What a good tip! I soak cut potatoes in a warm brine before making oven fries but would never have thought to do that with frozen, I would have thought they'd dissolve or something.
That's amazing. And I applaud you for trying new things.
Around then, yeah. We had an odd confluence of events, landlord selling house out from under us right when I got some bonus $ that would make it possible to do beginning renovations and found a house that was solid but very oddly arranged so people didn't buy it and I could bargain, and a zero down government loan. I was utterly convinced we were buying at some peak, but fuck me, prices just kept getting higher until they now make no sense. I'm sure it's a bubble, housing has to have a relationship to wages in the area.
The city has some programs to help people buy a house, forgivable down payment grants - if you live in the house 20 years you don't pay it back - and others to help low income homeowners with repairs, but of course the wait-list is insane. They are trying though.
What a gorgeous spider, and thank you for the update, I was going to comment that she needs to clean her web!
What the actual fuck? I would charge them with trafficking, that is certainly not anything that could be described as parenting.
The house I used to live in is over 100 years old and still standing, it's not like the hurricanes hit directly very often. Insurance charges like they do, though. And it's not like everyone can just easily pick up and move, where exactly?
Humans live on the coast for a reason. All over the world, population is clustered on coastline all over the world.
On deserving anything - none of us deserve what we get. There are so many who work so hard and get nothing, so many who do nothing and get so much. I often think I am lucky because I'm not in pain constantly, can see and hear and feel, and that is more than many people get, but I don't deserve it more than they do - that just isn't the way things work.
I do think you can earn things and deserve them (sort of) in that way. Like wages.
Better as I get older at least. Other people seem to think I am a good person but I guess we all have impossible standards for ourselves. By Dorothy Parker standards no. "If you have two coats you stole one from the poor." I don't have literally two coats but a dozen sweaters, which are short season items here.
To the extent you can be good and live within the system, yes.
If standing before God and he asks if I did everything I possibly could for those who needed it most, no, I have not, nor have I always been a friend to myself.
Pati Jinich also opened my eyes to a combination I would not have considered - fruit salad with onion! I love it.
On cooking, I guess I'm always learning. Never been a recipe person. Most recently learned that some foods are good burned. Burned cabbage, so good.
Hurricane with 2 week blackout following it.
Tornado but it was a block away - the sky was GREEN. I looked out the window and thought "that's odd" then my brother called and said there is a tornado by you go take the kids to an interior room (hallway was best we could do). It knocked down a checkers and a car dealership, tossed cars around.
NavierA local coffee roasters. I get a two pound bag once a month. Saw the guy delivering to the local cafe and looked them up. So good. Each morning before work I do a batch in a stainless steel moka pot, and bring it in a thermos. There just is nothing I like better than that one. "Cafeteria Blend" it's called.
Two good jobs and digging out from each of us being single parents before we got together but no, we are ok. Can't retire or anything like that but not one bad month from homeless anymore.
I was even in a position to help a friend with a (no interest) loan when she had a very bad month, it was tight for us but not impossible, and my husband did not get mad or worried at all that I did that, so I would say we are well off?
The overall economy is made up of a lot of data points - we are a little bit worse off than we were in terms of cash flow, but wealthier because we bought a house before (well at the start of) the bubble.