Right after Christmas, John and I went on a camper van road trip to San Diego. I like living this close to San Diego. I would live right in San Diego except we’d have to work an extra 10 years to make up the difference in the cost of housing, so yeah, we’ll just drive to San Diego.
You’ll just have to take my word for it that it’s me under all the face coverings.
We mostly just walked around outside, and did some biking too.
We enjoyed looking at things that were not the desert.
We met Mark and his kids for an hour-long walk on the beach. When John and I arrived, the first person I spotted out of our group was Jonathan, who was just standing alone on the beach in his black hooded sweatshirt and black mask. I would have walked right past him if I hadn’t noticed him looking at me. Wait…do I know those eyes?
That’s Mark in the background, missing out on the picture. After all, I had said, “Let’s meet for a walk”, not “Let’s meet for a photo shoot.”
Initially Mark didn’t think the kids would be interested in meeting us for a walk, telling me they don’t like going for walks. Turns out they were happy to see John and I. 😉
The beach was not crowded.
It was hard to keep 6 feet of distance because you couldn’t hear each other talk over the noise of the surf. But we were masked, and there was a good stiff breeze on the beach, so we were fine.
Even the kids were masked. Thank you for taking good care of your old aunt and uncle!
Alex got one of his shoes wet, so instead of taking them both off, he continued to wear the dry one. Very logical boy.
Later, John and I went to a different beach and walked out on a pier.
These next pictures are from the University of San Diego, where we had a nice late-afternoon walk.
It was a great trip and I was very happy to see my niece and nephews. I wish my other nieces were within driving distance!
My cookies aren’t very fancy, but I made up a bunch of cookie dough and left it in the refrigerator. Now we can quickly throw together a fresh pan of them every few days. We’ve been putting random things on them to “decorate” them, it’s sort of funny. Leftover halloween candy corn – why not? That one in the far right lower corner has pecan butter on it. Now that was good!
I’ll tell you who knows how to make fancy cookies is Tracey. These match her wine-themed Christmas tree.
Tracey’s cookies are quite a step up from mine, lol.
Tracey’s girls made these reindeer, aren’t they great?
John saw that photo on my computer and wanted to know where to get one. I guess he was hoping I had them hidden away somewhere. He was about ready to ransack our kitchen looking for them! Unfortunately, Tracey and her family live in California, so all we had were the tantalizing photos. They now have a standing invitation to visit Tucson at Christmastime!
I also ordered biscochitos from New Mexico for John. I wrapped them up and marked the package, “do not shake” because John is such a kid and biscochitos are crumbly 🙂
Since he was so good about refraining from shaking the biscochitos, I had to mark a package, “This one you can shake” And then I realized I better add “(within reason)”. Because, you know!
Lotsa chocolate. John is totally addicted to chocolate.
We had a chile-and-sugar theme going (also ordered from New Mexico).
John got me a really cool humming bird feeder that suctions to the window (on the outside; John just stuck it up on the inside to demonstrate). I made him take it right down from there; I didn’t want any birds getting confused and running into the window trying to get to it!
Later we put it up on the outside of my office window, and it totally works. The hummingbirds come right up to the window to use the feeder! My desk is pushed up against the window so the hummingbirds and I are eyeball-to-eyeball, with just a thin sheet of glass between us. When I get a chance I’ll post a photo of them.
He also gave me something that initially I thought was one of those collapsing laundry hampers. I tried to undo it and it whapped me right in the face! Which John caught on film, which is the only reason I’m bothering writing about a boring laundry basket.
Except it wasn’t a laundry basket at all. It turned out to be a 3-tier hanging swimsuit dryer! Very handy.
I’m not going to list out all the gifts – this started as a food post – but while I’m on a roll, here’s a very creative handmade gift from my sister-in-law, Adrienne:
Back to the topic of food – for Christmas dinner, we ordered several different kinds of empanadas from a restaurant that does Latin-Indian fusion. Yeah, like Honduras and India. Sounds like a strange combination, but the food is very good.
Although we were a bit bummed that they got their labels mixed up and our feta and spinach empanada was actually ham and cheese!
