Getting along aloneness

Last nights dinner,oven roasted
salmon, fries and tomatoes,
Polish cucumber salad

Unlike others who are alone, I continue to cook meals for myself. Local restaurants in town are few and menus limited.  I have not wanted to venture out for a Friday night dinner alone anywhere truthfully.  I want to enjoy my glass or two of wine with my meal and find that better done at home.  

 The past couple weeks when our temps were unseasonably hot for us in June, 90', I ate mostly salads thrown together from whatever was in the refrigerator  or made a good sandwich out of turkey.  It would be easy to shrug, why bother, but I know I must continue to eat healthily to maintain myself.  Yet at dinner time I am most lonesome, eating alone, no one across the table, no one to even complain. Jerry did not often complain about foods but I was often on a salmon kick for Fridays and every so often he would ask, "can't we have anything but salmon?"  Sometimes I made shrimp. scampi too. And often we would go out to eat, but he often ordered the fish always fried too.

But good salmon at home, cannot be beat in my opinion. It is easy to fix and since I am particular and selective in what I buy, has to be fresh at the meat counter and if fresh flown in from Alaska is available, I pay the price,  so I always have great salmon. I discovered the brand, Grown in Idaho,  frozen French fries are just as good as any home fried with dinner and easy in the oven, they roast with the salmon. I have not fried French fries in so many years.  Now when I fix salmon I have left over for the next day or so.  I have now used up all the salmon in my freezer so when I purchase I can buy smaller portions and prevent so many left overs.   All my life I have not eaten meat on Fridays and although my Catholic faith changed that restriction to only during Lent, I have always stayed with meatless Fridays.  Last night I harvested fresh dill from my herb plant and made the cucumbers in sour cream, a Polish delicacy for me.  It is ogorki w/ smietanie or mizseria....in Polish.  I used up one large cucumber and  still have some of that for a snack.  I truly savored my fresh dill,  like the scent when picked.  I had it and a sprig of fresh rosemary for the salmon,  truly fragrant too.

Rhubarb patch, puny needed fertilizer

So I continue to do all my work inside and out and some days have overdone myself, like Wednesday when I hauled  sacks of manure down to the garden to replenish the rhubarb which was puny this year. I did not get enough to do anything with.  I recalled old late farmer friend always said to feed it manure, well it has been without for a couple years.  Although he recommended dousing it late fall to prepare it for winter, when I spotted the manure bags at our local hardware store I was inspired.  This was a monumental task and although they loaded the sacks for me I  had to get them out of the truck and to the garden.  My handy cart worked but I had to hoist the bags into and out of it, could have used help but having none, I tackled it. The heat was worse  than I expected because it was sporadically cloudy and not reaching those awful 90 degrees we'd endured for weeks.  Still our clean clear sky, unfiltered northern sun were hot and sweat drenched me from head to toe but I got it done.  Truthfully it got me overdone, exhausted and that evening I went to bed at 9:00, lights out. I had no one here to tell me, "ok that's enough for now"  but then if I had it would have been Jerry and he'd have carried the bags for me, helped, etc.  But again here I am. 

 The gardens/flowers  are looking great even if the grass and lawns are parched, but today we have rain and the lawns recover quickly.  I sure hope we have the worst of the heat behind us and our beautiful  summer weather returns.   

Apple Jack rose in front blooming
late this year