Verna and I have been watching NFL playoffs this weekend, but there is still enough time to enjoy our weekend meals. Yesterday, it was home made chicken pot pies (yum!) and today we had this great southern tradition - chicken fried steaks with mashed potatoes, savory bacon green beans and cut corn. The steaks weren’t the usual bottom round cut, but beef tenderloin (filet mignon). Verna also sauteed some baby portobello mushrooms. Click on the image to enlarge.
We bought this bouquet of Red Roses and Stargazer Lilies at the flower stand in the supermarket yesterday. They look very pretty on the sofa table in the great room. Click on the image to enlarge.
I snapped this photo of the Weaver Mountains that are about 25 miles north of town. We were on our way to do our weekly grocery shopping. The cloud shadows give the mountains a very photogenic appearance. Click on the image to enlarge.
Compost red wiggler worms slow down their consumption of organic scraps in the wintertime, but we humans keep producing the scraps. So, to reinforce the worm workload, we ordered a thousand more red wigglers from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm.
Image - the compost bin after introducing the new worms. Click on the image to enlarge.
The worms arrived in the mail today, so to get things started, I gave them a “drink.” The worms are packed in dry peat and come in a bag (see insert in photo). The next step was to dig down below the organic scraps in the compost bin to the layer of worm castings below. I added some moist garden soil and put the ball of worms on top of the soil. The instructions that come with the worms say to cover them with a wet newspaper. The worms will absorb the moisture and begin to crawl into the soil and thence start consuming scraps within 48 hours.
Verna has been watching the Food Channel lately. She saw one of the chefs prepare a German-style meal. This gave her the idea to come up with our Sunday menu consisting of breaded pork loin cutlets with potato pancakes and Brussels sprouts. In German, it would be called “Jägerschnitzel mit Kartoffelpfannkuchen und Rosenkohl.” All I know is that it was great! The pancakes were topped with a dollop of sour cream. Missing from the picture is a heaping spoonful of apple sauce. Click on the image to enlarge.
We went to the range today for our weekly target practice. We took three handguns with us: “Jerry Lee,” my .357 magnum revolver, “Little Boy,” my Glock 26 9mm pistol and Verna’s unnamed S&W 908S 9mm pistol. We shot 50 rounds of .38 special and 100 rounds of Luger 9mm parabellum ammo for a total of 150 rounds shot downrange.
Video - Verna shooting “Jerry Lee.”
Now that we’re getting back to shooting on a regular basis, we can see ourselves improving after the long period of not shooting while we were building and getting moved in to our new house. The Better Half put a nice group of rounds on the small target at the top of the stand and I got three or four rounds out of 10 within two inches of the center of the big target. The other rounds were all in the black. We were shooting at a distance of about seven yards.
When we returned from running errands today, we were greeted by a covey of quail on and around the courtyard wall. We have seen them do this before, but this is the first time my camera caught them in the act. When we first arrived, there were five or six on the wall but as I approached with the camera, they started to retreat toward the wash. Click on the image to enlarge.
