Skyr and a recipe...

Recently, I came across a new-to-me product called Skyr:

Skyr is an Icelandic yogurt that is thicker and a bit less tangy than Greek yogurt.  I don't typically eat plain yogurt (because it sooo tangy), but I thought this stuff was pretty good. Mostly, the texture is what makes it better to me than Greek yogurt - which I thought was "the bomb" before this.  I bought this brand at Fresh Thyme Market, but I also found it at my local Meijer yesterday.

Anyway, I shared the picture with my two sisters via text and a conversation ensued about yogurts, probiotics, just generally healthy eating... 

And my sister, Sherri, offered up a recipe.  It sounded so good I told her if I liked it,  I would post it to my blog and give her credit.   I did make it, and here it is: 

While I made it without paying any attention to measurements (I know I added more berries, and I completely forgot the walnuts), I give you Sherri's breakfast recipe (complete with her notes):

 ¾-1 cup of Fage Greek Plain yogurt. (I like 2% the best but they are all good depending on any dietary considerations.)

1 Tbsp of chia seeds. I stir and let sit for 5 – 10 minutes.

Top with a couple tablespoons of walnut pieces (Full of all kinds of good things for you: polyunsaturated fat, antioxidants and Omega 3’s)

And 3-4 berries. (I like to crush 3 blackberries with a spoon to stir them through the mixture.  

Sherri also writes:

"When I am out of berries, I have used an all fruit spread, which tastes delicious too. Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries would be fine too but I think the crushed blackberries enhance it the most.

 

I’ve had this nearly every morning for about three years and I am addicted to it. It is so easy – I don’t have to think what will I eat?   And it's probably more nutritious than anything to start the day.

 

The chia seeds and walnuts I buy on Amazon in the 2-lb packaging and are staples in my refrigerator. A small container of blackberries at 3 per morning will last a week. The yogurt I buy most every time I go to the grocery. I like the taste and texture of Fage Greek the best and its sugar content is the best I’ve seen."

~~~~~

Thank you, Dear Reader, for hanging out with me again.

One New Thing...

I actually have two new things to report this week.

New Thing One:

At Christmas Middle Son gifted us a box of goodies he curated from Imperfect Foods.   It came the week after Christmas, with meats in an insulated bag with a cold pack:

Unpacked, this was what the box contained:

There were several new-to-us things in the box, but the most delicious were 2 filet mignon steaks (from grass fed cows) - they must have been swept into the fridge before the above picture was snapped.   Mmmmm...  They were melt-in-your-mouth delicious, and I think it might have been the first time we've eaten that tender of a cut of beef.  It was definitely our first taste of grass-fed beef.

With the gift came an offer from Imperfect Foods of $20.00 off the first four orders we placed (if we should decide to do so).  We decided to give it a whirl, and we received our third order this past week.   I've ordered some new-to-me things each time, but this week the most interesting new thing I ordered was a dragonfruit:

I let it sit for a couple of days, 'till I was pretty confident the insides were the right amount of softness (based on the squeeze & press test).  I've read online that these fruits do not ripen after picking, so they are picked as close to ultimate ripeness as possible.  And some people say the fruit grows sweeter after it's picked and sits for several days. Not knowing who was right (or if both are technically right), figuring this fruit might have been close to a week old by the time I made the decision to cut into it, I was reluctant to put off eating it too long for fear that it might go bad.  

So...  Thursday, with much anticipation, I cut it open

and we had a taste.  

I don't think the color of the plate above enhances this fruit at all, but aside from that, we remained intrigued to try this.

The verdict?

For how exciting this fruit looks on the outside, the taste was pretty underwhelming.  I've read descriptions of this type of dragon fruit tasting between a watermelon and a kiwi.  Or a pear and a kiwi.  I'd have to say something much less than a pear or kiwi, but ever so mildly like those two things comes closest to what this one tasted like.

It was kind of disappointing, and maybe we ate a slightly underripe dragonfruit, but with these being pretty pricey, I'm thinking this will be our last (and lasting) impression of this very impressive looking, but underwhelming tasting fruit.

~~~~~

New Thing Two: 

This may particularly interest my fellow Blogger bloggers.  I think it was last summer, that we all lost our follow-by-email widgets from our blogs.   While I was disappointed this happened, with all that was going on in my world I didn't have the mental bandwidth to care too much about it.  That is, until one of my sisters discovered I had a blog and asked last week if there was a way to follow my blog by email.  Suddenly, I was motivated to do the thing I hadn't been motivated to do for months.

I did a little searching and found a free web feed subscription service in follow.it  and put a widget at the top of my sidebar.  I may move it down at some point, but I wanted to make it easy for anyone reading today to find it if interested.

I'm sharing this with you because 1)  it is a new thing, and 2) if you had been previously following my blog by email (through the original widget that was provided by Feedburner), you may receive (or may have received) an e-mail from follow.it offering you the opportunity to follow my blog through them.   If you are already receiving my blog posts through email, you may not want to do anything different.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't.  I just want to let you know you may receive an email from follow.it and to let you know why. 

