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Ashlynne -- we've just started our bathroom repair/remodel today too!!! We have 2 bathrooms, but only one shower, and that's the bathroom we're working on, so we'll be using our gym membership every day for the next month!
It'll be chaos at home, so I'm not interested in cooking tonight.
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Mongolian Beef, Rice, and Broccoli. It was pretty good! It was a copy cat recipe for PF Chang. I was pretty impressed that it turned out so well.
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Basmatic Rice. Shrimp stir-fried in peanut oil with lots of veggies and a tarragon sauce. It was going to be an easy meal since I was using frozen veggies, but I had to peel and devein the shrimp. At least I didn't have to do that plus a lot of veggie prep. It was quite good. (Fresh vegetables are better, but we're all entitled to short cuts sometimes.)
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At 12:30pm, I started making lunch - Pork chops Dijon. I learned from my last cooking bout. This time, I read the recipe through. Cut up the onions. Mixed the sauce together (mustard, low fat Italian dressing and black pepper.) Then I started on browning the meat. It says cooking the meal is only 18 minutes. I will have you know, it took me 90 minutes. It seems my measuring spoons don't have a TBS, only teaspoons. So, I had to google on the kindle how many tsp in a TBS. So the 6 TBS mustard - became 18 teaspoons. I thought that was an awful lot of gravy. The meat came out flavorful. The sauce was very very salty. I just could not eat the sauce at all.

I realized today that because of my upbringing, with mom cooking with very very little salt, that I'm used to Bland food. I can handle spicy. I just cannot handle salty food. So, in conclusion, when making future meals, I will seek ingredients that are low sodium. And before I start cooking, I will Google on substitutes to use for those on low-sodium diet.

FYI, I may not have eaten the gravy, but I did make a dipping sauce made of low sodium soy sauce, vinegar, fresh red pepper and lots of onions. YUM!!! I put aside my 2nd chop steak without any gravy in it. That's my dinner for tonight. This time, I will eat it with corn.
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Book, so proud of you for trying some cooking! I know how it is to start attempting these things (and the "18 min cooking time" turns into 90 mins...) and you will only get better in time. Cap, jeanne, emjo and other "real cooks" in here would tell us that with some practice you could eyeball that 3TBS measurement and just squirt it directly in... I'm not there yet, either, but I'm doing a few more things than I used to.

I've discovered Birdseye brand frozen skillet dinners. They have about 3-4 servings per bag, but in reality it feeds me and my father with little to no leftovers. But its easy-peasy to make, and has lots of vegetables in each of the varieties, and at around $3 per bag its half the price of other frozen one-skillet dinner brands. Downside is the sodium content is very high.

Tonight had the three cheese chicken variety. Delish.
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I made it to Chicago just fine today . got a rib crushing hug out of the granddaughter that ill never forget , then spent about 3 hours in the kitchen with my son . chicken , vegs , cheese stuffed brotchen rolls and cherry cobbler .
got an invite to stay 2 , 3 , or more days if I want . gonna make with the fudge ecstacy cookies tomorrow . lot of catching up to do with my son . of course weve both grown so there are a lot of philosophical things to compare notes on .
hope to take three kids trike riding tomorrow .
son has a girlfriend ive never met so we have a very delicate process to go thru to get aquainted . when she wakes up in the morning she'll find her refrigerator doors have been reversed . they swung the wrong way . it annoyed her but it annoyed me worse ( evidently ) ..
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Captain, thanks for sharing your time with the family. That is so nice. And I'm sure the gf will be very happy to find the refrigerator doors have been corrected the right way. And the kids would love that fudge ecstasy cookies. You sure know how to win their hearts!
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ABB, in my whole life, that is the 2nd time I ever cooked real meat - as in a pan. And I'm not including ground beef in that category. The first time I tried to cook the chops, it came out soooo dry. This time, I really believe that the gravy mixture helped the chops be tender. I just don't care for the gravy. I have 3 leftover chops in the freezer. I think I will try cooking it on Sunday using cream of mushroom soup - the way sis likes it. Except, I will throw in more mushrooms. Cooking is such a hassle, but eating it is so much better than microwavables.
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thanks for the kind words , book .
pork is done when the blood tinged juices run clear when forked . any continued cooking will result in dry , tough pork . ill bet youd love chops baked , surrounded by light apple stuffing . a can of corn in the stuffing mixture only makes it sweeter tasting .
there isn't any coffee in this dammed apartment this am . wth is wrong with people ?
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What are is everyone from on this site? I'm from Blue Bell Pa. Shilo, glad your mom had a good laugh. I love making my mom laugh. Kazz, Once and while we have to indulge, we deserve it :)
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Cap, glad you made it safely. Those cookies sound devilish :)
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im from Martinsville Indiana . sally , when your mom is no longer with you , the times you had a laugh together will be the only memories youll care to retain .
I hope aunt edna is placed in NH while im gone . in homer simpsons words " itll be everybodys fault but mine " .. he he
edna is ok with the upped level of care but Ill bet everybody involved in the transition will be on her s*it list for a while . ( 2 minutes , dementia )
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bhg/recipe/desserts/fudge-ecstasies/
a pic speaks a thousand words ., youll need a milk cow , these cookies are rich .
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Capt there must be a Starbucks somewhere in the Windy City, or even a McDonalds. Any size coffee is $1 right now
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I do not cook often did plenty when my kids were young. But I cooked last night, a vegetarian lasagna, garlic bread, salads. Two guests were vegans, houseful! I was ready for them to leave!
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thanks veronica . f*ckface junior needs to wake his a** up and direct me to a starbucks . im not sure i could find my way out of this appt building .
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Cap mum lived in Chicago! She was engaged to a marine but left him at the station there and came home yep broke his heart!! You should go and see some blues clubs i didnt have time when i was there!
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the only club im familiar with is whittled out of a 4 inch hunk of oak and has a big nail embedded in the larger end kaz .
anyway , i found something resembling coffee and the cookies were done before these guys even woke up .
i wrote to cuz this am and told her when her g - daughters came to ednas and we woke edna up , she produced a beautiful , shy looking , little girlish smile upon recognition of her GG - kids . thats when my head snapped and my a** headed to chicago . if cuz doesnt understand that then she can stfu and take care of her mother for a few days .
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Ha! Ha! Cap what do you call then there then? Bars? venues? yes clubs we call them! Like golf club.nightclub!!

