how to spend your days, and going to Florida!!!!!!

 ...snow day well spent:

A single batch of cookies is so easy, after so many years of tripling the recipe.  These had a whole bag of peanut butter chips, and a whole bag of milk chocolate chips, plus a few mini regular semi-sweet to balance them out.  The house smelled heavenly, and no, I did not eat any.  

Miss Charlotte Claire, did you do this to Sunny?

We had the yummiest dinner!  I had Chik-fil-A nuggets in the airport when we were traveling back from Florida, and they were so good.  I decided to recreate them...a five pound package of chicken breast, carefully trimmed and chopped into small cubes, chunks...soaked in dill pickle juice for a bit, drained, tossed in olive oil, and dredged in a mixture of flour, with salt and pepper, and a bit of confectioner's sugar.  I wanted to air fry it, but there was too much, I would be making batch after batch...so I put it on parchment covered baking pans with lots of olive oil, and turned the oven to 400.  I did flip it and stir it up a few times, and was pleased at how crispy it got, and the inside was still tender.  I don't think I exactly nailed them, but they were really good, so much cheaper, probably healthier, and we at them with...knock off Chili's Chipotle Chicken Crisper sauce...(1/4 cup Franks red hot sauce, 1 cup brown sugar, a tablespoon water, a few tablespoons of butter, cook until boiling, let boil gently for a few,stirring the whole time,  it gets thick! ) Spoon that over your nuggets, mmmm.  not healthy, I know...but so yummy.  I had mine with cauliflower rice, but the kids had Basmati rice and there were seasoned fries from the air fryer.  I did snitch two of those, why are fries so good?   

....and, we are going to FLORIDA!!!!  Yay, I am so excited!  We are going to see grandma, just Paul and I and the two little girls...next week!  We're only going for four nights, but it'll be so nice.  

I have to say, I'm disgusted and disappointed with the Canadian government's response to the protests.  I saw a video of the cops on horses riding through a crowd and trampling people.  Arresting peaceful protesters, freezing accounts, threatening...hmm, free country?   I know that these times will happen, and there's not a heck of a lot I can do about it, but my goodness, it's alarming.  

Here in New York State, the government has decided not to enforce the vaccine booster requirement for healthcare workers, wish they had said that a few weeks ago.  They can't afford to lose any more of the health workforce.  A substance abuse center in central NY just had to oust their inpatient patients, due to all of the remaining nurses handing in their badges, sick of working in understaffed, unsafe environment.  We have the military staffing hospitals here, wings still closed, beds still closed, it's crazy.  

Things are opening up, slowly, hope they stay that way.  Norway has opened it's borders, no vaccine or testing required anymore.  

We just need to get the masks off the school kids.  You've probably all seen the memes about the hypocrisy of the elite visiting schools unmasked, and the school board members trouncing around maskless, while a regular parent in that same district gets tipped out of his chair and dragged out of a school board meeting (here in NY state, AFTER the state mask requirements were dropped...but still being enforced in schools)...  I mean, seriously?  If you have mask breaks in classrooms, kids taking them off to eat and drink, then putting them back on...little kids, touching them, tugging on them, breathing in them and dropping them....I cannot for the life of me think of a scenario where anyone thinks this actually helps anything.  And if it DOES prevent kids from getting colds and flus, well, what's going to happen to their immune systems when things go back to "normal"?  

Anyway.  The poor kids.  Lots of them say they don't mind.  Well, they've been TRAINED to not mind.  It's sad.

Going out and about and seeing peoples' faces again is wonderful.  If someone still chooses to mask, that's fine and dandy too, who knows if they have immunity issues, or fear, or are especially vulnerable, or just plan feel safer.  That's fine...

Well, I'm certainly not short of strong opinions today, am I?  I need to get busy around here...there are projects, believe it or not...