Taste Like Chicken WE 11/7 & 11/8

Hope all is well in Chicksterland.

It is another bright, beautiful day here in the Miami Valley. We drove to the YS winter market. It is just a few vendors but two of our favorite farmers were there, so we got garlic and sweet onion, fennel, potatoes and tomatoes.

Iggy has been craving Chinese food, so we are going to pick that up for lunch. 

Iggy blew some more leaves to the curb yesterday for leaf pickup on Monday. I got a lot of steps in yesterday, so today it is rest the foot day. 

Karen, what is in the new avatar? Mine is the sun starting to set last evening behind our maple tree.

I hope everyone is doing well physically and mentally.

Thanks for the start, Chele. Does YS have a year round market? Quite a haul! Have you ever tried to grow fennel? The above-ground parts are great for attracting black swallowtail butterfly caterpillars. Unless the weather is really cold, it tends not to go dormant in the winter. What did you get from the Chinese restaurant? The new avatar is our Thursday evening sunset over the lake. It was incredible with the sky reflecting off the lake. Pretty maple tree.

Kathy, in NC, as independents we could vote in the primary if the state Republican and Democratic parties approved it, which they rarely did for some reason. So all we could do there was vote for things like school board until the general election. It would be nice for McConnell to not be in charge. I'm so tired of his doing nothing but approving conservative judges. I was hoping he would be defeated. I pulled up the NHC's page on Eta and it looks like your entire state will be getting at least wind from the storm. It's about to become a TS again. They aren't predicting hurricane status, but this year, it wouldn't surprise me. Did you watch the Miami-NC State game? Sounds like it was a wild one. FL and GA should be a good one today. Will you watch it? Good luck to your 'Noles against Pitt. Does UCF play today? I didn't see a game for them when I was checking the schedule. Kind of anxious about the Clemson-ND game. That could be the season for either team.

I hope the shot has kicked in, Becky. At least the right knee looks good on x-ray, so I guess it will just take time. Are you going to take it easy today, after the long day you had yesterday? Dale got 16 containers of blackberries on sale this morning, so I have most of them flash freezing for later.

Linda, I hope things have calmed down at the election HQ there. Sure is taking a long time to process ballots. I hope you have a quiet day. Did you get any rain?

Enjoy your weekend, Denise. Do you have any outdoor activities planned for the good weather you are expecting?

Liz, I hope you have a relaxing weekend and the pups cut you some slack in the sleep department.

Dale did the grocery trips this morning. I need to cook for Arya this weekend so he went to IGA with cheaper frozen veggies and did the rest of the weekly grocery shopping so I shouldn't have to stop this week. I do have to meet one of the other master gardeners after Osteo on Thursday to do some cleaning out of our office at the extension building so just as well I don't have to stop. It took a while to get everything cleaned and put away after he got home. We have a sunny day and are supposed to be in the 70s. We were supposed to be in the 60s yesterday and it never made it, so we'll see. I did watch Growing A Greener World this morning and it was all about container growing, so that was fun. Have a good Saturday!

Did you make it to the 70s today, Karen? It will be nice for you not to have to do the grocery stops next week. I need to get to Meijer in another suburb for oysters for our Thanksgiving oyster dressing. Ours usually carries very little. We have never tried growing fennel bit I love the butterflies. We did not plant zinnias this year and noticed far fewer butterflies. YS usually has the winter market indoors but today it was in a parking lot. I know they will be there next weekend but I don’t know for how long. I am sure they won’t have it indoors. I had seafood wonton soup and braised eggplant in a spicy brown sauce and Iggy had pork pot stickers and General Tao’s chicken. Leftovers for tomorrow.

Linda, how are the masks going? Any more organizing done before the floor people get there? How is Micki’s haircut?

Chele Thanks for the start.Glad you got to the market and I hope you and Iggy enjoyed your Chinese.

Karen The left knee is better but it normally takes a few days for the cortisone to really do it's job.I have stopped doing the elliptical for 48 hours since it's rough on my knees but I took 2 short strolls today.I got in my 10K steps but not as many zone active minutes as usual.Good score on the blackberries.Last week HEB had raspberries on for 97 cents/container.Friday I was going to get 3 blackberries and 3 raspberries but the raspberries had gone up to $2.57 so I got 6 containers of blackberries to last through the weekend.I think they are like $1.78/container.

