Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Long Day

Last time we bought a side of beef, I wasn't happy with the quality of either the cow or the packer. So we went back to Country Pride Meats in Clinton and bought half a cow from the same people we've been buying beef from for many many years. That meant a bit of a drive today.

Andrew and I started listening to US at War series. I love it. It's balanced. It draws heavily on primary sources. It encourages critical thinking. The kids hate it; they say George C Scott has a droning voice that puts them to sleep. Andrew drove home from the butcher, solely motivated by a desire to avoid note-taking on the history audio-book. While he drove, I read All-of-a-Kind Family to Maggie, and hit a few chapters of our kiddie version of the Odyssey.

On our way home, we were dropping off 1/4 of the meat with the family who went in with us to buy the side. We missed a turn, and so took a route that was just a wee bit longer. It happened to go right past Old World Wisconsin, a place that Maggie's been longing to visit, if only to hit the gift shop. We decided to run in and purchase that $2 fan she's been desiring. Oh my goodness! Four bus-loads of kids. About 60-80 grade-schoolers in a tiny gift shop, all wanting to spend money. What a madhouse! It took us about 20 minutes to make that one little purchase. At least they were relatively well-behaved kids.

While down near our old stomping grounds, we stopped at our eye doctor's office and had our glasses adjusted. Mine were so crooked that I'm having a hard time getting used to the "empty spot" where the corrective lenses no longer sit. It may be weird for a few days of adjustment, but it should make reading out of books easier -- keep those near-sightedness lenses out of the way where I need the far-sightedness lenses. I keep inching closer to admitting that I need bifocals. But not yet....

Freezer has been emptied, scraped free of frost build-up, repacked with the new meat, and organized. It's so nice to go hunt in the freezer and know where to find certain food items.

Four days of white bread and white pasta has wreaked havoc on my allergies. It also seems to have caused joint pain. Shoot. I'm old. Hopefully getting back to a better diet will help. But it also scares me about traveling and being away from my kitchen for more than a day at a time. I'm old.

Two Steve Martin movies arrived from our Netflix queue today. Ah, tonight we will sit and laugh! Andrew needs to see The Jerk so that he can understand the choir director's frequent references to the movie.

6 comments:

  1. An evening of Steve Martin seems like just the ticket after a day like that! Wow!

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  2. I need to do the freezer thing before we pick up our 1/4 beef. Ugh. One more thing to do.

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  3. At least it's cold enough now that we can have frozen food sitting all over the floor of the garage, not thawing while we scrape the freezer walls clean. But it's a job that wouldn't go well for a person who's wanting to see her chiropractor.

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  4. My daughter went on a tour of a butcher's place in Clinton last week as part of her culinary class...maybe the same place?

    As for joint pain from too much white flour, don't blame your age. I've had that for many years.

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  5. There's a butcher in Shopiere (Twin City Packing) that has a Clinton mailing address. I really liked the guys there, but they discontinued large animals and now butcher only fowl. I was at Country Pride this week. It's rather new, begun since we moved, by the folks we buy our cows from. It's right in Clinton proper, just south of the downtown area, by the tracks.

    As for the white flour and how it affects my body, I guess you're right: I don't know how much my age has to do with it. I haven't had this much white flour in a long long time. The kids are gobbling up these bagels, and I'm smelling the lusciousness of them, knowing that I really ought not. Sometimes I am weak and eat one anyway.

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  6. Thanks for the info on the meat/fowl processors! As for the white flour, I hear you. It's so hard to pass up these tempting foods, but later we pay in pain and stiffness for having let our common sense be overruled. :0

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