-----One-pan Tuscan Salmon

Applebees? You get an F for ripping off the Cheers theme song.

Turkey, Mushroom and Brown Rice Soup(2014)

Creamy Turkey, Mushroom and Rice Soup.
---It's actually dairy-free. I have people with various degrees of lactose intolerance, so this excites me!
---Plus, I love being able to say things like "You don't see them but there are actually cashews in your soup."
---No nut allergies here. I wouldn't have thought of using sunflower seeds! I wonder what my thoughts will be upon actually noticing sunflower seeds are in a pureed state ... hmmm.
---Three soaking times for the cashews are given. Allot at least an hour ... up to overnight.
---"... use additional turkey stock or water when reheating it for the best consistency!"
---If you don't have leftover turkey, there are helpful instructions for poaching a turkey breast. :-)

The title is mainly misleading ... refers to some of the hazards of building. Anyway, these tunnels have a fascinating history ... including use during World War II and art-ish hangouts. The parts about maintenance and all the infastructure were interesting!

You can participate in this meme HERE. :-)

It's the last Monday of 2021 and I am looking forward to 2022's reading efforts. I want to concentrate much more on not only book blogging ... but music, movie reviews on various sites, cooking, current events and trying TONS of new things! :-) I even have the equipment and the beginning of plans for a podcast.

In 2022, you will find me participating more on:
Letterboxd
GoodReads (I listed 44 finished books in 2021.)

I pulled out one of my fave, though it could be in better condition, records this week.
(video is a clip ... but awesome clip)

And movies watched included:

Both mens' children were included and there was a much-appreciated cameo near the end.

STARTED:

-----Terry McMillan is the author who wrote "How Stella Got Her Groove Back."

AND THE AUDIOBOOKS:

WANT TO READ:

A CURRENT READ:

I am on page 107.

---

I read this but wasn't impressed. I suppose it because I have read others pretty much identical in scope. Given that ... I would rate the book as "adequate."

You can buy templates for papercut art.

-----Cookie Butter Pound Cake Bread Pudding

-----Homemade Hash Browns with Spinach and Carrot
-----Carrot, Parsnip, and Turnip Hash Browns
-----Zucchini and Potato Hash Browns

-----The search for a time capsule placed under the Robert E. Lee statue will resume tomorrow.

-----What is a Dun Horse? Traits, Colors and Facts At the beginning of L'Amour's book, a character is riding a long-legged zebra dun ... obviously a horse. I have learned that you can also ride a zebra dun mule.


-----And What About Britanny and Them Bretons? This gives some idea of what a "Breton Frenchman is" and what current opinions are about the history/definition/culture ... I browsed the comments.

I haven't watched this movie in some years ... long enough that the storyline was a guess for me. As far as westerns go, I find it a worthwhile watch.
Memorable moments:
A counting
Death scene that mentions tamales.
The frank ride to THE END (note I didn't spoil whether it was happy or not).

"The Humboldt"=The Humnoldt Trail. I'm just trying to figure out what the locations would be modern day ... I like knowing stuff like that. :-)

Based on the Louis L'Amour novel of the same name.
L'Amour was a prolific writer ... 105 works.

Soon I will start reading the earliest L'Amour's novel ... Westward the Tide. It is available for FREE borrow on OpenLibrary. The publication on there is the 70s ... but this book came out, in Great Britain, in the 50s.

Matt Bardoul was a good man to have as a friend and a bad one to make trouble with. He was also a single-minded drifter--until he met his match in an outspoken beauty named Jacquine Coyle. She was headed into the Bighorn Mountains with her father and an expedition in search of gold. After Matt signs on to join them, he discovers that there is a group of outlaws in the party--gunfighters and thieves that Matt wouldn't trust for a minute. At first it's unclear what they are planning, but before long Matt realizes that he's the only man standing between innocent people and a brutal conspiracy of greed, lust, and cold-blooded murder.

