Plus Points, Comet Landing.

Our grocery store awards Plus Points on certain grocery items – different ones each week. I generally try and make sure that the items we want are only bought with Plus Points, of course that doesn’t always work out. The allocation of items for these points is supposed to be based on what we normally shop for. In some cases they obviously aren’t and items I wouldn’t buy because we don’t have kids for instance, get points and are offered to us. I never buy stuff we don’t want/use even though it carries points. 100,000 gets you $100 of free grocery. I often buy a few things and use them but Matt gets mad and wants to save them for a full shop. Well, he got his wish this morning and bought $110 worth of groceries for $10. We still have quite a few points to start building up again. Good system. Same thing with our Visa. We get cash back once a year with the result that we use Visa for practically everything.

The Rosetta Mission involving landing a spacecraft on a comet has turned out successfully.
I was impressed that Google got this doodle up so fast to celebrate this landing. We heard about the actual landing of the Philae Lander at 11:03 Wednesday morning and it didn’t take Google long to have this doodle up at all. This was achieved by the European Space Agency. There is a video on the page as well as an interesting article about the whole mission.

We used to make appetizers like this all the time, haven’t done so in years though. This one came from Food.com

Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts

By Merlot
Even though this is a very old recipe, I thought it might be something new to the "young whipper-snappers" who are unfamiliar with this recipe.

Ingredients:

Yield 16

 

• 1 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts, drained
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 8 slices bacon, cut in half crosswise

Directions:

1. Marinate the water chestnuts in soy sauce for 1 hour.
   
2. Drain.
   
3. Roll each chestnut in the brown sugar.
   
4. Wrap each chestnut with a piece of bacon.5
   
5. Secure with a toothpick.6
   
6. Arrange on a cake rack in a shallow baking pan.7
   
7. Bake at 400 degrees F for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.8
   
8. Drain on paper towels.9
   
9. NOTE: This can be prepared ahead of time and stored in refrigerator until ready to bake.
   

Have a great day

Almost Human. Palaces. Cleaning.

The Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavenaugh, recommended Almost Human so last night I watched it. I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it hadn’t been full of advertising. It was an hour long programme and if I got a full half hour of actual programme I will be very surprised. However, what I watched, I enjoyed. So thanks Alex, and maybe I will struggle through the ads and watch it again. I thought Karl Urban as Detective John Kennex was positively dishy. Don’t tell Matt.

Afterwards we both watched another episode of “The Queen’s Castles” which was about Holyroodhouse Palace. A palace about which I knew very little. A lot of its history was centred around Mary Queen of Scots and her tragic existence. It centred very much in the continuous battle between the Scots and the English which was finally resolved after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Although the Scots still clung to the Stuart cause for many a long year and I think deep down, there are Scots today who would welcome a Stuart on the throne. The name of the palace came from the Abbey, now in ruins, which is close by and Holyrood means Holy Cross.

In passing I will mention my bowling was mostly disastrous although Matt’s was not.

My cleaning lady problem is causing me a headache. Monday my original girl came in to clean bringing a friend with her who has been her support for a while. But, I still don’t know if she is ready to come back to work or not, so I still don’t know what to do about the couple who are coming to me on the 6th. If they do come it’s gonna  be a pretty pricey couple of weeks for me as far as cleaning goes. I don’t want to tell them not to come at the last minute though. I really don’t know what to do. I would rather keep our original girl, she is very good, we are friends, and I don’t have to explain what I want done any more. She promised she would drop in later in the week. I’ve got bald patches from tearing out my hair.

We used to do a recipe similar to this years ago, always delicious, when I saw this one on Cooking.com, I thought it was an ideal appetiser for the season.

Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts

Contributed By: Diana,

Make these simple appetizers and they'll be the first to run out at a gathering. Just 5 ingredients make these delicious treats!

INGREDIENTS
2 cans whole water chestnuts
12 oz bacon
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup chilli sauce
1/4 cup mayonnaise

DIRECTIONS
Wrap drained chestnuts in 1/3 piece of bacon and fasten with a toothpick. Place in two foil lined pie plates or cake pans. Mix brown sugar, chilli sauce and mayonnaise.Pour over chestnuts and bake at 350 degrees for one hour or until bacon is crisp.

