Getting back to normal

Hello everyone,

My husband is doing much better.  He’s been off of the heavier pain meds for days,  he’s doing great at physical therapy and he even drove a little yesterday.  

Needless to say but we are both very happy he’s doing so good.  

It wasn’t a big list but I scratched every single task off of the to do list.  That felt good too! 

I cleaned up the front flower beds- they weren’t “weedy” but had some dry stuff leftover and of course leaves.  

I half filled up this trash can and uncovered some tulips almost ready to bloom. 

  

The garage got a good sweeping.  When it warms up even more, it will get mopped too (and no, I don’t mop our garage often, maybe once a year or so) 

I also gathered up a bag of trash out there.  I’m reclaiming real estate 

as 6

Laura at Harvest Lane Cottage talks about doing.  

In the backyard,  I looked over husband’s raised beds.  They need some attention before he can plant anything so I worked on them some.  

I’ve still got 3 1/2 beds to clean out and I left the worst for last but I’ll just keep working on the .  It’s too early plant most things anyway.

While I was pulling weeds,  I found several volunteer lettuce plants.  

So I gathered them up and replanted them all together.  

I think there are about 12 volunteer leaf lettuce plants 

For cooking,  before the surgery, I made a batch of sausage biscuits for the freezer that my husband likes so much.

They were so handy for quick breakfasts.  If you are the caretaker, it’s really nice to have some fast some easy foods. 

These are baked Grands biscuits and Jimmy Dean precooked Turkey sausage patties.  

I freeze them with the sausage on top so I can microwave the sausage a little before I put the biscuit in the microwave.  The sausage takes longest to heat.  

One night this week we had hamburgers and I baked these Rhodes dinner rolls for the hamburger buns.  

We really like them but they are smaller than a fast food burger bun.  

And it’s simpler to eat slightly smaller bunsat home than to go out for store buns or takeout food.  

  

And last a funny story about the 5 year old grandson who is back in traditional school after almost a year or virtual school 

He has plenty of cool masks- I know he has baseball, dinosaur and super hero theme masks but apparently the teacher had some even nicer ones 😎

I hope you all have a good weekend.  I think we are going to a school plant sale and I’m sure my husband will pick out way more plants than we

need.  

❤️ Rhonda 

Soup and celebrations

Hello everyone 

I made a delicous batch of soup last week, inspired by a soup recipe from an old blog that is no longer being updated. 

Lena’s cabbage soup post

I followed the recipe except I didn’t add the beans and for seasoning,  I used just a little sage and thyme.  

It was such a good soup! 

For the last 6 or 7 years,  we started taking a trip for our wedding anniversary and they were usually to the San Diego area or Branson, Missouri.  

In March if 2020 was our 40th wedding anniversary- you all know what became of celebrations then. 

This week was our 41st anniversary.  With my husband’s surgery,  trips aren’t possible now but he tried to make our day very special.  

I woke up and saw this huge happy anniversary sign in our front yard

My husband thought he asked 1 of our children to arrange for a flower delivery but he actually asked 2 children so.....

2 huge floral arrangements were delivered.  

They are both so pretty and it smells like a florist in our home.  

Ducky spent last week at our favorite kennel/doggie day camp 

He had a great week playing with so many other dogs.  

He is home now and so tired from his busy week and also so happy to nap beside Jeff.  

I hope that photo doesn’t gross anyone out too much.  We think it looks bad but we checked with the doctor and they think it’s OK.  

This was actually Jeff’s 4th knee replacement surgery.  His other knee had lots of problems and it took 3 surgeries to get it OK.  

So we are really hoping this knee will be a one and done situation.  

Hope you are all fine.  

It’s been raining buckets here for about 16 hours and I’m glad today is a stay at home day.

❤️ Rhonda 

3 weeks of March so far——-

Hello everyone 👋🏻 

This was not a normal month for us 

First I’ll show you my to do list from 2 weeks ago 

There was no list last week as my husband had knee surgery at our local hospital.  

He’s doing ok but it was major surgery.  Surgery was on Monday and we came home Wednesday- I think he should of stayed there a few more days but it wasn’t our decision.  

