Charmion, I hope you're able to easily travel to see the relatives—it's sounding like some parts of that region, particularly in New York State, are frightful for travel and first responders right now. Stay safe!

Steve, you don't mention COVID so I'm hoping you and Mrs. Steve have managed to dodge that bullet this time around.

JennieG, your carrots and Brussels sprouts with prosciutto sounds interesting. Care to share that recipe? I find the sprouts to be somewhat bitter, but with the sweetness of carrots it might be something I would try. Or give to my daughter to try - she's a fan of the little cabbages.

Keberoxu, I hope your plans work out the way you envision. Do you expect to stay in that area even after your time in the community concludes?

I reread my remarks about the storage containers and realized there is a missing story there. My father (a packrat) had two upright full-size freezers in his shed across the road from his house. The houses on prime beach property are small so parking and storage need to be somewhere else. In his beachfront area lots were about 50' wide and people tended to also own the long narrow lots on the opposite side of the beach road (fifty feet wide and about 250' long). His shed was a historic structure that was built on one of the beaches to the west and moved to his property maybe 70 years ago. Marysville has a big strawberry festival and every year he bought 5-gallon cans of processed strawberries that he decanted into various sizes of Rubbermaid storage containers and put in the freezers. And a LOT of other stuff. When I worked on his estate I ended up with one of the larger U-Haul boxes, one size down from the wardrobe box, full of these Rubbermaid containers.

I don't remember now what I did with all of them, but I kept an array and for years have used a smattering of them, but others have remained stacked in the pantry. A couple of times a year I do something garden-related that involves bringing out one or two of the 12-cup containers, but the rest just collected dust. So they're old, rarely used, and in excellent condition. I let my daughter pick through for the ones she wanted and these will replace some at her house that are cracked, etc. and will be trashed. It was an interesting weekend for remembering things about Dad, this is just part of it.

I parked these remarks in a file today because the site crashed before I was able to post, and since then have had a call from an old family friend announcing that she will be arriving tomorrow evening and staying through Friday evening. This is one of the benefits of 30+ year family connections with an 89-year-old woman, she comes to see family but ends up staying at the places that are most comfortable. I have an available guest room while her daughter 10 minutes from here has a house is full of people (her daughter's family). I've warned our friend about Pepper and her lethal cone-of-shame, and we'll have to give her a cane to use to rattle at the dogs. I'm pretty sure Pepper will still be in a cone after tomorrow's vet visit.