The Amish live simply and unpretentiously. It says so in my little Amish cookbook. And they cook like they live, simply and unpretentiously.

I'm going to give these recipes a whirl. Tonight it was bar-b-q chicken. Even had frozen Amish chicken thighs in the freezer. Very easy recipe, you stir a few sauce ingredients together and poor over chicken and bake. The Amish are so unpretentious that they don't even brown the chicken first. So, I was just pretentious enough to do that. Wonder if it made any dif. The finished product was very good. Not a lot of clean up and gave me leftovers, too.

Oh happy day! At the grocery store I spotted sandwich creme cookies as I was passing by the gluten free section. DTD likes gluten free, but I don't usually buy it. Yesterday I bought Gluten Free Has Never Tasted So Good Chocolate Covered Donuts. And you wanna know sumpin'? They were gooooooood! I'm hardly a worthy judge of gluten free products, so I can't stamp up and down and scream, Gluten Free NEVER tasted so good! So, I went ahead and bought these Glutino Gluten Free Vanilla Sandwich Cremes. As to date, all sandwich cremes have failed me. I came home and ripped open the bag and, first taste, DEEEEEEELISH-OUS! Four cookies later...still DEEEEEEELISH-OUS! So delicious, in fact, I had to immediately sit down and email the company, singing their sandwich creme praises. Their motto is not Never Taste So Good, but it's true, and they should come up with an equivalent jingle.

The chocolate donuts were only delicious after the first bite. The first bite was kinda weird. Read my cherry cupcake blog and you will find I am not a big fan of rice flour, which was the big ingredient in the donuts. So, but once the first ricey bite was out of the way, the adjustment cure was complete. Loved the rest of the donut.

My poor parents' dog went to doggie heaven today, so sad day.

Oh, I knew I had three things to tell you about food. GAD sent me to http://www.stilltasty.com/. It is my favorite website just about, certainly very useful. It tells you how long you can eat your food before you should chuck it. This is all well and good IF you know when you opened something. I don't know about you, but I'm constantly not knowing if two months or two years have passed since I opened the A-1 steak sauce or jar of pickled relish.

Well, I decided to check if my Maraschino cherries were little red bombs of destruction or still good. Stilltasty said they can last 6 months to a year. Oh, rats. I can't remember when I opened them, it's been a while, that much I can vouch for. Oh yes, the light snaps on. AND, this is a big unplanned coincidence in this blog. DING, DING, DING, DING, DING! Last December I made DTD rice flour cherry cupcakes for her birthday. BIG FLOP. They just crumbled into a pile of fine dust, in looks and taste. Ha, ha, now I love this, having just mentioned rice flour above and now the cherries, I remember when I opened them, going on a year ago. But do I really want to eat something opened for a whole year, Stilltasty notwithstanding? It gives me the eebie jeebies. I like FRESH food, I seriously do. Someone I know has had the same herbs and spices on a rack that was a wedding gift...DECADES AGO, as in half a century ago. Plus.

So, Stilltasty is great, but I have to be greater. I am now taking my handy dandy label maker and printing a label every time I open something. Like tonight, the liquid smoke (how many times am I going to use liquid smoke, People?) and the Worcestershire sauce. This way, 3 years from now, when I go to grab the liquid smoke for some obscure recipe, I will say, Hmm, let's check Stilltasty and see if a bottle of opened liquid smoke is still kosher after 3 years.

And I'm not stopping there, I'm labeling leftovers and jazz that goes into the freezer. NO MORE guesswork. My label maker is one of those things that was going to change my life, like my digital timer. And this is BIG, you watch. Label maker resides in little basket on computer desk that Robby steps on to get to the corner speaker shelf to get to the windowsill to get behind the Venetian blinds. Then he reverses it to come down, after sunning himself and watching the world go by.

I feel so Amish today. Am back to reading my Amish novel, after reading poor Dewey. There's another cat book out, Homer's Odyssey, about a poor blind kitten. Homer is a marvelous cat, but I can't take any more EMOTION right now. Give me the dull and the drab, please.

Tomorrow I meet a friend for lunch, we meet halfway. I have been carting a series of 3 Amish novels around in my car for months and months and can never remember to hand them to her. The idea of writing this in the blog is to make me remember tomorrow.

I'm terribly afraid that I bought a second Amish novel when I already own it, for the second time. In fact, I need to go look in my car trunk right this second and verify my hunch. I wonder if the Christian bookstore would believe me twice. Umm, hello dear Christian bookstore people, it's me again. I did it again. I bought a book I already have. It's my favo pastime, buying duplicate books. Will you sweet babies please let me exchange it for a book I don't have? (I call everyone and everything baby.) Oh dear, oh dear. See, I was looking for a pamphlet in my bedside table drawers last night. It made me crazy because I couldn't find what I was looking for. I looked umpteen million times. This is when I found the duplicate book. Also, I can't find this wonderful chocolate cake recipe my friend gave me. And I bought Reduced For Quick Sale Buttermilk, just to make this recipe. And the buttermilk gives up the ghost after tomorrow. Gads, I'm loosing it.

Checking Out,
KEM