Darienne

Seeing Senior Sea Kayaker's post on his wonderful Split Pea soup reminds me that I've made so many soups lately. The best of the lot was a Tomato Basil Soup. It was truly a 'died and gone to heaven' experience, made with real tomatoes. Other soups were made with overabundances of all sort of vegetables...cabbage, spinach, carrots, etc. I'm going to quit for a while.

Mine is not recent, but when I was pregnant for our daughter and first son, it was the Chinese Almond Cookies from the Canton Inn in Ottawa. The Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, used to eat there. The restaurant is long gone. Those cookies were the best. I do sometimes have a hankering for Miss Vickie's® Original Recipe kettle cooked potato chips. But then we always have in the house...so to speak...Kirkland's potato chips. I say 'so to speak' because they are hidden from me somewhere in the garage.

Good heavens. We buy a fair amount of pork for Chinese food cooking and also for the pup. And I have never ever noticed such a smell...and I am very picky about such things. I mean...very picky... (best emoticon I could find...)

We have an American cheese story (might well be out of place here) Many years ago we had a Rottie, Nigel, who had epilepsy. After each seizure, we would give him a substantial snack...it brought him out of the seizure state very well and precluded the post - seizure problems which can occur. We put a package of American cheese slices and some crackers into the van in case we were out travelling and he had a seizure in the vehicle. Well, Nigel died from cancer, and we forgot the cheese slices for over a year and a half. They were under the atlases on the van floor. And in perfect condition when we finally found them after two summer and one winter. Food you say?

Here's one of a set of one of the most wonderful food-related gifts I have ever been given. A friend from Delaware brought these mesh food savers as a gift during one of the many Dog Weekends we put on in a former life. So many women have asked me about them and could I get them a set...there are three of this size, two larger and one huge elongate oval one. I asked my friend in Delaware but she said she never saw them again. Alas.... This summer has been amazingly free of fruit flies and I haven't actually used them for the first time since I got them. Then this week, Ed brought the apple remains from making apple cider in the cellar up into the kitchen and left them there for a short time which is all it took for 6,000,000 of the little you-know-what's to appear and now I had a fight on my hands. Out came the mesh fruit covers. (Wow! Looking for the appropriate name to call them and found the Lee Valley website which carries them. mesh fruit covers )

Ouch. Two days ago I got stabbed by the tiny spines on a Chinese Eggplant. Had to use a needle to get the darned thing out.

I am getting nearer to my winter garden. A much younger and haler friend helped me move my desk around so that I now have a wide window sill and a shelf on which to place plant containers. It still is a mess because I must reorganize my life to accommodate the changes. That's the end of the tomatoes...about 1/15th of what his wife gave us. The window is old and the seal is broken and of course the outside is dirty. It has not been washed in our 28 years here. Couldn't access it. We might replace it. Probably not. And outside, a good neighbor, the one who gifted us with all that produce a couple of days ago, came with his tractor fitted out with this thing he invented and built and pulled the huge ugly old bush out from the ground in one fell swoop and then deposited it wherever it was that Ed told him to put it. Amazing. Now my indoor vegetable garden will have full south sun light...as much as we get in a Canadian winter. And now Ed has some work to do to make this mess into lawn.

OK. Why is the fruit 'evil' ?

There's that trick everyone should know when leaving home...put a coin on top of a frozen cup of water into the freezer and when you return, you'll know if your freezer lost power and regained it, thus jeopardizing your food supply. https://www.google.com/search?q=put+a+coin+in+the+freezer&rlz=1C1CHBD_enCA727CA728&oq=puyt+a+coin&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i13i512l4j46i13i512j0i13i512j0i13i30l2j0i13i15i30.7901j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_66QJZZOxBqaZ0PEPzJeZ2AQ_30 During last year's Durecho, we had power from our old generator (now replaced by a stand-by generator which cost more money than ...), we were able to store both our meat and that belonging to our neighbors who had no generator. That loss of power was 7 days for them and they eat higher on the scale than we do.

Thanks.

OK. I don't belong to Twitter or Tik Tok and I don't read e-books and our cell phones won't do anything more than vocal calls and photos...no text... and no one has our cell phone numbers because we use the phones only to communicate with each other when one of us is not with the other one, as in medical appointments. I don't Skype and when I had to do a zoom call, I had a friend who knows how sitting beside me to help me through it. My desk computer can't do zoom, but my lap top can. That may be more information than you want. OK. Are these Tik Tok cook books hard copy or just online? Thanks.

I belong to a number of vegetarian websites and often end up using recipes from them. We are not vegetarians per se but rather call ourselves, thank to Mark Bittman, 'lessmeatarians'. Here is the name of one website you might investigate. Of course I can't think of another name right now. There are hundreds of them out there. I don't think this one is strictly vegetarian, but it does have a lot of vegetarian recipes. https://www.themediterraneandish.com/ Facebook has a lot of vegetarian websites also.

Other neighbor works at our local university with graduate students and she came and took a share which she'll give to students.

We have 'his' and 'her' tools...and he borrows mine whenever. Sometimes he returns them...and often he doesn't. I've never borrowed 'his'. I think that two sets of ovens is quite beyond our snack bracket. But thanks for the idea. I'm grateful that Ed cooks as much as he does. He does most of the North American cooking and basically all the short order dishes...I do the rest. Added: Good heavens, I think my halo is slipping...

Thanks. That is my plan for the tomatoes...except that Ed has the oven for a roast this morning. A recipe for Tomato Basil soup which calls for roasted tomatoes. Some of which will go to the produce donor of course. We've been caught with a number of projects which must be taken care of immediately before the processing can begin. The eggplants are destined for cutlets for Moussaka. Some of which will go to the produce donor female. And along with some Spanakopita. Her husband will not touch the stuff. The potatoes go into the cellar which is dark to begin with. Our house is over 150 years old and the cellar is truly a 'cellar' and not a basement, although when we added on our living room about 10 years ago, Ed had a basement room built under the living room and it has a big window and is a 'basement' room.