Food Video Review

 I enjoy watching videos of old "forgotten" food items from the 1930s through the 1970s.  Not all of those dishes are gone and forgotten.  I freaking love tuna melts on rye, but keep them simple, with nothing more than canned tuna, flaked up, finely diced celery, mayo, and some salt and pepper in the tuna salad.

Casseroles are also good, but they really don't take much less time to prepare, dump in the dish, and bake (if any) than it would to bake some chicken breasts, steam some broccoli, and make mashed potatoes to go with it.  Hello.  For shepherd's pie, the meat needs to be cooked ahead of time, as does the mashed potato topping.  For tetrazzini, the bechamel needs to be made ahead of time, along with the sweated down mushrooms and celery.  The spaghetti can cook while all that's going on, but it still takes a good half hour before it's ready to toss in a glass casserole, top with some sort of bread crumbs, and let bake for another 30-40 minutes.

You can cheat with condensed canned soup for some things, but the end product is not as good.

Still, all of it beats the living daylights out of the jar of baked beans and a couple of hot dogs my mom left the babysitter to feed us when my parents went out to a dinner party.  I really hate hot dogs.  Diced up, they're okay for training a dog. A good bratwurst, otoh, grilled, is goff with some whole grain mustard.

Josie

 Our new dog:

  

Her name is Josie.  We had to have our 15 year old black lab mix euthanized a few weeks ago.  He beat the odds for his parentage by a good three years.

Josie gets along just fine with our cats, and is a lovable couch potato with no separation anxiety issues when we trudge up to bed or leave to go run errands.  It took her just a few hours to settle in, greet the cats with a brief sniff, and leave them alone.  She's already nine years old, so she probably won't last more than another handful of years.

We already have an appointment with our longtime veterinarian's office for an initial checkup.  It was part of the deal with the adoption deal from our local county SPCA, but even if it wasn't I'd have booked one.

The way her one ear doesn't sty up like the other one does is so endearing, and she has the sweetest personality.  She needs to lose 10-15 pounds worth of pudge, which we can manage with keeping her on a diet in which doesn't involve a lot of treats, and taking her for good long walks around our farm.

Josie and the Pussycats, for real, not the cartoon from when I was a teen.