Zig, Zag, Flee

It's not so much that I was hearing voices. I mean, that's not . . . you know . . . healthy. But, truth is, I wasn't. Healthy. Physically. 

Mentally, I was doing OK. A little depressed, a lot exhausted, but mostly OK. Well, except for the messages. 

Not auditory messages, visual. Delivered through a daily game I played. Seemingly mocking me at first, but later offering some pretty sound advice.

 

So, two things. The first one I'll give you the bare minimum in terms of information. Because I neither want to relive, nor will you want to hear all the gory details. And it was gory around here. 

Little by little, in the end of November through the middle of this month, we were sick. We being PurDude, (who was home from Boulder for 2 weeks for his brother's birthday, Thanksgiving, and Hanukkah), and then College Boy, and finally me.

PurDude's first morning here, he had respiratory symptoms. On his day 8, his brother exploded in the middle of the night, gastrointestinally. On day 11, I had respiratory distress and PurDude, still having his respiratory issues, was also exploding gastrointestinally. He went to an urgent care and they did lab work. All negative. He didn't have Covid, strep, flu, RSV . . . apparently, we were all suffering from . . . nothing.

 

Not to be deterred, I still made all the celebration meals, desserts, and snacks. So, at least I was functioning. And somehow it all got eaten. Whoever was well enough on any given day, ate whatever I'd made. Well, along with their jug of Gatorade.

Almond Cranberry Sauce Cookies

 

On day 15, with just some minor congestion, PurDude ran for his life, escaped, drove back to Boulder. Two days later, not to be left out, I joined the explosion party. And two days after that College Boy went for round two.

At the 3 week mark, everyone was pretty much better except for me, I was still coughing and congested.

Now the second thing: I play a lot of word games and post my results twice a day to my Baking In A Tornado Facebook page, where some friends there share their scores too. I wrote about it in Wordle, Nerdle, Curdle. I even wrote You Are What You Phrase, about the game Phrazle, which is the specific game choosing to mock me a few weeks ago.

I clicked on Phrazle this particular morning, PurDude was back in Colorado, College Boy was back at work but I, a week behind them, was still sick, and exhausted, and sad that our holiday celebrations were . . . how do I say this? . . . a shit fest. And although I was ready to play the game, figure out the elusive phrase of the day, I just kept saying to myself over and over again "how did this happen? How can we all be so sick with (according to the lab tests) absolutely nothing? Where did this come from?"

And there it was, the solution to the puzzle? Or a cosmic answer?

OK, that's just mean. Yeah, maybe we zigged when we should have zagged, but it's not like we had any warning. I mean, none of us are aware of having seen some big cloud of medical crud headed our way, so how could we have known to initiate evasive tactics?

Believe me, we would have. Zigged, zagged, or just flat out run for our lives.

The next day, since we clearly didn't zig, zag, or flee, Phrazle shared the only strategy left to me:

And the following day, I guess the advice was not to dwell on a ruined holiday season. Once I was better, apparently the puzzle gods recommended that I:

 

Finally, finally feeling just a little bit better, and hoping that with the illness was going the percieved subliminal messaging, I got to the Phrazle portion of my daily game routines. Hoping against hope, but afraid to look in the mirror, I wondered if I was starting to look human again. Seems Phrazle had reverted to snarky:

Oh, and btw, were you wondering about Hubs? Bet you can guess who it was who'd been tending to the boys while they were exploding. Well, let's just say this: Hubs . . . perfectly fine, from start to finish, not so much as one single wayward sneeze, dammit.

Almond Cranberry Sauce Cookies         

                                                                                      ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients: 

2 sticks butter, softened

1 1/4 cups sugar

1/2 cup jellied cranberry sauce, room temperature

1/4 tsp almond extract

1 egg, room temperature

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup white chocolate chips

1/4 cup sliced almonds, chopped

Directions:
*Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cover baking sheets with parchment paper.

*Cream the butter, sugar, cranberry sauce, and almond extract until smooth. Beat in the egg.

*Starting at the lowest speed, beat in the flour, baking soda, and salt until it forms a dough. Mix in the white chocolate chips and chopped sliced almonds.

*Bake for 11 - 13 minutes, until the edges start to brown. Allow to sit on the baking sheets for 2 minutes before removing to cool completely.

