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While I am unemployed, I am on government benefits. That means limited spending on things that aren't bills. I make a HUGE batch of a certain dish (this case, sauce for pasta), and then I take 4 scoops of each, and bag it. I then let it cool down and place them in the freezer.

The last time I did that, I had meatballs for a month straight.

Anyway, I try to limit my spending as to not run out of money. Nothing worse than running out of money 5 days before payday, with nothing to eat.. I have avoided that every month by cooking a huge batch and freezing it. This month, it was going well. Until I remembered my family's annual Easter lunch. 15 people will partake in the feast, and we each have to bring an item of food. I am in charge of bringing the most important thing - bread. With the inflation hitting here, everything gets more expensive. From fuel to food. Thanks, Biden.. Anyway.. The price of bread has skyrocketed these past few weeks, so it gets expensive to buy bread for the entire family. I ended up with seven packs of bread, which took a sizeable amount of money. It HAS to be enough. If it isn't, there's a McDonald's right next to where we are having our Easter lunch. But generally, I am pretty good at judging how much bread I need to get in order to make sure everyone are well fed.

Will I spend more money before the end of the month? Well.. It depends.. I have enough food for two weeks, which makes it close.. I have a bunch of chicken wings in the freezer, as well as some one person meals. Even those one person meals have gone up in price. They are usually super cheap, but in these inflation times, everything is expensive.

No, she wasn't my aunt, but her death bears great significance. Breakfast won't be the same without her. I do pancakes once a month and the large box I had was empty last week.

I headed over to WalMart to buy another box and Aunt Jemima disappeared. In her place were boxes by Pearl Milling Company. I never heard of them before this. They have the audacity to say Original. Original what? Original copies of Aunt Jemima?

I'm annoyed by this... So what's next?
I guess you'll be saying Uncle Ben died too...


The death of Aunt Jemima...

I often buy Hummus when it's on a BOGO sale. That's Buy One, Get One aka (also known as) two for one. 2F1 or a 2fer sale.

Hummus Ingredients: Chickpeas aka Garbanzo beans.
Lots of the brands have different spices added including many with Tahini.

I didn't know what Tahini was so I looked it up.
Tahini is ground Sesame seeds. Actually, it's Sesame and oil.

I'm afraid to ask what oil they use in Tahini as I rudely found that vegetable oil doesn't come from a vegetable, it comes from Soybeans and Soybeans are Legumes... technically classified as a group of plants whose seeds grow in enclosed pods, like peas and peanuts.

So now, I'm buying containers filled with a mixture of alternate names that is high in fat, carbohydrates with protein... and (get this) is considered healthy!

Depending on the brand, it's $5 for a 10 ounce cup.

I've been wanting to make rice pudding for a while now.
As a kid my mother did some conventional rice pudding where the rice always sat on the bottom while the 'pudding part' floated to the top.

This is a takeoff on my previous blog about the Venezuelan Chicha, a drink made with cooked rice, milk, condensed milk and ice cubes. The secret there was putting the rice in a blender.

We had terrible weather today and I decided to stay home and try a twist on an old recipe.

I took 2 cups of cooked rice, a glass of whole milk, 3 eggs, 2 spoons of condensed milk, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, a few sprinkles of cinnamon and 1 squirt of honey.
With the whole thing in a blender, I had to stop a few times to mix it with a spoon as the part on top wasn't so thick it wouldn't swirl around and mix with the bottom. I could have added more milk but wanted it to keep it thick.

30 minutes in an oven at 325 and the top started to darken. I allowed it to cool and tried a few spoonfuls.

The results: Success!!



The consistency was similar to tapioca pudding and a flavor similar to flan, though not burned with syrup on the top.

If/when I do this again, I'll probably cook it longer so the skin on the top will harden slightly.

I use a fair amount of pure virgin olive oil in salads and for cooking. Usually purchased in small bottles, organic whenever there is a sale. A few weeks ago while shopping at the local farmers market I saw 3 liter cans of olive oil on sale. I would pass this at the normal price and the special sale caught my attention. But... who needs 3 liters?

I held on to one empty bottle waiting for this and last night I finished off another small bottle. It was time and I decided to open the 3 liter can.
Unable to find a funnel, I poured from the can into an 8 ounce plastic cup.

Glug, glug, glug... I had to squeeze the can and back off as it wasn't pouring smoothly. The spout was small and the oil too thick for air to come into the can while the oil came out. It reminded me of motor oil... heavy viscosity and if you pour too fast it splatters.

I pinched the end of the plastic cup into a V-shape and started pouring into one of the small bottles. Going as slow as possible it's was similar to coming out of the can. Too much oil flow and it clogged the opening and spilled over the top of the bottle!

What a stinking mess I had made. 20 paper towels later and filling the cup several times, I was able to refill both small bottles, wipe up and move on to other things.

Rethinking for the next episode. this could easily be enough oil to last me for 2 years...
The next time I do this I'll be better prepared with a funnel or turkey baster or something more efficient in transferring from a can to a small bottle.

With a few cold fronts into Florida this winter, I've been thinking about cooking 'stuff' as it reminds me of a time when my parents were alive and the kitchen was always warm from a gas stove. My dad liked to grill and stove top. my mother was the boiler and baker of the family.
For some (possibly) unknown reason, I thought of rice pudding. Maybe it was the flan custard from a party not long ago. We buy rice in 25 pound bags so there's never a shortage of rice... thinking that I could get a recipe wrong and have to drop the entire disaster into the dumpster!
I made pancakes on Sunday morning... the kind where you only need to add water. Well, I added 2 eggs and used low fat milk in place of the water. Of course it tasted better that way.
Out of milk from Sunday, I went shopping tonight and grabbed the low fat milk again... maybe next time it will be whole milk so I can make some rice pudding.

If I should add raisins or not is open for debate.

I made a sort of stew yesterday. I made double the amount and put half aside in a dish with a lid on it, for another day. Just before I went to bed, I put the dish in the refrigerator. On opening the fridge door this morning, I heard a rattling sound, and soon worked out that it was coming from the lid of the dish of stew. I reached out to touch the lid and it burnt my fingers. It turned out that the stew was boiling away there in the fridge. I took the stew out of the fridge and left it on the work top, where it soon stopped boiling, so I left it for a while and then put it back in the fridge. After about an hour, I went to check on it, and blow me down the stew was on the boil again. Everything else in the fridge is as cold as it should be, it is only the stew that won’t conform to the laws of nature. The ingredients I used for the stew did include a couple of quite hot chillies, but nowhere near hot enough to account for this most puzzling phenomenon.

I saw eggnog ice cream last year at Wal Mart. I didn't buy it but regretted not doing so all year since. A friend of mine's daughter was there last year when I saw it and today she brought me a quart of it she bought yesterday when she was shopping.

Total bliss when having it for desert today.

??? Where to post pictures?
The computer vision cannot be logged in.

Tag. } Ideas to be enjoyed. ) While they remain Legal.

The standard baked potato may be Engineerd into main course status as follows..
Chopped peppers { your choice
Parsley
Pre sauteed mushrooms
Liberal addition of olive oil
Chopped celery & garlic clove
Pink Himalayan salt.
...drink pairing: Tequila, obviously.

McFunger Option..} just 2 tiny home grown 420 buds
Tossed into the center of said potato w/ butter..
Quickly become Force multipliers in the enjoyment of Flame-- the great jazz LP of 1978.