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I would love to be stranded in San Diego for a few days -- my favorite city in the world! I'm sure they took advantage of the delay and it didn't cause any serious problems.

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Today I made bagels.

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We had boneless pork chops and parsnips, butternut squash, sweet potato, Brussel sprouts, and onion, all roasted on one pan.

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I made a huge pot of chili - we each had a bowl for dinner, but the rest will go into the freezer.

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I was given a new Acu-Rite weather station, since mine was fried during our power outage Dec 16-17. I love checking rain and temperature recordings during gardening season. And I bought myself a new computer. I got my old one on Sept 12, 2012, so it is 10 years old. It's become a little slow and persnickity lately, and most all the letters have worn off the keyboard.

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We had BLTs for dinner, with lettuce from under the Gro lights. The hot house tomatoes were just OK, as expected, except the center cores were hard as a rock!

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Eggs today were 5.49/dozen! These are store-brand, not organic, not free range. Plain old large white eggs.

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Today I made broccoli soup, using broccoli frozen from last summer's garden. We'll have it tonight along with onion-wild rice rolls that I made the other day.

We're going to get another big storm tonight through Friday (thanks for sending that on to us, BakerAunt!) Rain, sleet and freezing rain, snow, but most worrisome are high winds, with gusts around 60 mph. We were without power much of last weekend, and not looking forward to more of that. We do have out of state and Canadian electric company trucks coming into the area already; they were a tremendous help last weekend.

I'm not sure what will happen to our family Christmas gathering planned for Saturday evening. My son does have solar power and a back-up battery system, so we could prepare all the food there, but that means more traveling for some people. We could gather next week!

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I bet those scrap pieces still taste great!

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I've temporarily given up on "Use It Up". We've had an unexpected death in the immediate family, 45 year old brother in law, that has put our schedule of family gatherings up in the air. Now, I'm just hoping to make a couple of meals and a few cookies. I'll refocus in the new year.

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Today I baked 2 loaves of Baker Aunt's version of All-Purpose Maple Buttermilk Bread. As usual, it hardly rose at all during the hour long first rise, but what tremendous oven spring! We know the flavor is excellent. Right now I have pizza dough rising for dinner. And I have Chex mix baking in the JennAir oven.

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Joan, so good to know that your husband is doing better! Your good cooking is helping him a lot!

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Large white eggs this morning were 4.89 a dozen! Yikes. Eggs used to be a fairly good source of inexpensive protein. The KAF flour and small section of mixes was mostly empty, partly because the flour was on sale. The mixes are cheaper in the grocery stores than at the KAF retail store which is 25 miles down the road.

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I've been paying 3.99 for a dozen large eggs for about 6 months now, but 2 weeks ago the price was up to 4.49. I noted that there were some low supplies or empty shelves then, also. King Arthur flour was on sale for 2.50 for 5 pounds (just a couple of the basic flours) so most of that section was empty. Chicken was 1.49 (that is not a typo!) on sale for boneless breasts and thighs; it's usually over 3.00 per pound, so I bought several packages. This is at a small, northeast only, chain store. I'm going to do my biweekly shopping trip today, I do not want to see my total.

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I made 6 small loaves of Lemon Blueberry bread, as gifts for Christmas.

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