Another normal today

Hello everyone,  

I don’t have a new photo but the second scrap quilt is completely tied and pinned. 

 I need to spend about an hour at the sewing machine sewing completely around the border and then it will be done.  

Yesterday I did a grocery pickup from the Walmart close to my house.  
My town has 3 Walmarts, 1 Aldi and 1 Sprouts.  
We aren’t crazy about driving to Oklahoma City anymore for groceries so Walmart is where I do most of our shopping.  

Before I placed that order,  we inventoried our frozen meat.  We have a good amount of pork and already cooked meat like beef taco meat, lentil taco filling,  shredded roast beef.
We had 2 packs of chicken so I bought a whole chicken and a tray of boneless skinless chicken breasts.  
That chicken was 7 pounds!
  I remember when whole chickens were 3-4 pounds.  
It’s illegal to sell chicken in the USA that has hormones or steroids so thats not why chickens are so much bigger than they used to be.  

It would take all week for my husband and I to use a 7 pound chicken.
So before I freeze them,  I cut out the backbone and wingtips.  I save those in a freezer bag until I have enough to make chicken broth.  
Then I bag up each half chicken to freeze.   

The chicken breasts were about 1 pound each.  
Each one was put in a small bag by itself.  

These bags will probably last for 2 meals

ready to freeze 

there were 2 small packs of ground beef in our freezer.  
This meat store at our local university is only open on Friday afternoons.  
Their meat is raised on campus and packaged by students.  
Everything we’ve bought there has been first rate.  
My husband went today and bought 10 pounds of ground beef and a small ham.  

I’m happy to be so stocked up and don’t expect to need to buy meat again until after Christmas.  
But we do eat almost all of our meals at home so it may not last that long.  

I’m  still liking this Walmart great value dishwasher detergent.
It gets all the tea and coffee stains off.  
It just seems to do a really good job.
This measuring cup is a quarter cup because that’s what size I had to use as the scoop but we only fill it about a fourth full so I use about 1 tablespoon a load.

we got a new roof in the spring and the roofers did a great job.
They cleaned up, but apparently these nails fell into some of our garden beds that were overgrown and that we never cleaned out in the spring..
We did very little garden or yard work this year as my husband had back surgery. 

Anyway,  my husband and I did some garden cleanup this morning and found these nails down in some bushes.  
We had 4 inches or rain yesterday and our temperatures finally dropped into the 50s so it was pleasant outside and the soft ground made it easy to pull up stuff.  

I’m not an expert gardener by any stretch but I’m going to brag a bit on my jade plant.
  I bought it 5 years ago at Walmart and it was just  
 a little 3 or 4 inch pot.  
It stays on the patio in warm months and comes indoors during cold months.  
I put those nails in front of it for scale.  
It’s grown way bigger than I ever imagined.  


Hope you all have a really good weekend 
❤️ Rhonda 

getting back to a normal routine

Hello everyone,  

recovering from Salmonella took my husband a lot longer than either of us expected.  

But he is finally feeling almost normal except for feeling more weak and tired than before he got sick.  

I working on that second scrap quilt.  I’ve been tying it on the big dining table- this table isn’t really big enough but I’m just using what I have.  And it’s fine.  

Maybe I will make my goal of getting them both finished by  the end of this month.  

Here’s the to do list I started Monday.  

I’ve done some of it and some of either didn’t get done or will happen as the week goes on.  

I did go to Dollar General to stock up on laundry products while they had good coupons on them.  But when I tried to check out,  none of my coupons subtracted.  The 2 clerks said maybe it was because the first day of the sale and I could try again later in the week.  I was polite but I didn’t buy a thing.  Dollar General may just be off my list of stores where I shop.  I don’t like doing errands and gas is too expensive for fruitless errands.  

Next door to that DG is a big thrift store with good prices.  One of our granddaughters needs some sewing help with a Halloween outfit.  

this is her inspiration photo- she bought a similar blue plaid skirt with shorts attached for $1 at Walmart.  We found some fabrics in my sewing stuff for the hanging down parts.  But she really wanted some reddish plaid too.  

I got both of these plaid shirts and a book for $3.35 at the thrift store near DG.  

If you’ve shopped for fabric lately,  these 2 shirts are much cheaper than buying fabric by the yard.

In the photo,  the second shirt looks brown but it’s brick red in person.  

Sunday,  I was thinking about meals for the week and I wrote out this list really quick.  

It uses ingredients we had on hand.  

We haven’t eaten everything exactly as written but it’s been very helpful and we have ate all our meals at home.  

After the salmonella,  we are neither one too eager to eat out anyway.  

Tomorrow,  I’ll look in the freezer and see what looks good and make another list.  

hopefully I didn’t put any of you to sleep ready this very non-exciting post.  

❤️Rhonda 

salmonella

My husband left to go to Arkansas to help his mother on September 16

They traveled two hours for her to get a medical procedure so they were on the road and ate restaurant meals for two days

Then they returned to her house

On September 22, he started getting digestive tract distress. He was feeling terrible but was somehow able to drive home to Oklahoma on September 26.  

he had to planned to stay in AR another week, but he wanted to be home.  

thankfully, his mother did not also catch his illness. 

On September 27, I took him to the emergency room as he had lost 17 pounds in less than a week.  

We were at the ER for about eight hours.  He had two IVs, lots of tests and a cat scan 

We were both very pleased with all of the care from the doctor and the many nurses and techs in and out of his room

The doctor was relieved to find out what the actual cause of my husband’s sickness was- Salmonella.  

I was very glad he did not have to be admitted as we were both told that was likely when he first arrived at the ER.

Once the test revealed what was causing his sick sickness, the doctor knew exactly what medications to prescribe.  

My husband was prescribed a special diet because his colon is so inflamed and four prescription drugs and one over-the-counter drug.  

He is following the doctors orders and even called the dr this week because he’s still feeling pretty lousy.  After describing his symptoms on the phone, they believed he was on the mend, but salmonella apparently can  take a long time to run it course

He is still quite tired and just in general feels lousy.

We have gone over all the food he ate- We do not know the exact source. It could have been a restaurant salad, it could have been salad toppings on a fast food hamburger, it could have been jalapeños on a calzone, It could have been undercooked eggs at a relative’s house and it could have been fresh salsa from the grocery store.   

undercooked chicken and uncooked eggs are the most likely source when other people get salmonella..  

I think we’ve all seen food recalls and warnings about bag salad, and fresh jalapeños, and eggs this summer

my advice is to take those warnings seriously.

Salmonella is no joke!   

I took a picture of my husband in the ER, but I don’t think he probably wants that on the Internet.  

I also took a picture of myself wrapped up in a blanket in the ER room.   I know from past experience that this hospital keeps their rooms quite cold so I wore long sleeves, but I was still very cold

The nurses kept putting  heated blankets on  my husband, and when they offered to bring me one, I happily accepted!

In  fun news,  a closeout store in our town was selling Amazon returns surprise boxes this weekend. 

 My daughter and Family bought some and said they had really good stuff in them

this was one of their boxes,
 A flat of canned peas, and a flat of dog food,
A large bundle of single serving peanuts,
Several kinds of fancy dog treats, and chicken treats
fancy wella Band-Aids
 a bundle of blank journals
 a bunch of little Coca-Cola
I don’t remember what she said is in those little green boxes in the center of the photo
and yes, they have a dog and chickens so the treats are perfect for them.

two grandchildren shown with the two Mystery boxes they bought for us

I should’ve taken pictures of everything, but I didn’t.
Amazingly one box had a pair of lounging pajamas that are my size.  
We also got three pair of windshield wipers and if you have priced those recently, they are pretty expensive.
My husband says they will work on our vehicle.
We also got a weighted vest that my daughter wanted, and you can see my granddaughter thinks she wants it too
I got two Identical purses , and I have already put my things into one of them
We  got two  Snackle  boxes, my daughter said they ended up with four of them
I  also got two nice glass rectangle food storage casserole type dishes with the plastic lids that snap on
We got the fancy cone collar for a dog which you can see my grandson modeling because he’s a silly 13-year-old.
 I think we got three boxes of gluten-free cookies that are actually delicious and a 12 pack of propel water restoring drinks.
  My husband has been drinking lots of Gatorade, electrolyte type drinks, so it will be nice to have another 12 pack in the refrigerator
we also got six boxes of fake aquarium plants but none of us have or plan to get aquariums 

sharing the weighted vest 

wearing the dog cone and a box on his head, but I cannot remember what was in that box.  

