Snoooze-VVVVVVVVV

Posted on 12/09/2021 by Grumpa Joe

Today is one of those days when I am falling asleep on my feet. My body missed an hour of sleep last night and now it takes the initiative to make up for it any way it can. Usually, it in in the middle of a sentence as I am writing or reading. If you see a string of a single character running across the screen you will know that my body just went into rest mode. The single character comes from my thumb which has stopped while in the middle of a stroke and is resting on one key.

September days can be outstanding in, Illinois and today is one of them. It is sunny bright with sparsely spaced billowy white clouds streaming across the sky. The temperature hovers around eighty mid-day and then quickly descends into the sixtes after sunset and finally bottomming out in the fifties near sunrise.

I should be out riding my bike, but that is a sport I gave up fifteen years ago and now it would take me a better part of the afternoon just to prep the machine for riding. At one point cycling was my life, I belonged to a bike club that went of regular rides several times a week, and in between I commuted to work by bike. I scare myself when I think about the number of hours I spent riding and enjoying the physicality of it all. I also realize how lucky I was to have an understanding wife who tolerated my sport. We spent many hours apart because of my selfishness in choosing to pump the pedals instead of spending time with her. That is one regret that I have which I have compensated for by abandoning the sport.

Today, I spent the afternoon cooking my supper. As I write there is a pot of beef stroganoff simmering on the stove, and next to it is a pot of water in a very slow boil ready to accept the wide noodles to compliment the dish. This is certainly not a KETO meal, but it is so very delicious that I have to forget KETO once in a while. I use a recipe from Paula Dean who showed me how to do it on the Cooking Channel. It is way too simple but tastes like a very complicated affair. It is my favorite recipe. Next to the stroganoff my next favorite is chicken parmesan cooked in home made tomato sauce. It is another a recipe downloaded from the cooking channel years ago. I learned from these two recipes that cooking can be much like chemistry. Pay attention to the details and measure the ingredients to make it taste like Emiril made it.

My plan is to chill until it is time to eat, then afterwards go for a walk. The walk will take off the edge of a big meal and allow me to enjoy the evening watching a few episodes from two series that I have become attached to: Bosch, and Downton Abbey. I have to control how much I see of the detective program because it is very explicit in showing murder scenes. A month ago I overloaded and decided to take a few weeks off to unload the depressing story and the scenes that come with it. The stories are so enthralling that It is like being hooked on a drug.

If there is any energy left in me after the walk I may forget TV and choose to descend into my wood shop to work on my bird. My latest Intarsia project is an owl in full flight going after prey. I started this project in December of 2020 and feverishly worked on it to about 75% complete in March 2021. The devil is in the details however, and after taking a break from the wood shop to concentrate on a number of other projects one being my garden, and another my wedding it was not until September that I resumed. Now I am competing with beautiful days and the regret of not spending those hours with my partner. Thankfully, my body tells me how much time I can spend in the shop just as it tells me when I need to rest.

My goal to read a book a week for the year is finally becoming real. After a non-stop reading marathon to catch up to four books a month I am at thirty-three and on track to reach thirty six by the end of September. To give myself some variety I’ve decided to mix non-fiction with fiction, male and female authors, old and new. Mostly they are stories copyrighted in 2020 and 2021 because I zero in on the large print section and they are recently published. I love historical fiction because it blends facts with characters and story’s that become real. For instance, last week I finished Kitchen Front which takes place in England during WWII and deals with the population that didn’t fight. They are the ones who contributed to the war by dealing with rationing of food and other necessities like gasoline, and tires. At the same time I have been watching Downton Abbey, a story about how an aristocratic family living in a huge manor deals with World War One. The two stories mirror each other and the difference in life between 1918 and 1940 were not very large. One thing that did change was the attitude of the people who were serving the aristocrats. The servants began to realize that maybe they had the short end of the stick and were itching to change their lives to become something better than a maid, butler, or valet.

It is time to blend the sour cream into the stroganoff and to drain the wide noodles. It has been pure pleasure staying awake throughout this report.

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Opportunity For Adventure Is Endless

Posted on 31/05/2021 by Grumpa Joe

Chicago is a city surrounded by many suburbs. In fact the ring of suburbs encircling the city is quite varied in ethnicities. At the same time these same suburbs are examples of Americans using their freedom to engage in businesses that fill needs. Last week I traveled sixty miles, yes sixty miles, to get to a place called Buffalo Grove. My life partner is from the northern suburbs and as such all of her doctors and services are located sixty plus miles from where we live. The same services exist within a twenty mile radius but they aren’t the same. Why? Because they don’t speak the languages my soulmate needs to speak to explain her problems. (Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, and least of all English) I digress.

