LHS Pride

Of course, this isn't really a video format, 

but thought I would post a couple of links to videos anyway.

The Luck High School Pep Band is really good, under the direction of Mrs. Gilhoi, these kids make good music and seem to have a ton of fun!  

CLICK HERE to listen.

And remember, I was taping from across the gym, so in person they sounded even better.

As you can see, the electric guitar player is having a blast and the drummer is a real character.

My great niece Emily is 3 rows up on the right, playing the flute.

The Luck High School Choir sang our national anthem at the game on Friday night.

Under the direction of Ms Werner, who is new to the Luck school system this year, these kids sounded awesome.  My bleacher seat was a bit behind the kids, so I am guessing from the front, they sounded even better.

Here's a video, CLICK HERE to check it out.  

I'm so proud to be a Cardinal.

Shout Out

Last night was an exciting game between the Luck Cardinals and the Frederic Vikings.  It was a close game and after coming back from behind, our Cardinals won the game!

The local radio guys were broadcasting, so I sent sister Laila a text and told her she could listen via the webpage.  She found the link and was listening to the game.  One of the radio guys walked by during halftime, so I told him that they had a listener in Colorado and he asked her name.

Fun for her, she got a triple shout out!

Click here to listen.

After the game, Noah was interviewed by the radio guys.

Little Jens, my great nephew, Noah's cousin, waited patiently until the interview was over.

Jens had gathered up all the used drawing tickets and wanted to give them to Noah.

It made me smile.

Love between cousins is pretty precious.

In my continuing study of how the opening tip-off predicts the outcome of the game,

Noah won the tip, Cardinals won the game.

Final score after an exciting game!

Feeling pretty proud of myself today

I saw an idea for making a feral cat shelter out of a styrofoam cooler inside a Rubbermaid tote and decided I needed one.  I see little kitty tracks in the snow every time we get a dusting.  

So, my good friend Carol had received an Omaha Steaks shipment over Christmas, and she donated the styro cooler.  I had a big hinged lidded tote that I was using for packages from UPS / USPS, but that got re-purposed.

Through the wizardry of the Internet, I found the directions and some tips on how to easier cut the plastic tote and started on my project.

First step, using a hairdryer to heat up the plastic, cut a 6" hole for a kitty door.

Add caption

The cut a matching hole in the styro cooler.

Add some bedding inside the shelter 

and some more insulation outside the cooler to have a good fit inside the tote.

 Line up the two holes and add the cooler lid for a nice insulated and safe shelter.

Add a food dish inside the shelter.

Placed the shelter out on the front porch close to the building, 

and hopefully, in a warmer spot than most.

It is also easy access for me to check the food supply and the general tidiness of the shelter.

Plugged in the heated water dish, 

Re-labeled the tote so that the mail mistress doesn't try to put packages inside.

Now all I have left to do is move the trail cam out to the front porch 

so I can see who comes and goes into the shelter.  

Keep your fingers crossed that I don't end up with a family of skunks moving in.

Where have I been?

Well, it has been 8 years since I started this little blog.  I wrote my first entry on the same day that was my last day of work at Coors.  Time flies, eh?

Well, I took a little break from writing but now it's time to get caught up a bit.

I haven't been that busy, unless you call playing cards, cooking in my wonderful electric pressure cooker, reading and watching football busy.

To start with, I love this electric pressure cooker, Instant Pot brand, and am having fun coming up with delicious and easy things to cook.

Here's an example of one of my successful meals.  A whole frozen chicken from Aldi.  I just took it out of the freezer, peeled off the plastic packaging and set it in The Pot, on the trivet, with a cup of water.

This took longer than expected to cook but the end result was great and I was not waiting to eat it as most of this chicken was going into another recipe.

Of course no browning of skin, but that makes it even easier to peel the skin off, that crispy skin is always tempting, this soft fatty skin, not so much.

A nice container of chicken after I cleaned the meat off the bones.

Next, the bones and skin and all go back in the pot, in a metal steamer basket, then I cook on high pressure for quite a while and then let it stew all night long.

The resulting broth is really good, strained it and cooled it and then skimmed off the fat.

Pretty good output for a $5 whole chicken!

***

Next up, chicken green chili!

This one was too easy and so yummy.

Rough chopped peppers, a couple of jalapenos and several Anaheim peppers.  I left most of the seeds in the Anaheims, took a few out of the jalapenos...I wasn't trying to make jet fuel!  Tomatillos, tomatoes, garlic, and onions rounded out the flavors.

The recipe also called for fish sauce, to deepen the umami flavors, and I added that as well.

The recipe said you didn't have to add any liquid as the veggies would provide the liquid as they cooked, but I was chicken and added about 1/2 cup of water to be sure the pot could make steam.

