Breaking Radio Silence

I didn’t mean to wait so long to make another blog post.  Things are happening, but I get distracted before I can make a post.

Prayer requested for Rod Ivers, Retired Rod on my sidebar.  If you read Sandie Dixon’s blog, also on the sidebar, you know he went in for tests and they found a brain tumor.  He is back in Kansas City under the care of his doctors at this point.  I did go over to see him the evening before they left.  He seems to have accepted whatever happens.  I’m hoping he is back here next year, as we all are.  Sandie is in contact with Rod’s family so we can hopefully keep up with what goes on.

I am transitioning back to night shift.  Monday night will be rough as for the first 2 weeks I’m doing 12 hour shifts, 6pm to 6am.  I go back to 4 10 hour shifts a week after that.  I am glad to finally get back on nights.

I’ve been doing my best to take food in to work that I have cooked myself rather than eating frozen dinners.  I am getting a bit tired of my own cooking, though.

Soup’s On

I guess there are those who are lucky enough not to hear all the cool things one can buy these days who haven’t a clue what I was talking about in the previous post.  An Instant Pot is a combination electric pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, yogurt maker, saute pan, steamer, food warmer, and many more things I’m sure.

I got the recipe from the Instant Pot site.  First I pressed the saute button.  Then I remembered I need to plug it in first.  I put coconut oil in the inner stainless steel pot and again pressed saute and it started heating.  Dumped in the chopped onions, garlic, and curry powder.  Cooked until I thought it was cooked enough.

I then put the rest of the ingredients in, which included a can of coconut milk, the cubed sweet potatoes, and frozen container of chicken broth I’d made a few months ago.  I ended up setting up a worst case.  Not intentionally.  That is just how things tend to go in my life.  Such as, I probably should have considered doing this last night and taken the chicken broth out to thaw instead of dumping it in as a frozen chunk.  Not the least of the reasons being I splashed coconut milk/curry on my top as it slid in.  When I put all the rest of the ingredients in and it didn’t look like enough liquid so I pulled out the carton of Silk Coconut Milk (for drinking?) I had and tasted it to see if it was still good.  It was, so I added some to the pot.  I’m probably a bit over full here from what the instructions say. 

I set the pot to 10 minutes on high pressure.  It came up to pressure automatically, stayed at high pressure for 10 min, then went to keep warm and let the pressure down as it sat.  I just wait for the beeps.   I did the trial run with water last night, and I have to say that even releasing the steam pressure manually is easy and safe.  That is why I got this.  I’m finding I need cooking appliances that turn themselves off automatically, as I get distracted these days.  I forgot I was toasting an English Muffin yesterday.  It was cold, but not burnt to a crisp, since I used the press down toaster function on the older toaster oven I have and it turned itself off when it popped up.  Hopefully the InstaPot will keep me from burning down the kitchen in a similar situation.

This is what it looked like after I let the steam off and opened it up.  I wasn’t ready to do anything with it yet, so I turned it back on keep warm and put the lid back on.  I ran around and did some errands, one of which was to pick up the rest of my order from Walmart.  Since I ordered this from the Evil Empire, it came bundled free with a Ninja blender/food processor.  I went and got it (shipped separately from the Instant Pot) and blended the soup in it.  No more pictures. though.

The verdict is that it is good.  Especially since I love squash soup and I have never had the nerve to try to make it myself.  It needed less liquid or more sweet potatoes.  I need to stop cooking for an army when I cook as I’m running out of freezer space.  It needed more spice, a common issue with my cooking.  The curry gives it some heat, which I’m enjoying as I somehow picked up a cold the past few days.  All in all, the soup, the Instant Pot and the Ninja blender seem to be keepers.

More cooking with Shadowmoss

I broke down and bought an Instant Pot. Today I make soup. The recipe is for Indian coconut butternut squash soup. I have sweet potatoes (yams) and no ginger and I'm using coconut oil instead of olive oil. Wish me luck.
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Another blogfest picture

Sorting out the email function yet again. This is Ray with his doggie bag.
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Blogfest 2016

Better a bit late than never.  I didn’t take many pictures and then couldn’t find my blog email address to post them directly from my phone while I was there yesterday.  Need to get that part set up better.  Anyway, here is the one picture I did take early on as folks were beginning to arrive.  There were so many cameras out that I know there will be a lot better pictures out there in blogland this morning.