The small shopping center we landed in to pick up a her new glasses had a very large food store called in the middle. Similar to a Jewel or Meijer’s. The next step on our agenda was to do our weekly shopping for groceries, at our Frankfort Jewel. So why not use the Garden Fresh Market store right where we were? We decided we needed an adventure.

Random Selections From The Garden Fresh Market in Buffalo Grove, IL

The store is amazingly loaded with foods from many ethnic groups, but mainly Russian. Fresh foods, meats, fruits, vegetables, you name it they stocked it. We perused the aisles for two hours and selected many ethnic varieties. After paying in US dollars via American Express we passed several kiosks containing more unique Russian goods. Magazines, toys, videos, you name it they had it. Even plastic model kits of Russian fighter aircraft and tanks. I thought to myself, only in America will one find a pocket of Russians living freely in a neighborhood where they can continue to be Russians without worrying about Putin knocking on their door.

When we finally loaded the car we were hungry, and there right near the eyeglass shop was a Korean restaurant. I asked if she wanted another adventure by trying Korean food. Yes, why not. We donned our masks and entered The Golden Durebok. There were about ten people sitting in booths scattered all around the place. All appeared to be of Asian ancestry. We found a booth toward the back and waited for a waiter to show up. After a few minutes an old man wearing a baseball jacket and a short white apron dropped a couple of menus on our table then proceeded to clean tables.

Thank God there were pictures of food in the menu. There was also english descriptions but they were intended to address Asian customers. We looked through the eight page menu and selected something from the appetizer page. We ordered thinking we had picked soup. Wrong, it wasn’t even close, and my lovely was very disappointed. We asked the old man if they had soup. He just gave us a dumb stare. I finally told him to bring us some soup, he left miffed. It took several minutes for him to return with two small bowls 1/3 filed with something that looked like chicken consume with a few pieces of green onion floating in it. We thanked him and he left. Lovely just looked at me and her entree as if expecting me to turn it in for another dish. I took a piece of what was on her plate and bit into it. Not bad, I said. She did the same, then reached over to take one of my fried dumplings. She liked the dumpling, so we traded dishes and ate.

Meanwhile, across the room from us sat two asian men, one very large in size, the other rather skinny. Both were eating with ravenous zeal. The skinny guy kept picking up a fresh napkin about every two mouth fulls to wipe his forehead and face of sweat. He did this throughout his meal. It brought back memories of when I ate with my Singaporean friends in Singapore. They loved very spicy hot food. I asked why. One answer was that Singapore is very hot and humid, but asians don’t sweat like caucasians. To compensate they eat spicy hot things that make them sweat so they could enjoy the evaporative cooling provided by the ceiling fans.

We finished our meals and I took the bill to the register to pay. I looked at what it said. What I ordered for lovely was listed as Kimchi Pancake and not soup as described in the menu. I paid and we got the hell out of there as fast as we could.

Kimche Pancake

How appropriate that I am reading the book Out of Many. One. How many more ethic pockets exist around the metropolitan area, and in how many cities of the country do they exist? I know for fact that there isn’t a city in America without a China Town, but how about Hungarian town, or Polish Town? I know they exist in Chicago and there is no limit to others as well. I attest to how they contribute to making America great, and interesting to say the least. It is also fun to explore these areas and to eat in their restaurants. The opportunities for adventures are endless.

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PSA-210419-Long Life

Posted on 19/04/2021 by Grumpa Joe

Exercise and Long Life

Eat whatever you like. Don’t allow motivational speakers deceive you.


1. The inventor of the treadmill died at the age of 54


2. The inventor of gymnastics died at the age of 57


3. The world bodybuilding champion  died at the age of 41


4. The best footballer in the world Maradona, died at the age of 60

 BUT

5. The KFC inventor died at 94 


6. Inventor of Nutella brand died at the age of 88


7. Imagine, cigarette maker Winston  died at the age of 102


8. The inventor of opium died at the age of 116 in an earthquake


9. Hennessey inventor died at 98

 

How did these doctors come to the conclusion that exercise prolongs life? 

The rabbit is always jumping up and down but it lives for only 2 years,

and the turtle that doesn’t exercise at all, lives 400 years.


So, Take some rest, Chill, Stay cool, eat, drink and enjoy your life

 because none of us are going to get out of this alive anyway.

