Taste Like Chicken WE 6/27 & 28

Happy Birthday Liz. Enjoy your special day.

Happy, Happy Birthday, Liz! Hope you're having a wonderful day!!

Thanks for the start, Chele. How were things at the farmers market? Does Iggy watch any of the PBS gardening shows? I saw one on Garden Smart this morning on urban and community gardens in Cleveland that was pretty surprising. Has he thought about taking a master gardener class and getting involved in those activities? That might give him a social outlet that he would enjoy and give you a little "me time". LOL on Hoarders Anonymous! There are a lot of us right now. We usually keep jars of dried beans on hand, so we just plan to increase there. It's good that you are stocking up now, since you were finding that a little challenging to do early on when you typically do it for tornado season. Dale cleaned out the closet under the stairs and that's where we plan to stockpile paper products. I think we're down to our last couple packages of TP and last few rolls of paper towels. Are you finding that you can only get smaller packages of TP right now, instead of the mega packs that used to be available? We're having the same problem here with bread flour. I like King Arthur best but it's been a few months since we've been able to get it, so I'm using what we can get. I rarely eat bread, but I make a loaf for Dale frequently and he also gets Arnold's multi-grain at the store. So I'm going to have to up bread making if we have to lock down again this fall/winter. Going with COBRA was probably the safe thing to do on insurance with the current issues, but it shouldn't be that way. Rocky almost made it to the feeder a little while ago. He was on the railing about 6 ft away when I saw him. It's amazing how he can go airborne off the deck.

Kathy, do you find it challenging to stock up for the uncertain future while getting groceries delivered? There was a columnist on a news show this morning who lives in FL and calls your guv, "Governor Disastrous" . Yes, I'm sure there are a lot of people who already have tickets for the first day Disney is scheduled to reopen. We have a misty day so far and are expecting rain this afternoon and storms tomorrow. So I don't think we will get much from the Saharan dust. I just saw an interview with Mayor (Mr. Val) Demings regarding covid. Talk about a power couple!

Abbott is at least doing something, Becky, but what he's doing now will take a couple of weeks to take hold, provided people don't ignore the warnings. I haven't heard any stupid statements from the lt. gov. lately, so is he keeping his mouth shut?  I heard Pence calling for prayer, which is typical for him. But I was brought up hearing, "God helps those who help themselves" so I'm afraid prayer isn't going to be enough. Sometimes I wonder if, given the virus and the political unrest, God has given up on us as a country and we're going down in flames. I hope you will be somewhat recovered from your last PT session before Monday, since you had some extra time. Can you get some shelf-stable meats that you could keep in storage that wouldn't be overly expensive? I love trout but often can't find it around here. But I did find some canned smoked trout at TJ's that I'll be trying this week. It's in oil, but I can rinse that off.

Linda, Bashas sounds quite unique, with 3 different emphases. Have you been to the Mexican type? What's special about German napkins? Do you get a lot of Vietnamese shrimp there? I don't know that I've seen shrimp from Viet Nam here. We get a lot from the Gulf Coast. Let me know how the "thing for bug bites" does. They LOVE me and I tend to forget to put on my homemade repellent every time I go outside. I had to put Arya's flea and tick stuff on this morning (we get her the one made from essential oils) because I pulled a tick off her fanny Thursday before bed. She wouldn't leave the spot alone and when I looked, there it was. So she kind of stinks right now. Do you think your governor will close things down again? Like Kathy's governor, I've heard some rather unflattering names for your guy, such as Governor D-----bag. Got to say he deserves it IMO. When is he up for re-election? I love the Paris scene. They had a restaurant on TV a few weeks ago where every other booth has manikins dressed up like patrons. I've always been a fan of teddys however, so I wish I was in Paris right now.

Enjoy your weekend, Denise. Do you have any special plans? How many of your 8 lbs of strawberries do you have left and are you eating them plain, making pies, freezing them? The ones in the grocery store don't even come close.

I changed the bed and laundered the sheets and quilt. Did some treadmill time, too. I'll do a few more workshops from the Mother Earth News Fair, but not planning much more. I do have some cleaning to do in the kitchen because I put oats on for Arya's breakfasts and kinda forgot about them. I managed to salvage some, but the bottom of the pan is burned and when I used baking soda and water to loosen the burned stuff, it boiled over so I have to clean the stove.

Kathy, we can see rain coming from across the lake because it gets very hazy. It has looked like that all day but no rain, which must be the dust. No sunset here but we haven't had any sun. We're supposed to have rain tomorrow, so dirty rain is not a good thing. LOL on Supply Central. I would be tripping over TP in our hallway. Stay safe. I hope we can get a freezer before August but it's not looking too hopeful. With the generator, we don't have to worry about a power outage but I can definitely sympathesize with you after 2 to 4 day outages at the other house on numerous occasions. I need to look at Amazon Pantry a bit more closely. DuhSantis fits. You're so right about the unexpected politics of masks. But then there are a lot of things that have been totally unexpected this year.

I heard something about a field hospital there, Linda. I hope it's not needed, but the way things are going, I'm afraid it will be. Without enforcement that has some teeth in it, some people won't change their actions. And even with an enforced policy, some people won't. I wish we had room in our garage for paper products. Too full of vehicles. We have tourists, too. Lots of redneck tourists who are given locally branded masks at the visitors centers but, instead of wearing them, they take them home as souvenirs. In about a week and a half to two weeks you should know how many of the church folks have turned up positive. In the meantime, they are spreading it to who knows how many people. We said the same thing about the high dollar air scrubbers at that church. Enjoy your cool weather.

Becky, do they know how many people got infected at the bar in Abilene? That's just irresponsible and it's good that they lost their license. LOL on Abbott and Patrick making contradictory statements. So, do I understand that TX has stopped any further reopenings for now but only some local thngs are being backtracked? Things look especially bad in Houston and Harris County. I've also not be a fan of canned meats even when I did eat meat. I usually get the wild caught canned tuna and haven't tried the low sodium packets but would be a good thing to stock up on. Yay on the ripe watermelon. I wonder if mine was underripe. I juiced it and mixed it with tea. Still not that great. Sorry about Kenneth's cousin but it's good that they waived the elective surgery policy under the circumstances. It sounds like she's been through enough. How's the soreness today?

I think there are other states just as dumb, Linda. It's a shame that so many people in so many states basically put their lives on hold for about a month and reopened too quickly and now we're worse off than we were before. Dale and I have been saying all along that we're on our own. I haven't read the Forbes article, but I'm not surprised. And this is the time of the year for parties and barbecues and people don't want to have to be inconvenienced.

Kathy, I heard your governor isn't changing anything and said, "we are where we are". DUH! is right!! Any change in your dust situation? We're cloudy again so who knows what our status is.

Did you go out on the water today, Denise?

We've had pretty heavy rain off and on and are expecting more. We cleaned a little space out in the pantry to make room for stocking up, moving out things that we didn't use that frequently. They are tall and deep spaces, so they will hold a lot. I also work on a few masks. One is fine but the other two, which are performance fabric filter pockets, are too big for me, so I'll have to start from scratch on those.

Waving to the rest of the gang.