• My First Bike*

    My first bike was a hand-me-down from my brother, Richard. It had training wheels at one time, but by the time I got it, those were long gone. The red building in the background is a church, and it was right next door to us. The dark haired girl in one of the pictures is my friend Aimee, who lived across the street from us. In the second picture, where I’m riding away from the camera, if you look closely, you can see some black metal bars, parallel to the ground. There were steps there that went down to the basement, and the black bars were to keep anyone from…

  • Mulder Monday

    Hi Everyone, my name is Mulder! My Medium-Boss said I could be a guest blogger today. Fun! I’ve lived with my Big-Boss, Medium-Boss, and Little-Boss for almost 2 years now. It’s hard to believe, but some people say, “Time Flies”. I’m not sure what they mean. I love my bosses, and I love my life. Yesterday, Medium-Boss took me on a walk that was very interesting. Lately, we’ve been going to a wonderful place called ‘Heather Farm’. It’s wonderful because there are so many interesting smells, and also interesting animals. Medium-Boss saw a turtle there once, and Big-Bosses sister said she saw an otter. There are a lot of birds,…

  • Sunday Funnies

    This one made me laugh. It reminds me of when I’m frustrated with Maya because she goes through hair conditioner too fast or is late getting out the door in the morning, and she says something like, “Well, at least I’m not addicted to drugs or pregnant or anything.” Yes, at least. That’s setting a low bar, but still, she’s right.

  • Rethinking Pinot

    Maya has a job working for one of her High School English teachers, at an annual event called ‘Pinot Days’. Most of the job is online, ticketing and calling clients and so on, and that goes on for a couple of months. Then, when the date of the actual event comes, she goes in to the City and helps set up, works with vendors, works with customers, etc. Ted and I benefit, in that she gets us free tickets. Pinot Days is a wine event, where local wineries bring their Pinot Noir (and sometimes Pinot Gris or Blush wines), and trades people can walk around and taste, as well as…

  • Roasted Branzino

    A few weeks ago, OK, maybe 6 weeks ago, I was lazily watching cooking shows on PBS, and a French chef who has restaurants in Las Vegas, Hubert Keller, was making a poached Branzino. It looked really good, though to be honest, I didn’t have the equipment to poach it, and thought I might prefer to roast it instead. So I poked around the Internet, and found a recipe that looked good on a blog, Girl and the Kitchen, here. It looked delicious, and I decided to give it a try the next time Maya would not be home for dinner (she’s not a big fan of fish). I followed…

  • Throwback Thursday

    When my Dad died, we divided up the list of people to notify, and one of the people on my list was my Dad’s ex girlfriend, Kit. Dad and Kit dated for awhile in the early 60s, when he dropped out of college, and they moved to New York together. As Kit tells it, they moved to New York because someone had posted an ad in the paper that they needed someone to drive their car to New York from Oakland, and it seemed like a good idea. The picture above, which Ted likes to call my Dad’s album cover, is of my Dad (on the left) and Kit’s friend…

  • My Reading List

    I have not been in the mood to read lately.  By lately, I mean, since my Dad died.  I just veg out in front of the TV. But I miss reading.  I miss getting sucked into a story, and now I have a couple of reasons to crack a book. First, Ted’s aunt and I are both fans of Dick Francis mysteries.  He died several years ago, and his son has taken over the franchise.  Auntie is much better than I am about remembering to watch for a new release.  Well, there is a new release, which she reserved at the library.  She read it and then gave it to…

  • Everything I ever learned, I learned at Mr. Steak

    Ted has been asking for that as a title for a post for years now, because all too often, when we’re having a conversation about anything at all, I will pop in with a story about my time at Mr. Steak. I worked there for 2 years, from 1982 – 1984. I think the first year was as a hostess, and the second year was as a waitress. So I was 17. Back then, when you took an order, you wrote it on a ticket, and turned the ticket in to the kitchen, and they cooked it for you/your customers. I remember as a hostess, watching the waitresses take care…

  • A2 Milk – A game changer

    Today’s public service announcement is also a product review/recommendation. Over the last several years, Ted has started to have issues with dairy. He thought perhaps he had become lactose intolerant, so was using goat milk or almond milk for his tea, and otherwise avoiding all dairy. His sister has similar issues, and told him about this new milk, A2 milk, that doesn’t bother her stomach at all. We gave it a try, and yay! It is gentle on the stomach, and Ted can now have milk in his tea, eat a bowl of cereal if he wants to, and I was able to make the squash soup recipe this week…

  • Winter Squash Soup

    I have a fondness for cooking shows, especially those where they show you how to cook something interesting. Most of the cooking shows I watch currently are on PBS, but I also enjoy watching Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa. A few weeks ago, she made a delicious looking soup, with butternut squash and canned pumpkin. I thought it looked like a good dinner to have on Halloween, considering it was orange, so I made it. It was delicious, and I will definitely be making it again. I made a couple of changes to Ina’s recipe. First, I cut up the butternut squash, then roasted it in the oven until it was…

  • My Le Creuset

    Back in early July, my beloved Le Creuset Dutch oven suddenly came down with a horrible chip in the bottom of the enameled coating.  Suddenly, you could see the cast iron at the bottom.  It looked like this. There isn’t a lot of danger from the cast iron, people cook with cast iron all of the time. But if the enameled coating is chipped, it could continue chipping, and you don’t really want to bite into that. So I did what any 21st Century person would do, and I complained on Facebook. A FB friend (a friend I knew in real life, back in college) mentioned that her Martha Stewert…

  • Dia de Difuntos

    Dia de Muertos is a time to pray for and remember friends and family who have died.  It is traditionally a Mexican holiday, and a Catholic one.  I’ve never really paid any attention to it before, but the bright orange flowers reminded me of my Dad, and my Grandma died last year in November, so it made sense to me to buy some flowers and make a small alter with some pictures of Dad, Mom, and Grandma.  There are too many others that I could easily include…my Uncle Forrest, my Grandma Wells, my Grandpa Ward, etc.  For today, I’m keeping it to these three, the most difficult losses I have…