Category Archives: Food

2026, Food, Health, Nature, Uncategorized

Go Fish

1 Comment

One benefit of living in the oil patch in ND was found in our local grocery store. To entice oil workers who came up from Lousiana and other southern states, the Cashwise store made a point of having a wide variety of very fresh and frozen seafood.

I don’t care at all for oysters or shrimp (shrimp is no better than eating mice, in my opinion) but the cod, salmon, lobster, clams, mussels, halibut, and crab were wonderful. I especially came to like Chilean Sea Bass.

I am somewhat disappointed with the seafood choices around our new town. The local grocery store has no fresh fish. The larger stores in Sioux Falls are better, but no sea bass. When did tilapia become so popular? I like to make a North German Fischgulash with cod or sea bass, shellfish, and scallops. The sea bass makes it particularly good.

Tuesday Husband and I made a quick SF grocery run and went to a specialty gourmet grocery and there was sea bass! I bought 3 pounds of filets and they are all safely frozen.

Our town had an ice fishing derby for kids and adults on February 14 at a spring-fed pond in town. It was 60° but the ice was 10 inches thick. They hauled out pounds and pounds of crappie, bluegill, perch, and carp. I am not sure if it was catch and release or if some of them were kept and eaten. I won’t eat freshwater fish because of all the contaminants in the ponds and lakes. The seafood I eat is probably not much better, but I can only hope.

Who is the pickiest eater you know? When was the last time you went fishing? What is your favorite fish to eat?

2026, Art, books, crops, Food, History

Spice of Life

36 Comments

I’m having fun churning through a bunch of “listicle” books in preparation for Blevins.   Shipwrecks, Nellie Bly, plants, more plants and Phineas Fogg.

The latest is The History of the World in 100 Objects, which was a BBC radio show awhile back.  I found the CDs through Interlibrary Loan and it’s prodigious – 20 discs!  It comes with a pamphlet that have 100 teeny little black and white photos of the items.  Luckily I was able to find a website that has nicer photos of the objects, so I’ve been keeping that open while I listen to the CDs.

It’s well done – not nearly as stuffy as I was expecting – and I’m enjoying it, although I’m having to keep at it since you can’t renew ILL items.

All the items are in the British Museum, including a statue of Chicomecoatl, the Aztec of Goddess of Maize and Sustenance.  The narration starts out with an overview of food having a divine role throughout history and then moves on to the history of maize, the plant it derives from and where it grows (just about everywhere).  Then came this funny bit:

“But crucially, maize is a rich carbohydrate that gives you a rapid energy hit.  But it is, let’s face it, pretty stodgy, and so from very early on, farmers also cultivated an ingenious – and tasty – accompaniment, the indigenous chili.  It has virtually no nutritional value but, as we all know, it’s uniquely able to liven up dull carbohydrates – and it shows that we’ve been foodies for as long as we’ve been farmers.”

I laughed out loud especially since I had just added a slug of frozen poblanos to a dish I had made about an hour before.  Now I want to go to Penzey’s to see if they have any good chili mixtures.

Do you have any “go-to” spices?

2026, Family, Food, Gatherings, Uncategorized

Decadence

35 Comments

This past weekend has been one of fun and simple excess. My birthday is February 1. Son’s is February 10. We decided to celebrate together this past weekend.

Son had arranged a Valentine’s Day treat for his wife in Sioux Falls including a live production of Moulin Rouge at the Washington Pavillion and dinner at a really exquisite Italian restaurant. We watched the 7 year old and the 6 month old while they were in Sioux Falls. We celebrated with birthday cake when they returned after dinner and the musical. They all spent Saturday night with us.

Son and I agreed that we wanted a German/Central European cake to celebrate, and he found a lovely recipe for Schwartzvald Kirschtorte. It was a fairly easy recipe for an experienced baker, and I baked the three cake layers on Friday. Grandson and I assembled the cake on Saturday afternoon after I had made the massive amounts of sweetened whipped cream, excessive chocolate ganache, chopped dark, sweet cherries, and kirsch syrup that completed it. Grandson loves to bake and cook. He really loved licking the spoons. It was a 9 inch cake that served 12 people. The header photo is all that is left after we all had second and third helpings on Sunday. It was a decadent cake..