The Whisper Game: Monthly Poetry Group

 

 

 

Last Friday of the month is for

Monthly Poetry Group to rhyme.

Diane, Mimi, and I take turns,

Your Favorite Text is the theme this time.

 

As usual, today I'll try,

a poem to write . . . or fudge.

Whether I'm successful or not,

you get to be the judge.  

 

The Whisper Game

When the boys were little,

was a game that we would play.

Started off as silly,

but it went on this way . . .

"Come here, I have a secret,"

how I'd entice them near.

They'd snuggle up beside me,

to my mouth, they'd put their ear.

At first they were confused by,

the words that I would say.

"Some boys love their moms," was what

I whispered, that first day.

Soon, though they would get it,

the answer, it was clear, 
"love you, mom," exactly,

what I needed to hear.

Fast forward many years to,

family dinner with older son,

off to college in the morning, for

independence (and some fun).

  

 

Strawberry Jalapeno Chicken

Next day, I was determined,

his independence to respect,

I'd let him reach out first to me,

but . . . so hard, I almost wept.

I'm sorry, I admit it,

I quickly failed, it's true.

Didn't make it out of the parking lot!

Saying "good bye," too hard to do.

Just two words I texted to him,

my feelings to impart,

"Some boys . . ." my simple message,

his "love you, mom," warmed my heart.

 

Before you go, stop by these blogs for more poetry:

 

On the Border

Messymimi's Meanderings

 

Strawberry Jalapeno Chicken

                                                                       ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:
1/2 jalapeno pepper

1/3 cup Italian dressing

2 TBSP red wine vinegar

3 TBSP strawberry preserves

2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Directions:

*Remove the seeds from 1/2 of a jalapeno pepper. Chop.

*Whisk together the Italian dressing, red wine vinegar, and strawberry preserves. Mix in the chopped jalapeno. Pour into a resealable plastic bag and set aside.

*Cut each chicken breast half into 3 - 4 pieces of similar thickness. Add the chicken to the bag with the marinade. Seal and refrigerate for 4 hours, turning the bag now and then.

*Preheat your grill to medium. Place the chicken pieces on the grill. Discard the marinade.

*Grill, flipping once, for about 7 minutes per side, until the chicken is completely cooked.

Solitary Games and Community Benefits: Word Counters

 

 Counting my words again. 

Today my fellow Word Counters and I are sharing our monthly group post. Each month one group member picks  a number between 12 and 50. All participating bloggers are then challenged to write something (or a few somethings, as the case may be) using that exact number of words. Today we all share what we came up with. 

This month's number is 37. It was chosen by Me!

As I've been doing in these Word Counters posts, I've chosen a theme and am using my word count multiple times in keeping with the theme. This month I'm talking about Solitary Games and Community Benefits. 

~ I play word and number games. You know this if you're a frequent visitor to this blog. And my Baking In A Tornado Facebook page. I even share one I've made up myself. They serve multiple purposes.

~ They exercise the brain, especially {{ahem}} as you age. There is the satisfaction of completing a challenge, and the temporary mental respite from politics, daily mass shootings. They can also provide insight into how we approach life.

~ Strategy matters, developed over time, based on experience, specific to the game. And discipline to stick to it, when lulled into looking for an easier way when, in fact the whole picture is not yet in view.

~ But rigidity can be your enemy. If the whole picture just isn't coming into focus it's not that sticking to a strategy is always right, but acquiring the understanding of when to abandon it can be key.

~ You knew I was going to work recipes in here somewhere, right? Rigidity is required when baking. Don't follow the rules, your cake won't rise. But cooking? Go ahead and change ingredients, cooking methods, as you go.

Turkey Tenderloin Bake

~ It's exciting, especially in a math game, to uncover all the pieces. Don't be deceived, having all of the information can be limiting. These are the pieces, you can add nothing else, to make it work. 

~ Conversely (hello, parenting), getting none, or very few of the pieces can initially be discouraging. But if you look closely, not just at what you have, but what you've eliminated, there's actually a wealth of information there.

~ I share game results twice a day on my Facebook page, morning games and evening games. Other players add the results of whatever games they play to the thread, and suddenly solitary games are a shared experience.

~ The last thing I want to mention is the most important. Build (or join) communities, share strategies, applaud successes, commiserate with failures. Build others up, look to them for support. No, I'm not talking games any more. 

