Hello on Thursday Morning

Dear Friends,

Linda and her girlfriends had a wonderful time in New York. They even had a chance to see the King Tut Exhibit before going to the play. Every time Linda returns home from one of her adventures, she always comes into the house “Happy”. She just loves plays so much, and I am so happy that she has girlfriends to go with.

My day had me making two trips to Home Depot, and filling up the car with 15 bags of cedar mulch during each trip. My routine would be to attack the flower beds until I ran out of mulch. I did all of the flower beds except for one bed which would require about five more bags of mulch. I know I could have and a couple yards of mulch delivered to my house, but I don’t like a pile of mulched dumped in my driveway. With bags, I can hide them in the back yard, and do the mulching at my own pace.

Just before my afternoon nap, I gave my lawn, and the neighbor’ lawn, who watch the Casa del Curley home when we are away, a little trim. I was ready for a nap as the time approached 2 PM. I worked from 6:45 A.M. straight through until nap time. I never stopped for lunch because I had “completing the task” on my brain.

After my nap, I tried to figure out what I should make for supper. I decided to use our electronic pressure cooker. I am really getting to like the device because it is so simple to use. I found a pack of country style ribs buried in our freezer. I defrosted them for a while in the micro wave before using the searing cycle in the pressure cooker. I painted the ribs with some store bought barbecue sauce, put in a half a cup of liquid (I used white wine), closed the lid, and set the timer on the device. 45 minutes later I had the most delicious, fall off of the bone ribs that you can possibly imagine. I did save Linda one rib, and she did agree that the country style ribs turned out great.
I normally would cook the ribs in the crock pot on low for about 8 hours. I guess using this device is really slow cooking fast.

As the country ribs were cooking, I was perusing the recipe book which came with the device. Cooking 4 to 6 ears of corn on the cob will take one minute once the high pressure is reached. I can’t wait for the corn on the cob to grow and be harvested at our local farms.

The pressure cooker that I have is not the same one as you see on QVC. When they do their food demonstration on television, they can put in frozen items in their electronic pressure cooker. With all of us having micro-waves with defrost cycles, it is no big deal to thaw beef, pork, or poultry first, and then use the pressure cooker. I did call the 800 number to see if I could cook frozen foods in my particular device, the person who I talked to said “No”. This won’t stop me from trying it anyway. I might try it on a couple of frozen boneless chicken breasts. There are safety valves on the device. If you hear an explosion in the neighborhood, you know that it was just me doing what I am not supposed to do.

I still can’t get used to the noiselessness of the device. There is no ticking like on those old pressure cookers that most of us grew up with. When the cooking is done, the device beeps a couple of times, and that is all the noise that you hear.
For busy families, this might be a good device to add to your repertoire of kitchen appliances.

This is one of those days where Linda wants to just relax and do things at her own pace. She also will be glued to a local radio station for a portion of the day because they having another one of the Radio Auctions. There is always something (mostly restaurant certificates for us) that we end up getting. They even have a snow blower with a retail value of $1300 as one of the items.

I am going to finish the flower bed, and do some weed whacking which I didn’t do yesterday because I was so tired from playing in the flower beds.

Speaking of bed, I did go to bed a happy man last evening. The Red Sox, and the Boston Bruins won their contests. I was particularly excited about the Bruins’ win because they were victorious on their opponent’s home ice.

I did see where the damage in Tennessee has topped the $1 billion mark. If you made plans to go to the Grand Old Opera House in Nashville this summer, you might want to rethink going there. It will be closed for at least three months. One of Linda’s girlfriends, whom she went to New York City with on Wednesday, has married children and their families living in Tennessee. I hope that they were not affected by the flooding.
The Berkshires are still looking pretty good as a place to live. Us Berkshirites are away from many of the natural disasters that are happening throughout the United States.

Well, I have to read the local newspaper, get dressed, and head off to Home Depot. Mulching is a quiet activity!

Have a great Thursday!
Talk to you soon. The Curley Lad