Cooking - Not Really (LOL), and Memories of Dad and Mom

Taking a careful look at my refrigerator stock yesterday, I decided against cooking meals. I actually had a Wednesday without any cooking ... well, almost none. My stock of food for the week is excellent, as of this morning I have four stuffed peppers, three portions of butternut squash, and I'm cooking a pork roast on Sunday which will stretch to two-three meals each. I'm not worried ... we're not going to starve anytime soon - LOL. But, that means that next week will be a very busy cooking week. Whoot! 

We've had a marinated pork loin roast in the 
refrigerator defrosting for a couple of days. 
I'll get that roasted up on Sunday, and it will 
serve well for at least two meals each. With 
what else I already have cooked, I'm set until 
next week (probably). I can re-assess on 
Friday, and do a quick cook if necessary. 

Now, I did say "almost" no cooking in the above. That's because I bought a pineapple and a mango, which I cut up and put into my little dehydrator. It's been merrily doing it's thing since yesterday afternoon, and it's almost finished. I think I had set it for 13-14 hours, and while I was awake, I was moving the trays every 90 minutes to ensure good air circulation. I've dehydrated several pineapples before now, but have never added a mango to the mix before. T think it will be a lovely munch. 

I purchased a pineapple and a mango at the store 
yesterday, cut them up and put them into the 
dehydrator. They should be ready to pull from 
there and put into a container for munching when 
I get back from the pool later this morning. 

I received a royalty payment for Mom yesterday - not much, less than $15, but it brought my parents to the front of my mind again. When Dad finally managed to get his college degrees and start teaching, he also started writing books on learning the German language. They were quite popular for quite a while, bringing in some nice royalty payments to both of them while Dad was still living, and then just to Mom once he passed. His final book was in process when he died, and a good friend and professional colleague at Colorado University Boulder finished the book for him and got it published posthumously. The royalty checks were a real benefit to Mom for many years, but these days, I'm certainly NOT getting rich any more - LOL. I'll endorse this as her representative and get it deposited. It was lovely to think about those times again - well worth the doing. 

Dad had at least four different books published 
on the German language. Considering he was 
actually Czech, I always wondered about that. 
But he moved to Vienna when he was quite 
young to live with his older sister, so German, 
if not his first language, was a strong second. 

Today will be my final day in the pool for the week. My workouts haven't been spectacular this week, but they've been pretty good - fairly good intensity and steady laps. I'm no speed queen, but I get the job done. I'll be entering price tags for the shipment that just arrived yesterday. That will take up most/all of my day at the shop. So it will be a computer day. I'm still working on getting things together for the Swarovski sale. It's such a huge category, getting things together is turning into a mini nightmare. It needs to be easy for us to use so that we can get inventory pulled quickly and accurately, and also needs to be easily used by our customers. That's a challenge to my organizational abilities. 

I love my little dehydrator. I wasn't sure how much 
use I'd get out of it initially, but I'm quite pleased 
with it, and I'm using it for fruits over the winter. 
It's just about the perfect size, and can hold a 
surprising amount of stuff for such a small package. 

So, as I head over to the pool and write myself a note to empty the dehydrator when I get back from swimming, I'll have plenty of things on my mind. I hope all of you have a wonderful Thursday and I look forward to catching up with you on Friday. Slava Ukraini and חיים למען ישראל.