Merry Christmas, Bill, Scott, Steve and all the members.
Let’s go Brandon.
As you were … Carry on.
20 replies on “A Christmas Card for All of You”
This caused me cry openly.Thank you! Merry Christmas and Semper Fi from one who did not serve, but much appreciates those who did. (I just missed Vietnam due to being a student.Almost enlisted anyway.)
And another note: I can count on two hands (including you, me and my wife) people who know what Yeshua Hamashiach means and use it. And since Christmas comes on a Saturday this year: Shabat Shalom!
Merry Christmas and Shabbat Shalom to you and your wife, Harry!
Merry Christmas, ACTS and everyone! This Army brat knows the value of our armed forces and appreciates the sacrifices made on our behalf. Thank you!
Merry Christmas to you too, Dindy Dee! May you and yours be blessed this holiday season and in the coming year.
I’ve spent many Christmases away from home and family. Some of them were great, despite that. I spent two Christmases in England more than 30 years ago and I don’t know how it is now but back then, the Brits knew how to do Christmas up right. I had some fantastic Christmases in England that I still remember to this day. Thank you to those people who made that happen. It meant a lot to me then and it still does. Giving a Yank far from home a good Christmas was an act of pure love and tremendous respect.
I’ve had some not-so-great Christmases too. I prefer to forget those. All I’ll say about that is you ought to be grateful and celebrate Christmas wholly and joyfully as is your right and blessed privilege. If you had been through some of the Christmases I’ve had you would learn to really, really appreciate what you have in America at Christmas time. If you do anything less, you’re squandering your heritage and you are wasting what should be the greatest days of the year. That’s on you and if you do not embrace Christmas for what it is, regardless of your religion or creed, there’s something wrong with you. It’s you, not us.
I lived in/was based out of Israel for a while. I’m not Jewish, I’m a Scandinavian Protestant by heritage and an American by birthright and allegiance.. I loved saying “Shabbat Shalom” to Israelis on the Jewish Sabbath. They all knew I am a “Goy” , a Gentile and not a Jew. They didn’t care. They were impressed that I thought enough of their religion, society and culture to abide by their mores. They would joyfully and sincerely wish me a “Shabbat Shalom” back. It means “Peace on the Sabbath”. You don’t have to be a Jew to appreciate and respect Shabbat. You don’t have to be a Christian to appreciate and respect Christmas.
Dennis Prager is a Jewish Jew, a First Order person of Hebrew descent who practices his Judaism. He loves Christmastide for this very reason.
Christmas is a season of Joy and Good Will. It’s something anyone of any faith can embrace, participate in and enjoy. It is the celebrated birth of Yeshua Hamashiach, Christ the Savior, and … It is the time of year, every year, when Christians show the Joy of Redemption to the entire world.
It is absolutely fine if our neighbors of different faiths share this with us. They are most welcome to do so. There is no reason why they should not.
It is not in the least OK if anyone tries to deny us the fullness of this festive season. We can and will gladly share, we will not be robbed in any manner of this most happy time of the year. You don’t have to join us, but you will not deny us this either. Christmas is not yours to take from us.
So Merry Christmas to all, Peace and Joy to the World, and Good Will Among Men.
This is what brings our Savior great happiness. It is a reason why he loves us enough to give his life in our place. Live every Christmas to its fullest, your Christmases are finite, don’t let any slip out of your grasp.
The lyrics of an old Carol say it quite well…
“God rest ye merry Gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day,
To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy …”
Christmas is important.
Merry Christmas to you, whoever, wherever and whatever you are.
Hope you had a very Merry Christmas.
My Marine godson was able to spend Christmas with his mom this year, so I know it was a special one for them both.
Thanks for this post!
Thank you and yes, we had a great Christmas here. I hope yours was the same.
We almost missed out on a Christmas tradition in our family this year. I always make a big pot of oyster stew (this fell to me after my maternal grandfather died, I’m the eldest of his grandchildren). It takes two days to make it right. It’s fairly easy to do but it needs to “age” to mellow out all the delicious nuances of the stew.