-----Films scored by Hans J. Salter

101 Things About Me
1. I should think we eat rather more brisket than the average family. (By the way, the average adult eats about a 1/2 pound of cooked brisket in a single sitting.)
2. I would like to own an older dark gray or black Armani women's pant suit ... or both. It/they would be worn often!
3. I need to restart my Medusa collection.
4. I think that the Canada side of Niagara Falls is beautiful....much more beautiful than the American side.
5. I like to keep a travel log. All the discoveries (and the frustrations) go into whatever notebook I am keeping. This intensifies all enjoyment and makes me, eventually, laugh at frustrations. I do hate when it has to be done hurriedly (frustrating to look back through handwriting and not be able to see some of the painting titles I wanted to from museums). I take more photographs than anyone I know.
6. Thing I need to replace: Pinky and the Brain comic of "Brainlet." We are all about the Shakespeare here! I've been known to celebrate, or at least nod at, Shakespaeare's birthday(April 23rd).
7. I've never been able to bring myself to like The Onion. But I do like that type of comedy writing, so I will perfect mine and then maybe try to write for The Onion. Hey, it's me and this is how I perfect something I could like a lot.
8. My favorite color is mustard yellow. I am very particular about the shades.I don't wear anything that color unless it has a Fall-ish tone to it!
9. A moment when I admired Jeb Bush ... Antonin Scalia had passed away that day and the Republicans were debating. Bush seemed to be the only person on the stage who was truly taking the moment of silence to reflect (and even seemed to be praying).
10. I play a mean/insane game of Munchkin. Funny moment ....the GM prohibited me from giving Husband "gifts." I don't usually win.....but I add a lot of humor/death to the game.
11. Spring is my favorite season.
12. I don't like keeping things in pants pockets at all ... yet I complain if there aren't any pants pockets when needed.
13. I like bootlegged jeans and I wish slight bell bottoms were always in fashion. I've been made fun of for wearing bell bottoms when they were back in fashion.
14. I love Big Brother Hard Root Beer from Aldi.
15. I've been various degrees of Vegetarian.
16. Vincent Price's laughter is awesome.
17. We only use cast iron for skillets. I've gotten so used to this and I'm momentarily surprised when people are surprised at this.
18. I don't like raw green pepper (at least from the store, where it is actually sweet-ish, from the garden, is different). I only like cooked if it has been long simmered. I will eat it when served just fine. I feel I should like it since so many loved ones have enjoyed it so much ... but alas, no.
19. Mr Brown Can Moo! Can You?" is my favorite Dr. Seuss story.
20. I want to (safely) see a bear in Smokey Mountains National Park.
21. One of my favorite sounds is calliope music ... circus, steamboat, certain recorded ice cream truck music. I like music boxes that sound like this.
22. I am learning to hula via tutorials.
23. I have a vintage Elvis: Aloha from Hawaii tapestry.
24. I touchtype really fast. I can type faster than Isaac Asimov could ... and more accurately, too.
25. I like to burn German Chocolate and gardenia-scented candles...at the same time. People like it, once they get used to it.
26. Pet peeve: "Family-style" restaurants that make their living off serving the cheapest, improperly thawed frozen vegetables they can find and "just add water" products.
27. I refer to anything martini-related as "The Art of Shaken, Not Stirred." I like homemade martini vinaigrette dressing!

Thoughts from September 12, 2013 ...
I once wanted part of the end of Blade Runner to be read at my funeral. Glad I noticed that might not be very reassuring...before my funeral.
"I've...seen...things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire, off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those...moments will be lost... in time...like, tears in rain. Time to die."

Christmas Eve Day. Piles of soft pretzels with cheese sauce at breakfast ... that was cool. We watched part of Venom: Let There Be Carnage. I started a folder for old nature/environment handouts I want to keep. I love the radio and have been making a point to get back to daily listening!


(#SoundtrackOfMyDay) Vinyl, on 45, that I will replace at some point. 🙂

2022-ish Goals

1. Finish the annex to my office ... a large amount of book storage, an armchair and a comfy cot behind a moveable wall.I love library annexes and delight in visiting those with "open-stack" rooms and (old)book sales.
2. Read the non-fiction works of John Irving and watch the five movies.

Above is the first one, a reread. A student and a mechanic tour Austria by motorcycle ... somewhere in the course of the story the two men want to attempt freeing all the animals from the Vienna Zoo.
I want to locate the places visited ... a guidebook I have, Wikivoyage, Youtube vlogs, Google Earth. Armchair travel and using the globe we gave my mother.
Yes, I said this list was 2022-ish. I've already started this one and am on page 44 now. Animals that I need to learn about include the arboral rat, the flying phalanger, grayling(fish that are eaten) and the Spectacled Bear(vunerable bear species; Andean; awesome faces).
3. Get COVID-19 booster.
4. Make journal entries the whole year. Personal, social media, family updates. I like to do photo journals!
5. Work on a comedy routine ... because I would like to do open-mic standup after the pandemic is over.
6. I have a project where I am writing a piece for each of this master list of logical fallacies ... that will take more than the year 2022.
7. Submit a lifestyle piece to BuzzFeed. Submit a personal or critical essay to Buzzfeed READER. (I used to do a variety of paid writing and would like to get back into that.)
8. Listen to each album in my record collection at least once.
I play Christmas music whenever I want here (it's me). So, I've already played a bit of Christmas stuff recently. Our Christmas album tradition will be in full swing after Halloween. I have 50-some of the Christmas records my parents played ... yes, there were more. Christmas was/is both my father and my FAVORITE holiday!

9. Add to our spiral rope chain Christmas garland by making my own (normally people make necklaces out of this).
10. Finish reading The Catcher in the Rye.
11.Be coordinated enough to flip two pans of sauteeing vegetables at the same time. It's a cooking thing ... you have your priorities, I have mine. :-)
I will have to get pans that aren't my usual HEAVY cast iron though. Yay ... new pans!
12. Put little decorative things among the lady ferns and get a pic of raindrops falling off. Maybe rain on the decorative things, too.

13. Find some sort of healthy-ish jello option.

-----Healthy Homemade McGriddles
" ... combine 4-ingredient protein pancake buns with folded eggs and your choice of healthier fixin’s like chicken breakfast sausage. It’s a simple recipe with a 25-minute prep time and just 5 ingredients, and it’s highly customizable."

-----A rare 'cotton candy' lobster named Haddie was caught in Maine
-----Glazed Corned Beef recipe
-----I saw a video yesterday that claimed, with the numbers rounded, there are no women citizens in Vatican City. There is a Wikipedia page on Women in Vatican City.

#SoundtrackOfMyDay

The Shrink Next Door

The first three episodes are up on Apple TV+ and I think new episodes go up on Fridays. According to the blurbs, Paul Rudd plays "Dr. Ike," a psychiatrist who takes over his patient's life. Will Ferell is an almost-40-year-old patient who it seems has ongoing anxiety and self-esteem issues. The series is based on real events.

First episode ... The Consultation.
It seems as if this might be the story of assertiveness training by a con artist? Hmmm. There is a part at the beginning which I am guessing is a flash to the future. The end is weird ... current day anger issues, sleepwalking, foretelling??

Second episode ... The Ceremony.
Milking money ... yep, this is a theme.
"Run to the light, Carol Anne." That's a line from Poltergeist.

vocab:
bema(bee-muh): the podium or platform in a synagogue from which the Torah and Prophets are read
aliyah[əˈlēə]: the honor of being called upon to read from the Torah.

Things you might find at a Korean Buffet:
-----Japchae/Chapchae (잡채) ... Korean Glass Noodle Stir-fry
-----"Kimchi breath"

Nice track choice. Like by me because he sounds a bit like Freddie Mercury here! The sensitive Billy Joel of the curls and cigarettes.

Third episode ... The Treatment
"Marty invites Dr. Ike to help out with the family business. Phyllis senses she is losing her brother and decides to take matters into her own hands."

This is reading with an extensive book scavenger hunt! You can sign up for the Fall Season HERE. :-)

I am new to understanding COYER ... but participating for whatever the Winter Season is, too. :-)

My first prompt:
A book with a red item on the cover. This is my personal copy. Somewhere in my shelves or storage, I should also have my mother's copy and the copy my mother gave me.
On page 15/495.

LDRathon Progress!!!

LDR(Long Distance Relationship) Readathon.
What a nice thing to salute during this pandemic! November 8th-November 14th.

This, for me, is three rereads, a continued tabbing and the Matt Ritter book. :-) I don't pretend I will get it all done in a week ... but I am at a point where fragments of reading are great and enjoyable things.

Progress:
Stranger in a Strange Land- page 71/438
Patton- page 101/978
Rainwalkers- page 51/249
Through the Darkness- page 23/478
Hitchhiker's Guide- page 105/815

From Patton:
"... the stables were maintained in the capable hands of the Ayer coachman, Henry, who said when he was hired that he did not particularly care about having a regular day off as long as he had permission to attend all public hangings."



