ALMOST DONE WITH THE BOOKS

FOURTH LIVING ROOM BOOK CASE (BEFORE)




FOURTH LIVING ROOM BOOK CASE (AFTER)



Running total for all four book cases so far is 855. I still have two boxes of very old westerns and children's books that will all have to be entered manually. They are genuine antiques and do not have ISBN (International Standard Book Numbers). Husband did ask why I turned the books backward. So I would remember where I stopped, might turn 'em back around...someday. Also, I have quite a few duplicate books, mostly from Mom. She probably forgot she had read them, and some of them certainly quality for forgetability.

Almost made 1,000.

Also our Memorial Day Picnic consisted of two steaks marinated in teriyaki sauce, baked potatoes, steamed broccoli, salad. Discovered a couple things; I heated the mini grill too hot and produced enough smoke to set off fire alarms three houses away. Our new fire alarm did not go off, we purchased it November 2009. It should have been screaming bloody murder.

MORE BOOKS AND COOKING ON MEMORIAL DAY

THIRD LIVING ROOM BOOK CASE (BEFORE):




THIRD LIVING ROOM BOOK CASE (AFTER):

Up to 755 books and counting, I think this book case holds about 150 to 200 books.
I have not maxed out shelving on this one but I might, I have a fourth bookshelf and two more boxes before I am done with all of my books.

I think I am a bit disappointed as it looks like I might not make a thousand books. Need more y'know.

Also, in the process of cataloging all of these books, one of the things that slow me down, are "Oh, I don't remember reading THAT one, sounds good, I'll just set it aside....hmmm,where did THAT pile come from!"





DEEP DISH QUICHE:

Also, yesterday actually, I decided to make onion quiche. I have a recipe for Italian Egg pie printed on a pink Styrofoam egg carton bottom, I have had it for years and had never used it.

So dug out six eggs, 1/4 lb of Mozzarella cheese, (shred please), 1/4 cup milk, 1/2 tsp oregano, 1/2 tsp of something I didn't have, so I doubled the Oregano, salt, pepper, pour into peel and stick pie dough, 425 degree oven, 35 to45 minutes or until brown. I went for a mottled golden brown. Tastes good, once cool one can hold a nice slice of pie in the hand for immediate consumption, without dirtying a plate. Don't forget to lick your fingers.

Upon reflection, I think I would skip the Italian spices, stick with salt, pepper and I should have caramelized the onions.

STILL WORKING ON BOOKS....

Bookcase before:



Bookcase after:



I dinked around today and input about 577 books all crammed into the two bookcases pictured. The books are stacked two deep 2 1/2 high. Lots of books and surprisingly few duplicates. The day before? I was tempted to jump up and down on the Cue Cat bar code reader. I could NOT get the thing to work. I finally discovered that most books have a duplicate bar code printed on the inside of the front cover as well as the back. For some reason the shiny slick back cover was not reading correctly, I switched to the inside front cover and really made some time. I also discovered that one firm left to right swipe worked well, pick up from paper immediately, the computer searches the online data base for 2-3 seconds and when the entry shows, hit enter. Very cool.

Because the weather was so terrific, husband and I drove to Bandon today. We had lunch at a likely looking place, the Wheelhouse. They specialize in sandwiches and seafood dishes. Husband ordered chicken Romano, didn't care for the tomato sauce.

I ordered Turkey Muffalata. I googled a Muffalata recipe and that may be the difference. The sandwich that I ate a third of the portion tasted awful or at least I do not care for that flavor profile.

Damn, I'm going to have to make one myself following the recipe below. Sheesh.

3 large garlic cloves, crushed
1 cup chopped green olives stuffed with pimientos
1 cup pitted and chopped “black-ripe” olives or Calamatas
1/2 cup roasted sweet red peppers, chopped
1 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/3 pound salami
1/2 pound provolone cheese
1/2 pound mild cheese
1/3 pound mortadella
1/3 pound prosciutto

Where am I going to get Mortadella around here?

