Four Foods on Friday 94

Filed under Four Foods Meme

Here’s this week’s questions.

1. How do you make mashed potatoes?

Peels usually left on. Dice potatoes, boil with a little salt until fork-mashable. Mashed up (with a hand masher) adding butter, milk, and fresh ground black pepper. Very rarely I will throw in some finely minced garlic bits to boil with the potatoes.

2. What do you wash pots and pans with?

It depends on what I make a mess with, and the pot or pan, because different methods work on different messes. I am a big fan of ‘fill it with soapy water and let it soak overnight’… that tends to be a one-size fits all solution.

3. Name something red in your refrigerator right now.

Thai sweet and hot sauce. Apples. Ketchup.

4. Do you prefer to use boullion cubes or the boullion powder mix?

Powder. It is easier to adjust for taste, and when the cubes get stale, they turn rock hard and difficult to dissolve. Besides, you can’t take a nibble of a cube – I can never resist popping a grain of boullion in my mouth for that extreme salt experience!

Wait a minute…

It’s 10am, the low last night was 52F, and it is 50F currently. What happened to our warm weather??

It is still raining, since yesterday. Actually, yesterday we had high winds, periods of blowing sand … although from our perspective, it was only blowing – I didn’t see any sand. Lots of leaves and a neighbor’s rooftop antenna were flying around though … and constant, light to heavy rain. It rained last night, with a few rumbles of thunder, and it has been raining all day. This is like Maryland weather! Brian is home sick again today, fighting a chest cold, but Honor went to school today.

Here’s a first for her:

Waiting for the bus in the rain – WITH an umbrella (we bought them in the US this summer, good to finally get a chance to use them) – both of us shivering and turning purple. I did make her run in and exchange her sandals for sneakers, but we were still cold. I know. We’re wimps. But a wet, windy, 50F morning is really cold for us! Fortunately, it should go back up into the 70’s for the rest of the week.

Happy Halloween!

Hope you all had a lovely Halloween weekend.

Pull up a chair, get comfy…

… and I’ll share a few photos.

Brian chose to be a gladiator again this year, but needed a new costume. I think he chose a good one. Here he is, posing with his class’s scarecrow.

Honor really wanted to be a tiger, but we could only find a leopard costume… I think this is much cuter anyway! I didn’t bring make-up, and before the parade, she asked me to draw on a nose and whiskers with marker. We had no idea if it was permanent or not, but she has such a crazy attitude – she didn’t care if she had to wear them the rest of the week! – so I drew them on. They did wash off :-X)

We went to the Embassy party and I must say, the folks who decorated and operated the haunted house(s) and trick-or-treat lanes for the kids really went all out. It was basically a walk-through of halls and rooms, all wonderfully decorated by individuals from those particular offices. They did an awesome job and it was a fun adventure for the kids. Thanks!!

The school hosted a very nice Spooktacular party. There was a haunted house and a trick-or-treat lane, as well as carnival like games to play. Fortunately, it was set up in the gym because it would have been rained out otherwise.

Halloween goofiness.

We found Honor’s class’s scarecrow outside.

The kittens unpacked Honor’s backpack, pulled her homework folder out, and scattered papers around. One of the papers was a little certificate she earned from the pumpkin carving contest. She got 1st prize for the weirdest pumpkin!

And while we are still talking about spooky topics, check out what I found at a local bookstore when I went out looking for a notebook for my recipes! She’s a great kitchen witch!