AND NO ONE DIED OF FOOD POISONING

This weekend I set out to finish up Christmas things and for the most part, I did. I finished ornaments. I finally found that special candy to go in a certain stocking. I rather crapily sewed together a couple of stockings. There was an issue with the sewing machine that involved several swear words and tension adjustments for bobbins. At one point Michael asked me if I wanted to call my mom and have her come and lay in the floor. He's heard the story of how mom would just lay in the sewing room floor while I worked on 4-H projects, but I finally got it working. Stockings are hung by the Wonder Woman with care (I don't have a fireplace). Presents are mostly wrapped and things are boxed and ready for shipping (shipped today!). Most surprisingly is that the house is also clean, dusted and vacuumed and everything, with the exception of the garlic skins floating around the kitchen floor. You see Michael thought it might be more economical to peel our own garlic as opposed to buying the big bag of peeled garlic at Costco. Turns out you can buy a shit ton of garlic for $7 at the City Market. The City Market in the winter is a sad affair. There's not much in way of local, but the spice guy is still there in the conventional section and that's what we were really there for. We went and stocked up on chili powder and cinnamon. Michael bought all of the garlic and then we headed out the door to make our way back to the car. Just before we opened the door to leave, I made a face about having to walk any distance in the cold. It was just so. cold. Michael leaned down to kiss me, to reassure me that I could make it one block, when we heard someone yelling "PDA! PDA!". We turned to see one of Michael's students pointing at him and laughing and we laughed along with the joke too. Michael is all the time telling me stories of getting on to this student or that for a clothing violation or public displays of affection. Here it was his turn with the student catching the teacher. It made me giggle.

I have one of those Pampered Chef garlic peeler things. You put the clove of garlic in this rubber tube and roll it around on the counter top until the garlic skin comes off.The garlic roller thingy is great for when you need one or two cloves of garlic, but not so much for the amount of garlic we had planned. It reminded me of Christmas morning, after we'd open our stockings. There was always a bunch of un-shelled nuts in our stockings and dad would pour them out in a big bowl and spend Christmas day with a nutcracker, cracking nuts. I have yet to figure out if the nuts were in our stockings for us or for dad. He ended up eating most of them. Any way...garlic...we're still peeling. Also, I woke up Monday morning with a bruise on the palm of my right hand from rolling out garlic. We both agree that the bag of peeled garlic from Costco is a steal. While I was in charge of Christmas things and laundry, it was Michael's job to keep us fed. He planned a new recipe from his latest Food and Wine magazine, scallop stew. He bought fresh scallops from a local grocery store. He chopped turnips and carrots and spent quite a bit of time cooking things. When he started cooking the scallops, we noticed an ammonia smell. A quick internet search later and Michael was tossing bad scallops and calling that local grocery store. Turns out bad scallops smell like cleaning chemicals when cooked. His quick action saved us from food poisoning, because I would have smelled the odd smell and shrugged my shoulders. Rotten scallops would have been in that stew. But instead we have lived to eat scallops another day!

This was going to be an entirely different entry, but I've rambled on about garlic and rotten scallops instead. Oh well. At least you got your public service announcement of the day: bad scallops smell like ammonia.