Well, The Smoke Alarm Works

Today was another Investment Cooking day and I gave the smoke alarm a good workout this afternoon. I was browning chicken breasts in butter and the burner was too hot, the butter browned a bit too much, and the smoke alarm let me know. I should have had on the vent fan and the ceiling fan and had the patio doors open but I didn't. I'll do better tomorrow when I'm frying things again. The recipe that set off the alarm was Chicken Breasts Pierre, one of my favorites and one of the quickest and easiest to make.

First thing this morning I got Chicken Tikka Masala into the slow cooker. It simmered away all morning, smelled good, and didn't set off the smoke alarm. 38 suppers in the freezer so far with 15 more to come tomorrow. (the mini meatloaves recipe makes 9 servings)

All last week the fiber-optic construction people worked across the street. It seemed like I had the most of those little utilities flags in my yard but they weren't paying any attention. Until this afternoon. Three of the trucks clustered at the corner of my lot, the guys were conferring at the tailgate of one truck (behind my tiny tree), and then they were using some sort of sensor to check things underground. I can't decide if they're not coming back or if they're coming back later to make a mess again. I hope they're done digging holes and making a mess in my yard.

While the recipes were simmering I drew a few things out of 20 Ways to Draw a Tree (and 45 other Nifty Things in Nature). I just noticed the subtitle of the book today and like the phrase "nifty things in nature." I drew two each of owls, beetles, and flowers. I like the beetles the best.

I pulled out my little baggie of dishcloth yarn leftovers and started a Leftovers Dishcloth this evening. What I should have done (but didn't) is weigh all of the little nubbins of yarn and try to calculate about half so I know when to start decreasing. But since this will be mine anyway, if I run out of yarn I can just stop abruptly or dig out some other random yarn from downstairs. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I've got two milk crates of dishcloth yarn down there, there's bound to be some other small bits of yarn down there that I could use to finish this cloth.

I got online and ordered more bookmarks because I'm almost out of the ones I ordered before, which means that I've given away almost 250 of the things. Holy Toledo! I also discovered that someone had hacked into my alternate email address so I had a string of spam and phishing emails sent from myself. Changed the password. What a pain. Then the @$#%& webmail site wouldn't let me in so I had to call Spectrum and a very nice lady taught me how to clear my History and clean my cache so I could get back in. *sigh*

--Barbara