Before I throw it out...

Something found typewritten, on an odd scrap of paper, most assuredly something of my mother's, from a time I assume she assiduously pursued the middle-class, Ozzie-and-Harriet dream (though it may very well be that my assumption is dead wrong, too).

Sunshine Punch

6 oranges
6 lemons
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
2 quarts ginger ale
1 quart charged water

Boil sugar and water to a syrup and cool. Add orange and lemon juice. Place in large punch bowl over cake of ice, add ginger ale and lastly the charged water and serve at once.

I wonder if this will taste any different if I pay cash for the water? <rimshot>

Cheers...

Catching up...

Galina and I find ourselves in silent revolt against eating out, not because we have anything in particular against the food served in restaurants around here - although that's not to hint that Pagosa is any sort of hotbed of cordon bleu cuisine, necessarily - but because of simple economics.

A dinner for us and the kids (four adults, two children) at a place like Ramone's, for example, will run about a hundred bucks, and that's if Galina and I split an entrée. And Ramone's is not expensive, as Pagosa restaurants go.

Saturday night, with Mike and Karen visiting, we served spaghetti squash, a 2-pound roast, a salad out of a box from the store, celery, radishes, and some crackers with home-made guacamole, and if we throw in the bottle of wine and the tiramasu for dessert (supplied by Mike and Karen), I'm pretty sure we were in the vicinity of maybe $50 overall for a fine dinner for four.

For yesterday's dinner, we baked some frozen salmon from the local City Market (the package says "wild caught" and the price is right) and served it after a course of Galina's home-made mushroom soup (using some of the recently dried mushrooms I'd picked). The salmon was accompanied by mashed potatoes, more of the celery, salad, etc., and topped off with more wine and the rest of the tiramasu. It was a grand dinner, and again, quite economical.

* * *Mike and Karen went over to Bayfield yesterday morning to participate in an agility event with their border collie, Dana, and Galina dropped me and Shiloh off there late in the morning on her way to Durango to check out the skinny on the flea market that's apparently in season (and has been for several months) near the county fair grounds. The agility event was pretty laid-back, and I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure it's something that I might want to get involved with (sort of along the lines of the dog sled teams Galina and I saw during our first winter after moving to Pagosa, which were quite exciting to watch).

Another thing that's... well, not exactly exciting to watch, but pleasant nonetheless, is the evening sky as days draw to a close and things are get quiet around here.


There's a part of me that wants to goof off today and make up the lost work time tomorrow (as has been mentioned before, and not just once: freelancers don't really get holidays). Another part of me knows that if I do, I court bad mojo.

I wonder, is there a middle course?

Cheers...