We deliberately did NOT order ham and cheese because John and I are not ham fans. Doesn’t feta sound ever-so-much better? We’ll just have to order feta empanadas again and hope it’s right this time!
We also got a Honduran tamale wrapped in banana leaves. Isn’t that the biggest dang tamale you’ve ever seen?
Both my kids cooked lamb for Christmas (which is a family tradition from the Greek side). I missed seeing them for Christmas, but we did a video call. We’ve actually been doing video calls at Christmas for about 10 years now, ever since Laura spent 5 years in Japan. So it was nothing new for us. It seems like most years one or the other of the kids joins us by video. The main difference this year was Monica (John’s mom) wasn’t able to be with us. She’s visited us at Christmas for many of the years past.
I hope everyone had a good Christmas or whatever you are celebrating, and I’m wishing you all a very Happy New Years!
This first set are photos of luminarias in Albuquerque that my friend Debbie sent me. She lives near old town, and they make real luminarias the traditional way, with sand and candles set in paper bags. (I use plastic, plug-in luminarias.)
I’ve seen a few luminarias in Tucson, but not many. We didn’t know which neighborhoods to go to for that. Here’s some rather extravagant lights we saw in a neighborhood quite a ways north of ours. I hope they have solar panels!
Yeah, that one was just nuts.
And here’s my absolute favorite:
The grinch stealing the lights right off the house, that’s the best!
I think I already posted our house lights, but here that is again:
Drying laundry under the covered porch while it rains:
To celebrate John’s return to Tucson from a week in Albuquerque, I tried to make cookies and got a little carried away with the red hots, lol:
He brought the sailboat back with him (with one of our kayaks on top). No, we don’t really need a boat in Arizona, but we don’t really need one in New Mexico either. At least now it’s here and we can imagine we might use it.
I’m still weak and low energy, but I’m determined to work out a little. Turns out taking a selfie with one hand is quite challenging!
It’s too cold to swim, so the pool is covered. But it’s still full of water and just has a flimsy plastic covering – like floating bubble wrap. One of these days I’m going to forget what I’m doing, climb out of my lounge chair, and walk right onto that plastic – and discover very quickly that walking on water is not in my repertoire.
Remember when John and I were surprised to see a coyote walking down the road near our house in broad daylight like he owned the place? Apparently he didn’t just come in from the surrounding desert; they seem to live right here in the neighborhood. We have some brush-filled, dry arroyos, and I think they live in there.
A couple of days after seeing our first one, I heard them howling (again, surprisingly, in mid-day, and only about a block away). It sounded like several coyotes! There were at least two for sure (before the neighborhood dogs joined in). Now we see them wandering around quite often.
We saw coyotes in Albuquerque too, but generally only one at a time, and more likely in the foothills. Not so often in the middle of town.
Here a male is patiently pursuing a female (we know that because of what they were doing next).
Okay…enough of the nature show, let’s move onto some more pictures of food. Here’s a random picture of my fish and barely soup. John isn’t as big of a fan of fish as I am, so I aways have fish when he’s gone. Fish with seaweed, usually, but I ran out of seaweed, so it was fish with frozen peas and carrots! LOL, somehow peas and carrots aren’t quite as sophisticated as seaweed! Luckily John brought the rest of my seaweed back with him from Albuquerque, so I’m good now.
I am very grateful for grocery delivery (very, very thankful), but it does require a certain…flexibility of expectations. You never really know what you’re going to get. In this case the persimmons were disappointingly mushy, but the yellow squash were fresh and firm, the avocado was perfect, and look at the size of those pomegranates! They’re as big as the acorn squash!
I forgot to tell you about Bunny’s kitchen fire a couple of weeks ago! Bunny is Laura’s next door neighbor. Their houses are the same layout except mirror images, so their kitchen windows face each other, and so do their back doors, which lead to their patios from their kitchens.
Laura was in her kitchen, looked up, and could see flames in Bunny’s kitchen and smoke pouring out her back door! She ran outside and called 911. Meanwhile, some nearby construction workers saw the smoke and they ran down the block to alert the fire station, which is literally less than a block away. The construction workers then ran back to Bunny’s house and broke in through her front door with a crowbar and put the fire out.
