From The Porch; What Retirees Wear

It is morning and you head to the closet to get dressed. You ask yourself, what clothes you are going to wear. You pick something out, but why did you choose that particular outfit? Do you want to look nice for that office meeting? Do you need to dress warm because it’s cold outside? Perhaps you want to show off that new outfit you bought at the mall this weekend? Well retirees don’t have those problems.

The only meeting we have is when we pass our significant other on the way to the coffee pot. We are not worried about the weather because we never go anywhere. As for the new clothes, well the last thing I bought was a new couch blanket. You know the blankets with the arms in them. That would be the blanket that keeps you warm and toasty on those cold winter days and still lets you drink your hot cocoa without uncovering. Just what every old geezer needs when he lives in warm, sunny, Florida. Although the cat does like to lay on it, summer or winter, so it was not a complete waste of money. 

When it comes to picking out what clothes to wear I put absolutely no thought what so ever into what I should put on to walk the dog or to take the trash out to the curb. Although I do make a game out of what other retirees are wearing when they walk by our house. Some of the men seem to still be wearing a uniform of sorts. Every time you see them they have the same type of clothing. One neighbor always has on the same type of shorts with a tee shirt that has a pocket. He always wears white socks with black work shoes. Another one always seems to be in a button down short sleeve shirt that he never buttons. My game is to try to figure out why they are dressed the way they are dressed.

I pegged the shorts and tee shirts guy as someone who wore a uniform to work every day. Like a mechanic or some thing like that. The guy with the open shirt must have been a lifeguard or something where he did not have to wear a lot of clothes. Even though he is out of shape with a gut hanging over his belt I am going to stick with my lifeguard scenario because the thought of him without clothes hurts my brain.

There are others who I have no idea what they were thinking, or not thinking, when they got dressed to walk by our house. I am guessing that socks with sandals are a comfort thing as well as track suites on women and sweats on guys. But what gives with the bright colors? I know we do not see as well as we used to but bright is still bright. Even if they get dressed in the dark they should be able to see that damn thing is too bright to wear in public. And don’t get me started on stripes with checks. The wife and I went to an early bird special place and left with a bad case of indigestion. Not because of the food because it was great, but because of having to look at what the other old geezers were wearing. Doesn’t anyone own a mirror anymore?

So the next time you are out and about and see some old guy with a plaid shirt, checkered shorts, black dress socks, sneakers, and of course a pork-pie hat remember, I put a lot of thought into what I am wearing.  

From the Kitchen; Reading a Recipe

More to the point I should say, how “I” read a recipe. You see very rarely do I read a recipe the way it is printed. I look at the pictures for meal ideas and then choose a recipe based on what ingredients they recommend or what ingredients I can substitute. That is because I am a visual person. (Read my last posting “Visualize This …” to understand what I mean by a visual person.) Show me what the finished dish is suppose to look like and I pretty much know how to go about making it. That is if I have all the ingredients or can make do with what I have on hand. So why do I use a recipe at all? Because there is lots of good information in any recipe, I just don’t feel that any recipe should be used as if it was written in stone. A recipe to me is a suggestion of ingredients, cooking times, and in some cases suggestions on what goes into the pot first.   

For an example I have selected a recipe for a Three-Minute Steak with Pineapple Relish from my Cooking Club Magazine. You can see a thinly sliced steak with relish sprinkled on one end and two side dishes on a plate. The recipe starts by telling you to have your butcher cut the steaks for you. What butcher do they mean? I buy my meat pre-wrapped and on sale. The only butcher I see is the guy who puts the meat out and in my store that would be a stock boy, sorry stock person. But back to the recipe, they then list all the ingredients for the relish and what ingredients to use when you marinate the meat. This is followed by step by step instructions on what to do with all the ingredients and how to cook the steak. This is a typical menu; right? However you still have to look at the picture to see what they suggest for sides and how to plate the steak to make it look appetizing.

 

 

Now let’s do it my way. First of all it is dinner time and I do not have the time or money to locate a butcher shop, find the butcher, then have him or her cut me two small pieces of meat. My wife is hungry now and demanding food. I do the only thing open to me; I locate my freezer, find the meat, and then I dig and chop out the two small pieces of meat on top. Notice how I did this all by myself, without the help of any butcher? What a guy. For the sake of this article let us assume the meat on top was a couple of pieces of frozen flank steak. So now that I have found my meat and while I am thawing it in the microwave, it is then that I take the time to glance through my Cooking Club Magazine until I find a recipe for the meat I am thawing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this case it is the Three-Minute Steak with Pineapple Relish I mentioned earlier. Since the accompanying picture shows suggested side dishes of mashed potatoes and something red. I am now in business.