Here are links to the other Word Counters posts:

On the Border 

Messymimi’s Meanderings 

Turkey Tenderloin Bake       

                                                                                      ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

about 1 1/2# turkey breast tenderloin

salt and pepper

1 bag (20 oz) frozen mixed stir fry vegetables, partially thawed

1/3 cup ranch salad dressing

1/3 cup sweet chili sauce

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 tsp ginger paste

Directions:

*Grease a 9 X 13 baking pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

*Slice the turkey into 1 inch slices. Season both sides with salt and pepper, and arrange in the center of the pan, leaving a border all around for the vegetables.

*Arrange the vegetables all around the turkey. Sprinkle the vegetables with salt and pepper.

*Whisk together the ranch dressing, sweet chili sauce, garlic, and ginger. Set aside 1/3 cup of this sauce. Pour the remaining sauce over the turkey.

*Bake for 50 to 60 minutes. Turkey must be completely cooked.

*Heat the reserved 1/3 cup of the sauce in a sauce pan or the microwave until hot (do not boil), pour over or serve beside the turkey.

 

Games Without Words

 

 I cheated. Well, not so much cheated really, but screwed up.

 

The difference? Intent. And although there was no intent, there was a screw up.

 

And the screw up? Inevitable. How far it went, though, now that's a story!

Listen. I'm human on my best day, so making mistakes isn't really noteworthy. But I am also two other things: an extremely organized over thinker, and I'm aging. Resulting in a bit of a mental tug of war. Previously, the extremely organized over thinker went for the most part unchallenged. That progressed to there mostly being a precarious balance maintained. But more and more the fuzzy aging brain is becoming a bit more . . . assertive. Tipping the scales in my favor isn't that hard, Googling words, and proofreading posts and recipes the day after I write them.

 

So, on to that story I promised you. It's about a personal Wordle game I host on my Baking In A Tornado facebook page. I've talked about it in a few different blog posts (Wordle, Nerdle, Curdle) so I won't go into it again, I will say that it's gone on SO much longer than I could have expected.

Each week, Monday through Friday, I post the link to a Wordle game, the results of which are a word I've chosen for that day. All of the words are food, cooking, and baking based, of course.

 Gingered Squash & Apples

 

I thought it might last a week or two, maybe a month, and people would lose interest. That's not what happened. Today I posted the link to our 212th game, and people are still playing.

Which is kinda shocking, considering what happened last month.

Now, as I said, I knew I'd screw up at some point. And I did. In a moment of . . . I don't know what . . . in October, I posted a link to that day's game, AND the answer. Ooops, sort of takes away the challenge of playing.

Fortunately, I caught it immediately, deleted the post, moved that word to another day in the future and chose a different word for that day.

Inevitable screw up under my belt, I went happily along posting daily links to games. And those who play went happily along posting their daily results. Fun for them to play, fun for me to see how they all did.

Until one month ago. I announced the day's game and went along my merry way.

When I had a chance, I went back to my page to see the results being posted, and whether I'd stumped anyone (insert evil laugh here). Yes, lots of people played, each one showed their results, but they all also made the same comment: this word is spelled wrong.

Huh?

I went to play the game myself, putting in the correct answer as my first guess.

Umm, stupid game, trying to tell me the last 2 letters needed to be switched. Which I did, and which won me the game.

OK, that's embarrassing, I SO wish this was April 1st, I could have tried to sell it as a (deliberate) joke. No such luck. But when I went back to my FB page to fess up and delete the game, I noticed something. More and more people were playing, and enjoying it, finding the whole thing funny.

 

I learned two things from that screw up. 

 

First, my friends all have a good sense of humor (phew).

 

Second, that word games are fun. Even when you're playing a word game . . . with a word . . . that isn't a word.

        Gingered Squash & Apples               

            ©www.BakingInATornado.com 

 

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

1 acorn squash

1 large Honeycrisp apple (can substitute apple of your choice)

1/2 cup ginger ale, warm

1/2 tsp minced ginger

1/4 tsp cinnamon

2 TBSP brown sugar

1 tsp orange zest

Directions:
*Grease an 8 X 11 baking dish. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

*Slice the squash in half, clean out the seeds, and slice each half into 8ths.

*Peel and core the apple. Cut into 16 slices.

*Place the squash slices into the prepared pan. Top with the apples.