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I Will Not Eat My Greens

Posted on 30/10/2020 by Grumpa Joe

In many movies and comedy sketches I have often heard the line “eat your greens.” I had to look up what greens were. My source labeled greens as collard greens. They are in the same source of greens as kale and broccoli. I found them disgusting. I suspect the vegans in the world think they are delicious, not me. A week ago I wrote about my virgin experience with kale. I love kale, especially when it is drizzled with salad dressing. The collard greens supplied in my Green Chef dinner package turned me off. Maybe they will grow on me if I eat enough of them, fat chance of that happening.

Collard
Kale
Close up of a bowl of Italian boiled spinach

Each time I cruise through the vegetable aisle at my local grocery store I am amazed at the quantity of green leafy lettuces and other strange looking eatables from around the world. On a good day I will pick something I have never tried before just for the sake of experimentation. I can tolerate the lettuces, but when it comes to the heavier leaved darker green things like collard I pass by. As a kid I hated spinach. That is because my mother had only one way to prepare it, by boiling. Boiled spinach leaves are the world’s worst resembling some very old and wet sea weed. On the other hand fresh spinach leaves are excellent in a salad. The best is baby spinach drizzled with poppyseed dressing and with sliced strawberries on top. The chef who invented that combination should be in the Chef Hall of Fame.

Baby spinach with strawberries and poppy seed dressing

I find that the Green Chef meal plan is making me a better cook, and making me develop a more refined pallete. I hate waste and will never throw anything away, I’d much rather make it the way they instruct me to and try it. So far I am batting 5/6, only the collard greens have been a loser. In major league baseball a batting average of 5/6, (0.8333) would command a hundred million dollar contract. I’ll stick to keeping score with my selections from Green Chef.

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Miscellaneous Rambling

Posted on 19/10/2020 by Grumpa Joe

Today, I went into a mild shock as I tried to stuff a fully assembled winter coat box into my car for delivery. The box didn’t fit, and I had to disassemble it to make it go into the back seat. Now I have to expand the box and tape it at each location that I deliver to.  A minor irritation, but an irritation no less. 

The morning was beautiful sunny blue-sky-day which made me feel really upbeat. I quickly made a KETO omelet with spinach, scallions, and sundried tomatoes accompanied with three slices of gypsy style smoked bacon, and two slices of KETO toast smothered in butter.

After breakfast I read the mail, and then prepped for a walk. The plan was to walk to the pharmacy, to pick up a prescription, then to the mailbox to drop a letter, and finally to the coffee shop for a latte.  The prescription failed, my doctor did not approve a refill, I had to make an appointment for a blood test and an office visit before he would. Onward to the drop box with the letter and for the latte. I arrived home after two hours, and proceeded to assemble the box I grumbled about above. 

I spent a long afternoon surfing the net for information on immigration laws. One of my friends is living here on an expired visa, and needs help to get legal again. I didn’t find anything very promising. I don’t know how all the people who come in here illegally actually get to stay, much less to sign up for bennies. All the law I found is pretty simple, and seems to be iron clad on how to handle illegals. I’m positive that If I try to help this person that I will wind up in jail for five years and he will be deported.

Immigration word cloud concept isolated on white

My daughter called me this afternoon to tell me that her daughter (my grand-daughter) received notification that she was placed on the National Honor Society. Proud mama that she is she couldn’t wait to make a braggadocios phone call to let her pride show. She is one of my favorites so I am as proud as can be of her accomplishment. She did it while hunkered down and forced to attend classes on the internet.

After this post I will settle into my usual evening routine of five hours of non-stop TV. I found a new series which I have been avoiding for reasons unknown to me. It is titled Hunters, and stars Al Pacino. He is a former prisoner of a Nazi camp who escaped being gassed by his captors. He is currently hunting down escaped Nazis from WW-2 living within the USA. I found the first episode fascinating, and will watch it until every damned Nazi is hunted down and exterminated. 

Another movie title caught my eye and I latched onto that too; Moondance Alexander. It turned out to be a horse story about a young girl shunned by her friends who finds a horse while delivering groceries after school on her bicycle. It turns out it was filmed in Calgary, Canada home of the Heartland series my favorite horse opera too date. I must have seen ten movies in the last month all with the same theme, and all filmed in the same location with titles that lure me in. 

It is also time for me to call my long-lost son from the Lone Star State. Our conversation will easily last an hour or two as we share Trump stories.       

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