The Coffee House-Come & Chat With Us!(May 2020)

[Urban Gardener]

I love Thai food! I usually get praram tofu, or tofu cashew nut. I also love the fried tofu appetizers.

 

[silva]

Hope you feel better Freesia.
I’ve been craving comfort food. My daughter is going for Thai and is going to get me something and drop it off. One of the perks of living so close to her now.
I ordered veggie tempura, fried tofu and yellow curry...it’s a lot, I know, lol. But I love leftovers. And with the air fryer it’s easy to heat up fried foods.

Sounds so good! I've craved Chinese or Thai, but I've been really been buying too much food everytime I shop! And cooking a lot!
Have you bought a fridge yet? I just checked on the Memorial sales, expecting the Whirlpool that was around $1000 when I first looked- now more like $1400 . Realizing everything that wasn't "essential" is going to be low in stock, and priced accordingly.

 

[KLS52]

Sounds so good! I've craved Chinese or Thai, but I've been really been buying too much food everytime I shop! And cooking a lot!
Have you bought a fridge yet? I just checked on the Memorial sales, expecting the Whirlpool that was around $1000 when I first looked- now more like $1400 . Realizing everything that wasn't "essential" is going to be low in stock, and priced accordingly.

Yes I did get a refrigerator. I went with a no frills freezer on bottom. The refrigerator is amazing, so much space, but the freezer is disappointing. It’s too small! I hate it. Apparently I was supposed to pay attention to the individual cubic ft of the fridge and freezer, not just the combined total of 22 cubic feet.

 

[silva]

Yes I did get a refrigerator. I went with a no frills freezer on bottom. The refrigerator is amazing, so much space, but the freezer is disappointing. It’s too small! I hate it. Apparently I was supposed to pay attention to the individual cubic ft of the fridge and freezer, not just the combined total of 22 cubic feet.

What did you get if you don't mind? I had looked at so many! And I definitely wondered about the bottom space- so hard to judge! they all seemed smallish.
The Whirlpool I;m set on is 22- I'll have to check.
I don't think I'll be buying anytime soon. I'm so torn over what is a need or not! Like I really really want that car I've been keeping an eye on! I'm gonna have to really total up my present cars repair cost average over the years. I'm pretty sure between it's initial cost and repairs it's probably close to 200 a month! It's a 2006. The one I'm looking at is a 2018 and $9600. I wouldn't expect too much in the line of repair cost for the first 5 years.
Then there is the exterior doors I could really use....
My son is still waiting on checks, both unemployment and his currant work

 

[Amy SF]

I’m reading again. It’s the first book in a British fantasy trilogy that I got for free on Apple Books. I’ve got the font enlarged REALLY BIG so I can read it without straining my bad eyes.

 

[Freesia]

Hope you feel better Freesia.
I’ve been craving comfort food. My daughter is going for Thai and is going to get me something and drop it off. One of the perks of living so close to her now.
I ordered veggie tempura, fried tofu and yellow curry...it’s a lot, I know, lol. But I love leftovers. And with the air fryer it’s easy to heat up fried foods.

That sounds amazing.. Thai food is one of my favourites, i havent had it in such a long time.. maybe i should try and get hold of some...

 

[Freesia]

So went out today. i was still hurting and in a poor mood so it didnt go very well, also i noticed supermarket shelf stripping has started again so i couldnt get some of the things i needed... one of the things i forgot altogether so will have to try again on Monday...

Went to the mall to get the protein powder at the health food store i havent been able to get for 8 weeks. At the mall there was pretty much no distancing and even i was failing to distance sometimes as i was in a discombobulated and sore mood and occasionally forgot about distancing even though i tried but it was silly as many werent themselves, even the bookstore you are supposed to distance but they have staff guarding the doorway so cannot really get in the store without automatically being a foot away from them,

anyway i hope to have a better time next week, at least my headache is going away... now will make a protein shake..

 

[Raven]

I don't really like Thai food. It's the lemongrass taste, even though I burn lemongrass oil all the time at home. I always get paranoid that there might be fish stock in it too.

I just had two slices of leftover pizza for breakfast.

 

[Urban Gardener]

I don't really like Thai food. It's the lemongrass taste, even though I burn lemongrass oil all the time at home. I always get paranoid that there might be fish stock in it too.

I just had two slices of leftover pizza for breakfast.

You can ask them to make it without fish sauce. I used to be friends with a Thai family who owned a few restaurants. Fish sauce is a traditional ingredient, but it's easy to leave it out.

I love lemongrass. I'm always trying to recreate Vietnamese lemongrass dishes at home.

 

[KLS52]

@silva ... this is the one I got. Looking at the specs more carefullly, the refrigerator portion is 15+ cu ft and the freezer only 6+! When I tell you it took almost two weeks of searching and trying to be so careful in what I was choosing...I can’t believe I missed this. The saving grace is that we have a chest freezer from my old house that I was going to give to my daughter but I think I will reneg on that now, lol. If we can find a place to put it in the garage, I think I will do that.



