Yesterday I made the Chicken Dumpling Hot Dish recipe from Jeanne Cooney's, A Second Helping of Murder and Recipes. We liked it. It had good flavor. There was loads of leftover sauce, however, so next time I make it I will either add more chicken (I had cooked two large breasts for this batch.), vegetables (blanched and drained, if frozen), a couple of cooked, cubed potatoes, or some frozen hash browns. I put some frozen hash browns in the bottom of a casserole dish and scooped the leftover hot dish on top of it for a second meal for us, or lunches for me. I had seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper before adding the other ingredients, but next time will only pepper the chicken. The soup already made it salty enough. In my humble opinion, at least. My husband was adding salt to his portion before eating it last night. I can't imagine how that must have tasted. Any relation between that salt shaker and his high blood pressure?
We made a few stops on the Central Minnesota Builders Association tour of homes yesterday. We were not overly impressed. At the first house we stopped at, I would have needed a step stool in all of the closets, and in the laundry room, not to mention the kitchen. The closets all had hanging bars which were out of my reach. In two of the houses the master bedroom closets had to be entered through the bathroom, which I would not like. Fine if one is getting dressed right out of the shower, but what a pain if you just need to grab a pair of shoes or a sweater. I could imagine having to walk over my husband using a sink or the commode while I was trying to get dressed. The million dollar house had a mouse hole in the wall between the walk-in closet and the laundry room for dirty clothes. I would have put the hole up higher so that clothes could be dropped into a basket on the other side instead of being kicked through, and then needing to be picked up off of the floor. I also would have put a door on the hole for privacy. One of the houses had a nursery-sized room (furnished as a nursery for the show) at the top of the stairs, but way down the hall from the master bedroom. I did not think that very practical. Gone are the great rooms of a few years ago. Gone also are formal living rooms and dining rooms. Instead the new homes are designed with huge family room spaces in the lower levels. Not sure if that is a good idea, either. There is such a thing as kids having too much privacy, out of the way of parental supervision. I see family rooms as being redundant when there is a living room in the house. A small play room within sight of Mom's or Grandma's main work areas would be a better option. Second story laundry rooms are another phenomenon which would take some getting used to, as well as laundry rooms too small to hold an ironing board. What's the point? Bonus rooms are also in, but I figure, why not just build a closet in so that they can truly be multi-purpose, serving as an extra bedroom, guest room or work room. Having just picked out new flooring for our house, we thought some of the flooring in these expensive homes to be cheap in comparison to our choices. We saw a patio home with a very noticeable gap between the flooring and baseboard in a bathroom, so construction was not necessarily any better than that in our Fred house, either. The things which I did like on the tour were a built-in china cabinet and sun room in the patio home and the patios and garage floor at the million dollar house. Husband commented on my negativity, but I pointed out that that could be a bonus for him, since I was not clamoring for upgrades! We have plenty of house as it is. Just needs some de-junking, which will continue as we paint and clean for the flooring project.
My Shaklee Basic H came to the rescue again twice last week. The first time was when Arthur needed to remove some tar from his car. The second time was when I went to clean electric tape residue off of the mirror above my vanity I presume it was Fred or Kathy who had put electrical tape around the mirror to hide the black spots. I decided it was time to rip it off. My Basic H worked like a charm.
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