Strangely enough even though Jen Psaki says her boss, the Potato in Chief, saved Christmas and the shelves were all stocked I had to drive all over the place, twice, just to find two gallons of whole milk. The first day I looked, last Wednesday, there was no milk in WalMart Grocery, Food Lion (x2), Krogers, or any of the smaller convenience stores. None, not whole milk nor any other sort.
The second day I looked I found 5 gallons of only whole milk at WalMart, all the other milk was gone. I took two of the 5 and as I already had the other ingredients our tradition was upheld in spite of Raggedy Jen’s lies.
There’s something weird going on when you can’t buy milk. I think that’s the first time in my life, here in the U.S., where I was unable to get milk when I wanted it.
This can’t be a “supply chain” issue, milk has to be produced and consumed in a finite span of time. During the whole of the “COVID pandemic” so far I haven’t had any problem getting it. It’s not something sitting on a ship in a port somewhere waiting to be unloaded and distributed. As a symptom this worries me a bit.
I’m glad your Godson got to spend Christmas at home. That probably won’t be the case every Christmas during his service. During the Christmas Season I always think about all those people who won’t make it home at Christmas time.
Hmmm – I will need to ask my sister about the milk supply. Up until a year ago she was the GM at a Kroger dairy plant in MI. All of the raw milk came from very local farms. And cows being cows need to be milked twice each day. Also, due to that the supply doesn’t really vary all that much.
Can’t be a “Stock up on it ” issue as it doesn’t last that long.
College kids came home? Baking?
I wonder if there was an issue at a couple of dairies that no body talked about. I will see what she knows.
She runs a bakery for Kroger now but I am sure she keeps in touch.
Thanks for checking on that. It’s a very, very rare thing I’ve never experienced before here in the U.S. so I’m powerfully curious about why that happened.
I seem to remember a while back something that may apply. Can’t find it, but I remember something around here, and could be else where as well. A couple of dairies were just dumping their milk. Why? They couldn’t get any truckers to transport the milk. Can’t keep it all on site as more keeps coming. Oldest gets dumped first. Can’t even make cheese….as that is not done on the dairy farm. Why no truckers? The reason could not be determined for sure. Covid? Gas prices? Both and more? Never heard for certain.
Thanks for that information. It might be that a milk dump/trucking shortage just happened to coincide with increased Christmas demand.
I don’t know, it just seems strange to me that “the shelves are all stocked for Christmas” and I can’t find any milk to buy anywhere.
Anecdotally it seems to me like milk and bread are two of the very most basic food stuffs. It worries me more than a little if those things disappear from the shelf. It makes me wonder what else might be missing and what might be going on behind the scenes.
Clearly with “the shelves are all stocked for Christmas” … We cannot rely on government information at all. This is unusual, I was brought up and taught by my teachers not to “trust” the government but outright, bald-faced lies are a fairly new thing.
Usually when the government lies to us it does so with a degree of plausible deniability. To tell me “the shelves are all stocked” when they clearly and undeniably are not is worrisome.
It’s like the government has come to a point where it doesn’t even care if the information it releases is even interpretable as “accurate”. An outright lie is a sign that things are probably worse than I thought they were and …
That takes some doing. Because I’m pretty sure things are pretty bad.
So, I heard back from my sister. There is definitely NOT a milk shortage. In fact at this time of year (when all the schools go on Christmas break) there is more milk than can be bottled since the schools are not ordering.
This is very likely a lack of employees at the stores to stock shelves.
As a test she suggested asking the store manager if there is any in main fridge in the back that is not out.
Cool, thanks. Weird then that all the stores I went to were all experiencing the same shelf stocking issues due to being shorthanded.
Actually that’s a load off my mind. It’s not that I’ll die without milk, it’s that I was concerned that was a symptom of a larger issue.
After this, I’ll bear that in mind and go make a stink with the manager. Politely of course. I’ll want the people who run the stores I shop at to know I’m not happy with their performance. Which will hopefully put a bee in their bonnet that buzzes against vaccine mandates etc.
