Ya'll, I was given a gorgeous mortar and pestle, and I have to say, it is one of my favorite things in the kitchen.

I am not a chef, but Dianthus is correct. Kitchen chemistry. Removing the water content concentrates the flavor just like similar items such as orange zest. You use relatively small amounts of orange zest, but if using orange juice for flavor, you use a lot more of it due to cooking off the water. The thing with dried herbs is that they lose flavor due to light and air exposure over time so if not used in a timely manner, will not provide good flavor. For this reason I keep basil and oregano as house plants since so usr those two herbs a lot. Dried garlic lasts a long time and tastes way better than garlic powder which loses potency fairly quickly under exposure so I keep dried garlic bulbs around, and in the back of the cupboard so their flavor lasts longer.

Just to let you know. He can have your Dd and his friend arrested for theft. 2A is so well protected that most states have no laws making it legal for anyone to dispose of another person's guns (property) without permission until that person is convicted of a felony and only when the court orders it. People are not allowed to protect themselves in this way. The best she can do is document this, record or have witnesses to the threats, and file for a restraining order to prevent him from being allowed back into the house when he is released from rehab. That won't protect her. She can't legally take his guns out. The better plan is to get her and the kids the hell out of there. And yes, she should divorce him so she can get her half of the assets to help her get settled. The thing is, if he gets off the meds and receives treatment, becomes stable and safe, she can remarry him. But she really has NO other method of protecting herself other than to be far away, not in the house because if they are married and the house is still in both their names, he has every right to return to it. The law is reactive, after the crime has been committed for the purpose of rounding up the criminal. The law does not exist to protect anyone, and is the reason so many women and children end up dead when dads' brains go off the rails. She can't stay in that house with those guns if he is coming home to it, she can't legally dispose of his guns, and she can't stop him from returning to the house unless it is tied up in a divorce unless a family court judge has decreed she gets the house. The restraining order is the only thing that a family court judge might take into consideration to prevent him from living there. BUT, even with that, he will likely be allowed to take his guns with him. She won't be safe! Not at all. It sucks. I get it. My father tried to kill my mother and commit suicide - neither act being successful due to his physical condition and lack of planning - and though there was a restraining order against him, since she refused to divorce him (because apparently god hates divorce but not murder/suicide 🙄🙄🙄😡😡😡), she could not stop him from returning to the house when he was released from the psyche ward. It was up to her to find somewhere else to live. She came here, but to be honest, the only reason we were safe was that they discovered his terminal cancer and by the time he got home, he was so weak he couldn't do anything. I wish I didn't have experience with this. Ugh. But ya. She can't stay, she can't take his guns and could go to jail for that which means he gets custody of the kids until the court sorts it all out which is profoundly dangerous and if convicted of felony theft, means he likely gets full custody, and she can't protect the kids if she isn't with them. Get her the hell out of there! They won't be safe once he recovers enough to be mobile and able to carry out a plan, but they will be safer. During the elapsed time, just maybe he will get weaned off the drugs and recover his senses or someone on the medical staff will have an epiphany, order a psyche eval, and he will get committed for a hold and some folks will figure out what is going on with him. And again, should he return to being the person she married, and a safe daddy, she can always remarry him. It doesn't absolutely slam the door on being a family unit in the future.

It is hard, isn't it! I feel like I really need to take over grocery shopping for my mother in law. She way over buys, can't eat it all, and so much goes to waste. She is stubbornly resistant to eating meals I cook and freeze for her even though she raves to her friends that I am an amazing cook. Her 86 year old mind is less easy to deal with than my 3 year old grandson. At any rate, today Mark and I just want to eat light. Scrambled eggs for breakfast with red pepper, potatoes, spinach, and green onions. Salads with boiled eggs for lunch. Fruit bowls with Greek yogurt, and turkey sausage made into gravy with my einkorn biscuits for supper. Nothing fancy or particularly heavy. She wants to make and eat huge, heavy meals all.the.time. because that is how her mother in law and own mother cooked. It isn't healthy, riles up her gut, and creates a massive amount of waste because she can't eat all this food of she doesn't have company over. Trying to get her to change is maddening!

This is too much to put on you. It is also bad for your kids. Schooling/education comes first. They have to get their education and 24 hrs a week during the school day gone will create a lot of hardship for that. Other people need to help out, and that includes siblings who can leather stay over in the suburbs two or three nights a week so she also isn't in the car four hours a day which can be very hard on a cancer patient. Make it known his is a hard no. If you want to help, let them know you can do one day a week. That would be much easier to work the education schedule around. My advice comes from the place of a person whose mental and physical health was almost destroyed by the full time care giving and living in the car for my terminally ill father. I regret it so much,and had to work hard to repair the relationship with my kids.

I had not even thought about checking Dollar Tree. We have a snow/ice event coming tonight, but when it clears, I am going to head over there.

Squirrels are wretched. Maybe slightly leas wretched ham ground hogs, but wretched nonetheless. Here, dh does dispatch them with an air pellet gun if necessary. We don't like to do it, but this year we are planning on seriously feeding ourselves and our young adult sons from the garden so need to prioritize. I just hope our other protective measures work so he doesn't have to do it.

