grilling

Writer’s Workshop — A Busy Month

Fandango12 Comments

For his Writer’s Workshop this week, John Holton gives us six writing prompts and we are tasked with choosing one of the prompts (or as many as we want) and writing a post that addresses that prompt (or those prompts). I am responding to three of the prompts this week:

  1. Write a post inspired by the word forget.
  2. Write a post in exactly 9 sentences.
  3. Do you have any special plans for April?

I didn’t intentionally forget to write a post this week for John’s weekly Writer’s Workshop prompt.

I have just been very busy doing things like working on my taxes, which are due to be filed by April 15th.

And, since I am going to have to pay Uncle Sam and the Golden State a lot of shekels this year due to dipping a little to deeply into my 401 (k) accounts last year, I have been trying to come up with some schemes to reduce my tax liability.

To no avail.

Plus, it’s Blogging from A to Z in April time and, even though I am an unregistered, unofficial participant, I am trying to be diligent in posting an A to Z entry every day this month at 6 am my time.

Except for Sundays.

As for plans for April, I have a birthday later this month.

I would prefer to low key my birthday this year as I usually try to do every year, but it’s a biggy — my 80th — and my wife insists that we have a “proper celebration.”

So she has invited friends and relatives over for a backyard party that includes grilling steaks, baby back ribs, and salmon, and guess who has grill duty — it’s the birthday boy!


Badge by Patty, http://anothercookieplease.com

Thursday Inspiration — Cooking with Gas

Fandango12 Comments

For this week’s Thursday Inspiration prompt, Jim Adams has asked us to write a post using the word “cook.”

Ever since I got married almost 46 years ago, my wife has been the chief cook — and I’ve been the bottle washer, so to speak. She is a very good cook and I am fairly confident that had I not married her, I’d be dead my now.

My pre-marriage bachelor diet was primarily fast food, fried food, and beer. But Mrs. Fandango began preparing healthy, nutritious, delicious meals. She made sure I got a balanced diet with veggies and fruits and food that was mostly organic.

One of her requirements wherever we lived was that our home had to have a gas range, rather than an electric cooktop. She felt that she could cook with much more precision with gas than with electricity. And since she took pride in preparing her meals and I loved eating her meals, I made sure to accommodate her gas range demand.

In fact, she loves cooking with gas so much that this is one of her favorite rap songs.

Now I don’t want you to think that my wife prepares everything I eat. I make my own cold cereal breakfasts and when we have eggs, I am often the one who cooks them. And I’m also the outdoor grill master, grilling hod dogs, burgers, steaks, and even seafood to perfection.

So I’m not totally helpless in the kitchen.

Life in the Burbs

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6FE3ACD6-5987-4868-90F0-FC77F2D452FF“Does my nose deceive me or has Henry started up that damn barbecue grill of his?” Bill groused to his wife. “Ever since he bought that jodhoeing monstrosity of a grill, he’s out there night after night, as soon as it turns twilight, grilling steaks and chops and chicken and whatever else he can burn to a crisp. And he invites all of his loud, obnoxious friends over. He’s so ostentatious.”

“Oh my God, Bill,” his wife Maggie said, “don’t soil your trousers over this. I told you that if we moved to the burbs, you’d be dealing with this sort of thing. I wanted to move further out to the countryside, but you wanted to move into a new housing development, the perfect microcosm of suburbia, with cookie cutter houses and noisy, nosy neighbors surrounding you.”

Bill shook his head. “It just pisses me off that he’s always out there barbecuing and that I can’t even relax in my own backyard.”

“Yeah, right,” Maggie said. “Admit it, Bill, what you’re really pissed about is that he hasn’t invited you over.”

“Yeah, he’s a jodhoeingly rude son of a bitch, ain’t he?” Bill said.

Written for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie’s Tale Weaver prompt, where the theme is Making Sense of Nonsense and the nonsense word is “jodhoeing.” Also for these daily prompts: Daily Addictions (nose), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (barbecue), Word of the Day Challenge (twilight), Your Daily Word Prompt (ostentatious), The Daily Spur (soil), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (microcosm).549DE9C0-FD45-4797-B7E1-375992907A74