Next time I’ll go talk to the manager and find out exactly what’s going on. Might be a good topic for a blog post. Though that likely won’t happen because …
The funny thing here is that I almost never grocery shop in the store, any store. I order my stuff and have it delivered. I started doing this well before anyone ever heard of COVID-19. This saves me a lot of time wandering around a store looking for what I need, saves me from impulse buying (the “Oh, that looks good, I’ll get some of that” syndrome) and saves me gas running around to various stores. My Jeep doesn’t get great gas mileage and with the increase in price that’s a significant savings.
It also allows me to maximize my grocery budget because I can pick and choose in seconds rather than wandering around trying to find the better deals on groceries. I never go over my budget because I know to the penny what I’m spending when I get to the checkout cart.
So when I went out to get milk and other components to make oyster stew that was the first time I’ve been in an actual grocery store in months. I have no idea what the “new normal” is inside the stores themselves.
We tried the order on-line thing. I do almost all of the cooking: I am generally better at it than Mrs Ron both from a skill but also a disposition. I find preparing dinner to be a very nice way to transition from work mode to home mode. I am therefore pretty particular about veggie and fruit selection. Not in a stand over the bin for 20 minutes and find just the right one, more in a glance at it, they look bad change the menu in my head. The children they have as shoppers have no clue when it comes to selecting well. So once a week, we make a menu together and I very willingly go to Kroger.
it does seem like nearly a third of the “shoppers” are now Kroger employees. So they have more people working, just not on the tasks that they would have employed them to do just 5 years ago. A dozen or more shoppers, but only two lanes open with checkout people. And nobody stocking during the day, only late at night or early morning.
The deli counter now closes at 6pm since they don’t have people to work.
But more on topic – I did ask specifically about dumping product. Sister said that at least at her plant they had the ability to adjust process time and ample incoming storage. Dumping was a tragic event and only done in the case of something bad detected in the process that could lead to a health issue or recall. They are pretty strict about health and process items. Recalls are really expensive.
Just thought of the most likely reason (most likely since it is simple) no milk in the fridge: the store manager just didn’t order enough. Groceries are one of the most history of purchase driven types of business. Why they have lots of stuffing packages in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving but only a small section on one shelf the rest of the year.
But the last two years worth of data has got to be skewing the prediction of demand. Especially with milk, kids not in schools for the last year probably skewed what was being purchased at the stores (upward) for most of the year, and the trend the last two years at Christmas was less of a spike. Add in the fact that milk is perishable, and they probably err on the side of having just enough to too little as a matter of practice, and I can easily see shelves being empty. I also wonder if whole milk is generally down as a product.
I have not consumed a glass of milk in over 5 decades so I am probably not one to know about the rates of skim vs 2% vs whole.
BTW – I love fresh, raw oysters. Mrs Ron thinks I am ill in the head. I am, but not because of that.
I only shop for myself and I’m only cooking for myself. It’s hard to use up things when you’re the only one eating them. So most of my veggies and such are canned or frozen and I use very little fresh produce. I just can’t get it gone before it spoils.
I buy onions in 3 lb. and potatoes in 5 lb. bags and usually have to toss a significant fraction of them because they get too old. My storage is fine but nothing like that lasts forever.
The exception to that is in the summer when I grow tomatoes and various peppers (from bell to cayenne), stop at roadside stands and my generous neighbor who drops off some fresh asparagus now and then.
Love bacon and tomato sandwiches with fresh garden tomatoes. I make a pig of myself on fresh tomatoes eating them with just about every meal and sometimes for a snack. The peppers are for potatoes O’Brian, hash browns and various curries I like to make.
When I make curry I make a huge batch and refrigerate/freeze it so I don’t eat it all up at once and start speaking with an Asian/Middle Eastern accent. When I was overseas I grew a great fondness for spicy foods. It was all new and marvelous for a midwestern farm boy raised on meat and potatoes.
If I was cooking for more than just me I’d probably be a little bit more picky about things.
