As the title of this entry says, I’m not talking about mysteries today since I don’t have anything Cozy-Mystery-ish to complain about. This has to do with something I am missing. (I’ve been trying to limit my Rants and Raves, but this really grinds me!)

As I have said many times before, I don’t particularly enjoy baking/cooking. I take every short cut I can when it comes to feeding my family. For holiday meals I serve Stove Top dressing, doctored with lots of onions, celery, and chicken broth. Oh, and I don’t make the chicken broth myself, rather I depend on Swanson to do the tedious work involved in making it. As for my creamed onions, frozen Birds Eye pearl onions are my staple >>> I skip all the onion-preparations my grandmother did.

Well, to get on with my rant…

Years ago, my husband bought me a bread machine – since he loves freshly baked bread. I remember telling him he had better learn how to use it, since I did NOT plan on making bread. I didn’t even make room for it on our kitchen counter… that’s how determined I was NOT to use it. I think I finally relented on his birthday, and went ahead and made a loaf of bread, and I’ve been hooked ever since! So much so that when my old machine “wore out” I bought a new Oster bread machine four years ago.

The reason for my rant is that I can no longer find the boxed bread mixes for bread machines that we like. I know I have complained about San Antonio now having a monopoly grocery store in town. (H.E.B. ran all the other grocery stores out of town with bottom-low prices,  and upon getting rid of their competition, quickly raised their prices. >>> But that’s another story…)

Apparently people no longer use bread machines – but prefer to use either their hands or their mixers with dough hooks. Not me! I like the add-a-cup-of-water-top-with-mix-then-the-yeast method, where I go about my other business while the bread machine does the work.

Anyway, I get quite miffed when things that I really like >> such as easy bread machine mixes, are no longer available in my local grocery store.  How about you — are things you used to use all the time no longer available in your local store?

P.S. Thank goodness for the grocery sections in my Walmart and Target!

I hope you all are having as good of a day as we are here!

We’re lucky enough, once again, to have the whole family here and assembled – myself and my husband, my son who lives in town, and my daughter who is visiting from D. C. – plus our dog Cocoa of course!

I’ll be back again tomorrow with the normal Monday post for the weekly new releases, but for now…

Happy Holidays!

Danna

Do any of you have a household trick – or two – you wouldn’t mind sharing? I have three, just to get us started.

1.  Those of you who have been with me for a while know I mentioned this one several years ago. Don’t throw away your children’s tiny toys from yester-year. Instead add a pretty Christmas ribbon & hang them on your Christmas tree. As your children get older, these little toy-ornaments will (probably) end up being your sentimental favorites, along with all of the ones they made for you >>> (even including the ones their teachers had them use toilet paper tubes to make!)

2. When my children were young, I would read their favorite “Golden Books” into a cassette, blowing a whistle at the end of each page to signal when they should turn the page. (Of course, this didn’t replace our nightly ritual of reading to them right before bedtime!) They would listen to the books in bed every night. [I guess now this could be done with a child’s tablet or digital voice recorder… My children (now adults) actually remember these books over the store-bought books that came with cassettes.]

3. I have also talked about this next tip before – probably lots of times. To all of you cross-stitchers, I use my regular cross-stitch patterns and add Mill Hill seed beads into the pattern. I love the added “pizzazz!”

I know this entry has absolutely nothing to do with reading Cozy Mysteries, but thought it would be fun to hear about some tips you may have.

Do any of you have “tips” you’d like to share? If so, please post a comment. Thank you!