Baking and chores

I've got a couple of Christmas gifts purchased. Look at me, all on top of everything 😉  DD and I were messaging and I told her about dh and I deciding not to exchange gifts this year, since we'll just be by ourselves and we really don't need anything. I told her it's completely up to her if she wants to not exchange with us this year, but she wants to, so that is perfectly fine, too. She gave me a couple idea of books she wants. One is a series, so I ordered a set of the first 4 books and also the other book she mentioned. 

I told her dad "says" he's not going to get me anything, but then he will go and do it anyway, so I think I might get him a gift I was planning on before we decided to not exchange, cuz I don't trust him....she said ya...he's lying! LOL.  

My desk and top of my file cabinets is a cluttered disaster again, so that is on my to do list for the weekend. Even trying to be as paperless as possible, there sure is still a lot of papers to deal with. 

I have a couple of leftover ripe small bananas that might be enough to make a loaf of banana bread, so I think I'll do that today. If it's not quite enough mashed up (I think the recipe I use calls for 1 cup) maybe I could add a little applesauce? I don't know, seems like that would work, LOL.

I made a chicken sandwich ring for dinner last night. I've been making this for years and years and always just use prepackaged bacon bits. I don't think I've cooked up real bacon since the first couple of times I made it (1990's? LOL) but as I got out the ingredients to make it, I realized I am out of bacon bits. Luckily I had a little bit of bacon left in the freezer (purchased when we had house guests) so I thawed it in the microwave and cooked it up. Put it in the fridge on the plate to cool down as quick as possible so I could break it up. On my, it really made it all taste better. Much more bacon flavor.  I also use bacon pieces with my homemade mac & cheese, so I guess I'd better start using real bacon for that, too. Oooh...I haven't made that m&c in a long time. It sounds really good. I don't have all the cheeses on hand, so I will have to add them to my next grocery list, along with the bacon.

So, one year I had purchased a frozen Thanksgiving turkey that came with a packet of gravy. It was really good gravy, but the next year I couldn't remember what brand of turkey. I thought it was butterball, but every butterball I've purchased since then doesn't have it, nor any other brand I've gotten. Anyone know which turkey comes with that? Well, I just searched online with Walmart "frozen turkey with gravy" and Jenni-O comes up, so maybe that is the one I got several years ago.

Did I mention my mom's memory care place has like 4 covid cases now? (out of like 25 or so residents in the m/c part), so that worry has been in the back of my mind the past week. So far so good with my mom and now that her phone is back in sight, she is calling me just about every day,  usually either after breakfast or lunch, but when she calls me after lunch (around 1:15 or so) she will ask "are you done with dinner?" Sometimes I say yes, sometimes I say, no we haven't had dinner yet 😘