Once in a while if I really need an onion or something and I’m out I just walk over to my sister’s house and tell her …
“Give me an onion or I’ll kidnap your puppy and hold her for ransom.”
When I’m going to grill for a party (we have an annual pool party around the 4th of July) or something like that I always go in and buy the meat after carefully selecting it. As you say, the store “shoppers” don’t really know what they’re doing and I doubt they care even a little bit. There are two really good butchers around here and they get my best custom when it comes to meats.
I drink milk fairly regularly, usually go through a couple gallons a month or so. I like Campbell’s Tomato Soup with grilled cheese sandwiches and that kind of thing. I make it with a can of milk, a dash of garlic powder, a double dash of onion powder, a dash of ground pepper, a quarter tsp. of cumin and salt to taste. It’s more like a bisque than anything. It’s one of my favorite quick meals.
I often, not always but often, have a glass of cold milk with my dinner. Which being from the midwest we call “supper”. I never figured out why one is used some places and another in others.
When I was married with kids I did a lot of the cooking, mostly out of self defense. My wife’s idea of a full meal was hot dogs and a can of Campbell’s Pork ‘n Beans.
While it is just Mrs Ron and I, I still make extra for her folks who are 91 and 87. Was doing it for my mom, too before she passed 2 years ago. So not quite the same as a full house, I haven’t cut back too much as if we don’t bring them food I am not sure they remember to eat. Not slipping mentally as they just are getting older an don’t think about it or plan for it; so we try and keep them stocked.
Oh, and a good vegetable soup will freeze really well. So instead of tossing the onions and potatoes, make a good beef soup or stew and freeze it.
I am also a glutton for good tomatoes. My perfect lunch has always been good italian bread or a baguette with mozzarella and tomatoes with fresh herbs and olive oil. I could eat that everyday for lunch and be happy.
Way to go ACTS.
Semper Fi and a Merry Christmas to you and those dear to you, My Brother., My Fellow American, and My Friend.
Now THAT’s what I’m talking about. Merry Christmas to you and yours as well. Take Care.
20 replies on “A Christmas Card for All of You”
This caused me cry openly.Thank you! Merry Christmas and Semper Fi from one who did not serve, but much appreciates those who did. (I just missed Vietnam due to being a student.Almost enlisted anyway.)
And another note: I can count on two hands (including you, me and my wife) people who know what Yeshua Hamashiach means and use it. And since Christmas comes on a Saturday this year: Shabat Shalom!
Merry Christmas and Shabbat Shalom to you and your wife, Harry!
Merry Christmas, ACTS and everyone! This Army brat knows the value of our armed forces and appreciates the sacrifices made on our behalf. Thank you!
Merry Christmas to you too, Dindy Dee! May you and yours be blessed this holiday season and in the coming year.
I’ve spent many Christmases away from home and family. Some of them were great, despite that. I spent two Christmases in England more than 30 years ago and I don’t know how it is now but back then, the Brits knew how to do Christmas up right. I had some fantastic Christmases in England that I still remember to this day. Thank you to those people who made that happen. It meant a lot to me then and it still does. Giving a Yank far from home a good Christmas was an act of pure love and tremendous respect.
I’ve had some not-so-great Christmases too. I prefer to forget those. All I’ll say about that is you ought to be grateful and celebrate Christmas wholly and joyfully as is your right and blessed privilege. If you had been through some of the Christmases I’ve had you would learn to really, really appreciate what you have in America at Christmas time. If you do anything less, you’re squandering your heritage and you are wasting what should be the greatest days of the year. That’s on you and if you do not embrace Christmas for what it is, regardless of your religion or creed, there’s something wrong with you. It’s you, not us.
I lived in/was based out of Israel for a while. I’m not Jewish, I’m a Scandinavian Protestant by heritage and an American by birthright and allegiance.. I loved saying “Shabbat Shalom” to Israelis on the Jewish Sabbath. They all knew I am a “Goy” , a Gentile and not a Jew. They didn’t care. They were impressed that I thought enough of their religion, society and culture to abide by their mores. They would joyfully and sincerely wish me a “Shabbat Shalom” back. It means “Peace on the Sabbath”. You don’t have to be a Jew to appreciate and respect Shabbat. You don’t have to be a Christian to appreciate and respect Christmas.
