My family

Family Stories Vlog

KEEP ROLO-ING ALONG

20 Dec 2016

A woman on the Swap Bot discussion I am part of was mentioning that she had made some candies using Rolo candies (chocolate covered caramel) and pretzels.  It sounded intriguing, so I tried it.  So, so easy!  Get yourself a bag of those round-ish pretzels and a bag of Rolos.  Put the pretzels on the tray, top each with a Rolo and then bake at 250 degrees for no more than 3 minutes.  Remove from oven and press a pecan in the top of each.

And that's all there is to it.  I learned these are called Rolo Turtles.

We are going to a New Year's Eve party and have to bring some food, so I'm gong to make a big tray of these.  I've never seen them before and I suspect people will like them.

I'm taking time off from Blue Angel for two weeks, because of the uncertainty of activity around Christmas time, so it's my turn to be creating meals every night.  Last night I made a recipe I'd made before which is ridiculously easy, but very delicious.  It's a crock pot recipe and you put about 3 lbs of chicken parts in the crock pot and sprinkle (or spread) with a mixture of 6 oz of lemon jello, melted butter, Dijon mustard and onion flakes.  That's all.  Slow cook for about 6 hours.  The jello mix has a strange consistently.  I ended up picking up each piece of chicken and smearing the lemon on them individually.  The end result of lightly lemon flavored, not really sweet and really delicious.  I served it with rice and creamed spinach.

Tonight it was chicken pot pie, which gave me an excuse to make pie dough.  The filling was simply chicken breast cubed and browned, then add.  Cream of chicken soup (I didn't have any but substituted cheese soup) and two cups of frozen vegetables. When those are mixed together, you add 1/2 lb of Velveeta, cubed.  Now, I must say that I have not cooked with Velveeta in .... never?  I'm snobbish enough about cheese and faux cheese that I just never buy it.  But this recipe insists the Velveeta is needed for smoothness, so I decided to try it.  It wasn't bad.  You put all this in a pie pan and top with pie dough and then bake.  I have enough dough left over to make something else.  It was a lovely short dough and it was delicious.

We had a sort of busy morning.  We had to go to the bank for me to make the mandatory annual withdrawal from my IRA, now that I'm old.  Walt has been ding this for so long he had to help the bank executive who was helping us because she hadn't done this sorto of thing that much before.

Next it was on to the market, where I did some shopping but also deposited my check.

Then home and back to my video.  I found this great video which is a 2 hour guide to all the features of the new iPhone 7.  I've made it through the basics and am now into the more tricky stuff, the stuff I wanted to learn. 

Fortunately, I had watched it from the beginning because at some point I gave it conflicting messages and the phone froze.  I was afraid I'd have to go back to Verizon tomorrow, but then remembered that this phone has an escape route, where you hold two keys down together for 10 seconds and it reboots it.  It worked!  I felt so smart.

The main problem with the video is that you can't go back five seconds, but have to roll backwards and there are several things that I wanted to go back and re-watch but 99% of the time I went back too far and watched parts of the video again.  And again.  And again.

I still have another 40 minutes to watch, but it's going slower now, but I am learning a lot.

My plan had been to run over to Atria and bring my mother some of my rolo treats, but the car didn't start, so I was stuck at home while Walt charged it.  I did call her and let her know I would be stopping by tomorrow instead.  She won't remember, of course, but at least I checked in with her.

So I did what author Harlan Coben invited me to do.  I received an e-mail letting me know that his book, "No Second Chances" had been made into a mini series for Netflix.  Coben has been one of my favorite authors for a few years now.  I had not read this book, buy figured it would be good, so went to Netflix and watched Episode one (how I love our "smart TV" that lets me access Netflix from my recliner!)

It looks like it's going to be a good series, but I was surprised to discover that though it was produced by the BBC and written by an American author, the movie is in French, with subtitles. But I watched the first of the six episodes and will finish the six episodes as soon as I can.

Some people prefer dubbing to subtitles, but I like subtitles, especially in a movie that is in French, where I can sorta kinda understand something.

I learned in a good  way the value of subtitles over dubbing.  There is a beautiful Brasilian movie I saw oh maybe 30 years ago.  It's called Gaijin and is the story of the Japanese workers who came to Brasil to work the coffee fields.  It follows on couple, who marry in order to make the trip. 

In the movie, the Japanese characters speak Japanese, the Brasilians speak Portuguese, there are Italians and Americans who speak their respective languages.  It's interesting to see the mix of languages, but you don't realize the importance of the subtitles until the end, when the Japanese mother is telling her daughter about returning to Japan, a country she has only heard of and has never visited.  The mother is speaking Japanese, the daughter is speaking Portuguese and asking if her friends can come with her and you see that the daughter has become Brasilian.  If that had all been dubbed, you wouldn't have a clue what the movie was really all about!

So I'm enjoying "No Second Chances' in French and recommend it.  It's quite good.  Watch it with a plate of Rolo Turtles next to you!