But first a word about the frigging crows. We've had a large group of crows ("murder" or "storytelling", I'm told are the choices for what to call a group of crows - I'll go with "group", since "flock" doesn't quite cover crows) around the neighborhood lately. They went away a few days ago, judging from the much lower noise level, but they were here on Tuesday. One of them shat on me. A clump on my coat, and a drop or two on my hat, and both cleaned up well, but still.... Frigging crows.
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group is for us to check in at to let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It's also so we can find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. Members come here to check in. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a PM to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
Has anybody else noticed how easy it is to tell whether or not somebody likes to cook by whether or not they join in conversations about recipes? I've known several people in my life who would quite happily talk about food in general, but let the subject work around to recipes, and they would change the subject in the middle of a sentence - frequently somebody else's. And every time, mutual acquaintances couldn't figure out how I knew the person in question was a lousy cook, since every time it was well known that I had never eaten anything the person had made.
Lunch has become my biggest meal of the day. I've been eating, mostly, frozen mixed vegetables fried up using coconut oil and seasoned with seaweed, cayenne and salt - usually with sweet potato on the side, sometimes with rice. I prefer the sweet potato, I find. The frozen mixed vegetables are by the half-pound, and most often my own blend - I do get tired of corn, but I'm very fond of all the other veggies in the standard mix, so I mix up a pound bag of green beans, a pound bag of baby lima beans, and two bags of peas and carrots. Portion those out and I have the basics for lunch for most of two weeks. It does help that I have a kitchen scale. And I recently bought five Pyrex storage containers big enough to hold my prepared lunch - an hour on the weekend and I'm set for the work week.
My indulgences include two croissants a week (one on Tuesday, one on Thursday) and at least one time a month, I get tortilla chips and a pound of pico de gallo and have that for lunch on a payday weekend.
I like eating out, but I don't actually do it as often as it may seem to some of you - my favorite meal to go out for is breakfast, and there's only a couple of days a week I can do that (and I usually don't). I did, just the other day, though, try a place I've never been before. Prime Rib & Chocolate Cake. I ended up talking most of the appetizer home and having it for breakfast the next day - it was potato rolls with bacon jam, and one of them (I wasn't expecting to get three) was more than enough for dinner if I actually wanted to eat dinner. I tried their pot pie. The amount of vegetables in relation to meat was to my taste, and the meat (I don't eat much beef) was actually tasty - but it was (and, with my family background, I never expected to say this) too salty. I don't know about anything else the place serves - and it will probably be a long time before I go there again.
I don't have a waffle iron, but I found something online this past week that I sent to my daughter. Puffles. Basically, roll puff pastry out to the width of your waffle iron and twice as long, lay out what of sweet or savory edibles you think would make a good filling on half of it, fold the other half over the filling and seal the edges and cook in the waffle iron for roughly 5 minutes. The instructions are a bit more complex than that, but not much, and you should be able to find it with a quick search.
If I've mentioned any recipes that somebody remember and would like them, let me know. The offspring and I are going to Seattle this weekend, so I won't be around much.