LUNCH!!!

After adding several more shelves of books to my data base, I paused for lunch.

I watched Robert (Famous English Chef, I Cannot Remember His Last Name) on
Dinner Impossible. His task was to build a kitchen from items purchased at a hardware store and provide lunch for the cast and crew of Lost, 125 people.

He went shopping and grabbed car jacks, wheel barrows, metal paint cans, sheet metal, cinder blocks, a chain saw, C-clamps, fishing nets, a plastic wading pool and a whole bunch of stuff.

He was lead to a spot where he had food available on the island just like on Lost and was to use those ingredients for the meal. He had watermelon and Avocado and made a salad out of that.

I don't remember what he used for dressing but I made my own dressing out of lemon juice, salt, pepper, pinch of cayenne pepper and cashews with a packet Splenda, and paired it with Virgin Bloody Mary.

I have been playing with my new Book Collectors Program.

I downloaded the free trial for 100 books. The first FIFTY books I used "enter manually", I entered the very small print ISBN number, the author, the title, and there was a whole bunch of other stuff. Then I saw the "Enter Automatically" button and pressed that. Oh, the ISBN number was first then you hit the "Search" button and ALL OF THE OTHER INFORMATION about the book populates the screen. Kewl!

I can upgrade to the PRO version, it has a few bell's and whistles I can live without for the moment. I have ordered a bar code scanner to to scan the ISBN numbers and getting my collection catalogued will go much easier. Below is a picture of all the books I have entered as of today. About 200 books, I stacked them two deep on the shelves and the bottom shelf is nearly empty. I have two and a half more book shelves to go through in the bedroom then its' downstairs, but NOT until I get the bar code scanner.

WOKE FROM VERY STRANGE DREAM

I dreamt that I was in the new hospital in our lovely new VERY BIG medical records department. I was surprisingly open, it looked more like a public library, the aisles from the stacks, lead into a large room with tables and on the other side of the tables was the cafeteria!

Anyway at one point, Simon Cowell interrupted my search for a piece of paper that I had lost. He told me he had it and he had written down something on it. He had written that I was being rude to a little old lady patient! I was rude? Yes.

So I took the piece of paper and started looking for the patient in order to apologize or try to fix the situation. Then I woke up and as I woke up I was mentally filing our files in color coded terminal digit filing and trying to explain to the file clerks how it worked. I think I need a vacation. At any rate I went to the dream site and although there was no entry for Rudeness I figured Meaness was very close.

BIG OLD MEANIE!!

To dream that someone is being mean to you, suggests that you are being too hard on yourself. You need to give yourself a break. Alternatively, the dream may be a metaphor that you are looking for "meaning" or significance to some life issue.

Er...okay...I'll take it.

WEIRD SCIENCE!

This is what happens when you "warm" three bottles during the night in a slow cooker filled with water on low. You may have to click on the pictures to enlarge them to see how deformed they actually became.



The lids actually cooked closed. I could NOT twist the lids off. I finally resorted to stabbing them in the thin neck part with the pointy end of my rat tail comb.
Tonight I am going to try again, I plan to twist off the caps on three bottles, dump out a teaspoon or two of water, recap lightly.I will then sit the bottles upright as that part seems a bit thicker. Husband is going to turn the slow cooker on about 5 am. I think we've almost got it! I wonder what will go wrong this time?

IT'S OFFICIAL.WE HAVE TO BOIL OUR WATER

Got an email at work today from some one forwarding the report from The World Newspaper that Coquille officials have issued a boil water notice. Yep, use only bottled or boiled water for drinking, washing,cooking or brushing teeth. Bring to full rolling boil for ONE minute to kill the bacteria that got into the system. Thus ensued the following debate.

"We can take some of the boiled water upstairs to the bathroom for washing."

Mmmm that could get heavy and sloppy.