I’m not sure you can tell from this photo but they had a very good time with these mystery items.

Opening the mystery boxes was lots of fun!

  It was  the most fun I’ve had all week as this has been a rather hard week.  

Whether the  merchandise was worth the purchase price of $59 for each box, I’m not sure, but for entertainment value, it was more than worth it!  

Stay away from salmonella and be careful what you eat!

❤️ Rhonda 

And I’m doing this post on an iPad that I don’t normally use and it may look weird as it’s posted but it’s the best I can do right now

Friday things

hello again, everyone

our son that lives four states away, came back to our town for just a short visit because of some things involving his former law partner here.
He asked me if I could hem a pair of pants while he was here, I said, of course, and bring anything that you have that needs adjusted.
He brought three pair of his pants, two pair of his daughter’s pants, and a skirt he hoped I could make look more Halloween appropriate.  
Everything got hemmed and 
I sewed some green ball fringe and black Rick rack around the skirt bottom.   Both of those were items I just had in my sewing room that I probably Thrifted  several years ago

we both think it turned out really cute and I know my granddaughter will enjoy swishing the full skirt around.  

Because grandkids would be here after school I baked a batch of chocolate chip muffins. I had some sour cream that needed used up so this recipe was perfect..  
I’ve made this recipe many times, but I did not get a photo of the finished muffins.

While I was in the kitchen, I grated  3 pounds of cheese with this fairly new grater.  
It works pretty good.  
I put two boxes in the freezer and we will use one box before it goes bad.
We like cheese on salads, on anything Mexican, on baked potatoes.  It just goes fast  

There were seven of us here for supper tonight. We started with salad.  I should say a few of us had salad.  Then we had delivered pizza, but I did not get a photo of it.   I’m  pretty sure you all know what Pizza looks like.  Everybody ate pizza.  

The children also ate lots of chocolate chip muffins and took the leftover ones home with them.  

that’s my exciting day But I did enjoy it very much.

❤️ Rhonda 

not the best blogger

hello everyone

Two weeks ago I had plans to try to Blogg every day, but obviously that has not happened.

But I have taken some pictures along the way and I’ll just share those

I did completely finish one of the twin quilts for this room.
This room has two beds and I have the Quilt top made for the other bed,  I just need to spend time finishing it.

I’ve  been to a thrift store twice over the last two weeks.
The 16-year-old granddaughter has turned into a crocheter and she wanted any kind of yarn I could find
The bags of yarn are very full. One of them had some thicker yarn, maybe it’s referred to as chunky yarn by yarn people.
One bag is all cotton yarn And it is nice to crochet into dishcloths
I also got a big mug and a bag and a funny little remnant of fabric.  

 

oThe second trip I bought a vinyl tablecloth that I plan to use on two tables on our patio- It’s 104 inches long.
And five jars that I will use just for dry food storage.  I’m pretty sure the quart ones are old mayonnaise jars and they are a very heavy glass compared to how I think glass jars are made now

another Friday night supper with a silly 11 year-old showing y’all the food.  
It was just the three kids and myself. We had breakfast for supper.- Strawberries, Biscuits and gravy, Sausage, Scrambled eggs, And banana chocolate chip muffins because I had ripe bananas and these kiddos like chocolate chips in their banana muffins.  

I don’t drink coffee and my husband will drink any plain black coffee. He doesn’t care what brand it is..  
I bought this MasterChef coffee at Walmart a few months ago as it was cheap compared to all the other coffees
I was surprised that the can was actually metal.  
I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it, but I did save and wash the can.  


They’re great food storage too.


Anybody remember when baking pumpkin bread in empty 1 pound Coffee cans was the rage?
i’m thinking it started in the mid 70s.
You can’t do that anymore because coffee doesn’t come in a 1 pound metal can and the cans that a lot of foods are in have some sort of a coating  on the inside that I don’t think is baking safe

But it was fun back then to make a round loaf of bread.   

that’s a snippet of my exciting life.  

