The chunkier portions of that chuck arm got turned
into pot roast of a normal sort, except that we 
haven't kept celery in the house after that disaster
a couple years ago when I bought a celery, and Lilli
made neat 1-oz packages and stowed them in the 
freezer, and the freezer went kaflooey, and she said
Well, I don't like celery much anyhow, so no more of
that, and as a result I've been reduced to celery
salt as a stopgap. While cooking, celery salt smells
pretty awful, especially in concert with carrots,
which it augments the bitter and greeny notes of to
the detriment of the sweet orangey ones. The result
was respectable, only there were 2 lb of it, and as
Lilli doesn't like leftovers, there was a lot for me
to exercise my ingenuity on. We had 2 semidelicious
meals of pot roast and gravy, and then I shredded up
the rest to transform into a ragu or sugo (after all
these years I'm not sure of the difference). Some of
this product got combined with the gristly trimmings
and became chili, thanks to ancho, cumin, garlic, and
hot and black pepper powders, thyme, and an onion.

And right then, about a week ago, my digestion
stopped. Here were these meaty meat products, and I
couldn't get them down, and Lilli didn't want to.

===
It was time for some refills, so we went off to
Costco to see if anything would tempt me, and a few
things actually did, sort of.

The pharmacist was surprised that my bill was 0, but
I said, just you wait.

The idea of meat was nauseating, so that was another
economy right there. We still had a couple steaks and
pork chops in the freezer, so Lilli wouldn't starve.

She found some Bee Sweet Cara Cara oranges, which
we'd been reasonably pleased with before - these are
the size, shape, and color of pink grapefruit with
an extremely citrus oily aroma and the taste of some
weird supersweet orange. They seem low in acid and
from the taste I'd suspect a vitamin C deficiency,
but that's apparently not the case. 

I felt like berries, so as I leaned on the cart, she
scampered off and came back with Naturipe blueberries,
product of Chile - these were gigantic, averaging 3/4"!
in diameter, mostly quite sweet, mostly of average
flavor, a little starchy but nothing compared to the
little Driscoll's marbles that Costco used to get.

Also Driscoll's blackberries, product of Mexico, which
were very sweet, even the ones that were hardish and
not quite ripe. Some were pretty fragrant, others had
almost an artificial flavor, and a few with an
offputting plasticky aroma and taste. On the whole I'd
rather stick with the Cara Caras at $1/lb as opposed
to the berries at twice or thrice the price, but one
can eat an ounce of berries, whereas it's hard to
limit myself to an ounce of orange. Max nix, as the
Drummer might say, I downed the berries in 3 oz batches
over 3 days.

On the way out a big 2 1/2 lb jar of unsalted cashews
leapt into the cart; this was 13.50. The nuts were very
fresh and very good, but we shall see what happens when
there's only half a pound left.

==

I fed Lilli linguini with ragu or sugo, and she liked
it. Problem being that there was still half a gallon of
sauce, and I'll have to deal with that myself (the
freezer is getting kind of full). Since then she's 
found burgers in the freezer and bought Mexican takeout,
where I've just begun to deal with the monster backlog.
She also invented a new dish, taking lima beans and
throwing some corn kernels in. I suppose I might have
pointed to the unpromising ingredients that she was
toying with and said, trying to make a meal of that,
that's a sucker's task, like snipe hunting or sending
the apprentice out for a square tuit, but she persisted
and claimed she liked the result.

There was still a serving of pot roast and mash from,
what, 10 days ago, and there was no way I'd ever get
her to touch the stuff, so I had some Pane D'Oro panko
from the 99c store (actually fresh and not bad, very
neutral in taste, which is what you want) and made
croquettes as follows. Mash up the meat and potatoes,
which were just beginning to go yeasty, the fridge set
at 35, add an egg white, some breadcrumbs, and a bunch
of pepper. Form into patties and dredge in panko. Fry
in a mixture of oil and bacon fat. A little plain, but
the crunch was just the thing to jump-start my jaws.

==

Two questions. Why does some unseen hand occasionally
put random characters into my documents? I mean unseen
as in I'm not even at the keyboard when it happens, and
all of a sudden there are stray strokes that pop up.
This is intermittent and unpredictable and annoying.

Two. Remember back a quarter century ago they said that
the Pentium was so fast that it was at the limit of
chipmakers' ability, thanks to the heat problem, and I
said, well, why not just put the CPUs in little fridges?
I know that problem has been bypassed, as phones are
smarter than Pentiums (would that their users were) and
don't get all that hot, but enquiring minds want to know.
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