103 and Rising!!!

Good Morning California!!  I'm surprised just how similar the weather is in central California as compared to southern Arizona.  It was 103 here yesterday, while Arizona was mid 90's.  Today will be another scorcher before it cools off a tad.  That means I try to stay inside, or at least in an air conditioned building.

Thus the trip to Michaels.  That resulted in this ..... a million piece storage chest on wheels.  The box was pretty small, meaning I didn't think there would be so many pieces!  It was daunting when laid out on the floor.  I have to say that THIS cardboard box was MUCH stronger than the red cart box.  It took a box cutter to get it open.

YAY!!  I get to use one of those 28 screwdrivers ... or maybe even THREE!  It wasn't my fault.  I quickly discovered that all screwdrivers are not created equal.  Some have big tips, some have sharp tips and some basically don't have a tip at all.  It took three tries to find one that would work with the screws.

Of course there are no directions, as in put screw A into hole B, but only pictures so small you need a magnifying glass.  I was cruising along quite nicely when I realized the backer board wouldn't fit because I had the bottom on backwards.  Big sigh ..... as I disassembled the entire thing and started over.

Time for a break, as this assembling stuff can be hard work.  Let's give Cooper a B A T H.  You have to spell that word because it's his least favorite thing in the entire world.  Although he loves to get wet if it's a big puddle in the yard, or maybe even the ocean ..... getting in the bathtub is a big NO-NO! 

Once clean, the scary blow dryer comes on, along with a comb or two.  Next up, the noisy thing worse than gunshots .... the deadly ELECTRIC TRIMMERS!!  Of course Mom really doesn't know how to do this correctly, so he always comes out rather rough looking.  

Yes he is a classy registered poodle, but I dislike the poodle cuts.  We would rather go with ranch rough and tough to impress the ladies.

Back to the box.  Once the outside was done, I had five drawers to assemble.  Good grief ... this turned into a much bigger project than I expected!!  After installing ten railings for the drawers to slide on, it was finally complete.  It even rolls around for ease of cleaning up my messes.  Now I have a place to store all that leftover fabric that I will use someday ... hopefully before I die.

While all that was going on, I defrosted the next bag-o-dinner in the microwave, then dumped it in my preheated crock pot.  I'm still a little leery of that frozen raw meat thing.  This SHOULD be Black Bean Turkey Chili.  My local Mexican store, not having any ground turkey EVER, only had ground pork.  

I set it on high for a couple of hours before turning the knob down to low.  Gosh ... it smelled wonderful and actually looked pretty tasty.  

The good news is I'm still ALIVE!!!  No food poisoning like I expected!!  And SO TASTY!!  Who knew freezer meals could be this easy to fix and so good?  Honesty, I would even feed this to company!!  It needed corn bread, but I'll fix that next time.

The background on this freezer cooking comes from seeing a demo on Facebook.  It looked easy and was CHEAP ... my favorite description of dinner.  The delivery meal programs average $6-9.00 a serving.  This do-it-yourself is $2.89 a serving!!  It does take a bit of organization, but was really easy.

Here's the recipe for this one in case you are interested.  One recipe is a serving for six, so I decided it into two bags for the freezer.  I think you can make it with just about any kind of meat and it will be good. Always add the meat to the bag last, so it will hit the bottom of the slow cooker and cook first.  I did add one teaspoon of sugar to balance out all the tomato acid.  As you can see, they also work great in an instant pot.

At the end of the day, I gathered up my supplies for the crafty project that sent me to Michaels in the first place.  I'll explain this one later.

In the meantime, my 100 mph throwing arm is getting better.  I'm maybe up to 15 mph now, throwing a tennis ball at the darn pigeons!!  My neighbor and I are at WAR with these critters!!  I chase them off, they fly to her house.  She chases them off ... well you know what happens.  We need a plan!!!