I don't think it needed it, but it didn't hurt either.

Also skinless, boneless chicken thighs.

Next time I'd put the chicken on top, easier to retrieve after cooking.

 After cooking I retrieved the chicken and then used my immersion blender to make finish the breakdown of the veggies, added the shredded chicken back in and I have a wonderful spicy, chicken chili.  I often crave green chili and this is really good and so easy.  Now I'm going to be on the lookout for good peppers when I get to the bigger grocery stores.

I forgot to take a photo of the end product, but it was really really good, and I have 4 servings in the freezer, ready for that craving to hit again!

***

Today I tried caramelizing onions in The Pot.

There are a bunch of websites that offer Pressure Cooker tips and a very active page on Facebook too.

So, when I saw this tip, I thought I'd try it.  Eventually I want to make french onion soup this way, but today I was just testing the technique.

I added the chopped onions to a little melted butter, added 1/2 tsp of baking soda (which speeds the Malliard reaction of browning, and closed the lid.

The end result was impressive.

I used the onions in a big pot of chicken veggie soup that is right now cooking in The Pot.

So, that's part of what I have been doing,

I'm off to basketball tonight and tomorrow there is another tournament, so lots of bleacher time. 

I'll be anxious to get home to my soup!

Volunteering

Eight years ago, when I worked my last day at the brewery, I really thought I would spend my retirement doing lots of volunteer work.  But, as it turns out, I'm just a little too protective of my time and find it difficult to commit to any recurring volunteer gigs.

I was asked a few years ago to help at an Academic Decathlon, it is one morning in January, really fun and it is the perfect volunteer opportunity!  This year was my 3rd or 4th year, and I look forward to next year.

I judged interviews.  Two judges ask the kids a set of prepared questions and then judge the kids on their responses as well as their manner of response.  It's not about the content but more about how well they answered the question, made eye contact, showed emotion / enthusiasm...you get the drift.

The kids are interesting and I really enjoy hearing their answers.  Their interests are varied and wide reaching.  I think teenagers get a bad rap sometimes, there are some really great kids out there.

Looking forward to next year's participants.

BTW, I am going to start back tutoring reading through the Barron County Literacy Council.

I'm trying to see the upside of making the commitment.

Gus-isms

If Gus could, he would tell us he is ‘with us in spirit’.  I remember as Laila and I were emptying Mom’s house in Colorado after she died, the weather was in the high 90's & we were complaining to our brothers in Wisconsin and Gus told us he was ‘with us in spirit’.   That phrase took on new life after that, and it got to be one of the classics whenever anyone couldn’t be with the group.

I wonder how many times he asked me if I was on ‘red alert’ when it was getting close to travel time to Wisconsin.  The week before hunting, I know he was on red alert every day.  On the Friday before hunting this year, as I sat next to his hospital bed, he told me a few times ‘it all starts today, getting the groceries, buying the beer, heading to the shack’.  I don’t think he mentioned ‘red alert’, but I knew that was what he meant.  Those last few days in the hospital were the real deal red alert I guess.

So many Gus-isms are part of our normal language.  I for sure know that a bad headache is always a ‘christ-er’.  And my work mates knew that descriptor as well.  At least one of my employees was plagued with migraine headaches, and she used this Gus-ism to explain to me how she felt on more than one occasion.

When it was time to load up the car and ‘roll steel’, we all knew that Gus was ready to leave.  Getting loaded into the car for a drive always always always meant a packed cooler with pop and water on ice.  I still feel guilty if I’m driving an hour without a cooler in the car.  Anyone who wasn’t cooperating with getting ready to go somewhere was probably ‘jick jacking’.  There was ‘jick jacking’ of many kinds, but dragging one’s feet when Gus was ready to go, well that wasn’t good.  If the kids were drinking too much pop and eating too much candy, this was getting ‘jicked and jacked’, something altogether different from the dragging of heels.

Gus was usually ready to go home before anyone else, and when he was ready to go, he wanted everyone else to get in the car ‘right J now’.   Yes, he wanted everyone in the car ‘right J now’ and then we would ‘roll steel’. 

Getting to work on time, or being where you were supposed to be, well that was ‘standing tall’.  That might mean taking care of your job or it might mean arriving at The Shack for hunting.  Standing tall was just doing the right thing.

Gus was a Luck guy.  He lived his whole life there and did his civic duty in many ways.  All the years on the school board, village board, county board sounded like misery to me, but I think he liked knowing the inside scoop and being in on the decisions.

Gus was a walking history book of who was married to who and where they lived and who their parents and aunts & uncles were.   When asking him if he knew someone, often his quick response was ‘is there a problem?’ 

