August 6, 2011

This week has been a full one. I think I got a lot accomplished for my first week of retirement. On Monday, I picked beans and combined past pickings and I actually canned 2 bottles of French Cut beans. This was the very first time I had actually canned green beans, so I was very proud of myself. Next year I am going to plant more.

This week I tried out new Zucchini recipes. I figured I needed to learn to eat what we are raising in the garden. I made the best soup from all the vegetables in the garden. I boiled them in a chicken broth from bullion cubes and after vegetables were done, thickened it with flour water and added cheese and sour cream. It was really good. I have found that if you add sour cream with soups and cook the Zucchini of course with other things. It is delicious.

We had Steve and Inger Bishop over for dinner on Friday and I fixed Cheesy Tomato- Zucchini Casserole. That was really good. Also, I found a really good recipe for a low fat Zucchini Muffin. I also baked a spaghetti squash for the first time and fixed Baked Spaghetti Squash Lasagna style. It was really good and what was great was after you cook the squash, you hollow out the rind and fix the dish inside the rind an cook it. It is an adventure to be able to try out new recipes and then turn out well.

I spent a lot of time this week working on Christmas music, transposing songs for Jim and then I arranged piano duet of "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" and then Jim will play the melody. I do love to practice with them.

Thursday was a full day because I spent about 3 hour helping Suzanne Dyvad with her genealogy. She is 89 and is from France. She was brought up at the Rivera, or the town is call ST. Tropez. She has gone for years into the archives there an has gotten so much genealogy but then is still a lot to input. I helped her a couple of years ago and now I have time to help her again. She has to tell me how she is spelling it and how it is all links up. She almost died last year, so I have got to get it done before she passes on because there is no one else in her family that has the interest or could read her writing and make sense of it. In the picture Suzanne is standing in front of a mural of the Rivera that covers her whole wall.

Then I met Kathy Laskowski, a gal that was on one of my teams. She is so much fun and a great friend. We meet at her daughter's new restaurant, called R&R Public House. It is on the corner of Overland and Wells. It was very nice and they had the neatest bathroom faucets. The food was good too.

I started working again on the Indexing program. I got 200 names done. And we also took the Bolt kids to "Super 8" It was good but I was appalled at the language. I just don't know why they would take a good family movie and put in such language.

I picked our first blackberries yesterday. They are so big and so sweet. I was surprised how much I got just on the first picking. The blackberries on the North side of the side are ripening first then the ones of the East fence and then the west fence will follow. So I suspect I will have blackberries for the next month.

I am so glad that Willard stress test turned out good. At least now he can stop worrying a little. But no one seems to be concerned that he keeps gasping for breath. So I guess if his heart is working, well that is the most important thing.