Yesterday I felt a great deal of dismay over something I'll label: maintenance. It seems like everything is on the verge of breaking. Our landline phone sounds like a crackle storm. The DVD player is persnickety and will only play every other DVD so I have to keep the laptop handy. My cellphone hates staying charged, even with a new battery. My glasses need to be updated.
It seems like we take care of one thing (new gutters, check!) and ten new things sprout up.
I guess this is how it always is but at the moment it feels over-burdensome.
Yesterday I enjoyed my computer free day so much I thought about a computer free weekend. I used to do a computer free day every weekend and I think I might reinstitute that policy.
I read a bunch of stuff and noodled around in the kitchen. I listened to a bunch of podcasts while I made salad rolls, chocolate pudding and collard greens with bacon.
That wasn't the meal. I've had the stuff for salad rolls forever and I've never made them before. I thought it would be something good to snack on this weekend. The chocolate pudding was a surprise for Bob and the collard greens were because I had a Cooks Illustrated recipe and I had bacon leftover from something else I made so I thought I'd give it a try.
The photos are of something I've intended to blog about for a long time. We call it: The Bucket.
I'm not sure where that name came from but on weekends you'll hear one of us say, "I'm going to get started on The Bucket" or "Don't worry, I already did The Bucket."
I started The Bucket a long time ago, possibly as long as 10 years, when I weighed more than I do now. I used to bring it to the office and then when I wanted a snack, instead of eating Laffy Taffy and Ritz Crackers, I'd have vegetables.
You might think of it as a pain but once you get in the habit you hardly think about it. Every weekend or sometimes weeknight, one or both of us will drag out a pile of vegetables, scrub, peel, cut and pop them into these plastic containers.
During the week we can use it for our lunches or pull out and chop up for our salad at dinner. Bob likes to mix his with pickles or olives to give it more flavor. Cucumbers and jicama go bad pretty quickly so I don't recommend doing those in advance. The bell peppers can also get slippery so you need to keep an eye on them but The Bucket will usually last at least 5 days, sometimes longer.
The peelings all go out into the compost bin.
I should start a blog feature like "Where's Waldo?" only call it "Where's Pam's wine?" It seems like there's a glass or bottle in all of my kitchen shots.
Bob is calling me so I'm not going to proofread. heh heh, living dangerously.