❤️ Rhonda 

Monday = new to do list

Good morning

Google-Blogger-Blogspot is still not updating new posts on sidebars yet.  In my past experience,  they never seem to respond to problems but maybe they will get it fixed.  I just don’t know and am not very hopeful.  

But on to what I can do…..

My new list for this week-  it’s not heavy as I know it won’t get done if I put everything on there that I could.  

I started some scrap quilts for the 2 twin beds in one of our bedrooms months ago. The quilt tops are done.

Yesterday I sewed up fabric big enough to make the backings on both of them.

So I need to get them sandwiched onto the kitchen table- If you don’t quilt, sandwiching means layering the backing fabric, then the batting and then the quilt top.

These will just get tied with crochet thread, and then I’ll need to sew the bindings.  

my goal is to finish both of these quilts in September.  

I will certainly post photos when I finish them.

So if y’all don’t see photos, soon of finished quilt, y’all nag me OK?

the quilt tops - folded and under that basket 

hope you all have a really good Monday
❤️ Rhonda 

Friday Fun

hello everyone!

Today is Friday. Fridays used to always mean a grandchildren sleepover. That doesn’t happen as often anymore, but it does today

first I baked a pan of brownies using a mix.
Some of us like pecans, some of us prefer chocolate chips, and some of us prefer M&Ms
So I just put some of each topping on three different sections
I made the box mix just like it said, but I did add a teaspoon of vanilla.
They turned out great!

we went to Branson this summer and shopped at an Aldi grocery store

This melamine lazy Susan was on their specials aisle.  I’ve always liked patriotic things and  quilt designs and I’m very glad I found this and bought it.  

Today I filled it with fresh fruit because we all like fresh fruit about our oldest granddaughter especially likes fresh fruit.. 

Everyone was in a good mood at supper. All of the food was a crowd pleaser.

Can you longtime blog readers, believe that my grandchildren are so big?  

Our oldest grandson is a senior in high school, this granddaughter in the picture is a junior.

These boys are in junior high and middle school.

Our youngest granddaughter is in second grade in another state

We have nine total grandchildren.  

Hope you all are having a good Friday

Thank you so much for all the people who have viewed my blog since yesterday. I checked my stats and I’m shocked at how many of you read my first post in six months yesterday

I promise all the post will not involve desserts.  

PS I’ve come back to add this after looking at several blogs on my sidebar.  It seems no one’s Blog list are updating.

People are writing new post, but they are not coming up inside bars.  So if you want to see if some of your favorite bloggers have  a recent post, Everybody works together

I think you’ll just have to click on their old post and look around and see if there are some more new ones.  

Very frustrating I know 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

This seems to be a glitch with blogspot/blogger/Google.  Hopefully, they will get it fixed soon

❤️ Rhonda 
 

It’s been almost 6 months

Hello everyone,

I want to get back to blogging and I wondered if I should about highlight from the last 6 months but that seems daunting so I just going to jump back in with today.  

[

It has been such a hot and dry long summer in Oklahoma.  
I’ve done almost zero baking and meals have mostly been low-prep dishes cooked in a slow cooker to keep the house from heating up even more.  

But praise God,  we woke up to rain and the coolest temperatures we’ve had since May.  
So,  it seemed like a great time to bake a real dessert.mm
My husband said peach cobbler sounded best to him.  
I put almost 40 pounds of Colorado peaches in the freezer this summer so I used some of them in a Fannie Farmer recipe.  

I made half a recipe and baked them in 4 little pie pans.  
They were delicious and hit the spot after not having fresh baked desserts all summer.  
This crust was different from traditional crust as it called for baking powder, sugar, butter and cream.  

It’s a good recipe but I think we prefer a regular pie crust that uses just flour, salt, shortening and ice water.  

 This post is formatting weird,  It shows how rusty I am at blogging.  

But I really do plan to start posting  regularly.  

❤️ Rhonda 

First day of Spring 🌹 ☔️ 🐣

Hello everyone 👋🏻 

I’m still here and I’ll explain a little farther down.    Today was one of the only days I’ve left home in 2 weeks.  I went to my mother’s retirement home for their Spring Tea.  

This hay bale is always outside,  decorated for the seasons,  and I think this bunny costume is one of the cutest the hay bale has ever worn.  