As soon as the front door was open, Daisy, one of Bunny’s two dogs, ran outside. Luckily Laura was able to grab her before she got into the street, because it’s a busy street. Laura knew there should be a second dog, and told the fire fighters there was a second dog. But they secured the house and assured her that no people or pets remained inside.
Turns out Bunny had gone to take the other dog, Luna, to the groomers, which is why only one dog was in the house.
Afterwards, Bunny initially assumed she must have forgotten to turn her stove off, because she’s done that before (and, ironically, she had a sticky note taped up by the stove to remind herself). But it’s not actually clear what happened. There were no pots left on the stove, and there is other evidence to suggest that the fire might have started at the outlet in the wall where the stove was plugged in.
Everyone is safe, but what a mess. The fire fighters had to cut into some walls to make sure the fire was fully out, and the whole house has smoke damage.
I guess poor Bunny is getting a new kitchen for Christmas. Probably not what she asked Santa for. And unfortunately, she won’t have it in time for Christmas, either.
Bunny is staying in a hotel, and will probably have to be there for another 3-4 months. Her elderly aunt, who has dementia, and one of her dogs, are now living with her daughter in a nearby town. She has her other dog with her at the hotel, but the second dog will probably be going to San Diego to stay with her son.
Bunny says she is comfortable in the hotel and feels safe, because the hotel is careful and doesn’t allow visitors in and out. But still, to have to spend Christmas in a hotel! And probably all of this spring as well.
New Mexico has their vaccination registration system up and running. The criteria appear to be a combination of age and occupation. There’s nothing about cancer or other illnesses, so I won’t be particularly high on their list. That’s ok, I don’t mind waiting. I think people whose jobs are serving the public should get it as soon as possible. I don’t mind staying away from people for another few months; it’s not a hardship for me. The only place I have to go sometimes is the cancer center.
John and I had been assuming that we’d have to travel back to New Mexico to get our vaccination, because we are New Mexico residents. But it turns out that Arizona is willing to vaccinate all their out-of-state snowbirds! Traveling back to New Mexico from out-of-state would have put us into a 14 day quarantine, so it would have been quite a nuisance.
Here’s what the azdhs.gov website FAQ’s has to say about it:
I don’t think Arizona has a registration system set up yet. Here’s what the New Mexico’s registration website looks like:
It’s at https://cvvaccine.nmhealth.org/#
It looks like first we submit a pre-registration, then when it’s our turn we get an event code, and then we can come back to this page with our code to register for the shot.
Actually, all my recipes are “anything goes”. My recipes, like my houseplants, need to be flexible or else they don’t survive.
Same goes with my laundry, as aptly explained in this comic:
Here’s my lasagne recipe, complete with all my notes:
All measurements are approximate.
INGREDIENT LIST:
1 lb ground meat or 3-4 cups chopped vegetables*
1 onion, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
I jar marinara sauce (25 oz, or about 3 cups)
1 tsp fennel (optional)
Plus any additional spices depending on your preference and what’s already in your marinara sauce. Consider oregano, basil, red chili, parsley, etc.
3 cups ricotta cheese (2 cups or 16 oz is ok too if that’s the size container you have)
1 egg
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
Spinach – 1 lb frozen, thaw and squeeze out excess moisture
1 package lasagna noodles (10-16 noodles, or approximately 1 lb)
4 – 6 oz grated Mozzarella cheese (1 to 1 ½ cups)
⅓ cup grated Parmesan cheese
INSTRUCTIONS:
Stir fry ground meat or chopped vegetables, then add onion, stir fry until translucent, add garlic, cook briefly.
Then add marinara sauce and spices, remove from heat.
Turn on water for lasagne noodles – use a really large pot, also, optional, I add a tbsp of oil and a dash of salt to water. (Note to self – use largest kettle, not just the larger of the regular pot set.)
In a medium bowl, mix together ricotta cheese, egg, spinach, oregano, basil
Turn oven on to 375
Add lasagne noodles into large pot of boiling water, reduce heat and cook for 8-10 minutes, occasionally moving the noodles around slightly to avoid sticking together. Then drain noodles and cover them with cold water.
