Shopping for Daryl

Tomorrow is Daryl’s birthday, so after work tonight I went to town to see what I should buy him. Even though my store selection is a little limited, I still knew that I could find something. So off I went. I started to look around in this one discount store and was getting some pretty good ideas. Then for some reason I found myself back by the kitchen stuff. I don’t know why or how it happens, but I just seem to gravitate back there. And if it was a sign, there I am .. standing in front of the cast iron cookware that just happens to be marked down for clearance. SCORE! But I knew that Daryl would not like some cookware for his birthday. And it would be pretty safe to say that he thinks that we might just have too much kitchen stuff now. But just like some girls can’t get enough of shoes or scarves – I love cookware and crock pots! Since I didn’t take a cart in the store I thought I’d carry this cast iron kettle around until I decided if I really needed it or not. Well after awhile it was really getting heavy and then I thought, if I’m dragging this heavy thing around in the store for this long I might as well buy it : ) Now I did find a couple of things for Daryl in the store and it didn’t take long until I was at the check out counter. The lady who was checking me out said ‘Holy Cow this is heavy’ Yup, I knew that. After getting my stuff in the car, I wanted to see if there was anything at the farm store that would be a good present for Daryl. Now this time I was drawn to the back of the store to see what all the noise was about. The noise was some adorable little baby chickens and ducks. I asked the clerk if I could take a picture and at first he looked at me like I was from Mars or something, but then he really got into helping me. He took off the lid and wanted to make sure that one of my pictures turned out OK. He was very cool about the whole thing. Since I was on a mission to buy Daryl’s birthday gift was this another sign that he should get some new baby chickens or even better – some little ducks? No way! He probably would like the kettle that I bought more than some chickens and I think he wouldn’t even like the kettle!! So buying him chickens or some ducks wasn’t really a good idea. I did find something in the store for him though and soon I was heading home trying to come up with something that I could cook in my new pot. I didn’t necessary want to have to eat it for supper, but I just wanted to use it tonight. I grabbed some of the frozen onions and celery that I had in the freezer and started to cook them in butter and oil to get them both thawed and starting to cook. Then a couple of pounds of hamburger and homemade tomato sauce with some diced tomatoes went into the pot and simmered for the remainder of the night. I taste tested it before I put it in the fridge for the night and it was really pretty good. But I’m not sure if it was my new fancy pan or all the butter that I had used?

My photo of the day is that of the little chickens that were at the hardware store tonight. Just adorable!