The model number is WRB3322DMBW. It’s listed at $1300 something but we took the floor model and got $250 off. The day before delivery they suddenly said the refrigerator was “out of stock”. I was flipping out (not literally at them but to myself, lol) because it took me so long to find one. So when they offered a discount on the floor model, promising that it was in great shape because had been in the showroom due to covid, I said ok.

I love the refrigerator so much. We really need the room, especially if I’m having family over and doing a lot of cooking/prepping etc. I will make do with the freezer for now. It just means no big cooking up batches of food for me and freezing it and not too many frozen things for the boys like pizza and healthy choice meals.

 

[Val]

I don't really like Thai food. It's the lemongrass taste, even though I burn lemongrass oil all the time at home. I always get paranoid that there might be fish stock in it too.

I just had two slices of leftover pizza for breakfast.

Blin, i've never connected these things in my head, since i went vegan (lemongrass and fish). Now i will. We have seasonings here, that are labeled as "Seasoning for fish dishes", and they frequently (like, always) contain lemongrass. When i was a carnivore, i used to pour lemon juice on my salmon steaks and on salted preserved salmon and mackerel. I mostly ate it to "keep company", because i'd never got to like fish, despite that i liked calamari (creepy, i know). I even ate oysters, as we say, "not having blinked an eye"! But fish itself was always disgusting to me. And i remember that sour, but nauseating odour and taste, that all fish dishes had. How could i let those men manipulate me (i mean 3 men, who always were seducing me to eat fish: ex-husband, ex-bf, and my "bestie" George Firtich)...

 

[KLS52]

Re fish sauce...I learned the hard way when I first went vegetarian/vegan and ordered pad thai not knowing they put things like fish sauce in there. I knew to ask for no egg but not fish sauce. I realized when I took my first bite...it actually tasted fishy...which I’m guessing isn’t normal anyway, and perhaps they added too much. But they did me a favor because now I know to make sure they don’t add any.

 

[Raven]

Before I went veggie I ate chicken and tuna, they were the last things I gave up. I used to love tuna and sweetcorn on a jacket potato. Now if I give my cats tuna I'm almost gagging at the smell!

They always used to serve a lemon wedge with traditional fish (in batter) and chips.

You can get a Quorn lemon fish substitute here. I quite like it. The Quorn fish fingers taste like fish, but not in a gross way.

 

[silva]

@silva ... this is the one I got. Looking at the specs more carefullly, the refrigerator portion is 15+ cu ft and the freezer only 6+! When I tell you it took almost two weeks of searching and trying to be so careful in what I was choosing...I can’t believe I missed this. The saving grace is that we have a chest freezer from my old house that I was going to give to my daughter but I think I will reneg on that now, lol. If we can find a place to put it in the garage, I think I will do that.

View attachment 21168

The model number is WRB3322DMBW. It’s listed at $1300 something but we took the floor model and got $250 off. The day before delivery they suddenly said the refrigerator was “out of stock”. I was flipping out (not literally at them but to myself, lol) because it took me so long to find one. So when they offered a discount on the floor model, promising that it was in great shape because had been in the showroom due to covid, I said ok.

I love the refrigerator so much. We really need the room, especially if I’m having family over and doing a lot of cooking/prepping etc. I will make do with the freezer for now. It just means no big cooking up batches of food for me and freezing it and not too many frozen things for the boys like pizza and healthy choice meals.

That is the exact one I've been eyeing for so long!
Now though, I gonna go look at the Toyota Yaris at Hertz--now they're filing bankruptcy, and the prices had been dropping the last few weeks. Past the low end of kelly blue book fair market value. Some people say hold off- i don't know. Hertz is already so much less than the used cars anywhere else and they;re closing their sales lots. PA is now closed, Cleveland probably would be next
See what they give me for mine

 

[KLS52]

That is the exact one I've been eyeing for so long!
Now though, I gonna go look at the Toyota Yaris at Hertz--now they're filing bankruptcy, and the prices had been dropping the last few weeks. Past the low end of kelly blue book fair market value. Some people say hold off- i don't know. Hertz is already so much less than the used cars anywhere else and they;re closing their sales lots. PA is now closed, Cleveland probably would be next
See what they give me for mine

I had a feeling it was the same one when you said Whirlpool and I think I remember from previous posts. It’s a really nice, basic refrigerator if it wasn’t for the small freezer. But maybe it’s not a big deal for everyone.

It’s tough when you have several large purchases to make and have to choose which is more important. If it wasn’t for selling our other house and having some equity, I would not be buying the way I have been. We were lucky to get a good price for the old house and moving to a less expensive area is a plus too. So we were left with a chunk of money for repairs and some upgrades. We just had the plumber here yesterday to install the new water heater, toilet and bathtub fixtures.

Still, the spending budget is finite and even with all that we are doing, some things will inevitably get left off the list. It’s a question of prioritizing. I just need to make sure we have some left for furniture. We did not have a lot of furniture to begin with and I only need some basics, like a couch, chair and a dresser or two...hopefully an area rug or two. I already purchased a dining room set from Bob’s...very inexpensive as far as dining room furniture goes, but it’s surprisingly nice and sturdy.

