Smurf'd

I've been wanting to write this blog for a week or more now, but I haven't given myself time to sit down and write. After running my "fun" errands this morning, I decided today was the day. I'm going to write this blog like I wrote English essays in college. I set myself a timer (30 minutes), I have ideas flowing through my head, and I'm typing as fast as I can to get it all down.

We'll start with the fun stuff first.

I went to Trader Joe's this morning!  I had seen online that Trader Joe's sells shelf stable whipping cream. This was mind blowing to me because I'd only ever seen heavy cream sold next to the milk in the refrigerated section of grocery stores. Shelf stable? No way! Lucky for me, TJ is somewhat on the way home for me after I drop off my children at school. Originally, I wanted to stock up and keep it around, but the ones at this store were expiring in February 2027.

I grabbed two cartons. They're only 1.79 each for 8 oz! Unless this stuff is fake/bad/gross, this is a great price. From what I read online, it seems like they've got something special here. There have been so many times I've looked up recipes and ignored the recipe altogether or skipped the cream in it because I didn't have it on hand and I wasn't going to trek out just to buy cream. 

For the next four months, I get to add cream and make my curries and stews nice and thick! Yum. I'm excited. 

 

 

My next stop was Sam's Club. I had a return to do and then I wandered around the store cart-less. I got my freeosk item (3 free dishwasher tabs! You won't understand my excitement until you realize how many loads of dishes you do per week and how much money is spent on dishwasher tabs) and then scouted for anything on sale or deals on items I typically needed. While wandering the aisles, I saw Wendy's canned chili for sale.

 

You guys, this brought back so many college memories for me. We had two Wendy's locations on campus and between classes or at night for a "snack" I'd get Wendy's nuggets and a chili. It was enough to be somewhat filling and cheap enough for me to tell myself I was saving money as a college kid. No, I didn't buy this to take home to relive the memories, but it was a fun find.

After walking for a while, I saw some things I needed, one which was an 8 pack of Del Monte canned corn. It only goes on sale this time of year and they're one of the cheapest places I've seen to get it. I paid $0.83 per can. This is less than the generic brands at most grocery stores per can. I know this because I ran out earlier this year and needed to buy some from the grocery store. I paid closer to $1.00 per can for generic brand. I don't care about the brands necessarily. I'm mainly going for the lowest cost per unit. This just happens to be less than generic when on sale so I buy it. 

I walked back to the front of the store to grab a cart, went back through the store to grab the things I wanted to buy: 2 items. And then I went home.

Yesterday, I'd gone to the grocery store and found pork marked down. I picked it up along with two cans of cream of chicken soup. After arriving home and putting up the groceries I bought this morning,  I cut up the pork, added it in with my cream of chicken and seasonings, and set the slow cooker on low for 6 hours. This recipe reminded me of my friend who shared it with me 13 years ago. She passed away 3 years ago from lung cancer. I can't believe it's been 3 years. 

This is a similar recipe to the one I use. Mine is simpler: 2 pounds of pork chops, 2 cans of cream of chicken, Italian seasoning. Slow cook on low for 6 hours covered. I hope her husband still cooks her recipes for their children. I still think of her for two particular recipes she shared with me, this pork being one of them. She gifted me a recipe binder with hand written recipes in them when I got married. I still have all of the recipes even though I'm running out of room in the binder and I don't make some of them because they aren't what we normally eat. But I couldn't bring myself to throw away her hand-written recipes.

And then I sat down and set myself a timer to start writing which is what led you to the beginning of this post. I haven't even written about what the intended title of this post is for yet! I have 12 minutes left on my timer. 

My husband finally got around to finishing some projects around the house in the last few weeks.  One of the projects he wanted to do was to replace our mailbox post. The main post anchoring the mailbox into the ground was splitting down the middle. At some point, it would collapse and be unusable. We had gone to Lowe's and Home Depot a few times to look at their posts. We never purchased one until he did a few weeks ago. He painted it with leftover outdoor paint we had saved over the years. It was a shade of blue. I found this can of paint on the "oops" shelf at Home Depot years ago when they'd mark down mis-tinted paint to sell it quickly. This was a Behr outdoor paint marked down to $9.00 a gallon. This is the same paint I used to paint the outside window trim next to our patio. This is the same paint I used when I repainted our kitchen built-in two years ago. And, this is now the same paint which is the color of our mailbox post. 

I really do like this color. I mean, that's why I bought it in the first place. The morning after he installed it, I looked out the window during breakfast and saw the mailbox post painted blue in the daylight for the first time. My reaction? I giggled. The first thing which came to mind was that our mailbox had been Smurf'd. That's what seeing the blue post made me think of. I don't think any other house in our neighborhood has a blue mailbox post. There's a lot of natural wood ones, and some black and brown, but ours is one of a kind, painted this color. My husband laughed at me for laughing and called it Smurf'd. It's not even Smurf blue, but it's the idea it is now blue which reminds me of the Smurfs. 

Given the election yesterday, I think this is kind of how I feel about the results. I'm not in disagreement with the results, but there's a sense of shock. It actually happened, for the first time in my lifetime which I'm cognizant of. I'm not going to get political in this blog, but this mailbox seems to be a timely representation of the start of something new for our state. It's a change. It's different. And it comes with something exciting. I'm not about republicans or democrats. I don't even want to capitalize those words, and yes, I know they're supposed to be. I'm about taking care of the people. Is that even possible in politics anymore? 

Let's find out.  

p.s. I made my timer limit! This was written in 30 minutes!