*Whisk together the ginger ale, ginger, cinnamon, brown sugar, and orange zest. Slowly pour into the pan.

*Bake for 50 minutes. Spoon the squash and apple slices into a bowl, top with the sauce from the baking dish, stir gently.

You Are What You Phrase

 

 Everything says something about you.

You know that old saying "you are what yo eat?" Well, you certainly are also what you say, and what you do. What you read says something about you, what you listen to, who you listen to, and what you write.

 

Here's a new thought, one that dawned on me while playing Phrazle a while ago. You are what you phrase.

 

Before I go on, let me just explain a few things. First, and I won't go into great detail since I wrote a whole blog post about this in March, called Wordle, Nerdle, Curdle, but I play and share a lot of word games, as well as posting one of my own daily (Monday through Friday), on my Baking In A Tornado FB page for others to play. If you haven't before, click on over via that link and read about it.

Second, is a brief rundown of how to play Phrazle, since that's what I'm sharing today. Phrazle, as opposed to a word guessing game, is a phrase guessing game. The puzzle shows you how many words are in the well known phrase, and how many letters are in each word. That's your blank slate. For each of your 6 guesses, you choose words for the phrase, press enter, and are rewarded with clues. Each letter of each word in the phrase will be a color:

grey: this letter is not in the phrase at all

purple: this letter is in the phrase, but in a different word from the one you used it in

yellow: this letter is in the word you used it in, but not in the spot you chose

green: this letter is in the correct spot

Wait. Don't go!

Even if you're confused at this point, it's just background, read on.

 

Do back to everything saying something about you. I was playing Phrazle a while ago and, probably for the first time, not only looked at the results, relieved to have guessed them, but looked at my process. And wondered what exactly these guesses say about me.

 

For instance, have I been dreaming about pigs? 

That growl? It's what happens when you realize you're flat broke.

 

 

Is this a sneak peek into where to go to pray for an end to that whole flat broke thing? The fancy pews?

Well, I know what these two say about me.

Bad butter?

 

Cold fried?

 

Good grief, I'm hungry. 

No problem, I got this:

Strawberry Banana Cake

 

 

 

On this day I was clearly just thinking about the game I was about to play. Although, the way I go about it, it's more word salad (but salad doesn't have 8 letters).

 

 

I actually can satire, don't you think?

One thing's clear, if I was robbed, I wasn't bold enough.

 

Man in the hole? That's a long fall from the top of the hill.

 

In the dim house? What was I thinking? Probably that I need more coffee.

 

I'm willing to bet when I started this puzzle, the next thing on my to do list must have been to write my poetry post. I do adore those puns.

 

OK, I'm going to argue for credit for having solved this one in two. After all, I could make a case for a strumpet wife actually being a dumpster fire.

 

 

 

After that last comment, maybe we better forget the smog and the crib, I may need that get out of jail free card. 

Strawberry Banana Cake

                                               ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

1 box (15.25 oz) strawberry cake mix

1 box (3 - 3.4 oz), divided

1 medium ripe banana

1 cup milk

1 tsp strawberry extract

3 eggs

4 strawberries, cored and chopped

1 can (16 oz) strawberry frosting

1 TBSP milk

3 strawberries, cored and sliced

1 banana

1/2 cup orange juice

 

Directions:
*Grease and flour two 9 inch round cake pans. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

*Mash one of the bananas. Measure out 3 TBSP of the pudding mix and seat aside for the frosting.

*Beat, for 2 minutes, the mashed bananas, remaining pudding mix, cake mix, 1 cup of milk, strawberry extract, and the eggs.

*Pour evenly into the prepared baking pans. Sprinkle the chopped strawberries over the top, and bake for 20 - 30 minutes, until the center springs back to the touch.

*Cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edges and remove to cool completely. Trim the tops so the layers are flat.

*Slice the second banana. Place in a bowl with the orange juice. Cover with plastic wrap, pressing the wrap down onto the fruit. Refrigerate.

*Vigorously whisk the frosting, remaining milk, and the remaining pudding mix. Put about 1/4 cup into a plastic bag or piping bag for decoration.

*Place one cake layer on a serving plate. Spread about 1/3 of the remaining frosting on this layer and top with the second layer. Frost the sides and top of the cake.

*Pipe the reserved frosting onto the cake. Remove the bananas from the juice, decorate the top of the cake with banana and strawberry slices.