It was also decadent to spend so much time with grandchildren. Granddaughter frequently fell asleep in our arms after her bottles. She smiled and blew raspberries and cuddled. Grandson was so excited to play basketball and Scrabble with his Opa. He also got to roast marshmallows in our fire pit on Sunday morning. How decadent is that?

What is the most decadent thing you’ve eaten or done lately? When was the last time you took care of a baby?

2026, Business, Food, Uncategorized

Product Reviews

38 Comments

Husband and I quite regularly purchase specialty foods from a Spanish and an Italian importer, as well as things now and then from Amazon. We also order quite a bit from King Arthur Baking Company. I usually ignore the pleas from these entities for reviews of our purchases.

I mostly have better things to do, and I would hope my continued ordering would let them know we are happy with their products. I know the reviews are all in the aid of marketing.

The other day, though, the King Arthur Baking Company hooked me with an offer of a possible $100 if I reviewed our recent purchase of all-purpose flour. I really do like their flour. I told them it is the only all-purpose flour we use. It was impossible to submit the review, however, and I finally gave up in frustration.

What products do you order on-line? Ever submitted a review? What products would you like to honestly review?

2026, animals, Food, Kids, Mysteries

Scrambled?

31 Comments

It was YAs birthday in the middle of the month.  She was out of town for work so she requested a birthday brunch this past weekend.  She had the jalapeno hash with a wide of pancakes; I had the blueberry pancakes with a side of scrambled eggs.  

I used to always order fried eggs, over medium.  No waitperson ever blinked an eye over this, but apparently chefs and fry cooks weren’t up to the task.  Either the yolks were rock solid or the whites oozed out.  After several years of this, I finally decided to switch to scrambled.  Easy peasy, right?  Nope.  It was right about this time that “soft” scrambled eggs started to trend upwards.  I remember seeing chefs online and on tv raving about them.  I always just thought of them as “wet” and certainly not appetizing.  These days when I order scrambled eggs, I specify that I want them “dry”.  Again, no waitperson ever questions this description and I always get the eggs the way I like them.

On Saturday however, YA informed me that I’m ordering wrong.  I’m supposed to say “hard” instead of “dry”.  Since she chose that outing to also inform me of several other things that I do wrong, I didn’t think about it too much.

Then I read Ben’s blog and when I was looking at the chicken pictures, it made me wonder if on the egg point YA was correct.  I can’t imagine what the internet thinks of me based on some of my searches but now it has to add “ways to scramble” eggs to my weird list.  Turns out that most folks do say “hard” although there are enough that use “dry” to make me feel like I’m not completely on my own.  I also discovered that the culinary world also refers to this method as “American Method”.  Hmmm.  I found a lot of videos about how to scramble eggs but nobody seems to know why hard/dry is American.  I did also find that there are “diner” scrambled; the eggs are cooked flat on a grill and folded up. 

When I do eggs at home, my preferred method is fried.  Over medium of course.

Anyway, thanks to Ben and YA for my latest rabbit hole – egg research.  I have frittata and shakshuka on the menu for the next week!

Poached, hard-boiled, soft-boiled, scrambled, over-easy, sunny-side up?

2026, Food, Games, Kids, Seasons

Slippery Summer Fun

33 Comments

Slippery Summer Fun

Today’s post comes to us from Krista.

I think I’ve mentioned growing up on Cannon Lake and spending most of my free time swimming. I loved swimming, loved everything about the lake.

I don’t know where Mom got the idea, but one hot summer day, she took a large watermelon and spread Vaseline all over it. Then she tossed it in the lake and told us we had to bring it in so that we could have it for a snack later.

We spent most of the afternoon trying to “catch” that thing. It slipped away with every touch. There is nothing on a watermelon to grab hold of, and a greased one in the lake is a slippery challenge! No one was injured in this game, and everyone was exhausted. I don’t remember who, but someone was finally able to get hold of it.

When we got out of the lake, we were slick with petroleum product and water. We all had to shower before supper.

