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This has been a peaceful, quiet weekend, except for spending this afternoon
with Turbotax.
Friday night Nancy and I watched Judi Dench in Mrs. Henderson Presents, a British film set in London in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It was a pleasant little movie... and (although I am sure there were a number of changes from reality) based on actual London theatre history.
And Saturday was also a quiet day...
Nancy had gone shopping in the morning -- to a teacher outlet featuring
odds and ends (fabric, office supplies, all kinds of stuff) donated by
businesses with leftover material that they can't use, and teachers can
pick up this stuff for thirty cents per pound -- and then to Kohls (where
she got some fantastic bargains in clothing).
Last evening, just as I was trying to figure out what to fix for dinner
(and attempting to figure a meal that would not require a trip to a supermarket)
Jill showed up, soon joined by Eli.
I noted that I had frozen chicken breasts I could fix or I could do some
kind of meal involving pasta since I had some tomato sauce I had made and
frozen a few weeks ago. (I have always liked homemade sauce better than
the bottled factory-made product -- and now that I'm watching salt intake,
I especially prefer my own sauce.) |
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Jill said that she was craving lasagna and said that she would use my spaghetti
sauce and she would make it.
That sounded like a fine idea to me. Since I didn't have to cook, I made
a salad (mixed spring greens with Vidalia onion) and cut up some veggies
(carrots, green beans, celery, and cucumber) to use with French onion dip.
(Yes, I know, the dip has a fairly high sodium content, but I don't consume
very much of it.)
The photo on the left shows Jill washing an eggplant. She fixed sliced
eggplant as if it would be used to make eggplant Parmesan but then layered
it into the lasagna.
The photo below shows Eli (yes, he is quite tall) and Jill at the stove
-- he is dipping the eggplant slices in an egg/milk mixture and then in
breadcrumbs and Jill is browning them in the skillet. |
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And here's the final product.
I'm afraid I didn't think to get the camera until after we were finished
with dinner. (The green is spinach -- we almost always put spinach in our
lasagna. I must confess that I usually just use frozen spinach but Jill
used fresh organic baby spinach.)
So... we had a good meal... and Jill & Eli had picked up a movie --
The Nines -- a very interesting indie film, written and directed by screenwriter
turned director John August.
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We all enjoyed it. (And at Nancy's suggestion we watched it again this evening.)
And today was a quiet day at home -- although it was also a somewhat painful
day. Yes, we did it -- we started our income taxes. Arrrrgggghhhh!!!!
That was how we spent our afternoon. We did Jeremy's and Gillain's returns
and got ours started... just enough to see how painful it is going to be.
Now we have to put in some time going through credit card lists and checking
account statements to be sure we have found all of our deductions (and
have them documented -- the IRS is getting extremely nasty about that --
even though I know every year there are lots of deductions I do not take
because I do not have enough of a paper trail). Yeah, I suppose it would
be easier if we used Quicken all year and documented everything in there
and set up special files... but that would just have me angry all damned
year long about those corrupt and incompetent political hacks who run both
the national and state governments to please those who bribe them make campaign contributions. (You see what I mean... I'd really have high
blood pressure problems!)
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