I keep a bin of carrot ends, celery ends, onion ends and skins in the freezer. When it's Costco Rotisserie Chicken Day, we eat the chicken, then throw the freezer bin of stock vegetables in the pot as well. To this add as many celery sticks, carrots, and onions as you like. You're looking at maybe 3 carrots, 4 celery sticks, half an onion or so, total vegetables.

Two avocados
Some cumin
Some garlic powder
Some salt
A few cranks of the black pepper grinder
The juice of one lemon (you could also use a lime, IDK. I know a lime is traditional but the brightness of the lemon is great.)
Optional: plenty of good paprika. The vibrant red will dull the green and make it less appealing. So I put paprika in only when I’m spreading this in a sandwich.

Use one of those pastry butter things to mash the avocado. Faster and more consistent than the fork.

I'm at scout camp this weekend with the boys, and one of the other dads brought his ham radio equipment to try to participate in the Minnesota QSO Party.

The goal is to make a ham radio contact with someone in every Minnesota county. This seems straightforward in principle but we're suffering from being deep in the St. Croix river valley, as well as trying out some new equipment without having all of the fun automatic tuning boxes and thingies that make it easy to tune the antennas.

For the next thing I decided to cook in the annoying pan, I made an omelette. I figured, oh, this will stick for sure.

Well... it did not! Granted, I did float the omelette over a little butter on the bottom of the pan. I treated it like I was trying to make the omelette in a stainless steel pan. Put a little butter in, then pour the omelette into the puddle of butter. Easy.

And it worked for this pan too! Not a thing stuck, not even a little errant cheese sticking out of the omelette.

This is part two of the saga of my aggravating cast iron pan. You can read part one here.

Last time, after cleaning the pan, I did put some oil on it. And wow, that was educational. I am used to a few drops of oil being good enough for a whole frying pan. I put a good half teaspoon on the annoying pan and it was barely enough to coat a third of the bottom. It's REALLY rough. So it takes a lot.

Last summer I got a cast iron pan new in box for 5 dollars at a yard sale. Maybe my wife picked it up for me? I don't remember.

It's the most ridiculously rough, stereotypical bad "Made in China" quality cast iron a person could imagine. It is not pre-seasoned or seasoned in any capacity. Light grey, straight from the factory cast iron.

I’m back in the ER, this time it’s for me. (Had a spate of kids needing emergency medical care recently, in part because some of them don’t have the decency to get sick when the Urgent Care is open).

This is the first time for me in I’m not sure how long. And it’s certainly the first time I’ve had a hallway bed instead of a room.