Have a good weekend Chicksters.

Chele, we barely got into the 70s yesterday but will be close to 80 today. Looking forward to not having to make any stops for groceries on Thursday's trip home. Fennel is pretty easy to grow, and it will draw in the pollinators. The Chinese sounds really good. And, having leftovers mean it will be really good twice! Growing up we could get fresh oysters at a big local fish market. They were used for oyster stew on Christmas Eve. The grocery store ones here don't taste even close to the same. I thought for a while this morning that I would have to replace my avatar with a sunrise photo, but the sky wasn't as colorful as I had hoped.

How's the knee today, Becky? I used to get a kick-in from cortisone shots in 2 to 3 days, so hopefully that will be happening for you soon. Congrats on being able to take a couple of short walks yesterday. I hope you will be able to do that again today without pain. That's an incredible price on raspberries. I don't think I've ever see them that cheap. The blackberries Dale found were $1.99 each, but they have pretty consistently been 3/$10 lately, so that's about half price by comparison.

Kathy, that was quite a Clemson-ND game. Didn't end the way I would have liked, but hopefully it won't have long term implications. I'm glad you got to listen to the FSU game. That's strange that local stations don't carry the games. The Vol Network is all across TN and even has some stations that broadcast in surrounding states. I was shocked at all the blackberries he brought home. I have almost 4 quart freezer bags put away plus the 2 that were there already. So I should be good on blackberries for a while. I agree that any incidences of fraud will be extremely limited and won't change the results. There's no way over 5 million votes will be declared fraudulent. It's just noise now and a lot of angry people who have been believing the rhetoric for the last 4+ years. I went on FB this morning to be sure I didn't miss any birthdays but did not more and don't plan to. I'm still trying to figure out how at my age I have suddenly become the black sheep of the family over a guy with orange hair that they all idolize. Eta is definitely taking a strange path.

We do have a good bit of freezer space, Linda, between the 22 cu ft one downstairs, the new one we bought for mainly Arya's stuff, and the smaller freezers in both the upstairs and downstairs fridges. With as far out of town as we live, it makes it so much easier. So, 4 masks done, how many to go? I made a few masks from the pattern you posted, but I am so bad at making pleats that the Olson style is what I like better. I think your alternate method sounds good. Were you able to finally get the flannel you needed? I found this one on the Joann website and it is much more comfortable: www.joann.com/structured-cotton-face-mask/302013571P100.html. Thanks for the link with so many different patterns. I will be downloading several after I get a chance to look through it. It's getting much easier (for now anyway) to find elastic, which was a huge problem before. How much more stuff needs relocated from "the library" before the new flooring gets installed? Are both of you losing weight on the "endoscopy diet"?

Liz, how's the weekend going? Is Zoe continuing to improve?

Are you enjoying the warm weather, Denise?

I spent a little time gardening this morning. I removed the remaining pepper plants and replanted a couple of containers with sweet potato slips. My raised bed frames are deteriorating and, instead of rebuilding, I am thinking of going to container and straw bale gardening this spring. I will probably do tomatoes and peppers in straw bales and everything else in containers. I told Dale I'm getting too old to be a farmer. We have a pretty day and it was good to get outside for a while. Dale took his kayak out a little while ago. Perfect day for it. I have the rest of the sweet potatoes left over after I cut off the slips in the oven baking for my little Sweet Potato.

I just read that, Becky. He fought the good fight against his cancer. How are you doing today? Did you get you get out for a walk?

Linda, good going in the masks. 

Karen, we have reached 80° today. Too warm for November. Iggy had to break out the lawn mower for the backyard. I cleaned the bird feeders. 

Kathy, I know you are happy about ND winning but did you see the idiots storming the field? Super spreader event! 

Liz, was it grocery shopping day? Good luck in the city tomorrow.

Denise, do you have Monday off?

Have a good Sunday.