Wednesday is Anti-Procrastination Day

Hey friends and fellow bloggers,

I hope the week is going well for you.  It's been a bit busy for me but not with anything major. I just have a lot of little things to do and small things to catch up on. Don't you find that little things seem to take more time somehow?

I completed the murder-mystery by Canadian author Shari Lapena. I enjoyed it but the ending left me a bit disappointed though I think someone else may find it suits them fine. I don't want to say more because I know many of you are fans of murder-mystery novels so I don't want to give anything away.  Currently I'm reading, The Lemon Tree Hotel and Arctic Man both of which are good for different reasons. However I  wouldn't say they are totally engrossing.  Just satisfying and satisfying is good enough.

I'm still working to try and keep the meals tasty and interesting.

These are a few of the meals we had in the past few days.

Stir fried beef and onions and stir fried noodles with chili and vegetables.

BBQ Ribs and Kraft dinner with side of coleslaw (coleslaw not in photo)

Curried cauliflower & split peas served with rice and homemade chapati

Penne-pasta-lox-n-spinach with caesar salad.

BBQ-salmon-pilaf-salad

 

I think I mentioned that I try to follow the Fly Lady household routines. One of the big principles is to clean and shine your sink at least once a day. I try but often it seems like I don't get to it until very late at night.  It takes me so long just to wash the dinner dishes after I've finished eating dinner. Now and then I get ahead of the game and it always feels good to have a nice, clean sink.

Yesterday I paid the fee for the community garden and asked my nephew and his girlfriend to take over the plot once again this year.  After that I'll decide whether I want to continue renting the plot going forward. My nephew and his girlfriend gained some valuable gardening experience and I was able to focus on my patio garden and also catch up with a lot of projects and tasks at home.

One of my favourite days is Wednesday which is called anti-procrastination day in the land of Fly Lady. I usually am able to get one niggling item out of the way on that day, sometimes two.  I think it helps me to stop thinking about my long list of items during the week if I have a dedicated day to work on them. Of course, if I'm up to it I can also work on such tasks on any other day.

Errand day is on Thursday and I usually run to the post office, grocery stores and the library. Actually grocery shopping usually takes me about 3 separate errands on different days but Thursday is the main shopping day and some weeks I don't have so much to buy. Tomorrow I am expecting a package and I'm looking forward to it.  If it turns out to be helpful I will write about it in a future post.

Friday I'm also expecting a long awaited delivery of grass fed beef from an area where the ranchers were flooded out in November. You might remember me writing about the floods and the destruction of a major highway from Vancouver to the Interior of BC and beyond. I'm surprised the rancher has anything to deliver but I'm anticipating they won't be able to fulfill all their orders, possibly even mine so we shall see what happens.

We had some sunny days last week and fog earlier in the week. The weather forecast was for possible snow today. In fact it is did snow but barely and it quickly melted before the rain started.

As you can see, the sky is very gray and not very interesting unless there are some distant lights to look at.

Other things keeping me busy are liaising with long distance friends and relatives, watching a lot of Netflix, daily devotions and prayer and the daily things that keep the household going.

What about you dear reader? What things kept you busy this week?

Whatever it is you are doing, I hope you are keeping healthy and happy.

Weekend

For those of you who do the majority of the cooking in your household, do you ever get tired of it or not feel up to making the meal? I've found I've cooked a lot more than ever during the pandemic and unlike some folks I have barely ordered food from anywhere to eat in or have it delivered. 

It hasn't been easy as many of you will already know to dine in at most places. Additionally I always think I can make dinner in the time it takes to place an order and have it delivered.  But every now and then I need a change. 

The dinner in the photo below was what we had on Friday. It is a Vietnamese dish of Lemon Grass chicken and rice noodles, salad and a roll dip with vinegar sauce. It was so delicious. I've yet to try making anything other than salad rolls (made with rice paper) and I know and I keep telling myself to get started learning how to at least make some lemon grass chicken and Pad Thai noodles.

 

Saturday night I made stir fried noodles with vegetables and spices (sweet chili sauce, garlic, onions, carrots, zucchini and bell peppers).  I made stir fried beef with onions in soya sauce to go along with it.It was quite nice too. Sunday dinner will be some roasted steak meat along with some roasted vegetables and salad. An easy dinner in the oven and a bag kit for the salad.

I had a bit of a sweet craving and I decided to use up a can of blueberry pie filling. I made a lazy pie with store bought dough, a can of blueberry pie filling to which I added some frozen berries. It was okay but I didn't much like the taste of the pie crust. I will have to make my own next time but I wanted to at least see how the ready made tastes.

 

Have any of you seen the Netflix series called The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window?  What did you think of it?  I watched all 7 episodes over Friday and Saturday. It's a dark comedy/thriller/mystery and "borrows heavily" from the movie The Woman in the Window starring Amy Adams. Overall it was okay but a bit hokey in parts and there was some weak writing here and there.  One such example is the overuse of the word "bingo" uttered by Kristen Bell who plays the series lead. This might not have been that noticeable except that it was used only in the last 1.5 hours of the series so came across as overused.

I also watched Room 2806:  The Accusation a documentary film following events arising from the 2011 sexual assault case involving French politician, Dominique Strauss-Khan (DSK). I had heard about the sexual assault allegation on the news but had not followed the case or known exactly what happened to DSK. Some of you might remember that he was head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at the time of the charges against him and a very powerful person in the world's system.  He was heavily favoured to become the next Prime Minister of France after Sarkozy before the accusation ended his career and political aspirations.

Two books I picked up from the library on Friday are underway.  They are rather different from one another. The Lemon Tree Hotel is about a family run hotel located in the Cinque Terra region of Italy. It's a pleasant, romantic novel which makes for some lighter subject matter.  Not a Happy Family is a murder mystery of an elderly, wealthy couple whose offspring all have reason to come under suspicion for the demise of their parents. I haven't gotten far enough along to see what the details are as of yet but the author, Shari Lapena is Canadian and I've read another of her books, The Couple Next Door which I enjoyed.

I've had a good weekend so far.  On Sunday I have a lot of little administrative and paperwork tasks to do and I also hope to do some reading. Lest you think I only cooked and ate and watched television, I did manage to do some errands and wash and fold some laundry. 

Thank you to one of my blog readers, Jeanie from The Marmalade Gypsy who helped me figure out a way to leave comments on blogs once again. Saturday was the first time in a very long while that I was able to not only visit several blogs but also leave comments. Thank you too for your visit today. I appreciate you.