"Let's take some of the bottled water upstairs to the bathroom, too!"

Good idea but the bottled water will still be cold.

"No wait! Let's take the old microwave upstairs so we can heat water in the bathroom."

Oh, Crap it's buried under the ten flats of bottled water being stored in the sun room.

Five minutes later,

"Lets take the slow cooker upstairs to the bathroom, fill it with bottled water and heat on low!"

Okay that could work but how sterile will the bottled water be after cooking in the slow cooker all night long?

Five minutes late:

"Lets put some of the bottles of water in the artially water filled slow cooker so it will be nice and sterile AND warm to use for washing!" pant! pant! pant! gasp! pant! Detente has been reached.





I feel so much better now, if not much cleaner at the moment.

Please pass the hand sanitizer.

SHOPPING

We do have running water this evening along with iron oxide knocked loose spouting out, which should clear soon. Vitamins and minerals right here in Coquille!

Husband went shopping and snagged TEN flats of bottled water. He and several other shoppers were busily depleting the water supply in the local stores. He also took the opportunity to drain the hot water tank and it is busily filling and heating.

I hear the siren call of the flush toilet...over..and over...and over...

Waiting for.....WATER!

Tim discovered at 4:30 this morning that we had NO WATER. He very kindly waited until almost time for me to get up to inform me of same, noting that I might need a little extra time. Um, yeah, dragged all my beautification supplies to downstairs bathroom. Poured four bottled waters in suitable microwaveable container and let it heat up for 4 minutes. Ah just right for the face stuff then a TPA bath and if you do not know what that is, use your imagination. Then I used half a bottle for teeth brushing. Used the facilities and poured used water to flush. Hmm, we have an older microwave,I wonder if we could put it upstairs to heat water in the upstairs bathroom, depending on how long this outage lasts of course.

Tim is now scouting the local stores for a couple flats of water, him and all the rest of the people who are on city water. I called the hospital before leaving and they have no water either. So those who went to work early in order to shower will have to make do with a spit bath. No idea how long this outage will last. There is a broken main somewhere that is not showing on the surface. Hope the City Water people find and fix soonest. Camping out at home is real sucky...and I don't even want to THINK about taking clothes to river to rinse and dry. I think I have enough clean clothes to last a couple weeks if I dress colorfully. I guess we could always drive the laundry to either Coos Bay or Bandon. Ick! Ick! Ick! This is almost as bad when we lived in Barrow and they changed out our toilet, we had to use Honey Bucket services for three endless days!

For your dining pleasure tonight....

I have prepared a meat loaf consisting of ground beef, fresh chopped mushrooms, diced olives, diced onions, flavored with Tamale liquor. 350 degree oven, one hour.
Bake the prepared meat loaf on a bed of sliced roasted garlic Yukon Gold Potatoes.

Bon appetite!

Actually I had 3 quarts of tamale liquor left over that consisted mostly of spices flavored with the dark turkey meat that I had cooked a couple of blogs back. I reduced the tamale liquor down to 1 quart. I roasted the potatoes in Tamale liquor as well and I recommend roasting these particular potatoes for a good hour as they retain their shape after baking and do not get mushy.

I have also prepared a three bean salad with chopped salami and diced hard cheddar cheese with a dressing of apple cider vinegar, olive oil and two packets of Splenda. (Left overs)

Dessert will be your choice of fresh fruit. (spotty banana)

Presentation sucks, sorry.

AVATAR

I would like to thank Amanda for loaning me her DVD of this movie. It does indeed live up to all of the press. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and willingly suspended my disbelief. Except for one word.

UNOBTAINIUM !?!?!?!?!

Cleaning frenzy....not

Alrighty then, if you do not wish to pour harsh chemicals down your drain that have begun to run slow or have stopped draining altogether, why not try a more gentle method.

One half cup baking soda
One half cup vinegar
One cup very not near to boiling water.