Dennis Prager is a Jewish Jew, a First Order person of Hebrew descent who practices his Judaism. He loves Christmastide for this very reason.
Christmas is a season of Joy and Good Will. It’s something anyone of any faith can embrace, participate in and enjoy. It is the celebrated birth of Yeshua Hamashiach, Christ the Savior, and … It is the time of year, every year, when Christians show the Joy of Redemption to the entire world.
It is absolutely fine if our neighbors of different faiths share this with us. They are most welcome to do so. There is no reason why they should not.
It is not in the least OK if anyone tries to deny us the fullness of this festive season. We can and will gladly share, we will not be robbed in any manner of this most happy time of the year. You don’t have to join us, but you will not deny us this either. Christmas is not yours to take from us.
So Merry Christmas to all, Peace and Joy to the World, and Good Will Among Men.
This is what brings our Savior great happiness. It is a reason why he loves us enough to give his life in our place. Live every Christmas to its fullest, your Christmases are finite, don’t let any slip out of your grasp.
The lyrics of an old Carol say it quite well…
“God rest ye merry Gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day,
To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy …”
Christmas is important.
Merry Christmas to you, whoever, wherever and whatever you are.
Hope you had a very Merry Christmas.
My Marine godson was able to spend Christmas with his mom this year, so I know it was a special one for them both.
Thanks for this post!
Thank you and yes, we had a great Christmas here. I hope yours was the same.
We almost missed out on a Christmas tradition in our family this year. I always make a big pot of oyster stew (this fell to me after my maternal grandfather died, I’m the eldest of his grandchildren). It takes two days to make it right. It’s fairly easy to do but it needs to “age” to mellow out all the delicious nuances of the stew.
Strangely enough even though Jen Psaki says her boss, the Potato in Chief, saved Christmas and the shelves were all stocked I had to drive all over the place, twice, just to find two gallons of whole milk. The first day I looked, last Wednesday, there was no milk in WalMart Grocery, Food Lion (x2), Krogers, or any of the smaller convenience stores. None, not whole milk nor any other sort.
The second day I looked I found 5 gallons of only whole milk at WalMart, all the other milk was gone. I took two of the 5 and as I already had the other ingredients our tradition was upheld in spite of Raggedy Jen’s lies.
There’s something weird going on when you can’t buy milk. I think that’s the first time in my life, here in the U.S., where I was unable to get milk when I wanted it.
This can’t be a “supply chain” issue, milk has to be produced and consumed in a finite span of time. During the whole of the “COVID pandemic” so far I haven’t had any problem getting it. It’s not something sitting on a ship in a port somewhere waiting to be unloaded and distributed. As a symptom this worries me a bit.
I’m glad your Godson got to spend Christmas at home. That probably won’t be the case every Christmas during his service. During the Christmas Season I always think about all those people who won’t make it home at Christmas time.
Hmmm – I will need to ask my sister about the milk supply. Up until a year ago she was the GM at a Kroger dairy plant in MI. All of the raw milk came from very local farms. And cows being cows need to be milked twice each day. Also, due to that the supply doesn’t really vary all that much.
Can’t be a “Stock up on it ” issue as it doesn’t last that long.
College kids came home? Baking?
I wonder if there was an issue at a couple of dairies that no body talked about. I will see what she knows.
She runs a bakery for Kroger now but I am sure she keeps in touch.
Thanks for checking on that. It’s a very, very rare thing I’ve never experienced before here in the U.S. so I’m powerfully curious about why that happened.
I seem to remember a while back something that may apply. Can’t find it, but I remember something around here, and could be else where as well. A couple of dairies were just dumping their milk. Why? They couldn’t get any truckers to transport the milk. Can’t keep it all on site as more keeps coming. Oldest gets dumped first. Can’t even make cheese….as that is not done on the dairy farm. Why no truckers? The reason could not be determined for sure. Covid? Gas prices? Both and more? Never heard for certain.