Constant care giving had big me discombobulated. I came home from Alabama for a little rest, and found my mother in law down with a bad case of gasteoenteritis. So I have been cooking for her, and of course right now she can't handle fiber. Her diet doesn't line up with mine, and only just today did I have time and energy to eat well. Peanut butter toast - breakfast and enough coffee to make a horse set a new world record at the Derby. Large veggie salad and tuna sandwich for lunch. Tofu stir fry and vegetables plus hot and sour soup for supper.

This is how I feel. I also have a really wonderful relationship with my husband, my adult kids, and my nephews. I don't want to add new, complicated messiness to this. My parents created enough drama to last a life time. Mark feels the same about his side of the family. His sister has been a nightmare, but he and his brother and their kids as well as his sister's kids and their families are all in a really, really good place. Adding family members with no shared history or connection except DNA could throw a monkey wrench into the peace we have made.

I did a thing! I did a thing! I did a thing! I started another basil plant from an offshoot of the original. I know have two basil plants in the window, and both are healthy. I am a reformed, botanical serial murderer! 💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃💃 Apart from that, I am still in a holding pattern for planting. Our risk of frost doesn't even end until mid-May. I have 32 reusable starter pots though, and will start my San marzano and cherry tomatoes, broccoli, bell peppers, and cucumbers indoors the 3rd week of March and transplant them to the raised beds the end of the 2nd week of May. I have a whole bunch of cheap, white gossamer left from doing backdrops for weddings back when I did event planning. I am going to use that for frost barrier on the raised beds. Mark tried his hand at starting a pineapple from the top of a pineapple he ate a couple weeks ago. It doesn't look good, and is not producing roots (he has it in water) so I think that experiment will be a dud. I am a little concerned that my leaf pile does not seem to be composting at all well. o may get some compost accelerator to add to it when it begins warming up. I am a total newbie at composting so I am kind of winging it.

Thank you so much! I have several more adorable prints. I am a little worried about the fit, the ease of getting little one into the shirt. It unsnaps so I think it will be okay, but I am having Dd put it on T (the hospital is letting him wear clothing now) to make sure I do not need to adjust the pattern before I go and sew any others.

So many hugs, Kelly! 💓💓💓

It is going to be one stinky hairball!

Buzz cut? 😁

A after some delays, I finally have a grandson outfit done.

I have this issue where when someone even says "Wagner", I hear Mark singing " Kill the Wabbit" in his best Elmer Fudd which gives me an all new earworm. Vicious cycle.

Well, yes. But the thing is, that would be a very logical, normal thing to ask. I feel like our chances of normal or logical is just on a scale of 1-10, a -9 at this point! 😁

This. And we don't even come close to taking care of our veterans with this money. I find it beyond offensive. Mostly this is spent on new ways to kill people, garbage that military leaders do not want, but it enriches some politicians rich tech CEO friend. Gross. The waste of resources and metals is an affront to human dignity in the face of climate change. So I have LOT of negative feelings about defense spending. The object shot down over Lake Huron is being reported by local observers as looking very much like one of these spy balloons, same shape, smaller, shock cord (strings) hanging from it. Of course that is speculation from folks related AF and CG personnel. Nobody knows for sure. I was practically rooting for aliens, but probably won't get that bingo on my new card. I think I need to get bizarrely creative with my bingo card for the next round. I am thinking, "Aliens land on earth demanding to settle the question, 'Budweiser or Michelob?' ".

Six weeks.

We have a local nursery here that's our favorite and stocks species that are best for our region. We have two nurseries we have purchased from in Alabama, one in Hazel Green, and one Arab.

Here is an explanation of the symbol. I have seen numerous boom ranking systems online all say the same thing. Bulk order by author or publicist. https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/methodology/ https://bookriot.com/buying-books-onto-the-bestseller-list/

It's not because of popularity. If you notice the dagger symbol, that is the symbol that is used to indicate that the author has bulk purchased the book in order to up the quantity purchased in order to get on the list. They began using this after they were called out for authors buying huge amounts of their own books in order to get on the list. It seemed like a bit of dishonesty so they agreed to use a symbol to indicate that bulk sales from non book sellers is the reason the book crossed the threshold of sales in order to make the list.

Yes, and the covid was right before she became pregnant, and has been a complication. It has been a long haul.

This is why SpyCar and I say she has just exchanged one cult for another.

T is still in the NICU. He has been upgraded to progressive so his only support is his NG tube for feeding. He is now saying awake and taking a bottle at every feeding, managing about half of his intake by bottle, and the rest by tube. He had gained a pound. I got to hold him Tuesday night. His little head fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. He looks like his Uncle P, complete with strawberry blond hair and eyebrows. So now it is a waiting game because the only thing keeping him from coming home is being able to take the full amount at every feeding by bottle. Dd would like to eventually get off the pumping routine which is exhausting, but he is a long long way from being able to nurse. My mom flew down and is taking over for two weeks of grandma duty with the kiddoes. Dd and hubby are finally over their cold viruses and able to be at the hospital again, but they only go one at a time so that mom doesn't have the full dose of both, energetic grandsons alone. She is a good cook, and doesn't mind doing that for them. She is also reading aloud a lot to both, and doing little projects with them so Dd can nap each afternoon. I drove home yesterday. Multiple highway grid lock delays so my 11.5 hr drive was 14. I am very, very tired today, but managed some sewing. I have two major rocketry meetings, one tomorrow and one next week. Then I will make plans to go back.