 

Looking at the picture I see they show the relish sprinkled only on top of the meat. This means I can use this recipe on any type of meat, chicken, pork, fish, or even my all time favorite, hamburger. After all we be poor folks, and hamburger is our most important meal of the day; unless of course we can find us a hotdog or two. However I am thawing flank steak and since the recipe calls for steak, I’m cooking now. The recipe suggests I flavor or marinate the meat with oil and Worcestershire sauce. That way I do not have to oil the sauté pan when cooking the meat, but since the recipe calls for a Pineapple Relish I am thinking of substituting the suggested Worcestershire sauce for pineapple juice and oil instead. I think it will add more of the flavor my wife and I both like.      

 

Moving on to the relish I see that they want me to make enough relish to feed a small army. If you remember we are poor and not that wasteful. I am only feeding two people with an extra bite or two for Maggie May our owner and master mutt. I only need enough relish to fit into the palm of my hand. Maggie, our owner will not be getting any relish since she is on a diet anyway. Therefore in a bowl I put in only enough cut up pineapple to equal the amount I am going to need for this meal. All the other ingredients are for flavor so they will not add any balk to my relish. For that matter I use this “palm full per serving” method for almost everything I prepare. If I am making something like onions, peppers, potatoes, and corn or peas I cut up only enough of each so that when I mix them all together I have a hand full per serving. Lucky for me Maggie does not like anything but meat so I don’t have to make any of that stuff for her.

 

The rest is easy. Follow the instructions the recipe gives. Make the side dishes and try to figure out what that red stuff is behind the potatoes in the picture or what I have that is red. I think I will use canned stewed tomatoes since they go good with potatoes anyway. The only other tip I can give you is to line up all the ingredients you are planning to use in advance of starting to prepare your meal. That way you do not have to grab anything with wet sticky fingers. Remember to loosen or remove the tops from any bottles, jars, or cans. Or you could measure out needed ingredients in advance. Keeps you from playing that, Where is the *%#*%&^ stuff when I want it, game.

 

Cooking should be fun and let you use your creativity. It should not be a mechanical, I have to do everything they tell me to do thing. The first ingredient to go into your cooking pot should always be love and the enjoyment of a finely prepared meal. Maggie always loves any meat I cook and my wife enjoys almost anything I fix; as long as she doesn’t have to cook it herself. That alone makes me a great cook; in their eyes anyway.       

From the Studio; Visualize This

The most important tool a photographer has is his or her ability to visualize. How good a photographer is can be measured by how effectively they are at visualizing what they see. This may sound redundant but once a photographer sees what they are to photograph they must pick the best angle, the right light, what background, camera settings, and so on, and so on. For that matter a lot of us have to visualize what to photograph even before we see it. If a shooter is a working photographer he or she also has to be able to visualize what the client wants photographed as well as how the client envisions the end result to look. Let me tell you from experience what they want is not always what they say they want. With some of my clients it was more about mind reading than it was about visualization. I remember back when I was shooting glamour I learned a whole new meaning to what “Make me look beautiful” meant. I visualized them one way and they saw themselves a completely different way than what I did. To achieve what they were visualizing themselves looking like, I would have had to have been a plastic surgeon, not a photographer.

Good photographers visualize all the time. It makes no difference if they have a camera in their hand or not. For that matter really good photographers don’t have to even be in the shooting mood to visualize what would make a good photograph from what they are seeing or what they hear around them. They see something or hear someone say something and an image pops into their mind. That is what visualization is all about. Taking that image from the mind and recreating it for others to see is the mechanics of photography. I can and have taught budding photographers the mechanics of photography. Almost anyone can learn what makes a good picture. Then again that is why we have camera phones. A photographer creates a photograph from the image that is in his or her mind. That would be the image they visualized when they saw or heard something. Picture taking and camera phones are for taking a picture of what is in front of you.