He is supposed to wear Ted or compression stockings for several weeks.  Well,  they are very hard to put on, especially onto a leg with a 12 inch incision.  

We ordered this sock helper and it works like a charm!  

It doesn’t look like it would work but it does.  

Amazon has several brands as did the local medical supply store.  

Next week’s lists- they aren’t pretty but I hope they will help home things go smoothly.  

Meals 

Chores and errands 

Hope you all have a good rest of this weekend 

❤️Rhonda 




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February 28- fried rice

Last day of February 

How I make fried rice 

In a big nonstick pan or wok, Sauté a large chopped onion in just enough oil (maybe 2 teaspoons or 1 tablespoon)  to keep it from sticking and burning.  

Then add about 4 cups of cooked rice - I use cold leftover rice and I always use parboiled or converted white rice (like Uncle Ben’s) that was cooked in a rice cooker.  

I add about 1/3 cup or more water with the rice,  cook it on high, stir often until it’s heated through.  

Then I add low sodium soy sauce until the rice looks the right color (or to taste)  Ive never measured the soy sauce, I’m guessing 3 tablespoons or so. 

Now, add heated up vegetables -this time I used 2 cups of frozen corn and 2 cups of frozen peas and carrots that have been heated in the microwave. 

The meat was about 1 cup off finely diced leftover roast beef.  

Now stir and heat it all together.  

I add black pepper and don’t usually add salt as even low sodium soy sauce has plenty of salt flavor.  

I never add eggs like traditional fried rice. 

Sometimes I sauté diced carrots and celery with the onion. 

Sometimes I sauté diced bacon and use a bit of the bacon drippings to sauté the vegetables and then use the bacon as the meat.  

Sometimes I don’t put any meat in it and sometimes I use leftover chicken.  Roast beef is my favorite way.  

If you’re not using a lot of oil like restaurant fried rice,  your cold rice needs to not be sticky and clumpy.  That’s why I like converted/parboiled rice as the grains don’t stick together.  

I’ve been making fried rice like this for years.   

And it’s just as good leftover as it was the first time.  

❤️Rhonda 

February 27- cookies and books

Hello again

I bought a bag of black walnuts at Sprouts awhile back and I used them today to make these cookies.  

I got the recipe from my uncle Rex but I’m pretty sure he got it from his mom,  my grandma.  

I made them exactly like the recipe except I used vanilla instead of black walnut flavoring.  

  

I kept about dozen for us and shared the rest with our son and my parents.  

Black walnuts don’t seem to be too popular now but I grew up eating them- black walnut divinity is so good and so is black walnut ice cream.  

I’m sure this cookie recipe could be made with any other kind of nut too.  Also,  it did not yield 60 cookies for me,  more like 3 1/2 dozen 

Anyway,  we think black walnut pinwheels are just delicious.  

I’ve been reading this week.  

I really liked this one,  it may be one of my all time favorite books. 

I just started this one.  I think the kindle version is free on Amazon for a few days right now.  

You may know Kate from Youtube or her blog or her other Kindle books.  

Have a good weekend everyone 

❤️ Rhonda 

February 26- home things

Good morning everyone 

I spent a lot of this week cleaning and such around our home.  Things had just go out of whack for several reasons.  

I put the leaves back in the big dining table 

and put out a few Saint Patrick’s decorations 

  

Husband’s little garden plants are growing 

 

They seem to like our sunny bay window ☀️

Our living room 

I bought a vented storage wood box  to hide the antenna and roku boxes on the mantle,  put my assortment of birds on the mantle and on the shelf over the sofa 

and made a rag strip wreath for over the loveseat (some of the grands helped make the wreath) 

Cooking this week 

Smothered steak in the crockpot on a day I had a busy afternoon 

I cooked a hen and will make it into soup or more chicken and noodles this weekend 

And we had a new kind of frozen pizza that was really very good for a frozen pizza.  

   

During the cold spell, we ran our heater and our gas fireplace so much!  We did conserve when told to but that wasn’t until the middle of the 2 weeks when it never warmed up above freezing,  

I’ve heard natural gas prices increased astronomically too, 

I was concerned what our gas bill would look like and it came this morning.  

