Lazy week

This was just one of those regular summer weeks, mostly unplanned days with lots of sun afternoon rains, swim time, and iced tea on the porch.

Planned  meals:

1. Big salad meal

2. Veggie meal

3. Grilled tuna, tossed salad, green beans, mashed potatoes

4. Zucchini cheese strata, tossed salad

5. Stuffed peppers, coleslaw, mashed potatoes

6. We might be going tn Nashville and if we do we will eat out some

7. Ditto

Joys and meals that happened in real life:

Monday: I like to take Mondays and plan out the week, so I did just that, along with a lot of laundry and pool time. TheHub and I swam laps. We rarely swim laps at the same time. (I think it is a competition thing)

TheHub was/is athletic and played baseball all through college. All our married lives he could beat me no matter what we did, except swim. I am a much stronger swimmer than he is and his competitive nature will not allow him to be bested by me.

Dinner: There were things in the fridge that needed to be used.

Stuffed banana peppers, coleslaw, cornbread

Tuesday: I was on hold waiting for My Beloved Sister to let me know when she needed help. BIL had bought a new car in August of '24, and she was selling it. The place she was selling it and she had agreed to a price and all that was left was to deliver the car, get her money and be picked up. Simple right? Nope.  

Our plan was for me to leave 40 minutes after she left. It would (according to what they told her) give her time to do the paperwork about the time I got there. I had already told her it was no big deal if it ran a little over. 3 1/2 hours later!

Dinner: Rotisserie chicken from Publix saved the day. The rest was in the fridge.

Roast chicken, pink eyed peas, cucumber onion tomato salad

Wednesday: Spent the day sorting, organizing or tossing then cleaning the bathrooms and linen closets.  We have a lot of bathrooms and linen closets in this house so it takes a while. Now I have a true picture of what I might need to purchase to meet our shampoo, soap, body wash, first aid, etc. issues for the next year. Not a blooming thing!!! I am overstocked on all fronts!

Wednesday dinner: After spending the day in various bathrooms, cooking was not on my priority list.

Leftover chopped roast chicken in Italianish pasta, tossed salad

Thursday: Woke to no internet. A house is being built in the neighborhood and evidently while accessing water and power lines the crater they dug cut through the ATT fiber line.

I could do without internet or tv but a day without music?

TheHub and I did not go totally digital, and still have a tuner, turntable, cd player, and even cassette player plus thousands of albums, cassette tapes, and cds, decades worth of all genres. So, after dusting it off, I was able to blast whatever I wanted to. The bonus? TheHub met Son2 for lunch so I could really crank up the volume! I felt like a teen, well except for the knees, and back, and . . .  

Thursday dinner: TheHub had eaten a big lunch when he met Son2, so I felt no obligation to cook a real meal.

BLT* salad

Friday: My Beloved Sister came over and we spent about 2 hours in he pool. We both swam laps, then did some floating, followed by more laps.  After getting out, and a quick shower, TheHub and I had some running around we needed to do. We hit 5 different places before heading home.

Friday dinner: We were out later than I thought we would be and decided to pick up a quick dinner.

Chicken, green beans, coleslaw.

Saturday: TheHub and I ran by our favorite produce stand, then ran a couple of other places before coming home for a quick lunch.

More swimming with MBS. While we were swimming, the skies darkened and we played the game "Is that thunder or a plane" . I am perfectly fine swimming in the rain, but not so much in a thunderstorm. We agreed it was a plane and finished our laps. The actual storm happened about an hour later.    

Saturday dinner: We had been to Benny and Brenda's produce stand which meant a veggie dinner was going to happen.

Lady peas, okra, sliced tomatoes, cornbread  

Sunday: We woke in time to make it to the early church communion service, then the 8:30 service in the sanctuary. Our Sunday School class takes the month of July off. Many of our class members have beach houses or lake places and are gone most of July. 

We were going to be through with our church activities by 9:30 and decided to go out to breakfast afterward. We thought about hitting Big Bad Breakfast but their parking lot was full and there was a wait out the door. Nope, we just moved on to Jack's**. 

It is a local fast food restaurant, but the one nearest us had been torn down and rebuilt and actually has a nice eating aren. I am usually a cheap breakfast date as I generally get just a cup of coffee, however, Jack's has a smoked sausage biscuit on their menu that is fantastic. I don't know if they use Conecuh or not, but if it isn't it is a near ringer in the flavor and texture department.

After we came home I headed to the screened porch to read (thankfully we have a ceiling fan out there) and may or may not have dozed until a fierce clap of thunder changed that. Then I got to do one of my favorite summertime things. I love being outside yet protected during a storm, and like most summertime thunderstorms here, it lasted about 25 minutes with lightning, thunder and rain that looked like someone turned on a faucet. Then about as quickly it blew in, it was gone, followed by sunshine and steam rising everywhere. Ah, summer in the south!

Once the grass dried a little I picked about a dozen more pears to pickle.

Sunday dinner: We ate a later breakfast, then skipped an actual lunch, though some snacking took place. We had a boatload of fruit , cheese and different crackers on hand to fill that snacking need. Neither of us were actually hungry for dinner, and I was not really in the mood to cook. Instead we took the easy route and went to the absolutely cheapest place nearest us to snag dinner. Taco Bell to the rescue for a not delicious but adequate dinner.

Two of their regular cheap tacos***

What's possibly up for dinner this week?

1. Stuffed banana peppers, corn on the cob, tomato cucumber onion salad

2. Veggie meal TBD

3. Big salad meal TBD

4. Spaghetti w/meat sauce, tossed salad

5. Grilled tuna steaks, baked potato, green beans

6. Hamburgers w/ all the fixings, fruit salad

7. Take out or out to eat (We did not go to Nashville but it is a possibility again for this week)

Books read in July:

Holly

Eruption

Have a great week staying on plan going off plan or with no plan at all.

May all your weeds be wildflowers.

Anne

* I cook 2 or 3 pounds of bacon at one time in the oven until it is done but not crispy (we like it crispy) then freeze it. When we want bacon all I have to do is nuke it for about 45 seconds. Before TheHub retired that much bacon would last about 3 months, but now that he is home and is on to my bacon trick, he makes a BLT for lunch often. It is disappearing much faster than it did.

** Though Jack's began its life as a locally owned fast food hamburger joint, it added a really good breakfast menu and fantastic chicken dinners. It also has limited monthly specials, and you never know what they will be.

They are all over Alabama, a couple on Georgia and at least one in/near Chattanooga TN. If you are near on and have a hankering for something good give them a try. The biscuits are cat head biscuits just like your granny used to make.

***The bonus (if there actually is one) of going to Taco Bell is having the overage of taco sauce packs they stuff in the take out bag. I can never understand how two tacos require a dozen packs of sauce, however, I will save them and add them as flavoring to something I cook later on.