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Nor can the coffee cart stay away for long. Good morning! Your hot beverages of preference are now available. Enjoy.

C(_)/ c(_) c\_/ c[_] :coffee:
 
Morning...I need coffee :coffee:I'm trying to ease up on the caffeine (sleep issues), so virtual is perfect!
That kitty must have had a few adventures! Probably a fantastic hunter.
Hope everyone's day goes well.
 
Welcome to another day! The coffee cart is functioning well. Help yourself to the warm beverage of your choice.

C(_)/ c(_) c\_/ c[_] :coffee:
 
Thank you Redbarron! Nothing like a good cup of coffee to start another rainy windy day! We had a dinner party last night which was huge fun ... but I'm starting a little more slowly this morning & skipped my weekly Nordic walking group. I guess that's one of the perks of retirement - having friends come for dinner on a Monday!!

On today's agenda - a bit of tidy-up; but the big job is pull out the fridge, clean, see if we can figure out what's making that buzzing vibration sound ... so irritating. Maybe poke into some spaces to find stuff for upcoming garage sale ... good day for indoor stuff.
 
Met with a friend for some sewing on Sunday. Ended up having to sew through thick fabric by hand, ignoring my tendonitis in my thumb that was just getting better....bummer, back to icing and wearing splint today.
At least I have this fancy, comfortable, blue aquaplast thumb splint that a collegue made for me on a previous occasion.
 
At least I have this fancy, comfortable, blue aquaplast thumb splint that a collegue made for me on a previous occasion.

Medical stuff is more fun when you fancy it up at bit. When I broke my arm back in my teens (bike accident), a buddy who had some history with broken limbs loaned me a nice purple sling for my cast.

Brought some favorite herbal and green teas in for evening drinking. Try Forever Nuts, it's yummy. Dried fruit and almonds. C\_/
 
A friend of mine has been using one of those meal delivery services where the company prepackages all the ingredients and ships them to you. This friend is not at all comfortable in the kitchen, has 0 sense of what tastes go well together and couldn't improvise a meal to save her life. This friend didn’t use her kitchen for three weeks after she moved out of her parent’s house. She loves the service! They have gave her a coupon for a friend to try a free week, so we decided to give it a go.

Box arrived today, it was left on the front porch and no bell was rung which I wasn’t thrilled with. The company name is plastered all over the box so anyone could have known what was in it and decided to take the free food. Luckily, that didn’t happen!

First impression was that the box it huge! Most (possibly all?) of the packaging is recyclable which I looked before we decided to try. Bad planning on our part really, but our recycling just went out this morning so I will have this giant box sitting around for the longest amount of time possible.

One box contains three meals,
which seem to be well labelled, all the veggies, spices and sauces are in one large bag with the meal name on the outside. The meats are separate but are labelled with which meal they belong to. They didn’t go overboard with packaging which is nice.

Total prep and cook time for tonight’s meal said 20min, I took about 35. Definitely possible to do in 20 if you know what you are doing but not as much if you need to keep referring back to the recipe. We had Shanghai noodles in a peanut sauce which had red pepper, scallion and a leafy green veggie with an Asian name. I can’t remember the name at the moment but I had never tried it before, similar to spinach, maybe a little tougher and larger leafs. The meal tasted very good and it was a sizeable portion.

Over all opinion after the first meal was that it was no easier than doing my normal dinners. The price is much higher than if I had bought my own groceries. It tasted very good and it was nice to try something new. If the other two meals are the same quality etc, I could see myself using the service once every few months to try something new but not subscribing every week.

Anyone else tried one of these services?
 
Sounds like a good meal Greywolf. I've seen these services advertised, but haven't tried any, so it was interesting to hear of your experience. Sounds like it's been working well for your friend - takes time & experience to develop any confidence in the kitchen. At first people don't even understand the recipes - what's saute? simmer? chop or mince? I remember when my brother went away to university I found him a cookbook called "How to Boil Water - Guides for new Cooks" or something like that, which started with just the very basic language & skills.

My husband has a lot of interesting books about cooking now - most are gifts from our dtr who works in a bookstore & surely knows her stuff. One of interest is The Flavour Bible - interesting for what goes with what - information, not recipes. But he's gotten so interested in it that sometimes just the plain food flavour is getting lost! Too much of a good thing ... sometimes just plain flavourful food is great!!
 
The smoke here is BAD, I saw predictions this morning of 7, this has to be an 8 at least and I think it's 10+ at times. Last reading says 5, there is no way though and that's not what the health information that is coming out is saying either.
Slave Lake is under evacuation notice - that's the town that had the bad fire that they never really did fully recover from.
 
Such a difficult time with the fires again - seems early in the season, but maybe that's just because summer still seems not to have really arrived where I live. I hope your air cleaner is some help to you @ChemGal.

I'm home alone for the weekend ... tonight eating chips and watching the Raptors game - they are playing SO well!! Hopefully they can continue - almost half time ... they've pretty much led the scorecard all night .. now 10 points ahead!! Crazy crowds around the stadium & lots of other venues too!
 
Such a difficult time with the fires again - seems early in the season, but maybe that's just because summer still seems not to have really arrived where I live. I hope your air cleaner is some help to you @ChemGal.

I'm home alone for the weekend ... tonight eating chips and watching the Raptors game - they are playing SO well!! Hopefully they can continue - almost half time ... they've pretty much led the scorecard all night .. now 10 points ahead!! Crazy crowds around the stadium & lots of other venues too!
It does seem early, but maybe the season is different in Northern Alberta? It seems like the smoke usually tends to get bad late summer when it's coming from BC.
Slave Lake in 2011 and Fort McMurray were both actually earlier than this, also in May.
This was actually the hottest week of the year so far, that's not helping, the smoke actually seemed to cool things a bit though which is nice as I'm not opening any windows tonight!

I did have a minor attack, questioning if it had hit yet or just a bit of normal throat smoke & allergy stuff (it was itchy this morning) - nope. Glad I decided to do the IV, as I have a bit of leeway with the prodromes now. The IV makes it obvious, subcutaneous does not. Even with firazyr I find the switch isn't quite as immediate.
 
I'm really disappointed in the nearby schools - the kids were out at recess and they do am, lunch and pm recess. A parent even shared that a child asked to be allowed in as they were feeling unwell from the smoke and nope. Only those who have asthma were allowed in. I think the air quality data is delayed, it came in as 10+ starting at 4pm but the sky was orange well before that, visibility was low and the smokiness was obvious to everyone. Chemguy called me late morning to check in with me.

By tomorrow evening things should be better at least, but not well enough for me to trust really doing anything outside. If it really drops I might *look* at my garden, no working on it by me though.
 
I just read that the air quality numbers in Grande Prairie are off the charts. Last year we had numbers of 15 or so and it was awful. I read that the numbers are in the 20's and 30's now. I can't even imagine.
 
Trump say it has nothing to do with the surroundings (environment) so unexpectedly it remains his thought ... a blind situation!

Absolute unknown show's it hedonistic side ... with a stinking aura!
 
This is one thing we don't deal with down here. Forests are so sparse in Southwestern Ontario now that any fire could probably be fairly easily contained. Once you get up to Central and Northern Ontario, then you hit the fires and smoke.

That's not, of course, to say we don't have air quality issues. Heat inversions trapping pollutants and air systems bringing them in from the US Midwestern cities like Chicago and Detroit do cause quality issues in summer, esp. during heat waves.
 
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