And if you want to start following my blog by email, it is as simple as plugging your email into the widget and hitting subscribe. Another way to subscribe to my blog through follow.it is to create a follow.it account, find my blog in their database, and follow me that way.

You may be wondering why you'd go to that trouble.  To be honest, I wouldn't, but you may care about these things:

• If you subscribe using the widget, while I don't see anyone's name, I am made privy to your email address.  I promise you, I will never make use of your email address, unless you are a regular commenter and I think you might welcome a private email from me.  But seriously, I would imagine that situation would be rare, if it ever did happen.  I also don't plan to keep serious track of who may be following me.  Or who may chose to unfollow me.  It's just not something I'm into. 

• If you create a follow.it account, and find me in their database and subscribe that way, your email address is kept private from me.   The other advantage you would have in creating a free follow.it account is that you can subscribe to various other news feeds, blogs, and I honestly don't know what all...  and keep track of your subscriptions there.

That's as much as I know at this point.  If you chose to use the widget to follow me by email, I'd love to hear any feedback you might have about the experience.  I doubt I can control anything, but knowing if readers are happy or not with it, will certainly help me know if it's a good service.  I subscribed to my own blog, and found it simple to do, and it works well for me.  But if you have a different experience, please let me know.

And that's all for this week!  

I think that's 10 new things in 2022!

One new thing...

Ever since I thought of this idea of documenting new things, it seems that new things just keep presenting themselves.  I've started writing things down in a notebook so I can remember to share them here.

I expect many of these "new thing" posts to be short, and most to only cover one thing, but to make way for more new things, I’m going to be making some posts, especially here at the beginning, mentioning more than just one.

One of the Christmas gifts I received this year was a Chronological Bible from youngest son.  I’ve always thought it would be interesting to read through the Bible chronologically, and watching Hub read through one last year (and I think he’s doing it again), I decided to I’d like to have my own copy.  So I put this one on my wish list and got it:

 

I may be making another One new thing post on it when I finish reading it.  ;^)

I'm just realizing the glasses are also new.  I got them just last week, and I am enjoying something a little different than I’ve worn in years.  They’re bigger than anything I’ve worn since the 1980’s and I’m finding I like the extra space in the reading portion of the lenses.  

Ok, next...

When I was shopping last, I picked up some collard greens.  These are such a new thing to me that right there in the store, I got out my phone and googled how to cook them in case I needed to pick anything else up.  I know my mother used to cook greens when I was young, and they looked like the nastiest thing on earth and I’m sure I never even tasted them.  I decided it was time to change that.  So tonight I turned these:

 

Into this:

 

My apologies if that doesn't look very good.  I can't say this looks all that appetizing to me, but if you like greens, maybe it looks delicious.  I don't know.  I'm just documenting it.

Most recipes I found called for bacon, or ham hocks.  Well, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice expensive bacon in something I wasn’t even sure I would end up wanting to eat, and I didn’t want to sacrifice ham bones I have in the freezer (that I’m saving for ham and beans) for the same reason.  So I just pulled out a baggy of frozen ham chunks and cooked the greens with those.   It worked great, but I will say I should have not added salt when I was cooking.   It was all pretty tasty, but no one needs that much salt.

The verdict.  I’m glad I made them, but I don’t know why anyone loves them (like the many recipes I came across attest to).  Hubs, I could tell, is hoping I don’t feature them too regularly – if ever again.   Anyway… one new thing, easy to cook, and now I know we won't starve if collard greens are the only vegetables we're allowed to eat in the new world order...

And lastly…  who reading this knew that the IRS wants people to let them know when they change their address – and that they created a form for the purpose?

Of course they have a form for this...

I don't remember why this came across my path, but as I’m starting to worry about being on top of everything I’ll need for a fiduciary tax return for my brother’s estate, I came across this information online. 

I've asked a few people who I know have moved in recent years if they knew this form existed, and not a single person knew this.  So...  while I'm guessing most people don't know about this, and I'm not telling you you need to fill one of these out if you move,  the consensus of advisors online is that you should. 

I'm having to do extra things this year with taxes on my brother's estate, so I thought it a good idea to fill this form out since our new address is what we'll use for both our joint tax return and I'll use for my brother's estate tax return.

And since I think it would be a sad thing to leave you with an IRS form as my last thing, let me show you just one other new thing.

As hubs was leaving the house this morning he noticed a hawk on some bricks by the side of our house (forgive the fuzzy pictures):

Right after he took the picture, it flew to the top of the woodpile  behind it in the top picture.  I then spent 15 or so minutes trying to take a picture of it from the sun room, but my pictures were even blurrier, so I'll not trouble you with one of those, but when it flew off again, I went outside looking for it and found it on the other side of the white detached garage, sitting on the edge of a strawberry patch (which is one other new thing for me):

I know the pictures are terrible, but that was a most exciting thing today.  After hubs asked some birding friends to look at the pictures, getting different opinions, then after doing a bit of research online, I'm thinking it may be a juvenile Cooper's Hawk.  I don't know if we'll see it again, but it was pretty exciting to see it today!

Catch ya' later!

I think I've got 5 new things here...  Better start keeping track.