I am making that cabbage roll soup today. Would you believe Walmart did not have a single head of green cabbage yesterday? The bins were shockingly empty!
The soup calls for 16-19 oz. of cabbage ... the bagged angel hair cabbage (plain green, not tri-color) was 10 oz. a bag. I didn’t have time to run to another store looking for cabbage, so I got 2 bags. We’ll see how that works out.
The recipe also calls for 1.5 pounds of meat. I freeze my meat in 1 lb. packages. I’m going to use a pound of ground beef and stretch that by using another pound of venison. A little extra ‘meatiness’ won’t hurt anything!
I’ll let you know how it turns out - all of Cooking Classy’s soup recipes have been delicious so far (made the pumpkin soup yesterday).
I’m watching the sun rise out of one window & a deer graze her way down the side of the driveway from another. I put my back yard motion detector up yesterday on a different tree & it alerted me to the deer .... glad to know it’s working!
The sunrise coming over the mountains is a mix of pinks & purples, just beautiful. I’m having a cup of Twinings Irish Breakfast Tea with molasses cookies while I watch ... yum! :-)
I am starting another Big project (might end up being an ‘adventure’!) ... moving the mailbox to our side of the road. Mom has to cross the 2-lane, very busy road to get to the mailbox. Both sides of the road have blind hills .... she scurries across, hangs on to the mailbox so she doesn’t fall into the big ditch just behind the mailbox while trying to stay out of the way of cars speeding by. With her hearing issues, she does not hear the cars coming, they just suddenly pop up over the hill. It’s a very dangerous situation.
We were going to apply for a handicap exemption meaning the mail carrier would bring the mail as far as the door or to a box between the door and the road. I talked to one of the clerks at the PO & mom does not qualify since I live with her; however, the clerk talked to the postmaster who said she would drive out & look at our situation. To clarify, since it’s a rural route, all the mailboxes are on one side of the road. The carrier’s route does end at the river & she comes back up the road on our side so the postmaster, after looking at the situation, said we could move our mailbox wherever we wanted on our side of the road! You know you are living rural/small town when the postmaster personally drives out to look at your situation!
Next problem ... finding a mailbox post that works. We have a ditch on our side of the road too - not as deep as the other side. After recently digging 15 holes for bushes, I really don’t want to dig another for a mailbox post. There is no room at road level to put the post so it has to go IN the ditch & a wooden post is not going to be tall enough to get the mailbox to the 42-46” height required by the PO. I also want the box close to the driveway so when it snows, mom isn’t wading through snow to get to it. The ditch gets deeper as it approaches the driveway & the pipe culvert running underneath.
After much searching, I believe I found the solution: a SwingClear rural mailbox post. It has a long boom arm, it pounds in so no hole digging, & there is a 24” extension to get the mailbox at the proper height, despite the base post being down in a ditch. They also have a really good video on how to install - looks well within my ‘skill’ range (ha ha). The mailbox does swing out of the way if hit by a snow plow, large mirror on a PU, etc. & then returns to the proper position. I had to replace the mailbox when we bought the place because it had been hit & dented badly enough the door wouldn’t close properly - the post is also cracked & if hit again, probably won’t survive.
I ordered the SwingClear yesterday and it should be here by next Friday. As soon as the mail is picked up next Saturday, I’ll get the mailbox detached from its current post & start working on the new post. This will give me the weekend before the mail carrier needs a box, in the event I have an issue installing the new post. Mom is SO excited at the thought of not having to cross the road any more.
If you’re interested in seeing what this rather unique mailbox post looks like, here’s a link to the website (we have ordered a solid black one):
Sounds good. I want to try the olive garden zuppa toscana soup. Creamed soup and italian sausage, a nice combo. It calls for kale though (the horror) so I will get some spinach instead.