Thanks for that information. It might be that a milk dump/trucking shortage just happened to coincide with increased Christmas demand.
I don’t know, it just seems strange to me that “the shelves are all stocked for Christmas” and I can’t find any milk to buy anywhere.
Anecdotally it seems to me like milk and bread are two of the very most basic food stuffs. It worries me more than a little if those things disappear from the shelf. It makes me wonder what else might be missing and what might be going on behind the scenes.
Clearly with “the shelves are all stocked for Christmas” … We cannot rely on government information at all. This is unusual, I was brought up and taught by my teachers not to “trust” the government but outright, bald-faced lies are a fairly new thing.
Usually when the government lies to us it does so with a degree of plausible deniability. To tell me “the shelves are all stocked” when they clearly and undeniably are not is worrisome.
It’s like the government has come to a point where it doesn’t even care if the information it releases is even interpretable as “accurate”. An outright lie is a sign that things are probably worse than I thought they were and …
That takes some doing. Because I’m pretty sure things are pretty bad.
So, I heard back from my sister. There is definitely NOT a milk shortage. In fact at this time of year (when all the schools go on Christmas break) there is more milk than can be bottled since the schools are not ordering.
This is very likely a lack of employees at the stores to stock shelves.
As a test she suggested asking the store manager if there is any in main fridge in the back that is not out.
Cool, thanks. Weird then that all the stores I went to were all experiencing the same shelf stocking issues due to being shorthanded.
Actually that’s a load off my mind. It’s not that I’ll die without milk, it’s that I was concerned that was a symptom of a larger issue.
After this, I’ll bear that in mind and go make a stink with the manager. Politely of course. I’ll want the people who run the stores I shop at to know I’m not happy with their performance. Which will hopefully put a bee in their bonnet that buzzes against vaccine mandates etc.
Next time I’ll go talk to the manager and find out exactly what’s going on. Might be a good topic for a blog post. Though that likely won’t happen because …
The funny thing here is that I almost never grocery shop in the store, any store. I order my stuff and have it delivered. I started doing this well before anyone ever heard of COVID-19. This saves me a lot of time wandering around a store looking for what I need, saves me from impulse buying (the “Oh, that looks good, I’ll get some of that” syndrome) and saves me gas running around to various stores. My Jeep doesn’t get great gas mileage and with the increase in price that’s a significant savings.
It also allows me to maximize my grocery budget because I can pick and choose in seconds rather than wandering around trying to find the better deals on groceries. I never go over my budget because I know to the penny what I’m spending when I get to the checkout cart.
So when I went out to get milk and other components to make oyster stew that was the first time I’ve been in an actual grocery store in months. I have no idea what the “new normal” is inside the stores themselves.
We tried the order on-line thing. I do almost all of the cooking: I am generally better at it than Mrs Ron both from a skill but also a disposition. I find preparing dinner to be a very nice way to transition from work mode to home mode. I am therefore pretty particular about veggie and fruit selection. Not in a stand over the bin for 20 minutes and find just the right one, more in a glance at it, they look bad change the menu in my head. The children they have as shoppers have no clue when it comes to selecting well. So once a week, we make a menu together and I very willingly go to Kroger.
it does seem like nearly a third of the “shoppers” are now Kroger employees. So they have more people working, just not on the tasks that they would have employed them to do just 5 years ago. A dozen or more shoppers, but only two lanes open with checkout people. And nobody stocking during the day, only late at night or early morning.
The deli counter now closes at 6pm since they don’t have people to work.
But more on topic – I did ask specifically about dumping product. Sister said that at least at her plant they had the ability to adjust process time and ample incoming storage. Dumping was a tragic event and only done in the case of something bad detected in the process that could lead to a health issue or recall. They are pretty strict about health and process items. Recalls are really expensive.