 

[Amy SF]

Hello everyone. How’s your weekend going? Here in the USA Monday is Memorial Day, so we have a three day weekend. It doesn’t matter to me, because every day is pretty much the same right now.

I ordered meatless pasta sauce from Target because when they gave me pasta earlier this week, there was nothing on it, first because the server didn’t realize that “meatless sauce” was the same thing as “marinara sauce”, and she came back from the kitchen telling me there wasn’t any. So I ate plain pasta with lots of salt on it for flavor. Anyway, the jar was supposed to be delivered yesterday, and was even marked “delivered” by the USPS website, but I never got it. I have no idea where it is. It wasn’t delivered to the facility, nobody saw it, I don’t know if I’ll get it today. If I don’t, I’m going to have to wait several more days. It’s just unconscionable that they’d make pasta with meat sauce for everyone else but having nothing for me. They used to have meatless sauce for me, which wasn’t that great, but it was something. I don’t know why they don’t have it now.

 

[silva]

Having such indecisions . I don't have to have anything right now, but trying to plan. My car makes terrible noises sometimes, and my mechanic can't pin down the cause. He doesnt' think it's engine or trannie related, and says he worked on another car like mine that was doing it for a couple years. My only thought is getting some money for it as a trade, and getting a newer car while I have credit. Mine is a 2006, and I can count on spending at least another $1000 in the next year on repairs. It's a total rust bucket too!
Of course the house will always want stuff- I really need to change both doors, and had hoped to upgrade the rest of the electric from knob and tube, only half the house is currant.
My company has us taking off every friday until after July 4, though they are paying us 4 hours for the days off, I'm using personal time to cover the other 4 hours.
Ack. I hate this uncertainty. This was supposed to be the year I worked all the overtime I could get and be debt free except my house
How do you plan in times like these? I feel my job is pretty secure, especially being repair, but we make MRI's which aren't exactly a hot commodity now

 

[Urban Gardener]

Hello everyone. How’s your weekend going? Here in the USA Monday is Memorial Day, so we have a three day weekend. It doesn’t matter to me, because every day is pretty much the same right now.

I ordered meatless pasta sauce from Target because when they gave me pasta earlier this week, there was nothing on it, first because the server didn’t realize that “meatless sauce” was the same thing as “marinara sauce”, and she came back from the kitchen telling me there wasn’t any. So I ate plain pasta with lots of salt on it for flavor. Anyway, the jar was supposed to be delivered yesterday, and was even marked “delivered” by the USPS website, but I never got it. I have no idea where it is. It wasn’t delivered to the facility, nobody saw it, I don’t know if I’ll get it today. If I don’t, I’m going to have to wait several more days. It’s just unconscionable that they’d make pasta with meat sauce for everyone else but having nothing for me. They used to have meatless sauce for me, which wasn’t that great, but it was something. I don’t know why they don’t have it now.

That's horrible. Remind them that you're paying for food, so they need to provide it. Ask for a refund for your meal or for them to cover the cost of groceries. And mention that the options you're requesting are less expensive than what other people are getting. It's obviously within their budget.

As for USPS, they're really going downhill. I've also been having problems with them. They deliver packages to the wrong building and then the neighbors have to coordinate to re-deliver everything.

I know two people who work for them. One posts a lot of racist, xenophobic and sometimes just violent stuff on Facebook. Not jokes. Serious stuff. And he seems to be digital friends with a lot of his co-workers. So they're tolerating that stuff, and we're trusting them to deliver our mail . . . I use other carriers when possible.

 

[Chryssie]

Hey everyone! Work wasn't too bad today. I was in the cash office and had to hurry hurry as I was needed to do another job. Thankfully everything went smoothly and I got done in time to get my 15 minute break. Then for the next 2 hours I was stationed at the door to count people coming in and going out to make sure we stayed under our 107 persons limit. It went well; there was only one time we actually hit the limit and would have had to make people wait outside. Luckily people were checking out and there wasn't a line so no one had to wait. It was a novel experience! I did some shopping when I got off because there is a huge clearance event and there are tons of clothes on sale. I got a pair of pants, a Lucky Brand top that matches them ( I only buy Lucky Brand on clearance as it is a WAY overpriced "trendy" brand, but I like it a lot), a pair of wintery pj's that are soooo soft, a bra, and a pair of white slip on Skechers sneakers. I have been wanting some white sneakers for a while. I am buying stuff now while I have some of that stimulus money left!
I have had my lunch and I am ready for a nap now!

 

[Amy SF]

@NYC Gardener The shipment started from UPS and then was handed off to the USPS. I have no control over that.

My problem is I have no patience and can get all worked up over nothing. The pasta sauce arrived today, along with the napkins I also ordered from Target which were sent separately. Unfortunately not everything I order is shipped together, especially so during this pandemic time.