“And for tonight’s dessert, a real treat,” Karla said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Strawberry,” she responded.
“You mean, ‘strawberries’?” I asked.
“No, strawberry. Look.” She pushed the bowl toward me and there in the middle yet touching all the edges, was a single humongous berry.
“Where’d you get these?” I asked, incredulous.
“Where else?” Karla said, knowing I would figure out what she meant by her cryptic response. Costco.
Speaking of Costco and Humongous, we’re going to try their potatoes. They look like Russets, but they’re not. I think if I were in charge of giving them a name, I’d probably call them Melons. Truly, those potatoes are gigantic.
Wait until it’s watermelon season. Costco will probably feature melons the size of donkeys. Too bad they won’t have legs like donkeys. That’d be handy in getting them out of the store to your ca— I mean, truck.
Karla had four big kettles going all at once for about four hours and churned out a whole mess of potatoes for the salad she’s making for a wedding feast this coming weekend.
A dozen-dozen eggs, two gallons of mayonnaise, a gallon of dill pickles, three kinds of onions, eight big bunches of celery and who knows how much chopping of everything and stirring it into a great big mass. Then poof! Potato salad for a couple of hundred people magically emerges.
Piece of cake.
I just got a comment from longtime reader, avis, telling me that I am missed. My first reaction to being missed is "It's better than being HIT!" So much for corny humor.
My naturopath doctor, who only deals in natural remedies, has helped me get rid of the mini-seizures that plagued me on a daily basis for at least a couple of years—sometimes twice-daily. That malady was more of a nuisance than a scary threat, but still....
The new house is still consuming almost all my waking hours, and recently I have been making and putting in window frames. We spent a ton of bucks on the windows themselves since they're made with real wood, not composite or some other painted atrocity. So their frames are being made with Douglas Fir, a beautiful clear lumber that we get to pick out piece by piece at White Pine Lumber in Fresno, one of those old businesses that operates as they used to in the long-ago days of personal service and excellent products. It is such a pleasure to deal with them.
Today Karla is in Fresno buying the ingredients for a batch of potato salad. Batch is hardly the word. It's for over 200 people. A friend of the ranch is getting married, and she's putting on a really big show. There are musical productions and more. Guests are invited to stay overnight, so Karla was wondering if she should make enough salad for two days. So far my only part of this affair is to plug in our other refrigerator to store the finished salad.
The ranch is buying another vehicle. It's a diesel-powered Mercedez-Benz Sprinter van that seats five and has the whole back end sealed off, insulated, and refrigerated. It can be plugged in the day before we gather all the foodstuffs so it'll be much easier to stay legal than our previous methods of keeping things cool on their way to the ranch (lots of dry ice and picnic coolers).
I must go now. I have another nineteen windows to finish framing.
