Marlene McKay's Memorabilia » Food

The repairman had bad news

Marlene — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:51:17 +0000

So the repair technician for the microwave oven came out yesterday and pronounced the microwave oven officially in critical condition. A part needs to be ordered and it will take several days for the part to arrive. When the part arrives he will call me to schedule a time to come back out and fix the microwave. Yeah, right. Thoughts race back to the time when my dryer broke and a part had to be ordered. That time the part was sent to the wrong place and after waiting six weeks with the patience of a saint the dryer was eventually fixed. Will it take that long to fix the microwave?

Well, I asked the technician if the part could be shipped to me directly and then I call HIM to schedule the appointment, and he said he didn’t think so. He was very nice (and a cutie too) and PROMISED that it would be less than a week. He gave me some paperwork and went off to his next appointment. I don’t want to say that I don’t trust the guy, but I wrote a note on my calendar to follow up in one week, and then went down into my storage room to pull out my old “college dorm” microwave that had been gathering dust for the past several years and brought it upstairs. I’ll be using that to cook my meals until my “good” microwave is up and running. Sometimes it makes sense to be a little bit of a pack-rat!

Cheesecake for Easter Desert

Marlene — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:40:31 +0000

Coming home and finding the two cheesecakes that I ordered online at Cheesecake.com had been delivered was the highlight of my long hard day. The receptionist at work is off on maternity leave and they are having a hard time finding a temp to come in and take over for her until she comes back in a few weeks and we have all been doing what we can in order to keep the office running in her absence. It has a been a wake up call to us all on how much we all rely on her and how much she does each and every day and we are more than ready to have her come back and we will show her a lot more respect and less attitude after this experience.

Anyway, the only thing that I was asked to bring to Easter dinner this year is cheesecake. Last year I surprised everyone with one and it was a big hit and now it looks like it will be our Easter desert tradition, which is fine by me. I love cheesecake, any kind of cheesecake and cheesecake goes with just about everything.

Microwave oven on hiatus

Marlene — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:34:54 +0000

Don’t you love extended warranties?

I was cooking dinner last night in the microwave oven. The timer told me that the meal was half cooked and it was time to stir it. As I opened the microwave I discovered that the dish was still very cold! I checked all of my settings on the microwave to make sure it was set on “high” (it was) but the food was not getting hot. I reset the microwave again, started it up again and let it run for another ten minutes. The light was on, and I could hear the microwave humming, and I went back to doing something else, hoping that all was well.

When the timer beeped I went to the microwave, opened it up, took out the meal, and was quite disappointed to find that it was still cold! Not a happy camper, I can tell you that! I immediately put the uncooked microwave meal in the refrigerator, pulled a saucepan off of the pot rack, put a couple of inches of water in it and put it on the stove top. Then I dropped in a couple of hot dogs and while they were cooking pulled out the extended warranty information from the filing cabinet. After eating dinner I called the telephone number from the extended warranty information and made arrangements for a technician to come out and take a look at the microwave.

Chicken cordon bleu

Marlene — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 05:15:53 +0000

Tonight I decided to cook something special for dinner I’d never tried before. I cooked chicken cordon bleu, rice, peas, gravy, and dinner rolls. We had company for dinner, so it was really nice to have something special like that turn out so good! I’m getting to be a pretty good cook, if I say so myself! I think cooking is actually quite a bit of fun, if you can get people to eat what you cook without acting like you’re trying to kill them!

Saucy chicken

Marlene — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:47:50 +0000

My mother asked me to cook supper tonight, she wasn’t feeling very well. I asked her what she wanted me to cook and she said “whatever.” So I know she REALLY wasn’t feeling well. So I scrounged around the kitchen to see what I could come up with. Something a little bit different than what we eat. I felt like experimenting. So I found some skinless chicken breasts in the refrigerator that had a “use by” date of tomorrow, so I decided to pull them out and use them.

Then I went to the pantry and was looking around. I found a can of Healthy Request Cream of Chicken soup, and a can of Healthy Request Cream of Mushroom soup. I pulled them out. I rinsed off the chicken and cut it into strips and put them in a covered casserole dish. Then I opened the cans of soup and poured them over the chicken, put the lid on and cooked it at 350 for a half hour. While that was cooking I cooked up some minute rice, some dinner rolls and some veggies and we had a great meal! I’ll have to cook that again sometime! Definitely put that in my recipe box!

Slept through the celebration

Marlene — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 19:36:05 +0000

How did you celebrate the new year? I wanted to stay up, and my hubby and I even broke open a bottle of champagne! We each drank two glasses (we sipped) and turned on the Dick Clark celebratory television show. I’m sorry to say that we both fell asleep (me on the sofa, him in his recliner) around eleven pm and woke up about around one am. Oh well, we missed it! But you know what, the new year is here just the same. Hopefully this is not the LAST new year our civilization watches!

Christmas fruits

Marlene — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:31:01 +0000

The past couple of days we’ve been getting gift boxes in the mail from my hubby’s relatives. Seems as if they all decided to buy fruit from Harry & David this year! We love their pears, so we are glad to get the gifts. One of the boxes arrived with no message as to who the gift is from, it just said in the message part for my son to keep his hands off of the fruit! I am thinking it is from my sister-in-law, but I’m not sure of that.

Today we got another box, this time from my hubby’s aunt – it had pears and candies and nuts and smoked salmon and baklava and all kinds of great goodies in it! That box cost a bundle, I am sure! The last time I remember eating smoked salmon was right around 1999, and I really enjoyed it, so I’m sure I’ll enjoy that treat, assuming that my hubby doesn’t eat it all before I get any of it!

What is your favorite summer salad?

Marlene — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:00:13 +0000

It seems that when the heat is high outside, my kitchen becomes the hottest room in the house. I will do anything to avoid having to spend an hour in the kitchen cooking with the hot stove and oven making the room heat up. So I’ve become a great fan of cold summer salads.

Do you have a favorite salad?

The new Twizzlers

Marlene — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 13:53:35 +0000

Yesterday I was at the store and saw someone buying a package of Twizzlers. No big deal, right? Well, these Twizzlers were not licorice, and not strawberry. There was an assortment of colors in that Twizzler bag.

Well, that piqued my curiosity, so I bought a bag for my own family to try. There are supposed to be a variety of flavors. One of them being watermelon, which happens to be one of my favorite flavors.

Got the bag home, and we opened the bag. We each took a different color. Much to our dismay, none of the new flavors tasted anything at all like the flavor it is supposed to be. Such a disappointment! No one in the house wants to eat anymore of that candy, so I guess we’ll be throwing it out. Or maybe I’ll take the bag to work to let my co-workers try it out for themselves so they don’t waste their own money on buying a bag.

Looking for coupons online – beware of hackers

Marlene — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:41:15 +0000

I’ve been trying to find coupon-clipping websites to use to clip some coupons to help cut down on my shopping expenses. Several ladies at work have told me that they get a lot of coupons off of the Internet. So last night I went online and found what looked to be promising, and I signed up. I was immediately notified by my security software that there was a hacker attempt at that very second to get into my system! Thankfully my system blocked the attack.

I thought that was strange, and a coincidence. So I went and picked out my coupons and tried to print them off. They wouldn’t print. I thought I had done something wrong, so I tried it again. Again I got that notice from my security software. So I wonder if that website is a front for hackers, or if my security software is blocking something that I really wanted. Either way, I guess I’m not going to get coupons from that site!