Layer into large pan: ½ of the sauce, ½ of the noodles, all of the ricotta cheese mixture, the rest of the noodles, then the rest of the sauce (retain the mozzarella and parmesan until almost done cooking)
Cover the pan with a cookie sheet (the recipes all say cover with foil, but I’ve had experience with tomato sauce dissolving multitudes of tiny pinholes in the foil – which can’t be good!)
Bake for 1 hour at 375
When nearly done, remove cover, add mozzarella and parmesan cheese, return to oven uncovered and bake until cheese is slightly browned, approximately 10 minutes.
*In the marinara sauce you can use ground meat such as Italian sausage or ground beef or ground turkey, or chopped eggplant or zucchini or other vegetable.
By the way, if you hate eggplant, but wish you liked it, here’s a couple of suggestions:
If you hate eggplant because it has a very strong or very bitter taste, you are not alone. A certain percentage of people have taste buds that are very attuned to something in the eggplant that tastes bitter. It’s not your fault – it’s your taste buds! However, it is possible to pull most of the bitter out prior to cooking. Most recipes suggest salting the sliced eggplant, letting it sit for awhile, then rinsing or patting the salt off. That does help, but I find it more effective to soak it in heavily salted water for a couple of hours after you’ve cut the eggplant into slices or cubes or whatever you need for your recipe. By heavily salted, I don’t mean a quick dash of salt. I mean a lot of salt; the water should taste obviously salty. Since eggplant floats, I use a plate or something to weigh it down, to keep it fully submerged in the salt water. Wait a couple of hours, then pour off the salt water and rinse the eggplant in fresh water. The discarded salt water should have a brown tinge to it.
On the other hand, if you hate eggplant because of the texture, or because it squeaks, (yes, I’m not joking, some of us hate the squeak) then yep, totally, I know where you’re coming from. If that’s the case, after you’ve cubed, soaked, rinsed, and stir fried your eggplant, remove it from the pan, cool it slightly, and run it through a food processor or a blender until it’s completely smooth. Then return it to the pan with your marinara sauce.
In addition to eggplant being good for you, it will add thickness and richness to your sauce, and help cover the noodles so they don’t dry out during baking.
Serenity has not one but THREE new roommates (Serenity is Darren’s new name, remember? And pronouns “they, them”. Yeah, it’s going to take awhile to get used to this – for you and me both.)
Serenity’s previous roommates, Cody and Alan, were really nice guys. They’ve both moved on; Cody moved in with an old friend who recently moved to Boise, and Alan moved back to his hometown, Salt Lake City.
Serenity had found Cody and Alan on Craigslist. This time they put the word out among friends. Their new roommates are Chirstina, Heidi, and Heidi’s wife Kylie. Serenity already knew Chirstina, and Heidi and her wife are friends of their good friend, Ren.
Although Alan and Cody are both good people, the three of them never really became close friends. They cohabitated comfortably enough, but mostly kept to themselves. Now that Serenity is rooming with people from their friends circle, they’re hoping for more of a family-style household. It’s been lonely during covid!
Chirstina gets the downstairs bedroom and the hall bath, Heidi and Kylie get the larger of the two suites upstairs, and Serenity gets the other upstairs suite. There’s three bathrooms total, so that’s nice, to have as many bathrooms as bedrooms.
The only downside to all of this is it means I don’t get to spend a couple of months living with Serenity like I was hoping to this summer, because all the rooms are full! But I totally get it. A month or two with mom, vs a full-time, friend-roommate-family group? Yeah, I’d go for the full-time, family-style group too. Having mom visit for a month or two is just not THAT compelling!
Hopefully we’ll manage to get up there to do some camping together this summer. Idaho is great for summer camping.
My friend Tracey made all these adorable Christmas ornaments for her tree this year. This is the same friend who was done with her Christmas shopping sometime in mid-November…or I don’t even know when. August, probably! At least before Thanksgiving, which was around the time I was considering getting started.
Tracey wants to assure you that her friends helped collect all the corks – she didn’t drink all that wine herself! Although I can’t imagine how she would have had time to drink ANY wine and still get all that done.
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