My Grandmother, bless her heart, could not cook. One of her regular dinner features was hamburgers. She would roll plain ground beef into balls and put them in a black cast iron frying pan at around 3:30 in the afternoon. Then she would fry them for an hour and half. At five pm when my Mom walked through the door, dinner was served. The fried up wads of ground beef were placed on a dish with canned peas and mashed potatoes made from instant flakes. Hamburgers.

Grandma could however, bake. Her scones and pie crusts were to die for. I loved to bake right along side her where I was often treated to samples before anyone else. Subsequently, I don’t really enjoy cooking but I do like to bake. I’m not as good a baker as Grandma or as bad a cook, but I’m pretty unadverturesome (?) in my offerings.

The guys were working outside today. More concrete footings and joists for the deck and sheathing for the house have appeared. E was staining the rough cedar fascia until he ran out of stain. One can of stain only covered 10 of the 24 boards. I made blueberry muffins for coffee break. First time I’ve baked in the new kitchen and could only find one muffin pan.

E brought down more boxes for me to unpack.. We found two large bags of clothes. With it being October, we were delighted to open the bags and find all of my summer tank tops and sun dresses and E found his swimsuit. We also found boxes of flower vases, wine glasses and hooray hooray, the Scotch. We can’t find the clothes hangars.

I’m usually pretty organized and was shocked to discover a box I had marked vases, candlesticks etc. Really, etc??? What the hell was  I thinking, with etc.. I am not a person who accepts the existence of miscellaneous files let alone a box marked etc.. If you are going to go to the trouble to write etc.. just write what is actually in the box.  I must have been really tired that day.

Two years ago my sister-in-law (who is an awesome cook) served us french onion soup. It was delicious. She assured me that making french onion soup is really easy. Shortly thereafter, I was at the thrift store and saw some french onion soup bowls for 25 cents a piece. I grabbed four of them. I had the momentary delusion that french onion soup could be added to my limited repertoire of menu choices..

Apparently “etc. ” means french onion soup bowls because the four unused  bowls were in the box marked vases, candlesticks etc. It has been two years since I bought them. The soup bowls are unlikely ever to be used.  I should have saved the dollar or bought

another muffin tin