What unique games did you play as a child? What fun challenges did you give your own kids?

2026, animals, Food, Mysteries, Nature

Critter Conundrum?

29 Comments

I can’t decide if I’m losing my mind or not.

Backstory.  For many years, I have kept dog treats in my car – a box in the backseat and usually two or three in the little well in the drivers side door.  Most of these go to dogs at the hardware store – there are two official hardware store dogs but there are also often shoppers who bring their dogs in.  Occasionally if someone asking for money on a street corner has a dog, I will stop and talk to them a bit.  Dollar or so if I have it and a couple of treats for the dog.  I haven’t changed the type of dog treat – ever. 

This summer, I went to grab a treat from the little well and there were none there.  No big deal, I must have used them the last time I was at the hardware store.  I went to get a few from the box and the box was empty.  It’s completely within the realm of possibility that I took the last few treats out the box the last time I filled up the well, but I couldn’t grab a memory of doing that.  I bought another box, opened it and put a few in the window well.  A couple weeks later I noticed the well was empty, so went back to the box.  It was open and tipped over in the storage box where it sits.  Hmmmm.  This is where it gets tricky.  I am not 100% certain that I put any treats in the well at that point but the next week when I wanted one, the well was empty.

There is absolutely no evidence that critters are the culprits of all this.  No crumbs, no droppings, no scratch marks, no odor, no damage to anything else in the car.  Even in summer, I never leave the car windows open.  I could do a more scientific investigation (other than relying on my perhaps faulty memory) by taking a photo and jotting down the date and time to compare it later if I find the well empty.  Same with the box – picture and date of it closed.  So far, I’ve been too lazy to do that, although truly, how long would it take to snap a photo with my phone as I’m getting out of the car? 

It’s hard to imagine a squirrel getting into the car and it’s harder to imagine mice getting in and traipsing off with whole dog treats without leaving some kind of trail.  

Any thoughts?

2026, Business, Family, Food, Travel

Pea Green

32 Comments

When I started in the travel department of my company (35 years back), nobody had cell phones.  Of course, mobile phones did exist, however they were huge and very expensive.  Nobody I knew had a cell phone until the 90s.  The first small phone, the flip phone, came out in 1989. 

If you needed to call home while you were traveling, you needed to call through the hotel and it was exorbitant.  (This was also before everybody had laptops.)  My company had a strict “once every three days” rule for these expensive calls.  We all know how much technology has changed the world.  Now the company doesn’t even have a rule about calls home. 

This morning, I got up to the above photo texted to me from YA, who is on a work program right now.  Up until that moment, I had thought we were having a really warm couple of days.  Everything is relative, I guess.   The caption under her photo was “Breakfast on my balcony.”

Are you jealous of anybody this week?

2026, Food, Gatherings, holidays, Uncategorized

Bottoms Up!

38 Comments

Most of my friends and acquaintances know me well enough to know that New Year’s Eve does not find me out drinking and partying wildly.  The only time I’m up at midnight these days is if I need to make a trip down the hall in the middle of the night. 

I have only been drunk twice in my life.  The first time was when I was living in Northfield during the summer between what would have been my junior and senior year.  I was working at Ole Piper Inn and went to a party with my co-workers.  I hadn’t really had drunk much prior to that and there was a lot of mixing of different kinds of alcohol.  I woke up in my bed but don’t remember how I got there.  Keys were in my jacket pocket and the car was in the driveway – luckily nothing amiss. Thank goodness the party was only about 10 blocks from my apartment.

The second time was at a work party at the bakery in Milwaukee.   No memory loss this time (I remember the bus ride home from the bakery QUITE clearly) but I felt so awful the next day that I wished for memory loss.  It was after this horrible hangover that I decided that overdrinking was just not something I wanted to do. 

I’m not a teetotaler but I rarely have more than a glass of wine or one mixed drink.  It’s not hard as the taste of alcohol isn’t my favorite anyway.  Not imbibing much was a little challenging with clients over the years but nothing too awful.  The pressure that many people experience for not drinking in social settings hasn’t happened much to me; I’ve found that if I don’t call attention to my beverage in a party setting, most folks don’t even notice that I’m nursing one glass of wine for an hour or that I’ve switched to a non-alcoholic option.

