A bit of this and that...and GOOD.

More salsa from another year...I sure would enjoy some of it right now!

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You know sometimes life is a bit challenging.  Sometimes I am a big wuss...no courage or backbone at all.  To say it has been a bit challenging for us is putting it lightly.

Roger was always able to make about anything or fix anything.  And though I was not Mrs. Fix-it, I could work and accomplish things.

Last year because of my accident, we paid to have the yard mowed.  In the previous years Roger had used the riding mower and I did certain parts of the yard with push mower.

It is not a big yard, so thought it would be good for me to mow it this year.  Or at least try to mow it.  I thought it would help get me back to walking normal because I would be concentrating on mowing rather than worrying about hurting my foot.  Well, we went out there the other day and the mower would not start.  It had always been easy to start.

Our neighbor saw us and came over and tried to pull start it and couldn't.  Today I looked at Amazon trying to decide on a new mower.  Even though I thought it was something simple with the old, it is just beyond Roger.  That is why I was thinking about a new one.  I set and looked at Amazon while we ate breakfast this morn, came home with the intentions of ordering a certain one.

But it has a bag, and it is self propelled....I have not used a self propelled in years and years and years, but I didn't enjoy it when younger and was afraid I wouldn't now.  And it had the bag, and we had one one time with a bag and didn't like.  So, got to looking more.  I spent a good two hours looking, reading reviews, etc and still could not make up my mind.  Just so indecisive I drive my crazy.  But it actually might have been a good thing this time.

This evening, I had given Roger his meds and we had set down for the night.   I thought I heard someone at the back door...went in there and it was our neighbor...he came to get the mower and is going to see if he can fix it.  And he is good at stuff like that so it will probably be fixed fairly soon.

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Roger has his allergy shots tomorrow...Friday is a doctor's visit.  He has to go to get prescriptions renewed.  But also has nodules on his thyroid and we have to see our family doctor to see about getting them checked.  He had a CT scan a while back to check that the spot on his lung had not changed and they seen those nodules.

Plus they seen 'something' on his kidney...the previous year's scan did not go far down enough to see it.  So we don't know how long it has been there.  It may just be a cyst.  And the girl said that 99% of the time the nodules on the thyroid are nothing to worry about.

Monday I take him to have a CT scan without and with dye to check the kidney thing.

Just a little note

We have been gone since last Thursday....I will try to catch up with your posts in the next day or two, plus I plan to try to resume posting.

I hope everyone had a nice weekend and that this week is a good one for you all.  Even though I love to visit my daughter in St. Louis, I am always relieved when I get there and back and haven't forgotten something major.  LOL

I plan to make myself a list on this computer that I can print off whenever we go anywhere.  I will print a couple copies and that way be more sure of taking what he/we need and also check it off when I get it packed to come back home.

Remembering fun times...

A lot of my blog friends are thinking about the coming growing season.  It makes me itch to get out and dig in the soil.  Feel the ground in my hand...get my fingernails so dirty they don't look like they will ever come clean again.  Anyway, the talk of the coming growing season spurred me to look back at photos of the past.

I don't recall what kind of bell peppers these were...

I think the above was taken the same day....

This is from a couple years later.   I sure have missed having my own bell peppers to freeze the past couple or three years.  They are so handy to have to add to chili, or spaghetti sauce or whatever else you use them in.  Instead of making stuffed bell peppers, I slice up a couple bell peppers in the bottom of a casserole dish,  add my browned ground beef which I have also added onions too, cover with tomato juice and bake in 325º oven for about an hour and a half.  (I don't like to eat big chunks of cooked bell pepper, so I came up with doing this.)  Roger still gets the bell pepper, and I get the flavor...I used to add a bit of rice and cheese, but we like it simple the best. 

And this is one of those dishes that I love better the second time around.  If I have enough to have it the second time around.  Both girls loved it, and I served it to one of Roger's friends one time and he loved it.  I want it with mashed potatoes of course.

Though I love to add a few red bell peppers to things...I add red ones for the color.  But I want to add lots of green ones for the flavor.

One of my loves is salsa...

but above all else, I love home canned tomato juice.   It is like sunshine from a jar!  In the winter if I am sick with a cold, etc. there is nothing like it.  The stuff you buy in the store does not compare.

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The last time we had tomatoes was not good.  I had 16-20 plants and only ate one whole tomato...the flavor was not good and all the tomatoes were all messed up...you can see samples HERE.   It states that they did not all look like that.  The thing was, I would pick a pretty one and cut into it and it would have a mess inside...

The next year I bought a couple of the tomato plants they have in huge containers, thinking maybe I could at least have some to snack on, but they did not grow good either.  I messed around and did not try anything in 2016....and that August is when Roger had his stroke.  So I have not tried any since.  But I would love to try some this year...just to have a few to eat fresh from the garden.

Do you grow your own tomatoes and if so, how do you grow them, specially if not directly in the ground?