I’m not sure how it is so small and I’m very thankful we had heat during those very cold days.  

Ducky played with grandkids 2 days and spent 1 day at the doggy day camp and spa.  

It all made him so tired.  

But doesn’t he look clean and fluffy?  He smells good too! 

Hope you all have a good weekend 

❤️ Rhonda 

February 25- hello again 👋🏻

Good morning ☀️ 

Last week was nothing but rough!  It was so cold and snowy and icy.  

Thankfully we never lost power or water and the conservation things we did like keeping the water, gas and electric usage as low as possible, were not fun but we made it.

 

Melanie asked about our meals - before the coldest weather came,  I cooked several entrees and we reheated portions in the microwave as it used the least amount of power.  

We also had sandwiches.  

Below is a recipe we tried from Joanna Gaines.  

I divided it by 3 for just my husband and I.  But made as the recipe is written, it would be super family style meal.  

The salad was so good and so simple.  I made the salad a second time and we had it again last night with a different meal.  

The salad is a diced English cucumber, tomato and onion with just a little olive oil and lemon juice for the dressing.  

Apparently the weather got Walmart all out of whack and I could not get a grocery pickup so I went to the store Saturday.  

There were lots of bare spots but I found everything on my list except the caramel sauce. 

Walmart normally sells maybe 50 kinds of sliced bread but on Saturday, they had only 3 kinds.  We liked 2 of them so that is what we bought.  

And we ended up buying the ice melt at a local cleaning supply business.

Our house was very much in need of a good cleaning.  

I didn’t vacuum or steam mop when we were watching our electric usage and the floors were extra dirty because of tracked in snow and ice melt and grands being here.

I also didn’t do laundry.  

So I made my to do list on my iPad this week and I’m so happy most of it is done. 

Today, I’ll work on laundry.  

When we went to Walmart,  we also went by a thrift store.  I saw a vintage metal tole lamp on their Facebook page and I was so happy they still had it for sale,  

I’ve been changing the lamps in our home from lamps with cloth shades that get so dusty and are hard to clean to lamps with metal or glass globes that can be cleaned easily.  

Apparently I’m not the only one as these are listed at high prices on EBay. 

That’s the exact same lamp! 

Ours was $9.99 and my husband spent $17 on some new lamp parts to improve it.  

I’ll take some photos and show how nice it looks in our living room soon.  

I helped 3 grands with their virtual school the first part of the week and now they are in actual classes at their school 2 days a week. 

However 2 grands that have been going to in person classes most all this school year are back in virtual school because the town is have water problems, not weather related but a pump failure.  They should be able to return to school as normal next week after being out for 2 weeks.  

Seems like since the virus arrived, it’s always something, isn’t it? 

A holiday to plan for 😊

And I think this Instagram post sums up my feelings during so much of this last 12 months.  

❤️ Rhonda 

February 17- hard winter phase and bananas

First,  here is how the bananas are faring 

The bananas are pretty much fully ripe now.  The one I ate yesterday was a little riper than I prefer but it was still firm and not mushy like ripe bananas can be.

My unscientific results seem to say that bananas bought while green will keep a week and still be edible using this Rubbermaid box. 

I’ll keep using it and let y’all know it goes.  

In weather news,  it’s been so cold and we have about a foot of snow on the ground.

We’re having energy problems too. 

Our area has had to have electrical rolling blackouts and we’ve been asked to conserve all energy.

So we are keeping our heat turned lower than we prefer and we aren’t using any appliances like stove, washers, dryers, sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, etc: 

Some friends of ours that live just south of the Dallas area live in a town with a failed water plant, caused by the weather.  

First in their house, some water lines froze and then all water has stopped coming to their home.

To at least keep toilets flushed,  they are thawing buckets of snow for flush water. 

Above is part of what he posted on Facebook.  

Thankfully their 10 year old son is helping and thinks it’s all a big adventure.  


I’m ready for this winter adventure to end.  Thankfully above freezing temperatures are coming this weekend and maybe things will start getting back to normal.  

❤️ Rhonda