I had Friday off. Spent most of the day boxing up stuff and carrying it over to the storage unit. I'm getting CLOSE but there's always more I could move out, especially if I decide I want better shelves in the walk-in closet. I did pull out a couple skeins of yarn on the "I love this, why haven't I knit it up yet" principle; I might get a special tub to store all these and keep them here. Yes, I can run over to the unit but the place is harder to get into on weekends and I'd not want to go late in the evening, the lighting there isn't good and it would be hard to see what I was looking for.
I also did a little repair - the mailbox had gotten very wobbly because a couple of the bolts and nuts that held it onto the post had dropped out, so I got some new ones and put them in; it's more stable now.
Saturday I did the necessary shopping for today's special meal, and did a little work over at school. I also knit some on the corner to corner blanket
First color change! The nice thing about this is it's simple, so it takes little concentration.
Today, it started out a little melancholy. I was thinking of how when I was an older kid/teen and even into my early adulthood (when I was living with my parents during grad school), most years I got a new dress or skirt and top for Easter*. I haven't gotten any new clothes - well, I did get a sort of work-horse dress for my birthday, but going out and shopping and finding something bright and nice for spring hasn't happened for a long time, and might not for a while yet. I wound up wearing a several-years-old skirt printed with orchids and a matching top.
(*We didn't buy clothes often; it was kind of expected you took care of what you had. New clothes were for the start of school, or Christmas, or Easter, or maybe if something specific was needed, like you had gotten too tall for last year's winter coat)
I also thought of how my dad would buy orchid corsages for my mom and for me every year; he'd ask what dress we were wearing and try to match the orchid to it. I don't know if that was a thing done in his family or just something he wanted to do. It doesn't seem to be common any more? At least, I've not seen them for years.
I also admit a little melancholy over the idea of "it doesn't make sense to cook a big fancy meal for a holiday when you're alone" and I thought of my solo Thanksgiving in 2020 and the solo Christmas in 2020...
I guess as an adult you realize a lot of traditions you did as a child won't happen again - well, maybe unless you have children yourself. I miss a lot of the things my family used to do and find it really hard to find replacements as a solo person.
And the person approached me again at church, still asking for prayers. I reassured them that I was (I didn't say that I was praying they'd get help, or have enough clarity to realize it was delusions) but also said - God forgive me for this slight untruth/entrapment - "You know, doctors have to keep what you say in confidence [the person is very anxious that no one knows who could tell their alleged would-be tormentors], maybe you should talk to them at your next appointment" and I don't know. I don't know what to do and it bothers me and I feel like nothing I can do will really help things, but at the same time....I don't know. I wish they wouldn't keep asking me. I hope they do say something to their doctor where they will get some help. It's just hard and I admit I've considered either calling the counselor again, or trying to find some other professional *I* can talk to to help me unravel my feelings about this and formulate a useful way to respond.
Also, the bell choir played and while I didn't make an *obvious* mistake (I just failed to play once when I was part of a chord, so probably no one noticed), I still feel some performance anxiety over it. Especially today, I messed up a lot in rehearsal, I think I was having a hard time concentrating and I notice that happens some times when my allergies are bad.
But anyway. I got back home and worked out and ate lunch, and then did the prepwork for dinner. Once that was done, I got about an hour to work more on the current quilt top. And I listened to the BBC Easter Service (a CoE service, from Canterbury Cathedral) and I admit I cried a little, in a way I don't allow myself to in public. I don't know why I do. Partly something like gratitude, I think, for the idea that there's something bigger and more important than me, that there are other people out there working - all over the world - to try to make things better for others, and doing that in the name of Christ. (The rector (?) who did the message spoke about helping the poor and the refugees, especially those from war-torn regions). And they do it so much more "high church" than my tradition; there's a stateliness and a "this is different from day to day life, this is a glimpse of something bigger and more important" that my tradition lacks.
Then I put things in to cook. A bit earlier than I had planned but I got hungry early - only ate a very small lunch on the anticipation of a bigger, nicer dinner.
I made enchiladas for the main dish. I have a good recipe in my cooking-for-one cookbook from America's Test Kitchen. My only modification was that I cooked up a bit of ground beef with adobo seasoning and put about a tablespoon in each one with the cheese. I don't think it added a great deal, but at least I have the rest of the pound of the beef cooked up for other things later this week.
Interestingly, I watched an Andrew Zimmern program this evening where he noted that the name - enCHILIda - essentially means "covered in chili" whereas there's a milder version in El Paso called enTOMADa - with tomatoes instead of chili. I had never thought about that in the name for enchilada (one of the old cookbooks I have claimed it was a contraction of "entre lados" meaning "between the sides" which makes a lot less sense and I don't even know if "lados" is the word for sides in Spanish)
But yes, these have a lot of chili powder in the sauce, and relatively little tomato paste (just a taste), but they're good and they're not that hard:
This is about three servings for me, even though it's from a cooking-for-one book.
I also ate refried beans with them; I find it preferable to eat larger servings of fewer dishes than try to make like five different things.
I didn't make Spanish rice - I had originally thought of it - because I decided a cake would be too heavy as a dessert, and then I saw a rice pudding recipe in my Finnish-American cookbook (long story but: one of my mom's college roommates is of Finnish heritage and was an editor on it, and my mom bought copies for her and for me).
It's called Huituvelli and it's a sour-cream rice pudding. The recipe calls for raisins but I used dried cranberries as I had part of a package left over, and I thought they'd be good in it.
They were. This is a good recipe. It makes a lot, but I suppose next time I could halve it - there are no eggs in it so it would be easy to halve the amounts. (It takes 2 cups of sour cream!). It's not very sweet, which is good, sometimes you want that, and also, the sour cream (butterfat) is good after the chili in the enchiladas:
Yes, I put "squirty cream" on top. It doesn't pay for me to whip my own cream, it doesn't keep, but the stuff in a can does, and the national brand (Reddi-wip) is decent.
Next week, thank goodness, is a less-busy week: no evening things, and two of the labs are done with and won't meet.
No comments:
Post a Comment