{"id":32912,"date":"2023-02-25T13:07:52","date_gmt":"2023-02-25T20:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=32912"},"modified":"2023-02-25T13:07:56","modified_gmt":"2023-02-25T20:07:56","slug":"polenta-for-breakfast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=32912","title":{"rendered":"Polenta for Breakfast"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_0056\"<\/a>Donna made polenta last night. We sometimes eat polenta in place of pasta, topped with cheese and Bolognese sauce. One of the nice things about polenta for dinner is there’s always some left over. You can have it again, sliced and fried in butter with eggs, the next morning. Which is how we started this fine day.<\/p>\n

We’re back from taking Lulu and Fritzi to the animal hospital. They go in every 90 days to be tested for Valley fever. Both girls are on an anti-fungal medication, Fluconazole, which keeps them symptom-free … you’d never know they had it, unless that is you’re the one who has to trick them into swallowing pills with every feeding. Their last test showed they’ve almost kicked the disease, but the vet wanted us to keep them on the medication a while longer. We’re hoping the results of today’s tests, which we’ll get in about a week, will mean they can quit taking Fluconazole. Mister B had Valley fever and had to take the same pills for a few years before getting over it. Lulu and Fritzi are younger, and we hope they’ll recover sooner. Wish our doggies luck, okay?<\/p>\n

I’m going to make popcorn in a bit. Lulu and Fritzi will get some as a reward for being so good at the animal hospital, Mister B for having to stay home. Polly’s working days at Safeway after a long streak pulling graveyard, so Mr. B did in fact hold down the fort alone. But back on the popcorn: a while back I bought coconut popping oil, popcorn salt, and a bottle of theater-style butter-flavored topping. My goal, obviously, is movie-style popcorn, and I’m almost there. Just a few more tweaks … a little less salt, maybe, a touch of real butter melted in with the topping … and I should have it down.<\/p>\n

I bought another watch (I promise, this is the last one). The Costco cards we got in return for ordering new iPhones and switching carriers … basically credit cards that can only be used at Costco … came in. I used part of mine on a GMT watch, which I ordered from their online catalog. It has an extra hour hand to indicate Greenwich mean time, what we called Zulu time in the military.<\/p>\n

In flying, military and civil, times are expressed in in 24-hour GMT. If I took off from Tucson International at 12:25 PM local, I’d log the takeoff time as 1925. I never had any trouble with 24-hour timekeeping (and in fact prefer it to AM\/PM), but calculating the difference between local and Zulu requires addition and subtraction, and I’m easily confused. It was easy enough when I flew in the Netherlands (where Zulu is local minus 1 hour), a little harder in Alaska (add 9), harder yet in Japan (subtract 16).\u00a0Now, better late than never, I’ll have a watch that’ll show me Zulu at a glance. Yeah, I know digital watches all do that, but I’m talking analog. My new watch should arrive Sunday or Monday. Yes, I’ll post photos.<\/p>\n

I gave my Costco card, with its remaining balance, to Donna, who has an untouched card of her own. She says she’s going to use the money for a down payment on a hearing aid (also better late than never). God, I’m picturing the take-a-number queue for hearing aids at Costco … it’s going to be as bad as the one for eyeglasses!<\/p>\n

Hungry hummingbirds are hovering outside the window. I took in the feeders to clean them this morning and forgot to refill and put them back out. It’s time I got busy. Enjoy the winter weather, dear friends and readers … at least those of you who live, apparently, everywhere else but southern Arizona!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donna made polenta last night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,15,40,3,14,2],"tags":[4053,4193,4192,4191,4194,4190],"class_list":["post-32912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-cooking","category-critters","category-flying","category-military","category-personal","tag-bigseikolittledick-2","tag-hungryhungryhummers","tag-justlikeatthemovies","tag-kickingvalleyfever","tag-whatsthatyousay","tag-whattheyatebeforetheyatepasta"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32912"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32920,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32912\/revisions\/32920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}