I consider myself a good photographer. I have been at it for over 40 years. Photography kept a roof over my head for most of those years. Even before the first time I picked up a camera I had that ability to see things in my mind. When I looked at a scene I could focus in on that part of what I was looking at that would make a good picture. When someone said something to me I saw in my mind what he or she was saying. I am a visual person. I visualize all the time, with or without a camera.

I tell you all this so you may learn what went through my mind the other morning when my beautiful, slender wife came home from Curves. (For those of you who may not know, Curves is a workout center for women only.) Keep in mind Curves is not simply for women who may be a little over weight but also for women who what to tone up or just stay in the shape they are, like my wife. Curves is a great place because not only can you work out but they teach you about nutrition. Curves members find themselves in a safe social environment that they can achieve and/or maintain their health.

Having said all that, and I do believe it as well, I still have my photographers visual mind. I am sorry but I see overweight women when I hear the name Curves even though my slender wife is a member. I have looked in and seen that not all those women are overweight. Still I see in my mind what I see; as wrong as it may be. So when my lovely wife, who I might add has lost 45 lbs., came home and told me that a group of ladies from Curves was going to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory… I got this image in my mind that just wouldn’t go away. See what I mean?                          

Take This Job And…

Now that I am retired and do not have a job I sometimes think back to jobs I did have and how a few of them did affect my life. Well more to the point I should say that leaving a couple of these jobs taught me a lot about life and myself. Come to think of it most of the time when I would leave one job, for whatever reason, there seemed to be a sense of loss. You would think I would be glad to be out of there. I even had a job once that I knew had to be the worst job there ever was. The work was hard, the boss was a tyrant, and my co-workers hated me. One morning things were really, really bad and I just couldn’t take it any more. Therefore, I did the only logical thing and turned in my two-week’s notice. Yet at the end of those two weeks, when it was time for me to go, I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to loose what I had no matter how bad it may have been.

I spent many long hours trying to reason why I didn’t want to leave a job that I hated. Truth be told, at the end of those two weeks I would have stayed given half a chance, but why? I know it was not the comredery of the co-workers whom I didn’t like. Nor, do I think it was the weekly paycheck. That thing was so small it never ever came close to covering my bills. Perhaps it might have been the loss of routine in my life, although I doubt it. No the real reason for me quitting that job and then wishing I hadn’t; I would have to chalk up to age and stupidity. I know because not once in those two weeks did I look for another job. The real lesson here was; do not quit a job when you are mad and never quit until you have another job to go to.

Nobody ever accused me of being a fast learner. I may learn well, it’s just that sometimes it takes two or three times to get the message through my thick skull. Time passed but not enough time to cure me being young and stupid. This time I had a job I really liked. The people I worked with were great, the work was challenging, and on top of that the money was fantastic. However, there were a couple draw backs. You see this job was on a boat that sailed around the Gulf of Mexico looking for oil. We had to stay onboard for ten days at a time. To make matters worse I would get a little seasick but nothing I couldn’t handle. The real draw back to this job was my boss or perhaps I should say the bosses. You see they rotated them every ten days too. Every ten days the home office would send out a new boss for the same old crew. Most of them left us alone to do our jobs, but occasionally we would get one that knew, or thought they knew, more than we did about what needed to be accomplished and how to accomplish it.

Now this is where the young and stupid part comes in so pay attention. It was day six of our ten day cruse. Things had not been going as smoothly as they should have. The reason they were not going smoothly was that the home office had sent us the most stupid, boneheaded, ignorant individual they had. Sure enough on 6^th day I found my young and stupid self being chewed out for something I was sure was clearly the fault of the idiot doing the chewing.

I do not know what a more reasonable, more adult person, might have done in this situation but I did the only young and stupid thing I could think of; I quit. I quit right then and there, fifty miles out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, with three and a half days to go on my shift. Maybe I thought I could hitch a ride back to shore on the back of a dolphin. I suddenly had no work I could do on a working boat. Just to rub it in that idiot boss would not let me go anywhere but the galley and my bunk. He said that the type of work they were doing was dangerous; work I had been doing for almost a year. The real reason I could not even go out on deck was because I was no longer covered by their insurance. Once again I learned a valuable lesson by losing a job. Never let my crocodile mouth overload my humming bird ass. Can you imagine anyone quitting a job fifty miles out in the Gulf of Mexico with no way to get home?