I had a total blast yesterday.  After I posted the blog I loaded up and went to pick up Croft.  After loading up his stuff amid directions from Norma on how to store the tray of whatever we got for the snack and other important things we headed to Frys and picked up the first cheese tray we found and stuck it in a totally different cooler.  I did try to do it the way Norma had suggested…

The little red car didn’t loose any time heading out to Quartzsite (looked up the spelling this time).  We figured the gas mileage on the way home and  I got 40 mpg on this trip.  Woo Hoo little red car!  I got off at the first exit and cruised slowly through town down to the McDonalds.  We went in and got breakfast and I texted Rod to say we were in town.  He was held up at his ham (amature radio) end of the week prize drawing, but would be out as soon as it was over.  I wanted to look at a couple of class B rv’s I’d noticed on the way through town, so we stopped in.  I let Croft keep the salesman busy, as I’m sure the salesman thought he was smoozing the decision maker of the two of us while I checked them out.  Nice rigs but more than I can go even used.  There was a 2000 Mini Winnie that was only $20k that was in good shape and that is probably the range I’ll end up with.  Nice to see what is around used.

We went to the big tent.  I did some creative parking out along the edge as I’d rather walk than crowd in to get a better parking space.  Croft and I meandered through the maket and tent.  I spent some money on a set of 5 toys, the rubber balls that splat flat when you throw them, then gather themselves up into a ball again.  Sorry, they make me smile and I think I’ll use them to take out my frustrations.  I also picked up a couple of the small folding step stools, one for me and one for Mom.

At the blogfest Sandie Dixon came out to greet me and whle Croft caught up with George and Suzie I went over to Doug and Toni’s rig and talked to Jim and Sandie and them while they polished off a spead of food Toni had put out.  Folks started arriving and signing in and putting on name tags.  As we went around the circle and folks stood up and introduced themselves I would be surprised ‘Hey, I know that person!’ over and over.  Folks like Merikay and Craig, Glenda, Ivan, Mark and Bobby, and so on.  I did meet the ones I was most looking forward to meeting, Pheebs (and Al and Kelly of Bayfield Bunch) and Yuma (with Doug and Dolly of Miss Adventure Travels)  Miss Fergie, Yuma’s older sibling was adorable in a cute dress.  Dolly said the problem when Yuma came to live with them was that Fergie didn’t know she was a dog until then.

I know that others are all typing out their own stories of the day.  I was totally blown away with just how NICE everyone is.  Folks I thought wouldn’t give me much notice at all talked to me for several minutes and I loved talking to them as much, probably more, than I enjoy reading their blogs.  I came away with a few resolutions.  One is to start doing things I can write about.  Time to get out of this rut.  Another is to get serious about dealing with the things I need to in order to get into my own rv and get out there and enjoy the life these folks are so obviously having so much fun living.

Heading to Blogfest

I have directions and GPS co-ordinates.  I’m fixing a second cup of coffee, and getting ready to pack water bottles and peanut butter sandwiches to eat on the way and ham and cheese sandwiches to eat during the day.  I’ll pick up Croft in a half hour as he is riding over with me, and we’ll stop and get some kind of ‘snack’ to share with the group.

I’ve never been to Quartzite (probably spelling it wrong…) when everyone is there, so I’m excited to see what it is all about.  I want to tour the Big Tent and see what all they have.  I envision it like the flea market used to be at Dayton Hamfest.  It should be fun to meet some of the folks whose lives I read about on a regular basis on their blogs.  I may email some pictures to the blog while I’m there.

And so, I’m off.

Info for Ed:

Or anyone else who is interested in learning HTML, web design or coding with free on-line classes.

Try the free site Codecademy. 

https://www.codecademy.com/learn

You sign up with an email, and they walk you through HTML and on up as far as you want to go.  I’ve used it sporatically, more because I have difficulty sticking with anything consistently.

There are others, but that is the one I personnally have used.

Cooking with Shadowmoss

I’ve been reading cooking threads on the message boards I’m on.  One was extolling the virtues of pressure cookers, in particular the new InstaPot.  I have a high-dollar pressure cooker that I bought maybe 10 years ago and used once.  It is a Magefesa, made in Spain and was quite state of the art at the time.  So, I decided that I couldn’t justify buying a new InstaPot when I have all the other stuff (rice cooker, two slow cookers, and the Magefesa pressure cooker), and I should at least start using what I have. 

Another thread had folks listing their favorite cooking sites, and two really interesting Indian cooking sites were listed.  In another thread about how a bread machine had died and asking for suggestions the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes site was mentioned with a link to the recipe with instructions.  You see where all this is going?

