Today’s Business: 2010-07-28
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010Today’s Activities
- Shower. DONE.
- Cat duty. DONE.
Log
09:00 AM: I’m up.
09:45 AM: Starting the beef + grain soup in a few minutes. First, I’ll brown seven or eight pounds of stew meat, then, throw the grains, onions and the beef into the roaster and let it cook all day. The roaster in this scenario serves as a gigantic crock pot. By this evening therefore, we should have eighteen quarts of delicious soup / stew to eat. Yum!
10:40 AM: All beef cubes have been browned with Mom’s assistance, and added to the roaster along with the grain, onions, and salt. We’ll put in the beef bouillon cubes later. Gee, I hope that five pounds of grains won’t expand excessively. But, just in case it overflows the roaster while cooking, I have several additional big pots standing by into which to scoop the excess. I’ll check the progress of the stew every hour or so throughout today.
02:20 PM: The grains are tender now and have absorbed quite a bit of water. But we only experienced a small overflow, which we ate for lunch. 
now I’m allowing the roaster to cool for a couple hours before spooning the grain stew into freezer containers.
05:15 PM: Well I did use an extra slow cooker, because as folks on Facebook suspected, the grains really “exploded” in the last hour or so. Perhaps next time, I’ll use 4 pounds of grains instead of 5. Also, the grain stew has been packed in freezer containers and carried downstairs to the ice box. Now I’m just cleaning up the roaster and slow cooker, and the pan we fried the beef in.
06:00 PM: Cleanup from the grain stew project is complete.
07:00 PM: Watched KDKA TV’s Local News at 6:00 PM.
09:00 PM: Talked with [Ron], who has just returned from camp. He filled us in on how everything was. He said that few campers liked the shorter session (by one day in fact), but that they made the best of it and enjoyed themselves. No long hikes this year — only a two-mile one. They missed my music. But [Rick] filled in, in my absence.
[Ron] said he disagreed with many of my reasons for not going, and he seemed genuinely disappointed that I did not attend. I explained the two nasty encounters I had with [Prism], and how I didn’t like watching the camp experience slowly but certainly erode right before my eyes. He understood, I think, but even after a twenty-minute monologue in my defense, I still got the impression that he didn’t consider my reasons sufficient for opting out of camp this year. Well, to each, his own I guess.
The truth is that he need not understand. But I understand, and I’m the one that I must please ultimately. But I’ll see [Ron] at the alumni convention in August, and that seemed to make him happier. Hopefully he was not insulted at my decision to skip camp.
10:40 PM: [Emmy] and I read more of the Frankenstein book.
11:35 PM: Watched KDKA TV’s Local News at 11:00 PM, but we’re headed to bed now. Enjoy your evening and look for more of my story tomorrow here at Tom’s Diary. Good night.
Received Mail and Shipments
- Mis-directed mail.
- $10 coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond.