Monthly Archives: January 2015
84 cents a gallon . . .
First up this morning, I called Moen to order a new hose for my Renzo model kitchen faucet.
And as reader Ray McElhenry reminded me, with Moen’s lifetime warranty, they’re sending one out to me one free, and that includes shipping. Nice.
About 2:15 we headed out for the afternoon. Our first stop was the Home Depot about 5 miles down the road. Since I was getting the replacement hose from Moen, I don’t need the ‘Not So’ Universal, ‘Doesn’t’ Fit All Brands replacement hose any more and want to get my $27 back.
Then it was on to the Fry’s Electronics for a few things and also to check out possible new computers for a client. And of course it’s always fun to just walk around the place.
Then we headed back up to The Woodlands to have dinner at Grimaldi’s Pizzeria. We got there a few minutes after 4pm, which was perfect. Between 3 and 4pm, Grimaldi’s re-stokes their coal-fired pizza oven, so no pizzas until they’re done.
We had our usual order of a Small Salad which we split.
In fact it would easily feed 4 people,
And we had the large pizza with mushrooms, pepperoni, jalapenos, Italian sausage and meatballs.
By getting the large one, we have half of it left over to take home for later.
After a great meal, it was back up to Conroe for stops at Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart for a few things. Jan had planned to pick up a prescription at Sam’s, but it wasn’t ready because they didn’t have enough pills to fill it, so we’ll pick it up tomorrow afternoon.
Then it was on across the Interstate for the pleasant task of getting gas at the Kroger’s. And I say ‘pleasant’ because it cost me only 84.9 cents a gallon. That’s got to be pleasant.
Of course, that was because I’m still getting the $1 a gallon discount from our gift card purchase before Christmas. But even without the $1 discount, $1.849 is nothing to laugh at.
Tomorrow we’ll start wrapping up our two week stay here and get ready to move back to the Colorado River Thousand Trails on Wednesday.
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Thought for the Day:
Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes. – Jim Carrey
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Soup’s On . . .
Jan and I did pretty much nothing this morning, just enjoyed the bright sunshine for the first time in more than a week. Mister even went outside for a while, but despite the sun, it never got out of the 40’s and was windy enough so that he came back in after just a few minutes.
About 1pm I got out the slow cooker and started putting together a batch of our chicken vegetable soup. One thing about our soup is that it’s never the same twice. We always start with chicken broth and poached chicken breasts, but after that it’s more just what we have in the pantry and the freezer
At some point we buy a big package of boneless chicken breasts and several cartons of chicken broth. At home we put all the chicken breasts in the slow cooker, add the chicken broth, add seasonings, and then poach the chicken breasts for a few hours.
Then we vacuum-seal the chicken, two breasts to a package, and put them in the freezer. Since we always use liners in the slow cooker, it’s then easy to take the broth and freeze it for later also. And we’ll be doing this again soon since today’s batch used our last package of chicken.
So after the broth is in the slow cooker, it’s time to get creative. I started with a can of Rotel Hot Diced Tomatoes with Habaneros, a can of Whole Kernel Corn, a can of Red Kidney Beans, and a can of Black Beans and set the cooker on High for a couple of hours.
At this point I took the chicken breasts which had been thawing in the fridge and shredded them into the soup. Then about 30 minutes later I added half a bag of pasta twirls to the soup to cook. About 10 minutes before we were ready to eat, I put a bag of steam-in-the-bag veggies in the microwave, and when they were done, they went in the pot too.
To go with our meal, I heated up a couple of the free rolls we got from Golden Corral last night. And this was the result.
Really, really good. And enough left over so that we can add another couple of cans of stuff, and maybe some more chicken broth, and we’re good to go all over again. Which will probably be Wednesday night after we get back to the Colorado River Thousand Trails.
Tomorrow we’re going to take down to Fry’s Electronics for a few things, and then eat at Grimaldi’s Pizzeria on the way home.
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Thought for the Day:
“Happiness? A good cigar, a good meal, another good cigar and a good woman – or a bad woman; it depends on how much happiness you can handle.” – George Burns
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