Just thought of the most likely reason (most likely since it is simple) no milk in the fridge: the store manager just didn’t order enough. Groceries are one of the most history of purchase driven types of business. Why they have lots of stuffing packages in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving but only a small section on one shelf the rest of the year.
But the last two years worth of data has got to be skewing the prediction of demand. Especially with milk, kids not in schools for the last year probably skewed what was being purchased at the stores (upward) for most of the year, and the trend the last two years at Christmas was less of a spike. Add in the fact that milk is perishable, and they probably err on the side of having just enough to too little as a matter of practice, and I can easily see shelves being empty. I also wonder if whole milk is generally down as a product.
I have not consumed a glass of milk in over 5 decades so I am probably not one to know about the rates of skim vs 2% vs whole.
BTW – I love fresh, raw oysters. Mrs Ron thinks I am ill in the head. I am, but not because of that.
I only shop for myself and I’m only cooking for myself. It’s hard to use up things when you’re the only one eating them. So most of my veggies and such are canned or frozen and I use very little fresh produce. I just can’t get it gone before it spoils.
I buy onions in 3 lb. and potatoes in 5 lb. bags and usually have to toss a significant fraction of them because they get too old. My storage is fine but nothing like that lasts forever.
The exception to that is in the summer when I grow tomatoes and various peppers (from bell to cayenne), stop at roadside stands and my generous neighbor who drops off some fresh asparagus now and then.
Love bacon and tomato sandwiches with fresh garden tomatoes. I make a pig of myself on fresh tomatoes eating them with just about every meal and sometimes for a snack. The peppers are for potatoes O’Brian, hash browns and various curries I like to make.
When I make curry I make a huge batch and refrigerate/freeze it so I don’t eat it all up at once and start speaking with an Asian/Middle Eastern accent. When I was overseas I grew a great fondness for spicy foods. It was all new and marvelous for a midwestern farm boy raised on meat and potatoes.
If I was cooking for more than just me I’d probably be a little bit more picky about things.
Once in a while if I really need an onion or something and I’m out I just walk over to my sister’s house and tell her …
“Give me an onion or I’ll kidnap your puppy and hold her for ransom.”
When I’m going to grill for a party (we have an annual pool party around the 4th of July) or something like that I always go in and buy the meat after carefully selecting it. As you say, the store “shoppers” don’t really know what they’re doing and I doubt they care even a little bit. There are two really good butchers around here and they get my best custom when it comes to meats.
I drink milk fairly regularly, usually go through a couple gallons a month or so. I like Campbell’s Tomato Soup with grilled cheese sandwiches and that kind of thing. I make it with a can of milk, a dash of garlic powder, a double dash of onion powder, a dash of ground pepper, a quarter tsp. of cumin and salt to taste. It’s more like a bisque than anything. It’s one of my favorite quick meals.
I often, not always but often, have a glass of cold milk with my dinner. Which being from the midwest we call “supper”. I never figured out why one is used some places and another in others.
When I was married with kids I did a lot of the cooking, mostly out of self defense. My wife’s idea of a full meal was hot dogs and a can of Campbell’s Pork ‘n Beans.
While it is just Mrs Ron and I, I still make extra for her folks who are 91 and 87. Was doing it for my mom, too before she passed 2 years ago. So not quite the same as a full house, I haven’t cut back too much as if we don’t bring them food I am not sure they remember to eat. Not slipping mentally as they just are getting older an don’t think about it or plan for it; so we try and keep them stocked.
Oh, and a good vegetable soup will freeze really well. So instead of tossing the onions and potatoes, make a good beef soup or stew and freeze it.
I am also a glutton for good tomatoes. My perfect lunch has always been good italian bread or a baguette with mozzarella and tomatoes with fresh herbs and olive oil. I could eat that everyday for lunch and be happy.
Way to go ACTS.
Semper Fi and a Merry Christmas to you and those dear to you, My Brother., My Fellow American, and My Friend.
Now THAT’s what I’m talking about. Merry Christmas to you and yours as well. Take Care.