Happy New Year

 

Eliza Comes For Christmas Dinner – Chicken Cottage Pie

Eliza and her family came down on Christmas afternoon to open her presents at Meme and Grandpops house.  This is before she arrived.

Merry Christmas

 

Better be good because Santa Clause is coming tonight.

With mid 60's predicted for Christmas Day, I knew a fire would be out but 45F on Wednesday was do able so I couldn't resist.

Bev and I wish you the Happiest of Holidays

Beef Stew For A Crowd

With Bev coming home on Saturday and friends Joe and Kathy coming on Friday, I wanted enough food on hand for several days without cooking.  I wanted to use on-hand beef so I found one skirt and two flank steaks in the freezer totaling five pounds.  So, I scaled up a recipe that we like from Taste Of Home to get the following.  Since my meat was thinner than a roast, I cooked it differently than the original recipe.

New Garage Floor

After nearly 30 years of living in our home, Bev had decided she wanted to put an epoxy coating on our garage floor and I had to agree.  The main drawback is that everything had to be moved out before the installers showed up and like many others that was to be a big challenge for us as we had the walls lined with stuff sitting on the floor.  We also had three cabinets that rested on the floor.

To deal with the random stuff sitting on the floor, I bought two 48” wide cabinets from Seville Classics via Sam's and to make the cabinets easy to move I put wheels under them.

Another Look At Marco Island, FL

Our good friends and neighbors, Pat and Steve, also own a week at the Charter Club so we try to coordinate our visits.  This year they were there for the first week then Steve drove home and Pat L moved in with my three girls.  I’m not sure this changed their routines much except that Pat L and Cindy played plenty of pickle ball.

Home Alone – Almost

If you’ve been reading for awhile, you likely remember we have a time share in Marco Island, FL that we use every fall and this year we have expanded to three weeks.  I had hoped to go down for a week but my hip continues to bother me and I knew I could not make the drive down nor the plane ride back so I am holding down the fort along with the three dogs.

Since I’m only cooking for myself, I won’t have many food porn posts so I thought I’d let you see the shots they have sent me of what I am missing for the first week.  They began their first week with a visit to Stan’s Idle Hour in Goodland where they have a big event on Sunday’s with a band.