I want some of those cookies!!
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My first visit to the states was chicago i made a bee-line for the diners as soon as we arrived as i always wanted to eat in one since "happy days" after stuffing my face on eggs,bacon,waffles,maple syrup i nearly fell over on the way out as i experienced my first "caffeine" overdose!! Boy you guys can down your coffee i didnt even ask but everytime i turned my back my coffee was "refilled" Of course never getting anything like that here i reckon i drank about six cups without realising it! Love those diners though and managed to put on 6lbs! OOH i forgot the hash browns yummy!!
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Not cooking tonight! mum fighting again about money so ill starve her i am so fed up with her crap "what do you with all my money". she thinks food comes from the sky? So no money no dinner works everytime. Ill give her a few hours then shell get so hungry we will get a takeaway eventually yep this happens usually about every few weeks and this is what works. I pay all bills she pays for food thats the deal so tough!
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" cave man club " kaz .
the cookies are a b*tch.
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I am going to the store to buy the ingredients and make some for myself. Enough of reading about ecstasies, I'm going to eat them too. The tricky part is how to make them without sharing them with mum.
Country style ribs and vegetables in the slow cooker for dinner today.
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kazzaa - we lived in IL for a few years and anytime we went out mom would get coffee. She would get mad because just as soon as it would get cool enough for her to drink they would be topping it off again making it too hot to drink. I had to add ice chips when they did it.
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my son joked to " lany " while she was eating a cookie that she likes g - pa NOW . ha.
her response was " i always liked him " . im having a nice time here .
oughtta get some snow chains for ike and blow right over the north pole to europe since im so far north already . lol
speaking of " full of s*hit " , thanks debralee for linking megalomania and delusions of grandeur in my head . i was trying to learn exactly what megalomania meant .
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Homemade burgers with veggies mixed in so my mother in law can't see them! With not so healthy tator tots
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Book, I'm proud of your cooking adventures! Don't be discouraged about how long it took you. Those published cooking times are based on experienced cooks. You'll be one one day (if you want to be).

My stir-fry last night took longer than I'd expected. And I had to go to the internet to see how to peel and devein shrimp.

I hear you about the salt! We tried to keep relatively low sodium for my husband's health needs. Now my son is rooming here and he dislikes salt. When I eat in a restaurant everything tastes over-salted. I simply don't add salt to a savory recipe that includes canned items, like tomatoes. There is more than enough salt in the canned goods. (Baking is different. I follow the recipe, including salt.)
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i agree , jeanne. book aint messin around . shes gonna develope a love of the creativity that cooking constitutes if she isnt careful .
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Dinner tonight is the dinner I didn't eat last night - too tired. Contractor renovating the bathroom, muscle/helper guy building huge raised bed so I can grow all my own veggies, house in chaos, took mother to get dentures relined ($500!!!), went to town to collect flea preventative for the dogs and cats. Waiting for everyone to go home so I can flop into an armchair with a glass of something (my bad lol)..

I'm in SW Ontario, Canada btw, about 3 hours west of Toronto.
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Book~you are doing great since cooking is trial by error for all of us. Hugs to you!!
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