Remember when I told you that I learn well but sometimes slowly? Would you believe I quit being a photographer and went into retirement without enough money and nothing to do? Okay I get it now.

Cooks Rule

Cooks rule. Or do we? When Sharon, my wife, and I first got together I liked to cook; she not so much. We made a deal, I would cook and she would clean. For the most part that system works even after all these years. However I am starting to understand how sneaky and underhanded she can be. Not only did she get me to do all the cooking for her; I now believe she forced me to change my eating habits. Oh I know this has made me a healthier and happier person and I am not really complaining, just wondering how she did all this while making me think I was in charge of MY kitchen. I just don’t know if she did all this because she loves me or because of what I did to HER kitchen.  

It all started when I rearranged Her kitchen, MY way. Sharon has always liked her home to have an uncluttered look with everything in its proper place, preferably out of sight. I on the other hand like my cooking items within easy reach. I want my cooking utensils to be quick, accessible, and in easy reach, so I took those frequently used food prep items out of the draws and cabinets and placed them on HER counter tops where I could easily grab them. After all I was the cook and cooks rule. And if I had left it at that I may have gotten away with it; but no, I had to rub salt in the wound.  

The next thing I did in MY kitchen was to build a pot rack over the stove. That way if I wanted a pot or pan it would be hanging right in front of me. I could simply grab it and start cooking. I was so proud of myself. Appliances and other stuff on the counter top and a new pot rack. What could be better? I showed my new wife MY new kitchen. Sharon’s comment was something like, “Well okay, if you want all those pots and pans hanging where everybody can see them and all that other stuff cluttering up the counter tops, I guess it is alright.” Don’t get me wrong. She is no dummy. She may not have liked MY kitchen clutter but she knew enough to let me have my way if she wanted me to do the cooking. At least that is what I thought at the time. Since I was on a roll and not being one to leave well enough alone I agreed to, and even encouraged her to do the grocery shopping too. After all I was doing all the cooking why shouldn’t she do the shopping. I thought I had won another one, but perhaps not.

Back then we were both meat and potatoes people. We ate lots of gravy and sauces poured over rice, noodles, and red meat. Of course this type of diet had our guts pouring over our belts. I didn’t care. I was a happy guy with a beautiful wife who was eating delicious meals that I enjoyed cooking in a kitchen arranged my way. What my lovely sneaky wife was doing was to slowly start buying more healthy food. I hardly noticed when she started buying the same foods but the ones with less calories and lower fat. Over time she introduced more green stuff and brought home nothing that contained salt or sugar. I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t using those pots and pans as much as I use to because I was now prepping food more than I was cooking food.

It wasn’t just the food she was buying either. She started making us take long walks, go for bicycle rides, and she joined Curves for women. Her sneaky plan was working. After all who wants biscuits and gravy after you have walked for 30 minutes before breakfast? Wouldn’t an apple taste so much better? Now the good news here is that over time, and by time I mean a couple years, we have both lost around 50 pounds each. Which I admit is good for us. But remember I like to cook and it seems that I don’t cook anymore. Hell we don’t even eat anymore, we graze on salads and stuff I have to chop and peel. Where is the fun in that? Oh well I still enjoy watching the Food Channel.

So how did Miss Sneaky win? The other day we got to talking about rearranging the kitchen and dinning room. I discovered that of the 16 items on MY counter tops I only use the knives, cutting boards, and coffee pot. Of all those hanging pots on my pot rack I now only use 1 sauté pan and 1 steamer pot. It has taken 10 years but I have to admit my sneaky loving wife was right all along. But how do I admit that to her? How can I tell her that in MY kitchen I have 13 unwanted and unused items on MY counter tops and I only use 2 of those pots on the pot rack? Because if I did that my wife would dance around MY kitchen singing “Told you so; told you so”. Let’s face it, if I took down the pots and pans, cleaned off the counter tops, and admitted to my wife that she was right all along I would have to give up my “Man Card” that I keep in my wallet in the back pocket of my pants. That would be the pants that I have trouble keeping up since I lost all that weight. I just bet you if I gave her half a chance she would even take credit for us losing all that weight and getting heather when everybody knows it is always the cook who prepares the food and who deserves all the credit. What’s that you say? She told me what to prepare? Well maybe, but I’m still the cook and Cooks Rule.

A Kid In A Candy Store

Children are not adults. They like childish things like snacks, cookies, cake and candy.

