For much of our married life, Saturday mornings have often been a time of travel and adventure: 'Feel like going for a ride? Yeah; where to? I dunno; let's go west. Let's!'
So we'd pack a cooler with snacks and beverages and insulin and head out. We'd pick a spot for breakfast that we didn't get to go to regularly and that brought even more anticipation to the beginnings of our drive. Sierra the Malamute was our third party for many years (her big last hurrah was 2010 when we took her camping at several spots along the Lake Michigan coast), and if a place existed showing a 'No Dogs Allowed' sign, we steered clear. We'd go see the Big Lake (my favorite and almost always our final destination), or just drive through the beautiful Michigan countryside looking for yard sales or fun photo opps or even nothing at all.
Sometimes we'd be having so much fun that we'd just grab a room and spend the night, so as to have a leisurely Sunday drive home.
For the past several years however, due to several factors, our travel has all but stopped. We occasionally will make a day trip somewhere looking for a bargain on Pyrex dishes or to find a mom and pop roadside stand where they make the best grave blankets ever, but these trips are now (to both of us) all too infrequent. Saturday mornings, now, have become a time of Pioneer Woman and Rachael Ray, of Turner Classic Movies and College Game Day. Yes, we are getting more bargain for our satellite dish buck than ever before.
I enjoy the Pioneer Woman because she uses butter and flour and meat and potatoes and just plain old good stuff. She doesn't create her recipes based on what trends the other hollywood show hosts are using and she doesn't talk a whole lot about calories. She makes good food for her and her family.
Rachael Ray is thrifty, and saves half a banana and even half a can of broth for another dish. I like how she does the week's meals all in one day and her recipes are usually also pretty simple.
In my old age, I am becoming more and more a fan of TCM. The initial draw for me (and still a major selling point in my opinion) is that they show pictures un-interrupted and un-edited. I curse with great vehement the other 'movie' channels for the abominations they present: opening and closing credits sped up and unreadable, entire scenes removed, commercials adding 50 and 60% to the run-time - allowing them to show an hour and forty minute picture over three hours of tv time...
The Turner movies are, for the most part, quite wholesome. My favorites are from the '30's and '40's. Prior to 1930, most of the pictures were silent, and to me they are wayyyyyyyyy too slow-moving (twenty- or thirty-second shot of the room of people just standing there while the up tempo old western saloon piano music blares, then a closeup of one of the males made up in ghost white, black eye shadow and some dark color of lips while he utters something most heinous and detestable [causing the saloon music to modulate into a minor key, and giving the villain the opportunity to apply his oft-practiced raising-one-eyebrow look at the end of his monologue], then for about a minute we get to read '...and then the ranch will be mine!' over and over and over; finally a closeup of the damsel with a look of horror and dismay and fright as she puts up her arms in front of her face as if fending off flying monkeys...). And after the mid forties or so, the music starts getting a little wild and the dialogue includes way too much infidelity. There are exceptions to my not-so-hard-and-fast rule, of course: The Sound of Music, Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, Pulp Fiction, From Here to Eternity, Jaws, A Few Good Men, Ghost-busters, The Town, Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, Knight and Day, Scrooge (1951), Despicable Me, Mega-Mind, Inception, Star Wars Episodes 4, 5, and 6, and Day of the Zombies are but a few.
College Game Day is a story for another entry, and I've got to go check my chili.
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