Have a great day

Blog Books, Jan 1, Tardar Sauce.

Yesterday I made my blog book: all my posts from July 1 to Dec. 31, 2012. I do this every 6 months. I go to Blog2Print or Shared Books and it costs about $7.45 or so to download your book. You can spend more money and get soft cover or hard cover books, not worth it to me, but I usually print up a hard copy and keep them in binders. Not really sure why, but been doing that ever since I started. That was in October 2007 by the way. I never knew I could babble quite so much. I haven’t actually printed any of 2012 yet, need to get on with it. It’s a bit heavy on ink doing that of course, I have so many colour pix. Bit heavy on that shelf too by the look of it.

Our New Year’s Day didn’t contain much excitement, we just spent the day relaxing. I had cooked a rib roast for New Year’s Eve (delicious), so we ate it cold for supper with collards which we both enjoy cooked in oil, garlic and vinegar. Otherwise we really didn’t do much of anything. I did do a bit of sorting out in my computer room – it needed it. Didn’t do as much as needed but I made a start.

I have been fascinated, for some weeks, by a cat picture that keeps coming up with one caption or another on Facebook. I discover it is called Tardar Sauce the Grumpy Cat. She certainly looks grumpy. I can’t seem to find much about this cat but I did find this video which shows her in relatively normal cat positions. I assume she is actually a cute kitty with an unfortunate looking face. Some of the comments attributed to her have been hilarious. I haven’t owned a cat in years, not since I was a child, but this cat really appeals to me.

I used to love bacon wrapped items like this. Haven’t done them for a number of years, there are all kinds of recipes but this is the one that reminded me of them this last few days and the picture made my mouth water remembering how much I used to like them. There were Devils on Horseback (liver) and Angels on Horseback (oysters) to name a couple. Gotta get some bacon this week.

Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts

Contributed By: Diana, Cooking.com

Make these simple appetizers and they'll be the first to run out at a gathering. Just 5 ingredients make these delicious treats!
INGREDIENTS

2 cans whole water chestnuts

12 oz bacon

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup chili sauce

1/4 cup mayonnaise

DIRECTIONS

Wrap drained chestnuts in 1/3 piece of bacon and fasten with a toothpick. Place in two foil lined pie plates or cake pans. Mix brown sugar, chili sauce and mayonnaise.Pour over chestnuts and bake at 350 degrees for one hour or until bacon is crisp.

Have a great day

Weight Loss, Cyber War,

On GMA today there was a woman, Nancy Makin, who has written a book about how she lost more than a quarter ton of weight. Pictures were shown of her when she was morbidly obese at 703 lbs. and of course how she looks today, although not exactly lissome, she looks marvellous. She has been at her current low weight for 7 years. How did she do it, according to her, by using the computer and connecting with the world. Er, I use the computer and connect with the world, why can't I lose a lot of weight too???? Not, I hasten to point out, that I am anything like the weight she was. Oh well! I see more and more planes are beginning to fly from Europe; what an economic disaster that volcano has been. There was another segment on GMA about cyber war and Richard Clark pointed out that computer hacking by governments could cause similar disasters to this one caused by a volcano, such as paralysing the electric companies or train systems. He says the viruses or malware are in place to achieve such things and says that personal computers are hacked to allow the foreign governments to cause such havoc in an untraceable manner (maybe that's what's wrong with my desktop). He has written a book called Cyber War. Richard Clark is supposed to have been warning about 9/11 for ages before it occurred. He reckons America is not prepared for a cyber attack. Bowling was pretty disasterous for me again yesterday, need to pull up my socks as I have a tournament scheduled next month. I just came across this recipe on Cooking.com this morning and it took me back a few years, we used to make something similar all the time for parties, etc. I must try and find our recipe. Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts Contributed By: Diana Yield: 24

Delicious and first to go at a gathering

RECIPE INGREDIENTS 2 cans whole water chesnuts 12 oz bacon 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/4 cup chili sauce 1/4 cup mayonaise DIRECTIONS Wrap drained chestnuts in 1/3 piece of bacon and fasten with a toothpick. Place in two foil lined pie plates or cakepans. Mix brown sugar, chili sauce and mayonaise. Pour over chestnuts and bake at 350 degrees for one hour or until bacon is crisp. Have a great day