Don’t we grown-ups like all that stuff too, well don’t we? Of course we do. It is just that our grown-up bodies won’t tolerate all that great tasting stuff.  Perhaps our taste buds might want us to dive into all that junk food but surely not our mid section or our hips. I can’t speak for anyone else but I simply smell some of these goodies and I put on 10 pounds. Think you are immune? Take another look at these pictures and then tell me one of them doesn’t get your mouth watering. Even I, the consummate professional photographer, was tempted to dive in and scruff up some of those taste treats when the clients back was turned, but I didn’t. All I did was sniff, loosen my belt, and kept on shooting.

I guess it is just me but even at my age there are times in my life when I feel like a kid in a candy store.

Only now the candy has changed and keeps changing the older I get.

At my age Candy and the Candy Store is what and where you want it to be.  

 

What’s Your Favorite?

When I was a little bitty boy, everything was my favorite, at least as long as it took me to find a new favorite. My favorite ice cream was vanilla, until mom bought home some Neapolitan ice cream which becomes my new favorite right up to the point when dad took us to the ice cream shop and I discovered 

Rocky Road

ice cream. You see everything is new to a child; therefore everything becomes their favorite thing until the next new thing comes along. Then it is that new thing that is their favorite until… and so on, and so on.

This childish view of favorites lasted right up to the point when I discovered women and music. These two things taught me a new definition of what a favorite thing is and can be. Take music for instance. It is true that in the beginning I did like Rock & Roll music. Rock music was my favorite type of music and the only type of music I would listen to for a long while. But as I grew older I discovered new genres of music and how music does sooth the savage beast, or in my case a wild teenager entering manhood. As time went on I learned that I did have a favorite type of music. That would be any music genre that matched the mood I was in at the time. There were many times that the Blues were my friend, Easy Listening music helped me get through the night, Country music made me think, and Ray Stevens’s songs made me laugh. However when I wanted to dance, just let me hear some of that Old Time Rock & Roll Music. Now, to this very day my favorite type of music is music that matches my mood.

As for my favorite type of woman; let’s just say it has been a long slow uphill battle to discover what type of woman is my favorite. A happy home demands that at this point I state unequivocally, my favorite type of woman now is, and always will be, my wife. But in the beginning there was no way a young teenage boy like myself could choose what type of girl was his favorite type. Should I choose a tall one, a short one, a redhead, blond, brunette, one with brown eyes, blue eyes, maybe green eyes, and did you see that one standing over there? She sure can dance to that Rock & Roll music. How can a boy choose his favorite type of girl with all those different types of girls to pick from? You simply can’t have a favorite, can you? That is until the boy in me discovered the difference between a girl and a woman. You see a woman is the same as a girl but with so much more to offer. It was then that I, the boy becoming a man, discovered the ultimate truth and of course my all time favorite type of woman. That would be; Any woman that looks back, looks good. Therefore the one looking back becomes my favorite. You do know this was all before my wife came along don’t you? 

Now days it seems that the younger generation has no regard for change any more than my generation did back when we were that young. Change happens slowly and our favorite things change too without us even knowing it. Now that we have entered the computer age it would seem that computers have ways to remind us about what our favorites are. It seems like most of the programs on my computer now have a “Favorites” icon. However I have noticed that those “favorites” don’t change unless we change them. When I tell my computer about a favorite site for downloading my favorite music it will always remind me of that site even though my mood has changed and therefore my favorite music has changed. Only the computer doesn’t change. It’s just another thing the computer does to aggravate me. And don’t get me started about putting in a site into my “favorites” that has pictures of women who are looking back. My one and only favorite wife will make me her favorite eunuch if she catches me on one of those sites. I call that cutting off your … Never mind this is not one of my favorite things to think about anyway. So all you beautiful women out there do me a favor and don’t look back, but you can leave me a note or comment and still be one of my favorite people.            