Sprinkle baking soda into drain opening.
Pour in vinegar, oooh Look Its' all foamy and everything.
Pour in hot water.
Should speed things up a bit.

I rendered the above service to three drains in the house this morning.

I love the smell of vinegar and baking soda in the morning!

I remember a high school speech class, one of our assignments was to do a "commercial" so I picked good old baking soda, back then in the
age of the horse and buggy, they printed a lot more information on the boxes.
Hence my "commercial" consisted of reading off all the miraculous things that
baking soda can accomplish everything from brushing teeth, cleaning drains, and baking that special birthday cake.

I remembered at one point spouting that "it helped prevent bad breath in people!" For some reason that sent the class off into gales of laughter. Er, I think they were amused. Anyway the current box does not have as much printed on it as in yesteryear however there is a snazzy URL to go to in case you wish to visit the web site for more cleaning tips and hints.

Uh huh.

I LIKE TO BLAME IT ON THE NEW....PLUG IN AIR FRESHENER

For a week now I have been coming into the house after work and smelling apple pie baking and it dawned on me that the new air freshener was that "pie".

Well...dang!

I decided to make a pie for real, picked up a peel and stick pie crust, two Granny Smith apples and a container of fake whipped cream. I went that route because I couldn't fine mascarpone to whip with real cream and some sugar. Drat!

Put crust in pie plate, arrange peeled sliced apples, pour 1/3 cup sugar, brush with thinned apricot jam, bake in 350 degree oven for 45 to 60 minutes. Cool, top with favored whipped topping and eat! Yummy. Unfortunately it only makes four rather gimpy slices and two are gone already. Can you smell it now?

NOTE TO SELF: Purchase one of the new Febrize plugins. Enough with smelling fake food.

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?

TO GET TO OUR LAWN

We have begun to get visits from the Americanus Gallus who are free range as near as we can tell. I have heard the various clucking in the neighborhood with the occasional outraged squawk after being chased either by local children or local dogs.

They seem to like our offering of fresh cut grass clumps and made comment that they found the sidewalk perfect for catching worms.

Oh, and there does not seem to be a rooster, I have not been awakened at 0500 by crowing. Um maybe these ladies are cruising the neighborhood looking for some male companionship.

Conversations in the car....

This past Saturday, as husband and I were returning from Coos Bay, I saw a dark blue car pass us and I remarked,

"Hey, there goes a Camero, Dad had a silver one with a big old hitch mounted in the back to haul his fifth wheel trailer to jobs".

Husband: "I don't think that's a Camero, but I can't remember what it is called at the moment."

Wife: "It's not a Corvette."

Husband: "It's not a Chevette."

Wife: "It's not a Cabriolet."

Husband: "It's not a Chevelle."

Wife: (by this time getting desperat) "It's not a Cadillac."

Husband: (Likewise desperate) "It's not a Caravan."

Wife: "I can't think of any other cars that start with C."

Husband: "Me either, I'm sure I will think of it after a while."

Crickets chirping.....

About 6 pm that evening husband roared into the kitchen,

"It's an El Camino!" "Yes!"

Husband: "What does 'El' mean?"

Ensued short discussion of Spanish grammar El male, La female etc.

We both feel so much better.

Cooking Lessons, oh my......

Good Eats Turkey Tamales (Alton Brown 2009) and where it all went wrong.

I loved watching this show and thought to myself…I can DO this!

I purchased two turkey legs and cooked them in the following spices:
Paprika (Could NOT find smoked Paprika), Chili Powder, Ground Cumin,
Pepper (Could NOT find Cayenne), Dried Oregano, Kosher salt, black pepper,

Put spices and turkey legs in a 6 quart pot in 2 ½ quarts of water, bring to a boil, cover, reduce to simmer for 1 ½ to 2 hours until the meal is very tender and falls apart.

Um, well on MY stove simmer must be cooler than Alton’s because my turkey legs SIMMERED for 3 hours and still had to be ..er.. gently hacked/coaxed from the bone.

