Monica Kochelee

I was supposed to go to a baby shower tomorrow - for my sister in law.  Her due date is March 22.  But I got a phone call that the shower has been cancelled because she “is having the baby NOW!”

I haven’t heard yet if baby & mom are ok, I hope they are.  A leap day baby in the family, how cool is that?

His mother’s 80th birthday was the 26th.  She still lives in New England, about 780 miles away.  He couldn’t go up there for her birthday, but he is flying up there tomorrow with his sister-in-law to see her this weekend.  He will be back Sunday night.

So, I have two days of the house with no hubby hanging around asking me “whatcha doin’?” every ten minutes!  YAY!

My son wants to try a recipe for Kofta, which calls for ground beef that has been ground extra fine.  The recipe specifically says that detail “makes or breaks” the recipe.  That means we have to go to a grocery store that has a butcher and ask him to put the ground beef through the grinder an extra time or two.

So my son went to Safeway to buy the ground beef, and asked the butcher to grind the meat extra fine and the butcher told him that the ground beef in the display case was all they had, he would not grind it another time for him.  So, my son brought home just regular ground beef.  I already had enough regular ground beef to make the recipe, it just wasn’t ground fine enough.  And, he paid twice as much for the Safeway ground beef as what I paid at Wal-Mart for the same 93% lean beef.

So, I think I’m going to shoot off an angry email to Safeway about the butcher refusing to provide the personal service that butchers are SUPPOSED to provide!

DH is busy out in the garage working on the car and it doesn’t sound like he’s going to be through any time soon. Guess I’ll pop a movie in the DVD player to keep me company while I sort through the mail and pay bills.

We have the Indiana Jones collection and I haven’t watched any of those for YEARS, so it sounds like a fun way to pass time and get my paperwork chores done at the same time!

I’m glad DH is handy with the cars. He does a lot of the maintenance on all our vehicles and saves us a ton of money by not having to take it to a garage and pay those kinds of prices. Plus, I think he enjoys working with the tools and getting his hands dirty!

I just discovered Freecycle!  An Internet Yahoo group that you can post messages to that you are giving away or looking for an item.

I just joined my local Freecycle group and spent some time looking at the offers of things that people want to give away.  I just got a perfectly good used crock-pot and some crock-pot cookbooks!  Now I’m going to have to pick out some recipes and start using it!