Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Report from the Trenches

So, I'm prepping to convert from PC to MAC, and yesterday I took a gander at some old Zip drives to find out what was on them, because the new computer won't have a Zip port, and well, you know. At one point I made the HUGE mistake of clicking on a MONEY backup and the PC asked did I want to Restore to this Version and I said, no, cancel, get the hell out of there.

Hours later, when I got into MONEY, eeek! You guessed it. A fresh clean copy asking for me to input my data. O.K., this happened once before and I just restored the latest copy, except somehow I had backed up the Null copy, so the backup was no good. I had to go back into all the ZIP drives, and sure enough I found a 4 day old backup. Except the system wouldn't get it. It found it, but wouldn't restore. So I jumped through hoops (all this while I am cooking two new dishes for dinner) and moved (finally) the backup to a new folder on my hard drive, because I had saved ALL the old Money backups, many of them archives, and the folder was too confusing.

This damn PC always knows when I in a hurry and it's slowly dying, hence the haste to get off. Stress to the max. My restore worked, and I only had to rekey a few items, and I fished the receipts out of the trash next to my desk.

We let the produce man at Roche Brothers talk us into buying some unfamiliar squash varieties, and yesterday was "let's cook 'em up" day. I had a good sounding recipe with prunes, walnuts, brown sugar and bourbon, and yes, it was delicious, but kind of time consuming. Then the chicken which was supposed to last for 2 days turned out to be 3 pieces, which meant a quick trip to the store today. I used the opportunity to buy a wreath, more about that later, some bone-in pork chops (hard to find in this era of shortcuts) and 2 sweet potatoes, the memorial alas-no-more-Mrs.-Pauls potatoes. RIP.

Lots of buzz today about Amazon vs. Walmart, and I shopped in both today. A coffee maker for a Christmas present on Amazon, and a trip to sundries at Walmart. Well, the trip was mostly for Thisbe's diabetes syringes, except we got the wrong ones. Bought a bunch of other stuff. Not the zoo I expected today, but the bus had dropped the seniors off, with wheel chairs, etc. Nice that they get to shop there too. And Save! I found Barkeeper's Friend. Mine was so old that I feared it wasn't even made anymore. The scrubbing POWDERS are becoming fewer and fewer. Remember when that's all there was to clean a sink. Since, like 6th grade, I had to clean the bathroom sink every morning at home and it had to pass my Mom's white glove test. I did all the ironing except my Dad's shirts, too. Can you imagine? Poor me! A child slave.

On the way out of Walmart, I saw a woman with 3 boxes of Stovetop Stuffing Mix, and felt sad for her guests to have to eat over-processed stuffing out of a box. The woman in front of me, looked to be between 65 and 70. She bought $95.00 worth of stuff, including 6 big packages of tin foil baking pans, like for a small fruitcake or bread, except double, for two, and each with it's own clear plastic lid. Ye gods, she was gearing up for a LOT of cooking. Must have had over 100 pans. I'll bet no Stove Top for her, and the idea of whipping up so many fruitcakes, cranberry breads, whatever, is daunting.

While I stood in line at the drug counter, S.O. looked at Walmart for wreathe, way back in the gardening department, and he related the weaths looked kind of scraggly and behold, they were artificial and made in China. BUY A REAL WREATH, FOR GOD'S SAKE!!

So I came home and made mini-Halloween pumpkin cupcakes with a butter/cream cheese frosting, half of which I dyed orange (food coloring). They look awfully cute, and I'll take some to the neighbor's tonight and the rest to our host tomorrow, along with my dessert and the green bean casserole from scratch.

If you want to make the cupcakes, I think they'll be great right thru the holidays. I had to buy special self-rising flour, but it can be utilized for biscuits, and what could be yummier than home-made biscuits? I know! More home-made cup cakes.

http://www.bonappetit.com/magazine/fasteasyfresh/2009/10/mini_halloween_pumpkin_cupcakes

Breathless but productive,

Grapeshot

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