It was late, I poured the cooking liquid into a bowl, shredded the semi cooled
turkey legs into separate bowl and threw it all into the fridge and retired from the kitchen until the next day.

The next day I had to work, so I remembered that I needed to purchase one of those little metal folding basket gizmo's to steam the tamales. Put in 8.5 hours and after work picked up a steam basket.

Got home, chopped onion and sliced and diced the Serrano chili. Now I have my doubts about the chili I purchased being Serrano, it was pale green and bigger than a Jalapeno.

Warmed ¼ cup oil in a good-sized sauce pan, threw in onions, chili and garlic. Onion cooked until translucent and I stirred in the shredded turkey meat and one cup of the cooking liquid. At this point I skipped putting in the 3 ounces of tomato paste and chopped up the two nicely aging small tomatoes after seeding them.

Time to make the masa. I measured 3 ½ cups masa, the salt, the baking powder, the ½ cup lard and mixed it together. To this, I gradually added 3 cups of cooking liquid trying for the consistency of mashed potatoes and it looked more like cookie dough. Oh well. I wasn't going to fool around with it any longer.

At this point I looked at the dried corn husks and thought, “Meh, I’m not making individual tamales, I’m making a TAMALE casserole!!!”

I tossed kitchen twine in a drawer,stored the dried corn husks on a shelf as it will keep indefinitely and put the still packaged shiny metal steamer basket in the junk cabinet/drawer. It may turn up on a yard sale, who knows.

I patted the bottom of the casserole dish with a layer of masa and pricked holes in the bottom layer with a fork. I poured in the cooked turkey mixture. I pre-rolled the top layer of masa,pricked with fork and as I carefully lifted the top layer, it broke up into smaller pieces so I uh, artfully arranged the masa dough all about the top of the casserole dish. I poured in another one cup of cooking liquid and sealed the casserole with three layers of tin foil and put it in a 350 oven for 90 minutes.

I checked at 90 minutes and removed the foil and finished it in the oven for another 30 minutes.

In the mean time I made a cooking liquid gravy. I browned flour in butter and made a roux (spelling?) When the flour had browned a bit I added a half-cup of cooking liquid, stirred until thick and added another half cup and let it simmer. I added half tsp of salt, perfect!

The pictures do not look like much but it tastes GORGEOUS! I may get this recipe a little more streamlined in future, I don’t think I need 3 ½ cups of masa, maybe half that for the top and bottom crust.

Reading list at the moment

I currently have four books open; one I started in bed and took down stairs to read while eating breakfast and left at the desk, a second one I brought home from a book exchange with my coding buddy at work and I have to get that one finished by next Friday in order to give it back, a third one I picked up at the store today and didn't feel like waiting until I had finished the other two, and the fourth is an old favorite that I have read often enough to be able to put it back on the shelf, pull it out and open it at the page where I stopped. I feel so much better knowing that part of my short term memory is working fairly well.

Let's start with my old favorite; "Midsummer Magic" by Catherine Coulter.
Set in Lords and Ladies times, 1810-ish or so. The Viscounts father calls him to make a dying wish. The son is stunned to learn that his father vowed to a Scottish friend that his son would marry one of his three daughters. Hawk decides that even though he has a mistress in London who he has no intention of giving up, to travel to Scotland to fulfill his father's promise. The three daughters are in various stages of excitement and dismay; the eldest does not want to marry an Englisman, the two younger sisters are thrilled and prepare to flirt their way in Hawk's heart. The oldest, Frances decides to disguise herself in thick glasses, dowdy mob caps, awful clothes, terrible singing etc. Hawk meets them, envisions a life of having either one of the two younger women hanging off his arm, demanding his time and he decides he will take Frances,the dowd. Frances is not happy. She and Hawk travel to his estate. She discovers the estate is a stud and he has thoroughbreds, right up Frances alley, she is secretly thrilled with the horses, not so much with her husband. She manages to drive him off to London by being very disagreable. Eventually Hawk returns and Frances has gotten rid of her ugly clothes and is now beautiful. The story goes on well to describe how they get along as she is no longer hiding herself. Lots of sexy revenge and very witty stuff.

