Two Pans Three Times Each

Wednesday was moderately successful but I was most happy with my conservation of pan usage.

I had fried eggs for breakfast and left the pan on the stove because I knew it would be used again.

Later, I went out to get chili fixings since my wife intended to make a batch for the CC final meet. She had asked for two lbs of ground beef but all the packages were around 1 & 1/4 each, so I got two and figured we could have hamburgers for lunch.

After an 11 & 1/2 mile barefoot run (sub 8)in light misting, in spite of heavy rain forecast for the day, I made the burgers in the pan.

The second pan is deployed:

After a shower, I decided to make some applesauce since we still have tons of fruit from when we went picking weeks ago. In an hour and a half of peeling and chopping, I used up half the apples and half way filled our largest stockpot with apples. While they were stewing, I browned some Italian sausage in the fry pan for lasagna. Once the apples were stewed and mashed, they were packaged into jars we get peaches in from Costco. Then the same pan was rinsed and used to steam the apple jars for canning. 20 minutes later, it was filled to sufficient depth for lasagna noodle cooking. The pan is of sufficient girth that the noodles can be put into the water horizontally so the depth need only be a bit more than the noodle width.

Each pan used three times!

The Plus and Minus of Staying Busy

I didn't think I would get much done on Sunday.

Friday I had volunteered to work at the Bay State Marathon but on Saturday at the expo, they had nothing for me to do. As it turned out, I was at the expo with Dahlia since I had just taken her to the eye doctor which is located right by the Radisson. She ended up working at the race since there was a water stop organized via her high school CC team.

Around Noon, the day of productivity began with a visit to the grocery. I thought, bbq might be nice and got a pack of baby back ribs.

Home by 1:00 and put away the groceries and got the ribs cooking: First a dry rub, then into a covered pan in a 250 F oven.

Next, a barefoot 7.85 mile run followed by a necessary shower.

Even though I was freshly clean, the next job was an hour and a half of lawn mowing/leaf mulching. The mower has been running great in this cooler weather and with rain coming, this may be a last shot at elimination of leaves.

I took a minute to wash my hands and began assembling the ingredients for spaghetti sauce: Though this is a bit of a misnomer since the intent was to get a key ingredient ready for a later in the week lasagna plan. I also picked up ricotta and lasagna noodles in the above shopping trip. Once the sauce was fully assembled and simmering, I took the ribs out of the oven to let them rest and cool a bit. If they went on the grill in their present fork tender state, they would fall apart and into the coals.

At this point, there was a good half hour before the need to begin final supper preparations: Fire up the grill to put some char onto the ribs and put together some corn bread. Not 30 seconds after siting down to check-out the NFL situation, my wife asked if I had reviewed Surenna's essay. The essay is the girl's college entrance writing and tres-important: In fact the daughter had asked me about it right as I started on the sauce. I groaned at this new task but took up the paper and looked it over in commercials and used these breaks to stir the sauce from time to time. I had just enough time to review my edits with daughter and then set to work with wife on dinner.

After dinner, clean-up and a final shower, it was time to rest. I was too tired to pay attention to TV and too wound-up to sleep.