Give’em A Hand

For me it is not so much that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, it is more of the left hand can’t do what the right hand does. The subject about the difficulties a left handed person has came about last weekend when my wife and I were out and about at a dinner party. There in front of me was a simple butter knife. You know that little spreader thing with a handle that has a notched zigzag that makes the spreader a little off from the handle. In case you have never noticed, the spreader or blade is sharper or should I say tapered on one side. If you are right handed it is a simple matter to spread the butter on your bread. However if you are left handed the part you use for spreading your butter is the thicker side of the butter knife. That would be the side that can not even slice through room temperature butter. Which means that getting the butter on the butter knife when you are left handed is a very difficult task at best. Even if you do manage to get some butter on your butter knife that notched part of the butter knife makes it very hard if not impossible to spread the butter on the bread. I know it sounds silly to complain about something so trivial as a butter knife but… it is a fact of life for any left handed person.

In truth, like almost every other time in my life when confronted with a pesky butter knife I simply use a dinner knife to spread my butter. Wouldn’t you know it; at this particular function the lady seated next to me writes a social column for a local magazine making her an expert on etiquette. She noticed me using my dinner knife and politely pointed out how I should be using my butter knife instead. I politely pointed out I was left handed and butter knives don’t work for us so handicapped. This of course got everybody in on our conversation about left handed verses right handed and the woes of us lefties. In truth, most of us lefties just compensate without thinking about what we are doing. Like me using the dinner knife instead of the butter knife. It was then that someone else at the table pointed out that a left handed person has a shorter life span than a right handed person does. Yet we still are not considered handicapped, simply “Disadvantaged” even when those disadvantages could kill us lefties quicker. Think about it, you are a right handed person driving your car when something jumps out in front of you. More than likely you righties jerk the steering wheel to the right putting your car into the ditch. However if you are a left handed person you would jerk the steering wheel to the left into oncoming traffic. With luck the person in the oncoming car is also left handed and you miss hitting one another, except that only 10% of us are left handed so the chances are slim to none.  

 

On the up side I have read that we lefties are more artistic because for some reason we use both sides of our brain when performing a task. This could also answer how left handed people are quietly taking over. Was it not a left handed drunken sailor that kept his wine stash on the left side of his boat therefore making all the right handed people refer to the left side of any boat as the port side? Then there was the left handed, practical joking English traffic cop who made everybody drive on the left side of the road. What about Cupid, he was left handed and that is why we display our love with a ring on the third finger of our left hand. 

My father saw I was “Disadvantaged” with me being left handed. He did his best to teach me how to throw, catch, and kick a ball right handed. He also taught me to golf right handed. Not just because he loved me, which he did, or because he thought I was a freak of nature. No, he knew I was growing up left handed and figured he had to do something to change that because my father if nothing else was cheap. You see left handed sports equipment cost two or three times what right handed equipment cost. Dad wanted me to play sports. So I had to become a right handed sports person. Mom on the other hand didn’t care one way or the other about her cooking or which hand I used. Truth is I never knew how disadvantaged I was until one day I walked into a Lefty Shop. Everything in the store was for left handed people. I suddenly realized there were other people left out like me. On that very day I learned for the very first time in my life that I could cut a piece of paper with a pair of scissors. You think a butter knife was hard for me, you should see me with a pair of scissors. The rule was if I couldn’t cut it with a razor knife it didn’t get cut. The Lefty Shop had left handed scissors. Can you imagine that? Somebody actually made not only scissors but also lots of other things just for me to use and not feel like I was a spastic or retarded. They even had a left handed butter knife.

 

However we left handed people are adaptable and there seems to be more and more of us out there now. Why even the President is left handed. So all you righties out there had better not get left out. However remember as underhanded as you try to get you can never change sides. Ask any politician who has tried it.

I Think It Is Wrong

Sitting here at my computer looking at other people’s pictures I sometimes find things that are… well simply put, just wrong. Take the 2010 Bike Week held in Sturgis So Dakota. You can see all the pictures at strugis.com but I thought I would share what I found wrong with some of their photo; starting with lunch.

 

 

I think it is wrong to have the Clown and King running around on motorcycles when they should be serving me hamburgers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think it is wrong that some guys make their brides ride on the back of their motorcycles instead of springing for a limo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think it is wrong to teach our young people to ride at an early age and then let our old people show up at bike week on a scooter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think it is wrong that some people find themselves in the wrong role even if they are at bike week

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think it is wrong... Just look at the pictures and you will see what I mean.

