Oh. I think that burger looks a bit too runny for me

Hmm... is the top of the bun coated in some sort of clear sauce? It looks awfully wet. Whether that's a good or a bad thing I know not. Depends on why it's wet, I suppose. <scratches head?

Eating a sammach and drinking a glass of water for midnight munchies.

Two relatively positive food discoveries this week.

First: After all these decades of not caring for Pears, I now prefer Anjou Pears over the sorry excuse for apples Walmart has stocked these past some years. Sadly, I bought only enough pears to see me through yesterday, so will finish the week out with . . . apples. Next week I'll buy all pears and no apples, assuming Anjou's are in stock. <crosses fingers>

Second: I don't mind Craft Aged Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing. It's not a favorite by any means, but I like it well enough to use as a sometimes alternative to Thousand Island. I've been hoping for a decent Thousand Island alternative for forever. Those few times I find one, it either quickly disappears or proves a migraine trigger. Here's hoping Balsamic Vinaigrette escapes those fates.

I agree that pears are great, though they lack the forgiving storage longevity of apples.

I make plenty of big salads as meals. Most often I dress them with salsa, a bit of milk and a drizzle of 1000 isle or ranch. If I add some diced up fake crabmeat, I'll go with shrimp cocktail sauce instead of salsa.

As you like adding Salsa to your salad dressing mix, I recommend giving Wickles Spicy Red Sandwich Spread a try. It blends well with 1000 Isle. Yeah, I researched pears and read that they indeed have a relatively short shelf life. Luckily, the four I bought this Monday, before research, were at the perfect stage of ripeness. Well, three were. The other could have stood another day or so to ripen.

For breakfast I had bacon, coffee and a protean bar, a hardy meal.

Had one of my rare tuna/egg sammich suppers the other night.

5oz Tuna (one can)
One hard-boiled egg, crumbled
A decent amount of fine-chopped onion
Three Serrano Pepper) slices, fine-chopped
Black Pepper
Dash Garlic & Herbs Seasoning
Some Mayo
A generous amount of Wickles' Spicy Red Sandwich Spread

These are stirred together for consistency, then divided between two toasted 100% whole-wheat bread slices. I then top the two mounds with lettuce and cap each with another slice of whole-wheat bread, this time coated with yellow mustard. The end result is two super thick sammiches.

It doesn't taste like your conventional tuna sammich, but if I get the proportions right, never a given, it's yummy, as it was that night.

The side of Lima beans mixed with a tiny amount of broccoli, coated with Tangy Bacon Catalina Dressing worked out well too.

Yeah, my research found the same thing; Pears have a relatively short shelf life. Yet for some reason I have the opposite problem. The pears I find are usually rock hard. (To be fair, I sometimes find one or two somewhat softer pears per weekly purchase.) I at first considered this a good thing, even keeping them in the fridge to insure they didn't go bad before I got around to them. Instead, they remained over hard the entire week.

I eventually started storing them out of the fridge. This can helps to an extent, but still results in too many over hard pears. This past weekend, I unearthed a method to soften pears 'quickly': Put 'em in a closed paper bag with a banana. I did so soon as I got home from Monday's grocery run. I've checked the bag daily since then. Results? Over hard pears as of today, Thursday 05 May.

All this said, when I manage to get my hands on a properly ripe pear, it is yummier than any apple I've eaten in years, by a healthy margin. I ain't giving up on them.

Speaking of fruit, the week's worth of bananas I bought about a month ago were super flavorful. Soon as I bit into the first of them I realized that I'd totally forgotten what a really good banana tastes like.

Bananas have to be ripe - or better over-ripe - for this to work. When over-ripe, they start emitting a "fruit pheromone" that causes the other fruit around them to start ripening. Which is why you are not supposed to keep bananas in a fruit bowl with other fruit as everything goes mushy in no time.

However, I found the same problem with pears. It seems that fruit must have reached a certain degree of ripeness on the tree for it to be able to ripe off the tree, and many pears I think are picked way too early. So they never ripen and only rot. Some varieties are better than others, over here I found "Conference" variety to work best - they are green-brown in colour, not that attractive, and often a bit misshapen. But they ripen quickly in a bowl and they are so tasty then. I think you have the same variety in the States, but may be called differently.

And then there are pear varieties that are meant to stay hard - they are for cooking.

Agree that a properly ripened pear is delicious - but elusive.

Today I ate b-day cake

As my throat has begun to clear up, I'm gonna enjoy a couple of Gorby's soon. Of course with grillkrydda on them



I should probably stop putting foreign words into my posts, you reckon?

I had breakfast pizza and coffee.

Home made popcorn

Coffee and home made strawberry cake with lots of custard and whipped cream

Some time ago, you guys recommended freezing bread to keep it fresh longer. I've done so ever since, toasting it afterward to thaw quicker and for a firmer support for WowButter Sammiches. Turns out, there are health benefits from doing so, aside from avoiding mold, according to this short video!

Glad the bread freezing is working well for you.

Really? I've frozen bread for ages as I always buy a lot when I go food shopping.



Also; eating apple.

Apples are better turned over. Or flanned. Or strudelled.