I Can't Seem To Stop

Cooking, that is.  It was a gorgeous day but did I spend part of the day outside?  No, I did

not.  I spent it in and around the kitchen making meatballs and turning a bag of frozen chicken breasts into cooked chicken and chicken broth.  I did go outside to Sam's for the bag o'chicken and later, after an appointment, to Woodman's for 89 cents a pound fresh asparagus but the most fresh air I got was because when I broiled the baked meatballs to get them a bit crispy on the outside the smoke alarm sounded--twice, so I opened the kitchen window and the patio door to let the smoke out and the fresh air in.  I swear I'm going to stop cooking.  Cross my heart.  It's time to start eating some of it, don't you think?  We had jarred spaghetti sauce with 3 meatballs each on whole wheat linguine for supper to make sure the meatballs were good.  They are.

I assembled the meatball mixture before I left for my afternoon appointment and realized when I sat down in the waiting room that I smelled like a frying pan.  See, I cook the minced onion, bell pepper, and garlic before cooling it and adding it to the turkey, eggs, Italian bread crumbs, Italian herbs, S&P.  I got it all put together before leaving so the flavors would meld before I scooped out the (54) meatballs and baked then broiled them, before lining them up on a cookie sheet to freeze and bag for later.

February 26--Charles Willson Peale, James Peale (The Lamplight Portrait)  The old man sat in the pool of light cast by the copper lamp with the milky glass shade.  He held the portrait of a woman in his shaky hand as tears rolled down his cheeks.  Martha had been gone for over twenty years but sometimes, like that night, the loss was so raw that it might have happened that very day.

That was my day--went to the chiropractor, to Sam's, to Cyberworks to have Blake remind me how to convert the Guild newsletter pages, then home for lunch, fong the bag o'chicken breasts into the big crockpot to spend the afternoon getting all tender and yummy (do you use those crockpot liner bags? you should, they save you from having to scrub out the pot, I love them), mix up the meatballs, go to my afternoon appointment, swing through Woodman's for asparagus, then home to make spaghetti for supper, and get all the balls and chicken plus the broth packaged and into the freezer before sitting here to commune with you for a few minutes.  Yeah, that was my day.  Retirement is so relaxing.  I swear to God that I'm only going to reheat things tomorrow except for cooking some of the asparagus I bought today for supper.  That's it.  Really.  I'm kind of out of raw materials and freezer room.
--Barbara