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Procrastinating Again

MARY HONRUD

FOR THE COURIER

I'd been so good lately at getting my column written and sent in well before the Monday deadline, that having having procrastination raise its oh-so-tempting head really surprised me. It's a good thing I keep a list of what I've written and for which edition of the Courier, so I was able to confirm I hadn't written one for this week. And I remembered in time to get it done, which is also surprising. As my youngest says, "Go, me!".

So, living life and gathering info for our taxes derailed my being early this week. At least I think I have the necessary information ready to go to the accountants. But there's still our farm info to put together. It's so fun to have to deal with multiple tax forms.

Being self-employed, there isn't tax withholding as such, but there are estimated tax payment due each quarter, based on last year's income. Sometimes not enough is paid in, sometimes too much is. But the "refund", if any, gets rolled over immediately to the next year's estimated payments. We don't even see it. Getting the tax forms back to sign always comes with a surprise. I much prefer the years we've paid too much in estimated taxes.

I didn't try any new recipes this last week. But I can maybe bore you with menus. Here goes:

We had pork chops twice. Once with microwaved "baked" potatoes (procrastinated my way to that). Once with quinoa. I added canned spinach to my plate. Dennis mostly avoids greens. I've also baked one of the winter squashes from my garden that was still firm. (My former neighbor, who was a great source of info when I started gardening, swore squashes kept longer if you rinsed them with a weak bleach solution. It kills the surface bacteria that lead to surface rot. Seems to work well - similar to rinsing berries in a weak vinegar/water solution.)

We finished off that chicken and rice soup I'd made last week. The most recent meal was a three-pound beef roast in the InstaPot. I roasted veggies (broccoli, carrots, and onions, drizzled with EVOO and sprinkled with an Earthen Owl citrus spice blend, baked at 425° for 20-25 minutes).

I also made air fryer potato wedges for Dennis, who, again, avoids greens. Two large white spuds were scrubbed, cut into eight wedges each, with the skins on. I soaked them in as bowl of water in the fridge for a few hours, to remove some of the starch. After draining and patting dry, they were also drizzled with EVOO and then sprinkled with my air fryer potato spice mix. I've shared that recipe before. The spuds were cooked in the air fryer at 400° for 15 minutes, being tossed halfway through.

I finished my meal with a Whole Life Challenge compliant apple/pecan dessert, done in a pan on the stovetop instead of baked this time. I've shared that recipe before, too. Dennis doesn't like pecans or nuts mixed into anything (he'll eat them straight, though - I'll never completely understand him). So he got chocolate iced graham crackers to finish his feast.

 

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