I decided some spicy chickpea patties sounded easy enough on the Indian site.  I had a bag of dried chickpeas and a few already cooked potatoes in the freezer.  And, hey, cooking beans was one of the wonders of the pressure cooker.  The few instructions I can put my hands on for the pressure cooker said I needed to first do a run with only water.  I did that and got an idea of how it works.  I also went online for an instruction manual that is sorta the model of mine.  We are starting to literally be cookin’ with gas!  I mentioned something about the potatoes and Mom again handed me the last of her bag of potatoes.  This happened last time is why I had some in the freezer now.

First run with the cubed potatoes in the pressure cooker was a bit shaky, but they turned out ok.  The next run of potatoes (I figured there was an odds on chance I would end up throwing the first on out, so only did half at time) was pretty smooth.  By the time I did the chickpeas, I was almost to where I know what I”m doing.  I  now have large containers in my fridge of potatoes and chickpeas.

Today I tried the patties.  A few mis-steps along the way, and I used up a box of stale herbed pita chips run through the blender instead of bread crumbs.  The patties are 3/4 mashed cooked chickpeas, about 1/4 mashed potatoes, bread (pita cracker) crumbs, and spices.  I know now why so many spices, as I used what I had and it basically tastes like the pita crackers.  Edible and filling.  Just not exceptional.  I’ll take them to work tomorrow, though.

I bought flour and yeast last night.  This morning in between frying the patties I mixed up the 5 Minute bread dough.  I have a loaf now in the oven.  We’ll see soon if this will work, or if another bread machine is in my future.

I’ve used kitchen stuff I havn’t touched in 5 or more years, used up some ingredients that needed to be used, and will hopefully end up with some food that won’t kill me.  It is a work in progress.

The Indian cooking sites, just because I think they are awesome:

http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/

http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/

http://nishamadhulika.com/en

I’m no longer cool, I no longer own a Jeep

Yesterday I finally got it together and went to the local Chevy dealer to buy a new Spark.  I had the title and spare keys to the Jeep with me.  Turns out that there is not a Chevy Spark with a stick shift to be had around here.  I ended up with this 2014 Mazda3.  I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about getting rid of the Jeep, but I definitely know I need something that gets better gas mileage and that Mom and favorite neighbor can get in and out of.  This does all that.  It is also fun to drive.  The three of us went driving around last night looking at the Christmas lights around Mesa.  The Mormon temple does things up really nice with the Christmas lights.  Next year we will go earlier and walk around rather than just driving by slowly.  The key point for me now is that I can take more than just one fairly agile person with me when I go places.  Time will tell.  I actually did have the thought last week that I would no longer be cool.  This implys that a) I ever was cool just because I drove a Jeep and b) the Jeep is/was the sum total of my coolness.  Still, it is the passing of a part of my life, that lifestyle that I thought required 4WD and off-road ability.

Enjoying Open Live Writer

I know I am late to the party, but I do have to admit that using the Open Live Writer instead of the Blogger editor is a nice way to post.  I can start a post and wander around and do other things and come back later and not worry if I lose connection.  Those of you who have used Live Writer all along are going ‘duh’. As a computer professional (read:  inflated ego) I felt I had to use an html editor in order to be ‘real’ or something.  Result was that I didn’t post much.

I think the thyroid medicine is starting to wake me up a bit mentally.  Yesterday I saw mention of on-line courses on Canvas.net that are free.  If you have read much of my earlier blog you might remember that I am really into the idea of free on-line education.  At one point I played with the idea of putting together what I thought my version of an on-line secondary degree might look like, which was not an original idea.  Heather, Wendy Usually Wanders’ daughter was doing that waaaay back when.  I loved the idea.  That was as far as I got, though. 

I do feel like I have some major gaps in my education.  Math has always kept me back as I didn’t like most of the math instructors in my high school and therefore never took geometry or any further classes there.  That held me back when I sent for my technical degree, and is why it is a technical degree and not an engineering degree.  I have signed up for the free Math101 at canvas.  I got a 97% on the pre-test, so some of the college pre-calculus stayed with me.  However, I’m going through the videos anyway filling in the the gaps.  They seem to use Khan Academy videos for this, so I may just slide over to Khan to work my way on up from here.  It would be so awesome to actually understand the calculus I faked my way through in college.  It was interesting to stretch a bit mentally taking the pre-test, and probably what my mind needs to feel less foggy.

I did something special today, but I’ll wait until tomorrow to tell about it.