So far, so good
Feb. 21st, 2019 10:29 pmI'm coming close to two months into retirement, and so far it's going well. I had a to-do list of things I want to get done in the first while, but it's a slow process. One of the top things that I am going to start moving on next week is replacing our water heater. Our current one still has one working element, so I haven't been treating it with as much urgency as I would if it was dead. I'd made an abortive effort to fix it myself, but that's a matter for a longer post of its own. The short answer is that after talking to a local guy who fixes and replaces water tanks, he strongly recommended replacing it, with a compelling argument for doing so.
Because I retired early (I went at 55 instead of waiting until 60 or 65),![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
atara gave her blessing as long as "you have dinner on the table by 5". She has done almost all of the cooking so far in our household, but I've been chomping the bit to get my hands on the kitchen. For the most part I have been playing it safe and keeping things in my comfort zone, but I've gone out on a limb with a couple of the meals with mixed success. I made a dish of beans and rice last week that she did not like very much. I think it was a combination of the bacon picking up an off-taste in the freezer, and the amount of smoked paprika in the dish. I like paprika more than she does, I guess.
Every week we try to weave in at least one vegetarian day, and my plan for that had been yesterday. I've been trying to start using up a backlog of things in our downstairs freezer, and to that end I grabbed a bag of shredded zucchini, and a couple bags of frozen pumpkin. The idea was to turn the zucchini into bread for dessert, and to combine the pumpkin with some chard to make a vegetarian lasagne -- though we decided to substitute frozen spinach for the chard since they are very similar, and there is no wasted stems.
I was going to bake the bread first, then turn crank up the heat and put in the lasagne as I took out the bread to cool. The first hiccough was that it took me longer to prepare the bread than I remembered from making it in the past, so it went in a little late. I revised my schedule a bit and estimated that dinner would be closer to 17:15 than the usual 17:00. No problem. The recipe for the bread had instructions for either making two small loaves, or one big one. We usually make small loaves, but I saw no reason why I should wash two bread pans when I could get away with washing one. What I had not counted on was that the bread would take way, way longer to cook in the larger pan.
By the timeatara got home from work, the lasagne was still sitting on the counter waiting for its turn in the oven, and the bread was nowhere near done. Since the lasagne did not have meat or eggs in it, I decided that it would probably be safe to just put a lid on it and slap it in the fridge so that I could make it today. Things worked better this afternoon, and it was ready to eat shortly after she got home from work. It was also as good as I remember it being. Yesterday we had shawarma from the place around the corner.
The challenge so far has not been coming up with recipes, nor cooking the meals. Everything I've made so far has turned out well for what it is. The challenge is coming up with a meal plan that we both like. I like to get a little adventurous with my cooking, butatara is a bit more selective about what she likes (rather, she has a definite list of things she strongly dislikes), so that puts a real limit on what I can do. More than once I've had a meal plan all set up for the next week, only to discover that she thoroughly dislikes one of the things on my menu. This week was a results of a last-minute redo as I scratched two of the planned meals and scrambled for a replacement.
Ah well, I'll start building a do and don't list as I go on.
On what might be my last work-related note, I got a call from my ex-boss on Monday to let me know that I'd qualified for a "meet" on my performance profile last year. As a result, I'll be getting a full bonus for the year. Since the company had a banner year, that means I'll be getting a nice bit of money for a send-off. I knew that I was entitled to a bonus, but getting one is not always a given from this company. I think the fact I and the people I worked for genuinely like each other, and that I left on good terms counted in my favour.
Because I retired early (I went at 55 instead of waiting until 60 or 65),
atara gave her blessing as long as "you have dinner on the table by 5". She has done almost all of the cooking so far in our household, but I've been chomping the bit to get my hands on the kitchen. For the most part I have been playing it safe and keeping things in my comfort zone, but I've gone out on a limb with a couple of the meals with mixed success. I made a dish of beans and rice last week that she did not like very much. I think it was a combination of the bacon picking up an off-taste in the freezer, and the amount of smoked paprika in the dish. I like paprika more than she does, I guess. Every week we try to weave in at least one vegetarian day, and my plan for that had been yesterday. I've been trying to start using up a backlog of things in our downstairs freezer, and to that end I grabbed a bag of shredded zucchini, and a couple bags of frozen pumpkin. The idea was to turn the zucchini into bread for dessert, and to combine the pumpkin with some chard to make a vegetarian lasagne -- though we decided to substitute frozen spinach for the chard since they are very similar, and there is no wasted stems.
I was going to bake the bread first, then turn crank up the heat and put in the lasagne as I took out the bread to cool. The first hiccough was that it took me longer to prepare the bread than I remembered from making it in the past, so it went in a little late. I revised my schedule a bit and estimated that dinner would be closer to 17:15 than the usual 17:00. No problem. The recipe for the bread had instructions for either making two small loaves, or one big one. We usually make small loaves, but I saw no reason why I should wash two bread pans when I could get away with washing one. What I had not counted on was that the bread would take way, way longer to cook in the larger pan.
By the time
atara got home from work, the lasagne was still sitting on the counter waiting for its turn in the oven, and the bread was nowhere near done. Since the lasagne did not have meat or eggs in it, I decided that it would probably be safe to just put a lid on it and slap it in the fridge so that I could make it today. Things worked better this afternoon, and it was ready to eat shortly after she got home from work. It was also as good as I remember it being. Yesterday we had shawarma from the place around the corner.The challenge so far has not been coming up with recipes, nor cooking the meals. Everything I've made so far has turned out well for what it is. The challenge is coming up with a meal plan that we both like. I like to get a little adventurous with my cooking, but
atara is a bit more selective about what she likes (rather, she has a definite list of things she strongly dislikes), so that puts a real limit on what I can do. More than once I've had a meal plan all set up for the next week, only to discover that she thoroughly dislikes one of the things on my menu. This week was a results of a last-minute redo as I scratched two of the planned meals and scrambled for a replacement.Ah well, I'll start building a do and don't list as I go on.
On what might be my last work-related note, I got a call from my ex-boss on Monday to let me know that I'd qualified for a "meet" on my performance profile last year. As a result, I'll be getting a full bonus for the year. Since the company had a banner year, that means I'll be getting a nice bit of money for a send-off. I knew that I was entitled to a bonus, but getting one is not always a given from this company. I think the fact I and the people I worked for genuinely like each other, and that I left on good terms counted in my favour.
