and aon and on for nearly thirty minutes, lulling all of the audience into a stupor. Maybe it's a good thing I never went to one of their live concerts!

Between these two movies, I had dinner, again at Cheeburger Cheeburger. Something different, something different... yeah, I'll have the footlong hotdog! And so I did, adding banana peppers, pickles, and pineapple to it. That last item surprised the waitress, but proved to be the perfect touch!


I also had the split basket of french fries and quite tasty onion rings.
Yum! You see the picture at the upper left, right? They're every bit as tasty as they look, too. Not having time (or room) to finish them, I took the remainder home with me. The next morning, I broke the fries and rings into small chunks, then heated them in the skillet, adding scrambled egg to the hot mix. Instant frittata! Two tasty meals! And rather pretty, too, as the upper right photo shows.
I'm going to have to remember to do that combo again!