Regular stuff

The weather is doing it's usual crazy stuff around here.  Thursday I reported on, Friday was calm as anything and today it's blowing like crazy again.  Oh well, it's not like I'm out trying to put up fence panels or something.  And the good news is that the mountain is looking like the photo on the blog again.  It's been pretty brown for the summer and now I have snowy peaks in front of me.  ('Snow Peaks' - sounds like it should be the title of a soft porn movie.)

This cool weather makes me want to make comfort food so yesterday I made choucroute garni - there are a million different takes but mine is sauerkraut with smoked pork chops, kielbasa, potatoes and seasonings.  Many versions require several different sausages but that's tough to find around here and we are happy enough with the kielbasa.  One of these days I'm going to go hit Whole Foods or somewhere and get the real thing.  Unfortunately then we'll have a version that will feed 4 people for three days and there are only two of us.  You cook it together for a couple of hours and you are good to go.  Some recipes are for the stovetop and some are for the oven; I go stovetop just because it is easier to check on.  Usually I use chicken broth and vermouth but didn't have the vermouth so I used pinot grigio (don't tell my wife I used her wine!). 

I was checking out this story on Yahoo about the saddest cities in the U.S.  Well, I should have guessed, number 1 is our very own Las Vegas!  They looked at things like unemployment, suicide, all the stastics you might expect.  It pretty much goes downhill from there for me because both Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida are on the list.  Before we moved here we lived kind of equidistant from each!  Maybe I owe Las Vegas an apology for bringing my own personal rain cloud?  Maybe I should go visit Afghanistan? 

Gotta go.  Have a good one!