The Dreaded Plague

Greetings!  I am now on day ELEVEN of the plague.  It's a wretched little plague, characterized by a wracking non-productive cough, sore throat and fatigue.  Apparently it's been making its way through the neighborhood.  Word has it that it goes on forever.  I'm to the point that I don't cough so much during the day, but nights are still difficult.  I hate this.

So, not much has been going on since the onset.  The day before I contracted the plague, we pruned the dead fronds off the palm trees.  That's when we found the Hooded Oriole's nest.  The amount of time and effort birds put into nest building (with the exception of doves) is astounding.  See the fibers hanging off the fronds?  That's what they use to make the nest.

The Thanksgiving day picture shows how the nest is woven onto the palm fronds.  Birds are amazing.

There has been decorating for Christmas.  It's something to do in the house.  This is the tree we had in the RV.  It's about 14 inches tall, and it fit perfectly on the dinette side board.  What you can't see is that it's sitting next to the Instant Pot we bought at Costco.  Who has one?  Do you like it?  Do you use it?  Jim and I both do not enjoy cooking.  We've tried to like it, but we don't.  I'm hoping the Instant Pot might move us off our current limited diet of things that can be grilled.

Here are the always festive compotes with shiny ornaments in them.  Notice the lights underneath them.

Now the lights are on.  They're battery powered LEDs since there is no outlet in that corner.  Using my serger I made a long tube of gauzy material, and put those really cute lights on copper wire in the tube.  Very festive!

Same tree as last year.  Next year we may get a real one.  I think I'm done with the fake tree.

Jim decided that there must be outside lights.  This house is very difficult to light.  There is not much gutter, and it channels a lot of rain, so that might not be so good.  Anyway, we got one of the palms illuminated.  Amazon sells solar powered lights on copper wire.  I could put those on one of the Queen Palms.  They do not have stiff fronds.  Actually, I could do both Queens.  Lights for all!

Tonight's sunset was pretty good.  We've had clouds moving in and out all day, and they just happened to be here when the sun went down.

That's it!  Many words signifying that I've done basically nothing for eleven days.  I would like to hear from you Instant Pot owners. 

Happy Thanksgiving

Here's hoping your day was what you hoped for.  Ours was a little flat since I still have the plague, and it's worse than yesterday.  Soon it will be time to break out the antibiotics, even though the doctors tell us not to.

This is my official Thanksgiving Day photo.  Those are baby Hooded Orioles demanding to be fed.

We found a nest in one of the palm trees.  It was completed, but never used.

We made something new this year, it's a slow cooker crustless pumpkin pie.  It's actually good.  If we made it again, I would cut back on the sugar by at least an eighth of a cup.  I used a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice, half a teaspoon of cinnamon, no cloves and the called upon quarter teaspoon of cardamon.  Like I said, it's a little too sweet.  However, it could not be any easier to make than this.  Easier than cooking a frozen pie which will be full of high fructose corn sweetener.

My new method for stock making is to cut up a Cornish Game Hen.  Place it in a cast iron skillet with a cut up onion and four stalks of cut up celery.  Put it in the grill, cook at fairly high heat for 40 minutes or so.  Try not to burn the onions.  Dump contents of skillet into a stock pot with water and boil for awhile.  It made really good stock with virtually no fat and no scum rising to the top.  We did not have access to turkey parts, so that's we we used in the making of stuffing.

It was supposed to rain all day today, but so far all that has happened are high winds and thick clouds.  It's odd weather.  Last year was picture perfect.  I would like that weather pattern back now, thank you.

Later on, there was this.

Scenery

Is this not lovely?  This was taken about four in the afternoon.  I am sick as a dog (again) so Jim hiked up to the saddle by himself.  Yet again I have succumbed to a sore throat and non-productive hacking cough.  I'm better today than I was yesterday, so there's hope of my continued survival.

Being Outside and a New Grocery Store

Greetings People of Earth!  How are things where you are?  Things are better here.  Jim is a pale northwesterner who has spent a lot of time in the sun.  This, in turn, gave him a face full of actinic keratoses.  They're a harbinger of things that will be worse.  For years the dermatologist has been zapping them individually with liquid nitrogen, but as of a year ago there were too many.  Different treatment was required.  Late October Jim started putting Efudix on the affected areas.  It's a chemotherapy drug and it's quite unpleasant.  It's painful, to put it mildly.  Anyway, while treating this (21 days, plus 7 more recovery) one must stay out of the sun.  So, we've been like vampires, living in the shadows.  I didn't take any pictures.  If you're curious, there is a six minute youtube that's pretty good at showing the process.  Today Jim was able to go outside, after applying a significant amount of spf 110 on his face.  He's still a little red, but it's much improved.  I'm not sure when we know how successful the treatment was.

There was hiking!  Yay!  It felt really good to be outside.  We elected to do a non-hilly route and enjoy the day.  It was a success.

Later we went to a new grocery store, Cardenas.  They're from California, and cater to the Hispanic demographic.  They're pretty close to a Food City who also has the same demographic.  I think Cardenas has better produce and more stuff over all.

From the produce area, I don't know what these are.

Cactus leaves.  They're not part of my food culture, so I have not tried them.  Here is what you can do with them.

 

There are a lot of tortillas being produced here.

One can buy masa already prepared.

There's a lot going on in the photo.  Foreground we have some pretty good sized spatchcocked chickens on the grill.  Look further back in the middle at the lady next to the pile of green.  She's peeling roasted green chiles.  You can buy them by the bag.  This is a very good thing, peeling them is kind of a pain.  Update to post:  Actually she's peeling avocados.  Someone else, someplace else is peeling the roasted chiles.

These are Jackfruit.  They're interesting, and large. Update to post 2/14/24:  Cardenas only lasted 6 months.  I found an article that they'd pulled the plug.  The store has reverted to being a Fry's.

Now that Jim is once again a free-range human we can get the bikes out and hike and be outside.  Happy we are about that.

Politics and Amazon

This has been making the rounds on twitter today.  It's a Russian produced video of them taking over a US facility in Syria.  It's another dark day for American Exceptionalism.

You can link to the tweet and play the video here.

On a brighter note, here is a very interesting article about Roundup, MT.  Apparently people buy stuff from Target, Walmart and other stores, ship it to their homes or businesses and then repackage and sell it to Amazon.  Amazon then directs the merchandise to their various fulfillment centers.  I had no idea this was going on.  It's interesting how far items move.  I think there's a lot of carbon being expended in the process.

Other than this, I have not too much to report.  We spent some time watching clips of the impeachment hearings.  Gym Jordan and Nunez were their usual annoying selves.  Ambassador Yovanovitch's testimony was calm and collected.  She received an unusual round of applause when her time was over.  She's quite the professional.

Sunset

At 5:25 pm I leapt from my chair hollering "holy crap look at that."  It was a spectacular sunset.