Chili

Hi Natty!  How are you feeling today?  I suspect your emotions have calmed down somewhat, and you are back in the real world.  Well, I hope you are feeling healthy and happy and everything is easy going for you.  I have had enough of lentils!  Today it's back to chili.  I had a pot of beans slow cooking off and on the stove top for the past couple of days.  The key to great chili folks, is to focus on the beans.  Make sure the beans taste great THEN add the beef.  It's a good idea to wash the beans first before you soak them.  I think I did that, I don't remember.  Don't throw away the water that you soaked the beans in!  Cook the beans in that water!  Add more water as you need it.  I haven't been adding tomato paste into my chili lately, but today I decided to do that.  I dunno, I just felt like it.  The result is, that it tastes like chili.  It doesn't taste unique, it tastes exactly like chili.  It tastes so NORMAL.  I think those lentils really messed with my head.  And my jaw.



I have a white rose bud in my yard growing bigger.  When it blooms, I'll have Mary Unknown7 start wearing other colors again.  Sunday is still black, though.

Lentil soup

Hi Natty!  How are you today, Honey?  I hope all is well with you.  It's just the usual going on here with me.  Today is laundry day.  I cut the grass in the evening.  I had ramen for lunch and *sigh* lentil soup for dinner.  The lentil soup was thick and rich, it was so good that I could cry.  I'm not crying because it was good, I'm crying because I'm despondent.  I'm despondent that I couldn't find anything new and exciting to do with lentils, and got the best results by sticking to old-fashioned ways.  I didn't have to do much to it.  I bought some curry at the corner restaurant and heated it up, blended the lentils then added it to the curry, cooked it at low heat and stirred often to stop the lentils from sticking to the bottom of the pot.  That's it.  Yes, the cats were fighting over it.

Defeated by lentils

Hi Natty!  How's it going today?  Is everything cool and peaceful?  That would be awesome.  So what would you like for dinner?  Lentil salad?  Yuck!  Lentil burgers?  Are you kidding?  I have to concede that at this time, I have been defeated by lentils.  Lentils will NOT be prepared in non traditional ways.  Maybe in the future, I might have the stubbornness to try again.  But today, my jaw still hurts from yesterday's lentil fiasco.  I couldn't sleep last night because of the pain.  I had to take a couple of aspirin just to get a couple of hours sleep.  Of course, I was scheduled to do some chores early in the morning.  That and I just bought a kilo of snack peanuts that I can't eat.  It's a good thing I portioned the peanuts out into mini ziploc bags, and put them in an air tight metal container.  Hopefully they won't be stale when I attempt to eat them again.  So what's for dinner?  I managed to choke down a couple of sandwiches.  But tomorrow, it looks like soup.  Lentil soup.

Lentils

Hi Natty!  How are you today?  I hope you are happy and healthy.  I have a feeling that you are socially idealistic nowadays.  Which is fine, of course.  It should be be public knowledge how beautiful you are and that you are benevolent and generous, but perhaps you are feeling extra loving lately.  I wish I could be there with you to absorb your love because it would be great for me.  But since I'm not there with you, please use your brains when interacting nowadays.  It is more likely that people are feeling the exact opposite of you.  I would hate it if you got suckered, and I would hate it even more if you got suckered into self-destruction.  So please be cautious.

The fridge rules the menu in my house.  Yesterday I bought a loaf of bread, a 5 pack of ramen, some mushrooms and fish cake.  I was planning to cook ramen for lunch, then my Mom gave me some fish curry.  So I ate that with some bread, and I just had mushroom cheeseburgers with fries for dinner.  I'm full!  I have a bag of lentils in my cooler that has been sitting there since the start of Ramadan.  That's more than a month ago.  Lentils are cheap, but the problem with lentils is that you can't get too creative with it, or it will taste like hell.  My mother has a great recipe for lentil fritters, plus there's lentil soup/curry and hummus, but what else?  I thought I would take it as simply as possible, and fry up some lentils with salt.  Simple, right?  It tasted great hot fresh out of the wok with a nice texture, but after a few it became unpalatable.  Not chewy, gritty, hard or anything like that.  It hurt my jaw.  Right at the right hinge.  It still hurts right now.  What do I do with these damned lentils?

Took a ride

Hi Natty!  How are you, my love?  I hope you are happy and healthy.  Are you still staying inside?  I do so because it is my nature.  The lockdown was something I actually enjoyed.  But this evening I went out.  I had to get gasoline, so I went out on my motorcycle.  I also had to put air in the tires, and buy a few groceries.  just some bread and ramen.  I ate out for dinner at Ina's.  I had to sign a guest list.  The prime minister declared today that Covid-19 had been contained, so everywhere I looked people had taken off their masks.  I only wore that mask when I was in a confined area with lots of people anyway.  Logically, the virus had saturated the atmosphere months ago.  Either the humans adapted or didn't.  The ones that adapted survived.  I guess eventually the immune system adapted as well, so one can carry the virus but nothing bad happens.

Love

Hi Natty!  I love you!  My cats are in the mood to be so cute right now.  Look at the beautiful valentine they made this morning!  That's just the girls though.  Bro didn't want to get involved with such mushy stuff.  He's a macho cat.

I made some tortillas for dinner today.  It's been a while since I rolled out tortillas, pita bread is much easier to deal with.  My Dad got hooked on tortillas lately.  He calls them "wraps", because the manufacturer calls them wraps, I think the whole country calls tortillas "wraps" by now.  You can buy tortillas at the supermarket, but I prefer to just roll them out myself.  If the bread is fresh then it's good bread, even though the dough was a bit dry today.  You are probably used to the packaged stuff, and that's fine.  You can get Mission tortillas here.  I used to eat Mission tortillas all the time.  Over here they call them "wraps".



Perfume makes the best TikTok videos.  If they make TikTok videos regularly, I will post them here regularly along with the Jap kids video, even if it's only 10 seconds long.  I want more TikTok from Perfume!

What does it mean?

Hi Natty!  How are you feeling today?  Aw don't you worry about a thing, my Precious.  I want you to know that I love you with all of my heart, and I will marry you inshaAllah.  Hey, check it out!  I caught all 4 of my cats snuggling with each other, with my crummy camera.  I thought it was a temporary thing, but today they did it again.  The kittens just need a surrogate mother, and Floofy is just a sweetheart (even though she bullies her own kittens).  I think it's Lookie who is being the idealistic one right now, and making love meows to the other cats.  Lookie is the pampered pussycat, she's never been outside, never missed a meal, the only trouble she's had in life is from her mother.  All my cats are finally getting along with each other!  For now.  Could this mean nothing but peace and love for my family?

There's certainly no peace for my dinner, that's for sure.  I had the other half of the fish head today, and I had to lock up my cats in the kitty litter room so I can eat in peace.  Sometimes they ignore what I eat, sometimes all 4 of them aggressively attack my food while I'm trying to cook it.  It can't be my cooking, it's not even my cooking today!  I bought the gravy from the corner restaurant!  But lock up the cats I had to, and I got to enjoy my fish head with all its finger-lickin' goodness in peace.