Food is good, free food better (edited)

 My birthday was meh... frustrating,  I was hungry, nothing seemed to go right so it was not the best of days even if it wasn't my birthday. We are still short on money for doing what we need to do but friends and family are helping as best they can and I appreciate every single one. I want to thank my brother for gifting me some money for my birthday that helped make a payment on the electric bill. I can never pay anyone back  or even pay it forward to someone else, and I feel guilty about always being on the receiving end and not being able to do the same for others.

We had signed up for the food pick up in the complex and today was distribution day. It is organized as well as they can and we just waited for our name to get called. Went in with our bags and did the 'buffet style' pick and choose what we wanted. The usual bruised fruit and veggies, some mushrooms luckily, other random things. No filet mignon this time but got two marinated butterflied chickens and some marinated chicken thigh meat. There was haddock and some other stuff I didn't bother looking at. At least there wasn't any of the 'beyond beef' stuff. Bleh.

Here's the problem. They get the meat frozen and it says to freeze by a certain date (which was today). What they don't understand is it has to STAY frozen, not thawed and then frozen again. All the meat was mostly thawed and the lady said, 'well it was frozen when we got it'. I told her very emphatically it needs to STAY frozen because the date on it was for today. Needless to say instead of using the hamburger I had thawed for today we are cooking two of the chickens and the thighs and then freezing them for later. Will likely still use the hamburger because that will go bad by tomorrow, and am only using the oven for the chicken.

Also eggs. Lots of eggs, we grabbed the 18 count. The dozens were mixed brown and white and Jon steers clear of the brown ones. Simply because of the bad experience we had with the home chicken lady that hadn't taken care of her chickens and the quality was sub par. So he somehow thinks that all brown eggs are not as good as white eggs. There was a small mesh bag of the tiny red and white potatoes which I will be cooking up. Some of the white ones really are seedling size so will only be cooking the larger ones which are still small. We do have a bag of russets we bought the other day so plenty of potatoes.

My friend Margaret stopped by yesterday with some home baked corn bread, zucchini bread and chocolate chip bread of some sort. Also a 12 pack of cokes, yarn for me and a nice 5 lb bag of unbleached flour. Yay!  Oh and the window sun screen thing I needed for my car, she happened to have a spare one and it was even Star Wars. 

I now know why kitchens of grandmas from the 40's and 50's had those canisters for flour, sugar, coffee and salt or whatever. When you have limited cupboard space and buy large quantities of things, you need it ready at hand in the kitchen in a smaller container.

Oh to have a bigger kitchen. With a pantry. I could have said a 'gourmet' kitchen but honestly, just something twice the size of what I've got would be good. I've been looking at house plans dreaming again, and there were some plans that had kitchens the size of our bedroom 11'x12'. Even with counters that is three times the size of my kitchen. My kitchen is the same size or smaller than a small walk in closet.  Never mind a living room/dining room the size of our entire apartment. 

I am still doing knitting and got more yarn from my friend. It's kind of like the videos you see of a dog suddenly have a bucket of balls dumped on them. 'ALL THE THINGS EVERYWHERE WHICH ONE DO I GET FIRST!!!??' I have to calm myself and pick up the project I'm working on and store the rest of it away. Somehow. 

As far as gardening is going there was an orchid and some miniature roses and cut flowers along with the food they were giving away and I picked up a little red rose, two oregano plants and an orchid that had finished flowering. The rose had been overwatered, the oregano also it looked like and the orchid was fine just not in flower. I know how to take care of all these problems. The oregano and rose went to the garden and the orchid I watered well and then brought that inside, hoping that Rocky leaves it alone. Need to double check on the variety and how to take care of it for sure.

The miniature rose is actually four cuttings in the same pot (as I knew it was and have experience with them) so that I will resuscitate and then divide.  As soon as I figure out where it's going to go. I still need more potting/raised bed soil but will have to make do with what I have, as always.

On the other side of things I still have to sit down and try to get hold of someone in Medicare/SS and get that mess straightened out. Hopefully before next month.

Update/Edit: Jon just brought in the  mail and the only thing was something from SS for me. Essentially it says that due to getting medicare my deposit day will now be the 3rd. The state will be paying my insurance premiums thankfully! The dates are all screwy though because it says I was supposed to get it on the 17th and already got it. Government work at it's best. So I don't have to worry about that anymore.

Off I go to pull the first chicken out and have some lunch.