More cooking!

We had a small ham between Christmas and New Years and today was the day the bone got to become the centerpiece in ham & bean soup.  I'm the soup lover in the family so I get to make the soups.  Seems fair I guess!  Anyway, I slaved away over the soup this a.m.  Of course it's not exactly tough!  Beans and ham bone get to cook together in some water & broth; then when things are nearing done out comes the bone and in go some vegies & seasonings.  When they are done, use the immersion blender to beat things about a bit and add the ham that you have cut off the bone.  Voila!  Often I forget to remove the bay leaves before blending - nasty!  Or add the ham then remember to blend it - equally nasty.  This time, by some miracle, I did the whole thing in the proper order so all is good. 

Neither of us has been out of the house for more than about five minutes all day.  That's probably because we spent all afternoon outside yesterday.  This is the mildest winter we've spent here and yesterday it must have been close to 70F (21C).  We sat on the porch in the sun and solved all the worlds problems with the help of a bottle of wine.  Tough duty but someone has to do it.  And let me tell you, the world is going to get along much better now that we've got it all settled!  Whoever designed that porch on the south side of the house did a great job.  Now when the sun is relatively low, the porch is covered in sunshine.  In the summer when the sun is higher in the sky, the porch is shady.  It's just really nice, simple, effective design.

I recall saying we had our lucky meal, Hoppin John, on New Years Day.  We didn't get to the casino to try our luck until the 3rd but I'm happy to report that the meal did the trick.   Neither of us gamble much; we each take $5 and when it's gone we leave.  Well, this time my wife turned her $5 into $10 and I was up to $6.25 so we quit while we were ahead.  I don't know what kind of money 'real' gamblers wager but I'm thinking more than $5.  Joe from Vegas says the fireworks show the casinos put on was $500,000 worth; it would be tough to cover that on $5 gamblers!

Gotta go.  Have an exceptionally good one.