The spring tea was as nice as can be.  

The ladies behind this bar are some the workers and they had such a nice party set up.  

There was hot tea on every table and so many yummy treats.  

They brought around the food and served us all.  
Below is my plate.  I also had a tiny blueberry scone and a thumbprint cookie.  Everything was delicious and I think all resident women enjoyed it very much.  All the men residents were invited  too but only 1 man attended.  

I had black tea,  a little croissant with chicken salad,  a veggie stick cup with hummus dip in the bottom and fruit salad.  The fruit salad was delicious.  The young woman that made it said the secret ingredient was peach pie filling and I assume she means canned pie filling.  

At home I’m still cutting up lots of fruit and vegetables.  These Tangelo oranges are delicious but very hard to peel.  

I’ve got mostly pepper and tomato seeds started in the house.  I’m really pleased with how well they are growing.  

This is why I’ve been away from blogging.  My husband had a laminectomy back surgery.    He’s been in continuous pain for  about 3 years.  He’s been to different doctors and a chiropractor.  He’s has had physical therapy and multiple prescription and homeopathic pain relievers.  He’s has used a back brace and a special chair.  He traded in his pickup for a more comfortable car.  

He’s had multiple pain shots and multiple spine ablations.  

After trying everything,  he saw a surgeon that several of our friends have successfully been treated by.  The surgeon said he thought he could help him and we decided to.  

It was not easy decision but my husband really felt it was the only option.  

This surgery has a different recovery period than other surgeries.  He’s is supposed to just take it easy until his 2 week post surgery checkup next week.  He’s can’t drive or lift anything over 5 pounds.  

So far,  he is feeling really good.  He is having discomfort from the surgery but he says all the back pain is gone.  

below is his incision and I hope it doesn’t gross any of out too much.  

I think it’s healing up nicely and an RN friend also thinks it looks good.  

What would you all call this outfit below?  

I stopped at Walmart to pick up a prescription and a woman shopper was wearing this very outfit.

  It did not look like she had just rolled out of bed.  Her hair was styled and she was wearing real shoes.  

It looks like pajamas to me.  I live in a college town and I’ve seen people wearing pajama pants in public for years 

But this was new to me,  seeing someone actually wearing a pajama outfit  as streetwear.  

Maybe I’m just out of the loop.  

Or is this a thing people are doing everywhere?   

Happy first day of Spring everyone 

❤️ Rhonda 

Meals this week

Hello everyone 

Here is what we ate for our main meals this week 

This was a white chicken chili (that looks more green than white) It was based off of several recipes and contained white chicken, white beans,  green chili verde sauce, onions, green chilis, corn, chicken broth and taco seasoning 

Tuesday we had cheeseburger bowls- just everything that goes on a cheeseburger but no bun and served in a bowl.  

Wednesday was dill pickle chicken- I save pickle jars and juice when the pickles are gone.  Then chicken gets marinated in the refrigerator in that dill pickle juice for 8 or more hours.  
I put a light coating of seasoned flour on each piece of chicken and then fried them in just enough oil to keep them from sticking.  

we had some steamed vegetables and little oranges with the chicken strips.  

Thursday is the day we went to the commissary.  

That day we gate lunch at Cheddars that is just outside the Air Force base main gate.  

My husband had a cheeseburger,  I had blackened fish and we both had cole slaw.  

It was a really tasty meal.  

Friday night 2 grandchildren were here.  We had homemade pizza.  

The grownups like onions, peppers and jalapeños on theirs.  The grandchildren wanted just meat and cheese.  

Saturday morning breakfast was also eaten by the 2 grandchildren that slept over.  

We all had some french puff muffins.  Some of us had sausage, some had eggs.  

When their dad picked them shortly after we ate,  He ate a leftover muffin and the last of the sausage and he took the last muffin to our daughter.  

Then Saturday,  I cooked a new recipe with some of that stew meat in the meat bargain box.  I was sure we would like it so I made a double batch.  

It turned out really good!  

We’ve ate it Saturday and Sunday and I put 2 meal size portions in the freezer.  

https://southernbite.com/slow-cooker-beef-and-noodles/

What have y’all been cooking? 

❤️ Rhonda