 

 

 

 

Salad Dressing Not Just For Salads

It was dinner time and I had no idea what to prepare. Standing with the refrigerator door open with no clue as to what I was going to make for my wife and myself to eat. Something that would meet our varied requirements; you know, green stuff for her and tasty but healthy stuff for me. It is at that moment it occurs to me why women live longer than men do. Now follow me on this. They say that you live longer if you can keep your brain active. For men who sit in front of a TV set watching a ball game they cannot count that as keeping their brains active. However coming up with something to eat that makes everybody happy does. You know finding new ways to fix the same old sh.. stuff, and once you do figure out what to cook you also have to find a way to get it all cooked and delivered to the table at the same time. That is definitely using your brain, right? Isn’t that usually what the woman does? That is why women live longer than men do. Anyway back to the refrigerator and how I went about finding something to fix for dinner. This had to be a “leftover night” because I had lots of leftovers starting with one piece of chicken. I could give her, my lovely wife, that piece of chicken but then what would I eat? She likes salad so I could make her a salad and eat the chicken myself. Now before you yell at me and think I am being selfish let me explain how things work around here. We buy boxes or bags of spring mix salad fixings. I add about the same amount of iceberg lettuce to make it go farther and it also adds more crunch to our salad base. I then chop up carrots, onion, celery, and lots of other items one might find in a salad. These I place in individual containers so that they can be added to our spring mix and lettuce mixture in quantities that suit us. My wife loves this and would eat salad 3 times a day if I would let her. So eating the last piece of chicken would be no big deal to her. But since I am such a nice guy I couldn’t do that to her. Although it is true that at times I do cut up leftover meat, chicken, fish, or shrimp in a bag to put over our salad but with only one piece of chicken I didn’t think it would be enough for two. I also had to take into consideration the cat and dog who would be under my feet bagging for their share too. One piece of chicken can only go so far. Closing the refrigerator I moved over to the pantry and found more leftovers. There was a partial box of vermicelli, a half box of macaroni, and some whole grain spaghetti. Maybe there would be enough pasta for one person but not enough to make a meal for two. Of course there was other stuff in the pantry but I ruled out everything I was not in the mood for, like rice and instant mashed potatoes. Although the pasta did sound good there just wasn’t enough of any one of them. That and pasta without sauce isn’t very good. So I moved on to the freezer for a look see. Sure enough I found just what I thought I would, nothing. Since we have a side by side and I was working up a sweat trying to plan dinner I opened the refrigerator door too and stood there holding both doors open and still no ideas for dinner came to this now cool dude. It was then that I spotted the salad dressing in the refrigerator door and an idea suddenly came to me. Salad dressing doesn’t always have to go on just salads. Let’s face it; salad dressings are used to tie together all the ingredients in a salad making them into one dish. Way not use salad dressing to tie together other ingredients as well. Suddenly I knew what I was going to prepare for dinner. From the freezer I took out the shrimp in a bag and started to thaw 6 pieces each. Next I put on some water to boil so I could cook up the, one plus, serving of vermicelli. I then pulled out the leftover chicken and pulled all the meat off the bone and chopped it into bite size chunks. After that I got out all the salad fixin’s and it was then that I spotted a container of mushrooms and another idea hit me. So I cut the mushrooms into the same size chunks as I had the chicken. Put the chicken and mushrooms into a sauté pan and covered them over medium low heat. Now here is that special part where I use the salad dressing, but not on a salad. I got out a bottle of Ken’s Steak House Lite Creamy Caesar salad dressing. Just as the chicken became juicy and the mushrooms were dark rich golden brown and done to perfection I drizzled a small amount of the Creamy Caesar dressing over the mixture. I used just enough to spice up the favor and add a little something extra to the chicken and mushrooms which I then poured half over Sharon’s spring mix and iceberg lettuce mixture and half over mine. I then put the cooked vermicelli into the same sauté pan that I had used for the chicken and mushrooms. You guessed it, I added another drizzle of the Creamy Caesar to the pasta as well. While this was heating up just a little I put 6 shrimp into a salad bowl for Sharon and 6 in a salad bowl for me. Then I divided the spiced up pasta and poured it over the shrimp. There you have it; Chicken Mushroom Salad with a side of Spicy Garlic Shrimp Pasta. Which I might add tasted delicious. I am sure that preparing this meal added at least 2 extra days to my life span for all the mental work I had to go through to make this fantastic dinner. What do you mean I loose 3 days because I used butter to sauté my chicken and mushrooms? Not fair. I am already a dollar short, now you want me to be a day late too?