Today

Today I started out looking better than this, but by half way through the day this was about as good as it got. Preparing for Mum and Dad's 40th took its toll.
I got a lot done. I think. I went out for breakfast. I went to the market and bought lettuce and parsley and dill for garnishes and ham and powdered sugar and bacon. This is the fridge after the market. It normally has about 1/5 of that amount in it.
After washing all the lettuce and parsleys and sorting them all for garnish or for actual use in salads, I tried an experiment. Not having relish on hand here in Ukraine, or even sweet pickles, I decided to make my own "sweet pickle relish". I need it for the beef spread and maybe egg or chicken salads tomorrow. I ground up pickles in my food processor with sugar. It actually tasted pretty good. A little runny, but...
Today I also ran over to mum and dad's (running being figurative, taxied would be more literal) and took all the punch base and fun stuff from my freezer and put it in theirs while grabbing the bread from there to bring back here and putting the cakes in the fridge at their place (from the freezer--more on the cake tomorrow or whenever I blog next). The bread is now in my freezer overnight (which is why it isn't properly packaged) till tomorrow when we turn it into sandwiches.After that, I came back home and I rested a little then got to work cooking up some beef and soaking some beans for calico beans for supper. The calico beans didn't get finished until about 10pm, but they were worth it.
While that was happening I got the ham out and cubed some for appetizer toothpick thingies and then tossed the rest in the food processor with some onion and honey to prep it for deviled ham that will be made for tomorrow. The honey was added because I didn't particularly care for the ham (never have) and that made it much better. A little sugar does wonders!
I also threw 30 eggs on to boil so that they would be ready for peeling and making into salad tomorrow morning too.
I decided that if I had to turn the oven on, I was going to make it worthwhile, so I baked the bacon (much easier than stovetop). It always amazes me how much it shrinks! And yep, it is real bacon, sliced it myself.

After grabbing another rest to have a snack and watch Burn Notice :D, I decided that I needed to make cookies (don't ask why!), so I did that and baked them while the calico beans were baking. I think it was maybe because I had the oven on anyway and I wanted to make good use of it. They are dried cranberry and white chocolate. A very happy mix.
In between popping cookies in and out of the oven I worked on some cucumber garnishes. There's a lot of pics of these, cause I'm proud of them. :) Now I hope they just keep shape when I remove the toothpicks on Sunday. Each one is a couple of inches long and folded up like a ribbon. I put four or five on a toothpick and packed them in tupperwares with a little water in the bottom and a paper towel on top. There should be 70 or so all up. Enough to garnish one set of sandwiches.

And, my crowing achievement for the day? I've killed a half a dozen mosquitoes while writing this entry.

Now to go do some more dishes, tidy and make sure I am all ready for tomorrow.