I am now reading Heartless by Diana Palmer. This author specializes in angry frustrated men and repressed virgins. So far this story is holding pretty true to the standard plot. Oh and I'm sure there will be a villain in there as well.

The other two books shall unfold as most do. Nighty night boys and girls.

SUCCESS

Brief update on Cinco De Mayo. The potluck was very nice. I had a nice plateful of various Mexican type casseroles. The caramel pie with bananas went over very well, I didn't have to bring a darn thing home. The pharmacist tracked me down after lunch and asked for the recipe for the banana pie. When I told about the slow cooker and the rest of the recipe to him he was dumbfounded. You mean I can cook the canned milk in crock pot and store the cans on a shelf? Then we got to talking recipes and he mentioned a cookie recipe he had seen demonstrated with cajeta used as a filling. I'm thinking THUMB PRINT COOKIES and I better go purchase some more canned sweetened condensed milk.

I been dreamin' again......

DREAM 05 03 10

Dreamt I was traveling somewhere on a plane. Very big inside similar to that of a 12wide trailer house. My co-passenger was a man who seemed to be very protective of me. At one point I noticed that we were descending. The man told me that we were on autopilot. I told him to get on the horn and have someone talk him down because we had no pilot.

We landed and as we came outside there were lots of people speaking in French to us.
I don’t speak French but the man with me did. It seemed that the people were very happy to see us. We had been gone a very long time. 15 years or so.

The rest of the dream consisted of my watching various reunions of people. I watched one middle aged woman scream delightedly, “Mom, you became a nurse!”

Then I woke up.

Must consult dream site:

Flight

To dream of an airline flight, symbolizes a project that is about to take off. If the flight is delayed, then is suggests that you are unprepared in undertaking the project at hand. To dream of flight, signifies a new sense of freedom where you had initially felt restricted and limited.


Hmmm, since the “flight” was complicated without a pilot, i.e.; a leader, the new project may have a difficult time landing but will be successful in the end. I think this means that the new hospital project will take longer (No kidding!) than we think. Also I have been worrying about learning ICD10, which officially is coming on line October 2013. I need a few classes is all. Such a worry wart!

...and the speaking French, obviously a dream metaphor for communication problems. Oui!

RESULTS

This is cajeta or Dulce De Leche. I put those four 8 ounce cans of sweetened condensed milk covered with water in my slow cooker for exactly eight hours. I then turned the slow cooker off and left the cans to cool slowly over the next 5 1/2 hours. I then cooled them in the fridge until morning. I opened one today to check the caramelization, thick, rich,creamy, perfect!!

I love it when something works!!

Two COMPLETELY unrelated topics

I plan on making Cajeta De Lecha con platano for Cinco De Mayo next week. So in preparation I googled various recipes. I could not find any Nestles product already nicely made for me. However, I did find canned goat milk, which was recommended as being an authentic ingredient for the recipe as commonly used in Mexico. I went with good old store brand canned sweetened condensed milk. I carefully removed the paper labels and washed the cans. I dragged out my slow cooker, filled it water, four cans and let it go for 8 hours on low. I have since stored the cans after cooling in the fridge. I will take a picture when I open the cans to see how caramelized it got. The slow cooker method is wonderful, no peeking into the oven to add more water to the ban marie.



The precursor to actual ground breaking for the new hospital has begun. This oil drilling rig was driven onto the lawn by remote control. A handful of men scrambled all over it assembling long drilling rod things and adding water to a slurry mixture and pounding it into the ground. Checking for soil stabilization, I'm thinking. The soil around my house is pretty saturated. The worms have finally begun to come up out of the ground. Hope nothing starts to slip slide away.