Potatoes everywhere! And Valentine's Day

I made the planned potato and carrot soup, using a vegetable stock I made, using the stock bag in the freezer. The other liquid was the mapu tofu spicy liquid, which I saved. I'd made a bit too much, and it's a great soup addition. Dash of sea salt, lemon juice and it's done.

I blended it to a thick consistency, sprinkled on some dried dill, courtesy of the friend who grew it in her kitchen, and there was a good supper.

Five more meals from this batch.

I'm noticing a pattern -- leftovers from Yeung Man Cooking recipes, usually very spicy, make great soup starters. Because they already have plenty of flavor, onion, garlic, red chili oil, spices galore, no need to do much more.

 

This suits my inner lazy woman. I need to make more red chili oil though. And next week's Misfits will include firm tofu, to make marinated baked tofu sticks with a dipping sauce. Chili oil may be needed.

At some point I also need to open those cans of cannellini beans and see if they are what the label says. I'm thinking of opening them ahead of need,  and freezing the contents. I'll know what I'm getting then. Novelty is fine but not so much when I've got my mouth all set for one thing and another shows up. 

This seems to be a food centered post. Or maybe a comfort food post. 

Happy Valentine's Day, it's for all friends, not just romantic couples.

Happy day everyone, celebrate being a friend and having friends.

All the more needed, support for Ukraine.

And some useful information from good sources 

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is for all kinds of love and friendship. I celebrated by leaving a couple of homemade fudge brownies for the sick neighbor. 

I wrapped them for the freezer because I doubt if she can deal with them today, what with chemo and radiation. But one day.. meanwhile she'll know they're there, ready for when she's up for it.

Here's my many-years-old  heart mobile, made during an intense mobile-making period, hanging in the kitchen. There are others. One day we'll do a viewing.

And today's celebratory lunch, salmon fritters

And planned for afternoon tea

Happy day everyone, enjoy it your way.

Valentine's Day. Presidents' Day. Wedding Anniversary 6WS

So much to mark.  Don't know where to start!  You'll notice that when they abolished separate celebrations for Lincoln and Washington, and moved a lot of statutory holidays in the US to the nearest Monday, Lincoln seems to have been bumped.  Just sayin'.  I think the Cherry Pie Makers Full Employment Council won it. 

Cherry pie, for non US readers, being the iconic food to celebrate the man who claimed to have chopped down his father's cherry tree and been unable to practice self-preservation by lying about it.

Wedding anniversary, February 16, 1963 Handsome Partner and I  were married.  No we were not trying for Valentine's Day, cringed at the thought. It was the logistics of a Catholic wedding in the UK, where there being a state religion, not Catholic, priests have no legal authority to marry people, and the city registrar has to be physically present in the church to make it legal. 

Getting the registrar to agree to ANY of the dates the priest offered delayed it from the October date we originally planned on...registrar finally said I'll be there at 3.20 p.m. on February 16, and I will give you ten minutes.  Then I'll leave.  So we had to crush the whole thing into his time requirement.  Reason 45,679 why I'm so happy with the US freedom from a national religion...but it was still a nice day.

Finally, Valentine's Day is for celebrating all kinds of friendship, not just the  romantic red overpriced roses kind...so I wish all our blogistas a happy day whatever you're doing.  

Me, it's cowering in the house in zero temps, with a nice glass of merlot this evening and maybe some hot chocolate at some point.  Dollivers it's preening and prancing about in their red dresses with the lace trim.  Elton it's prowling in search of new outfits, after an incautious remark in here yesterday.

Oh,oh, here's an unsuspecting Upstairs Bear playing with his friends.

 
And here's Elton after a successful Sweater Raid after explaining that it's nice to share on Valentine's Day.

This Is Not Over!  the bears confer on how to raid the sweater back again without having to confront the Dollivers. 

Watch this space for further developments...