It always to fun to meet new people once I moved to Rice Lake and if the conversation got around to being from Luck, more often than not, I would be asked if I knew Gus Johansen.  I didn't go many places with Gus that he didn't run into someone he knew, either from his car dealership days or his gun dealership years.  I always said that Gus would talk to a dead dog.  It never seemed to matter where he was, he would strike up a conversation with strangers and in no time, he would have a life history and probably find something or someone in common.

I can remember being so glad to have a baby sister, in some way thinking it would even up the teams at our house, having been outnumbered by the boys for the first 6 years of my life.  I don’t remember that the boys were every mean to me, but I just wasn’t part of their fun times.  I spent lots of evenings watching the boys and cousins their ages, play cards or board games at our kitchen table.  One game that Gus liked a lot was called Rich Uncle.  As I remember, it was based on stocks and bonds and money.  I also seem to remember that he always won!  I guess this was to be expected as he was a banker as soon as he finished high school.

Washing dishes with the boys meant that Gus would wash but there were to be ‘no rejects’ by whoever was drying the dishes.  So, if there was still food on the plate, the dryer was to wipe it off with the towel.  My poor mother.

There were lots of shenanigans when our parents were gone.  I remember one night during the dish washing a water fight started with baby bottle nipples, but it progressed to the sprayer on the sink faucet.  Before it was all said and done, most of the towels in the house were used to sop of the flood of water on the kitchen floor.  I remember when Mom got home she was quite surprised to see all the towels hanging on the clothes line.  I’m just guessing she wasn’t that pleased.

My freshman year of college, I lived in the dorm at UW-Eau Claire.  Some weekends I would make it to Luck and sometimes stayed with Gus.  I remember an apartment at the back of the greenhouse right under the water tower.  It was kind of rustic, if you catch my drift.   I was going to college on school loans and grants, and working part time to have a couple of dollars in my pocket.  I had a bicycle and could get along pretty well in Eau Claire with that transportation in the good weather months.  One weekend I came home to Luck and Gus said “I bought you a car this week.”  I told him I could not afford a car.  He explained that I could make payments to him and that he had arranged for insurance for me too since I had a good GPA.  So, I paid off the $100 car in $10 payments over the course of the next months and drove that ’62 Chevy Impala for about 5 years.  Eventually, I drove that car back to Colorado when I decided my college time in Wisconsin was over.  When I sold that car, a high school boy bought it from me, I charged him $100 and that young man was as happy as a clam.

I was always amazed at some of the food that Gus loved.  Chinese buffets were probably the top of his list but butter, ice cream, spam and mac & cheese were also favorites.  His pancakes were legendary.  He made them so thick it was like eating a loaf of bread.  I remember one cabin weekend that Glenn tried to sneak in and thin the batter a bit but Gus noticed right away and added some more Bisquick to thicken it back up to his liking!  One thing, the way that Gus cooked was how he expected everyone to like their food.  And usually, I liked it just fine.

All thought life Gus often moaned and groaned about who had the most money or ‘the pile’ and how he was probably going to the Poor House, he also was right there to help family.  Years ago, Laila had a blown engine on a car in North Carolina one time, and Gus told her to take the bus to Luck and he would help her get a car.  I often drove cars off his lot when I was home on vacation, a very nice perk.  I remember him helping Aunt Ane Marie & Bill with their car after a blanket had been put on the engine in the winter to help keep it warm, but then was forgotten before the engine was run quite a while.  Picking out the blanket pieces and getting them mobile again was no easy deal.

Many years as Santa on the Luck Telephone free North Pole number was one of his claims to fame.  Several of my friends in Colorado had their kids call Santa on that number to leave their Christmas lists.  I have to admit, I called it a few times myself.

He was proud to be a Cardinal.  It wasn’t always easy for him to find school pride gear in his size, but he was always in a Cardinal / Luck shirt at the ball games.  I saw him sit at the center court at basketball so many times; it seems hard to believe he’ll never be there again. 

Oh wait, he’ll be with us in spirit.

Thanks for all the fun memories Gus!  I hope we’ll be telling Gus stories all the rest of my days and beyond!  

Your little sister Wanda

One thing done

I spent most of today making sense of the information I was handed when I got elected as Treasurer of our Senior Citizens group.   I organized and computerized and now I have a system in place for my tracking and reporting the income & expenses of the group.  It stirred up some of my lazy brain cells that used to do this kind of work on a daily basis.  But at the end of today,  my reports are printed and now I just have to plan how to introduce the group to my reporting.

As I was cooking dinner I noticed that the amaryllis had opened; wow,  so lovely.  

♡