So... What are YOU doing? - Part 5

[hotrhymez]

reading threads on here

 

[tango]

Looking at the weather and debating whether to take a chance the rain will hold off so I can burn another pile of laths, or get busy with my angle grinder and cut some broken bricks flush with the rest of the wall.

An angle grinder in a confined space is going to make a mess.... it will be a job that takes eye protection, respirator, gloves and air extraction. Thankfully the work is right next to the window, so I can put a big box fan in the window and suck the air out, then clean up the dust once I'm done. I just hope it doesn't take me an age, given I'm effectively having to cut it a small piece at a time because of issues accessing the area I need to work.

 

[Lamb]

Baking blueberry muffins. I'll probably freeze some since a dozen is way too many for the 2 of us.

 

[tango]

Baking blueberry muffins. I'll probably freeze some since a dozen is way too many for the 2 of us.

Feel free to send me some - I'll look after them for you

 

[Lamb]

Feel free to send me some - I'll look after them for you

LOL Gladly. I usually only eat one or two of anything I bake and then I'm done because my craving was satisfied. My husband, on the other hand, has no discipline and will gobble it all down without thinking twice.

 

[NewCreation435]

I'm really struggling with my blood sugar today. I was in the 50's at 3 am and then again at 10 am while at work. I had to cut a visit short because I was low and go get some juice to bring it back up. It's 1130 am and it has already been a long day.

 

[tango]

LOL Gladly. I usually only eat one or two of anything I bake and then I'm done because my craving was satisfied. My husband, on the other hand, has no discipline and will gobble it all down without thinking twice.

My wife has taken to cooking several of something so we can freeze them and have them later, which means she does one lot of cooking instead of several. Sometimes the theory works. Other times, well, the surplus never quite makes it as far as the freezer.....

 

[tango]

Had an interesting experience trying to get brick dust out of my hair.

I spent a couple of hours working with a combination of a hammer and chisel, and an angle grinder, to try and cut my protruding broken blocks flush with the rest of them. First I used the angle grinder to cut away the most obvious protrusions as best I could, then used it to cut channels into the concrete so I could cut between then (effectively creating a kind of zig-zag pattern in the profile), then used it more as a grinder to remove the remainder. Then the grinder shut down because the thermal protection circuit triggered, so I let it cool, put the battery on the charger, and continued with a hammer and chisel. When my arms got tired I ran the shop vac to clean up as much of the fine dust as I could manage, then checked the angle grinder and it was ready to go again. So I had another round of cutting and grinding, then the angle grinder shut down again so I went back to the hammer and chisel, and another round of cleaning up the dust. It was truly remarkable to see just how much dust the process generated - thankfully I was working right beside a window so I opened the window and used a box fan to pump air out of the room. I shudder to think how much more dust would have been in the room, had I not pumped it outside.

Eventually I got to a point where the brickwork looked more or less flush. If I'd thought ahead of time I'd have taken a piece of the insulation panel into the room beforehand so I could have checked to make sure I'd cut enough away, but by the time I thought of that I was covered in so much dust I didn't want to walk through the house to find a piece. For some reason my wife doesn't like it when I leave a trail of dusty footprints all through the house.

Because I was so dusty - I could bang my sweatpants and see a cloud of dust escape from them - as soon as I was outside the door to the room I was working on took my working clothes off and bundled them up ready for going in the laundry. I didn't really want to even step outside of the room but, since I've taken the blinds down, I decided to make that small humanitarian gesture.

Then came the challenge of getting the dust out of my hair. It took quite a lot of goes running shampoo through my hair to get rid of it all - initially I think the water more or less just ran straight off. I don't think I've ever been quite so dusty in my life, and don't particularly want to be that dusty again any time soon. I'm really hoping I've cut enough off the blocks so I don't need to go through all that again - it's amazing how far the dust spreads.

