Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE DeviceHi list.Sorry I have been absent from the
list for a while. This past month has been insane! Starting with the weekend of
Mother's Day, here in the United States, things just went crazy. Not only was
their Mother's Day, Emily's birthday, and Heather's birthday all in the same
week, but we also had a special religious event for Heather that Saturday, and
my in-laws were here for six days. Also at the same time, little Charlie has
been teething badly, making my day is rather difficult. As if that wasn't bad
enough, a nasty cold sweat through our family starting about the third week of
May, just before Memorial Day. I had all kinds of grandiose plans to fire up
Smokey Bear, the name I have designated for my massive new charcoal grill,
cooking some chicken drumsticks on it, and inviting a family or two to join us
that day for a good old-fashioned barbecue. It didn't happen, because I was the
one who was sick. And for some reason, now with Charlie crawling, my life has
suddenly become even more complicated but, he's a trooper, at a cutie, and with
the summer heat coming on here in Vegas, we have been locked inside long enough
that we are all just about going nuts. We are looking forward to a trip to my
mom's house on Saturday for some swimming and quite possibly a little picnic on
the back lawn. As a result of all this, I have not been checking my email very
often. I miss being able to use email on my PC, as opposed to my cell phone.
But I find Windows Live Mail to be a very unstable and unreliable program for
an email client. On that note, I'm open to suggestion that do not involve
Google Mail or any of the web-based email site.As far as food goes, I have been
having a lot of fun. When my father-in-law was here, he taught me how to make
rice perfectly every time using something called the pasta method. Essentially,
you cook your rice in about four or five times the amount of water that you are
using for rice, cook it for about 15 minutes on a gentle simmer, drain the
rice, then put it back into the pot got it cooked in, with the lid securely in
place, and let it stand for about five more minutes. I have to admit, my rice
has been just about perfect every time I do it, but the key is to let the rice
drain thoroughly before putting it back into the pot again. As far as actual
recipes I have made lately, I tried one last Saturday 4 noodles with a lot of
chicken and asparagus in it, that was dressed with a delicious Sesame peanut
sauce. It was pretty easy to put together, and Emily loved it so much that she
requested that I put it back on the next menu again. I am trying to simplify my
menus, or at least that's what I tell myself when I plan the menu, but I'm not
doing very well at it. I need to use the oven a whole lot less with this heat.
I am going to try using Smokey Bear, on the next menu cycle, to do our cast
iron pizzas. This Grill is wonderful because I can set the temperature to
exactly what I want it to be, and the grill automatically takes care of the
rest. Yet it uses charcoal, not pellets. We can still make our pizzas and
summer without heating up the house. Anyway, I'm trying to go through all of my
emails and get caught up, but it's going to take me a couple of days. Right now
I am stealing time away from the baby, and it is obvious he wants me to feed
him something solid. Just wanted to let you all know I'm still here, and I'm
still giving some serious thought to moving the list to another server. But one
thing at a time.Jon