All this is coming to mind because in addition to the New Year, I finally gave in and let the Medicare/BCBS home wellness visit happen last week. It was easy enough, no invasive stuff and only took about 30 minutes. The nurse practitioner asked me all the same questions that the doctor asks every year at my usual wellness checkup.  When he got to the “how often to you drink alcohol” question I hesitated after saying “one or two” and he immediately filled in with “a day?”.  I laughed and said “no, probably one or two every two or three months”.  I had hesitated because I was trying to decide between two to three months and three to four months.  He clearly didn’t believe me.  I reported that I had just had a glass of wine the Saturday before at my party but that I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had any alcohol.  Maybe Blevins back in September? 

He did write down 2-3 months, although I’m not sure he really thought that was the truth.  Oh well.

Did you party last night?  What makes for a good celebration in your opinion? 

2025, Family, Food, Games, holidays, Kids, Seasons

Christmas Eve Chaos

34 Comments

When I was growing up, there were only two holiday celebrations – both on Christmas Day.  In the morning it was just me, my sister and my folks opening gifts.  We opened one at a time, in order of age.  The next person couldn’t open anything until we had all sufficiently ooohhed and aaahhed over the current gift.  Then later in the afternoon, my mom would host Christmas dinner.  This was a potluck; Nonny did not like to cook, so hosting a dinner in which she cooked many dishes was not an option.  The attendees were different every year, depending on who was in town for the holidays.  I have 11 cousins but it was a rare Christmas when there were more than three of them joining us.  Quiet.  Christmas for me was quiet growing up.

Fast forward.  YA and I have been celebrating on Christmas Eve with some of my oldest friends (Alan and Julie) for 25+ years.  Back then there were Julie, Alan, their 3 girls, me, YA and usually a couple of Alan’s sisters and a few cousins.  As the kids got older, Alan’s sisters moved away but were replaced in number by boyfriends who then became fiancés who then became husbands.  Then the grandkids joined the fray.  14 of them.  No, not a typo.  The kids range in age from 1½ to 17.

This year Christmas Eve started out with about half of the kids snowmobiling/snowboarding; I thought it would tire them out, but I think it just revved them up.  Stockings first – Julie does those and they are low-key affairs: a mandarin orange, little pack of Kleenex, a candy cane and this year, each kid got a placement that Julie quilted for them with fabric chosen for each grandchild.   Gifts were next and that’s when it got a little wild.

We always start out going by youngest to oldest, but that breaks down pretty quickly, especially when someone chooses their Ukrainian egg box or their ornament box (I always wrap these in take-away boxes – perfect size).  Then everybody opens theirs at the same time and then the order of gift opening usually goes awry from there.  One of the sons-in-law is a bit of a neatnik so every gift that is opened, he supervises where the wrapping and ribbon and tissue went so he can scoop it up. Once we’re all opening packages willy-nilly, this gets a little stressful for him but we can’t convince him to relax about it.

A couple of the older kids started the “it’s a box” joke when taking off wrapping paper.  Then the younger kids took the joke and ran with it.  For the rest of the evening, every box was met with a chorus of “it’s a box”.  The teenagers had tired of the joke at this point so there was a lot of sighing and eye-rolling by a couple of them.

Several of the kids received stuffed animals and Howie, who is 9, got a capybara.  I guess they’re popular right now and Howie was smitten with it.  Its little legs were just the right size that it could sit right on top of Howie’s head, where it stayed for at least an hour, even when the unwrapping was done and the kids were split into various groups, playing some of the games they had received.

The noise levels are so far beyond what I either experienced as a kid, or am used to these days that I find myself just sitting back in wonder.  When YA and I carried our stuff to the car and headed home, my ears almost rang from the silence.  And when we got home, it felt so chaos-free (even with the dog excited that we were home) that I breathed a little sigh of relief.  I love them all but glad the chaos doesn’t follow me home!

Any fun/chaos/noise to report this week?