Instagram tags: #ldrathon #bookstagram #tbr
Find me on GoodReads!



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Rainwalkers is a story set in the not-so-distant future in a crumbling version of John Steinbeck’s Salinas Valley, after the breakup of the United States. A once rich and prosperous agricultural land is now a war-torn nation-state known only as The Valley. To combat chronic droughts, scientists seeded clouds with genetically engineered bacteria that created regular rains but unintentionally made the rains lethal to humans. Anyone caught in the rain dies within seconds, yet there are rumors of people who survive… known as rainwalkers.
In a land of forced labor camps and waning oil fields, poverty-stricken agricultural communities support the metropolis of Salinas City and the authoritarian Valley Administration in their unending war against neighboring nations. In desperation, the Valley Administration intensifies their search for rainwalkers, who are believed to be powerful weapons in the border wars, by forcing children housed at Valley schools into the rain to be screened for resistance.
War hero Willie Taft lives a quiet agrarian life until the Administration abducts him and his wife, separating them from their daughter. Although his wife is killed during their escape, Willie continues his journey to rescue their daughter. He faces mortal challenges from the Administration military force, the sociopath bounty hunter on his trail, and the ever-present toxic rain. Time is running out as he fights his way through the Valley back to his daughter’s school before she is forcefully screened with other children in the deadly rain.
-----I'm currently reading this in ... Adobe Digital Edition via NetGalley(in my library for 50 days) and digital novel on Scribd. I'm not that invested in the phenomena of the rain coming yet ... I need to turn my imagination up or the wording needs to get less "tell me" but it's just 20-some pages in.

Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon 2021

You can sign up HERE. :-)



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AND THIS IS MY FIRST READ...

Other writing by this author has received high praise!

__________________________________________
I will be browsing Winter Book Lists on Goodreads!

 

Blurry but here's a woodpecker going to town on one of our trees.

Listening To ...

Among today's workout music. :-)
I have lost around 26 pounds since the pandemic started! I've had (diagnosed)metabolism issues, of one sort or another, for decades and this is a huge accomplishment that I will capitalize on while I can.

Martini Vinaigrette (2006)

Notes: A suggestion forum called for a vinaigrette as a base. We bought Ken's Steakhouse Lite Olive Oil Vinaigrette and used remainder of the bottle for another salad. This blended all the flavors perfectly. I chopped up a bunch of Manzanilla olives. For the juice in the dressing, we used concentrated lemon and I have a large bottle left for cooking....I read that most any citrus juice works good with vinaigrette. We used "Three Olives", a vodka imported from England (instead of gin)....a lovely vodka.
Nowadays (2021): I would like to try a martini vinaigrette with the Three Olives Citrus or Cucumber Lime vodka.

"The perfect vinaigrette is so easy to make that I see no reason whatsoever for bottled dressings."
-Julia Child

-----Strawberry Vinaigrette. Light, for Summer Salads. There is also a Strawberry Poppyseed Dressing recipe.
-----Pickle Vinaigrette. The recipe suggests this can also be used to dip bread in.
-----Spring Vanilla Vinaigrette. "Perfect as a dressing for a salad of baby greens with strawberries or grape tomatoes. Sprinkle with toasted walnuts, if desired." A McCormic recipe. There are no reviews yet.
-----Asparagus Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette
-----Honey-Balsamic Vinaigrette
-----Roasted Tomato Vinaigrette. Versatile, concentrated tomato flavor.
-----Maple Vinaigrette


It's not salad:
-----Pork Chops with Warm Lemon Vinaigrette

(May 22, 2006 ... four of six arrangements.)



Tips:
-----Buy an inexpensive, often sort-of-ugly bouquet, from the supermarket floral store...they all have them.
-----I always keep miscellaneous items like ribbon & glass jars on hand.
-----I combine fake with real.
-----I used to buy vases on extreme clearance...usually 50 cents or less ... they'd probably be a little over a dollar now. The glass jars are usually from groceries. I've a few vases that belonged to my mother.
-----I cut up flowers, real and fake, to make them my own. So much less commercial.
-----I recycle bits of bouquet that are still salvageable from one arrangement to the next.

Having flowers in one's home doesn't have to be expensive! #LittleThings