Weekend Update

In my humble opinion, I think we had a really great weekend.

Brother Jim drove in from Erie and we had a wonderful visit! This time he didn’t pop in and pop out a few hours later. We actually got to enjoy his company for most of the weekend.

In honor of this occasion, I made a big batch of orange spaghetti (anyone in our family knows that dinner!). We were having a little get together on Saturday, so we went out for a bit after dinner just to pick up some supplies. Other than that, I guess it was a quiet night.

Saturday, we took Jim to one of our local restaurants for breakfast. Chello’s isn’t going to be a five star restaurant in anyone’s books, but the owner, Jorge, is really nice and friendly and always comes out of the kitchen when he has time to say hello to everyone. Nice guy, good cook. And, one of the waitresses is really funny. We always ask for her section when we go in to eat and she is never disappointing. We get our food, a few laughs and even some local gossip. Can’t beat that.

We did get a little sightseeing in as we took Jim to the Black River Landing after breakfast. It’s just above where the Black River empties into Lake Erie. More times than not when we’ve been there, we get to see the road that spans the Black River go up to let any tall ships in. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but it thrills the heck out of me! It could be a big freighter coming in or going out or it could be a tall sail boat. I just love watching the traffic up and down the river. Unfortunately, when we stopped by Saturday, all was quiet. No bells and whistles going off that something was coming up the river.

I was making a batch of Hungarian Goulash for our get together that evening. I had everything I needed but the meat. We have a local grocery store in our neighborhood called Fligners Market. While I think some of their prices on items are high, you absolutely can’t find better than their meat counter in any grocery store chain around. They move so much meat, that there is no fancy packaging behind the counter. There are bins and bins of meat that they sell in such quantity, everything is always fresh. You will wait in line to buy anything, so be prepared. No matter how long you will wait, it will be worth every minute.

Since I am not a great cook, and have a limited focus when it comes to cooking, I’m not afraid to ask for help. The woman that waited on us told me she had worked there for over 25 years. If she doesn’t know about meat, no one does! I explained to her what I was cooking and asked for her suggestion on what meat to buy. I thought I was looking for a nice piece of chuck or round, whatever I could get cheaper. After all, this dish simmers for three hours, so that’s a lot of time to make even a bad piece of meat taste good.

She suggested this big roast that was really close in weight to how much I wanted. I told her that might be ok, but that was going to be hard to cut up into cubes. She offered to cube it for me. What? Where do you get this kind of service? She added that at no extra charge, she would cut it up into cubes for me, bag it up and I’d be ready to go. She verified that I was making something similar to a beef stew and that stew chunks should work. I was thrilled! Less cutting for me! And, the roast she picked out was $.20 cheaper a pound than what I would have ordered on my own. Bonus!

As another added bonus about Fligners, it’s one of the last places that the bagboys will take your groceries out to your car for you. Some days, that does come in handy. Nice piece of personal service.

After the store, Jim and Ron worked on Jim’s computer (sometimes I think Jim comes to see Ron more than he comes to see me!) while I worked on getting dinner going. We had the Hungarian Goulash over Slovak halushki (similar to spaetzel) and I made a nice big mixed salad on a bed of baby spinach. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer dinner. To top this off, I even made raspberry margaritas! I’m telling you, I was the hostess with the mostest, as someone called me!
Everyone left about 10:00. Made me realize we are not the crazy party people anymore. If your party breaks up before midnight on a Saturday night, that can’t be good. Hmm. I think everyone had a good time!

I threw one load into the dishwasher and headed up to bed. Sunday, Ron had to go to fix someone’s computer, so I had some quiet time to recover from the past two days. I lounged around, played Pogo, did some laundry, put the second load into the dishwasher, and just had quiet time.

For dinner, Ron and I were scooping up some leftovers from over the weekend, so no problems in cooking dinner. It really was a great weekend. It may have been busy, but it was great to spend the weekend at home. As the saying goes, there’s no place like it.