I had hoped to be able to hold a shop vac nozzle in the same hand as the angle grinder and get a lot of the dust before it had chance to spray everywhere but it meant stretching my hand enough I didn't feel confident it was a safe arrangement.

 

[Lamb]

I'm really struggling with my blood sugar today. I was in the 50's at 3 am and then again at 10 am while at work. I had to cut a visit short because I was low and go get some juice to bring it back up. It's 1130 am and it has already been a long day.

Hope you get it settled with the blood sugar before tomorrow!

 

[Lamb]

My wife has taken to cooking several of something so we can freeze them and have them later, which means she does one lot of cooking instead of several. Sometimes the theory works. Other times, well, the surplus never quite makes it as far as the freezer.....

My husband has decided he doesn't like meals that have been frozen even though they were delicious right from the stove/oven in the first place. He's too spoiled I tell ya! He'll eat the muffins from the freezer I bet though.

 

[tango]

My husband has decided he doesn't like meals that have been frozen even though they were delicious right from the stove/oven in the first place. He's too spoiled I tell ya! He'll eat the muffins from the freezer I bet though.

We've tried a few meals to see how well they freeze. It's the whole issue of saving time, saving effort, saving a bit of money.... and it's always good to have something on hand in the freezer for the days we've run out of meals but can't be bothered to go and do the grocery shopping just yet.

 

[Lamb]

We've tried a few meals to see how well they freeze. It's the whole issue of saving time, saving effort, saving a bit of money.... and it's always good to have something on hand in the freezer for the days we've run out of meals but can't be bothered to go and do the grocery shopping just yet.

It does save money! It's hard to cook for just 2 people sometimes when recipe amounts are for 4 or more.

What things freeze better than others have you found?

 

[ImaginaryDay2]

I like to make and freeze pots of spaghetti (with sauce and veggies/meat). It dries out a bit defrosted, but more sauce fixes that. Chili does well, soups, stews - anything like that in batches

 

[NewCreation435]

I've been cleaning the house today and made a run to the post office before they closed today at noon

 

[tango]

It does save money! It's hard to cook for just 2 people sometimes when recipe amounts are for 4 or more.

What things freeze better than others have you found?

I don't think we've hit any major problems freezing things.

In general we've found that peppers freeze well but end up a little soggy when defrosted. It's only an issue if you have a recipe that doesn't cook them because once they are cooked they seem much the same. Likewise strawberries come out soggy but are fine for something like a smoothie or a sauce.

For us the bigger problem is freezing things to use later, then never actually getting around to using them. It's frustrating to find things at the back of the freezer that have been there long enough to get freezer burned and end up being thrown out.

 

[tango]

Taking a weekend break from the house, our Sunday school class is having its annual retreat. We decided not to sleep over this year because last year I had trouble sleeping on the beds in the cabin we rent and ended up sleeping on the couch. We'll be heading back up there soon, it's just a couple of miles from home. It's actually handy that we're not sleeping over - us and another couple decided to go home to sleep and all the available rooms are taken. Next year we might need to find a bigger cabin.

 

[Krissy Cakes]

Browsing and waiting till I'm tired enough to go to bed.

 

[tango]

Home from the retreat.... really good to just get away from it all and hang out with friends. It's truly remarkable just how much everybody spreads out in the course of less than 48 hours - even though we didn't sleep there it's remarkable how far and wide everything moves around.

We had a well planned weekend where food was concerned. At the end of the weekend we probably had enough food left over to sustain us all through another weekend... which was nice because we often end up dividing remaining food among the person who made it and anyone else who really liked it. My wife made some brownies to take and they barely survived through the first night.

 

[Confessional Lutheran]

I set my clocks ahead last night and actually made it to Divine Service early today. Now, I'm just web- surfing and eating spaghetti until I need to report to work at 3:00.

 

[tango]

Enjoying the sunshine. It's a shame it's so cold - the furnace is back to running a lot, to the point I dropped the secondary thermostat a couple of degrees - but nice to see the sun out.