GottaDEAL 2025 Prize Club Discussion Thread

[packratfamily]

Checking in for March.

Went to Dr with a possible issue and got good news, No Issue

And my Iris plants have new leaves poking up. Spring soon……

[stacya]

Hard to believe we are almost halfway through March already! I am currently sitting in my hotel room in Salt Lake City, while my luger is here for training and racing. Kendall raced in the Norton USA Luge Youth National Championships on Friday and Saturday for athletes age 14 to 17 (Kendall is 15), where she placed 5th in the nation. Aside from one, all of the girls ahead of her were 17 and are either on the next level up, or are her direct teammates, but have been sliding longer and had many more opportunities to train on this track. Her final race for the season, the Norton USA Luge Jr. National Championships are Thursday and Friday, where Kendall will be competing against athletes up to the age of 21. The first training sessions they had in preparation for this race took place Saturday night, where Kendall's time on her first run was the fastest out of all of the athletes training that night, and her second run was third fastest, so this will be a very exciting race! The video below is her first training run from Saturday night, which is almost a minute long - rather too long to make sure I don't miss her, than scramble at the last minute, lol

Edited March 11 by stacya

[HomeinKS]

March is flying!  Hubby hit a deer this morning in our 2005 Prius with 400K -200 miles on it.  We need to have a look and see if it is reasonably fixable; crazy thought I know.  

 

[Gator Pam]

16 hours ago, HomeinKS said:

March is flying!  Hubby hit a deer this morning in our 2005 Prius with 400K -200 miles on it.  We need to have a look and see if it is reasonably fixable; crazy thought I know.  

 

Ouch. Is he OK?

Did the deer run off? Or do y’all have venison to look forward to?

 

Tonight starts the festival of Purim, with Shushan Purim following on Shabbes. It’s not in my tradition to bake cookies for the winter festivities, but I do make hamentaschen for Purim.

 

This year I kept the count of each kind between a half a dozen for each of fruit filled, and closer to a dozen for the specialty ones. So we have:
6 fig
6 apricot 
6 prune
7 espresso martini 
and
10 s’mores

 

That’s still nearly three dozen for the three of us. That will definitely see us through the festival, and then some!

 

Since each kind of the traditional fillings made about a dozen, I have enough to deliver them to some friends as well. Hopefully it will make their Purim, or at least their weekend, merry.

[magickallight]

[cllehto]

 

Happy Pi Day

[Gator Pam]

[magickallight]

[len_mullen]

 

[speeddiva]

Hope everyone is doing well! I’m enjoying the early Spring weather we are having. It was a balmy 75° here yesterday. 

[Gator Pam]

Oh. My. Stars…
My absolute favorite concert experience was attending seeing The Philip Glass Ensemble play the scores of The Qatsi Trilogy live while the films were shown overhead over the course of three nights. This was in either the late ‘90s or early aughts in Gainesville, FL.

I never thought I would have the opportunity again, but apparently The Philip Glass Ensemble (most likely without Glass on keyboards, due to his age, whereas he was on keyboards when I attended the three shows) is touring Koyaanisqatsi at least, playing the score live along with the film. Of course I’m going to attend!

 

If the tour comes to your area, I highly recommend trying to go. It’s a breath taking experience.

 

https://seattlesymphony-prd-cd.flexaccelerator.com/en/concerttickets/calendar/2024-2025/25-philip-glass

[Gator Pam]

15 hours ago, len_mullen said:

 

Et tu, Brute?

[Gator Pam]

I’m a third year raised bed gardener at Marymoor Community Garden in Redmond, WA. Zone 8b. I was a complete novice when I started three years ago in a single bed, and moved to a pair of raised beds with an arched trellis in between them last year. I still feel like a novice at this point, but I love sharing what I’m doing and getting advice from others.

 

Today is indoor tomato seed sowing day. If they germinate and up pot well, they should be ready for hardening off in mid May and then transplanted out to my raised beds in late May/early June, depending on our temperature at the time.

 

Here is my garden set up. I had agricultural fleece over my beds for the winter, as I overwintered garlic, asparagus, and a purple collard tree in the beds.
 

 

I pulled the agricultural fleece back last week and removed the dried leaf mulch I had put over the beds to protect the soil over the winter. It looks like some settling occurred over the winter months, so I plan on adding some compost to bring level up before planting more.

 

I hand raked in some lime as well as organic vegetable and tomato granular fertilizer, and noticed my red wrigglers appear to be getting active. I quartered up a butternut squash and pushed it lightly into the soil as food for the worms, but something kept digging the squash quarters out, although they didn’t seem to eat anything from them.

 

I finally used a spade and dug deeper into the soil, completely burying the squash quarters. I figure the red wrigglers will find them deeper down. So far, whatever was disturbing them before hasn’t bothered them since burying them deeper.

 

I grew eight varieties last year and saved seeds from all eight. This is my chart of how I sowed them in my seed starting tray.
 

This is a 36 coco coir pellet starting tray. My intent is to transplant two of each variety into my raised beds. I put two seeds from a variety into each pellet, and did two pellets per variety. If I have 100% germination, I’ll have double the plants I need, but I know germination rates tend to be much lower than that, especially with self saved seeds.

 

As I only needed 16 pellets, I removed the others in a pattern I found easy to chart and have stored them to be used next year.

 

Not to mention, the San Marzano style seeds were saved from tomatoes that were grown from seeds I saved the year before. So these are second generation seeds. Since they were not isolated from other varieties when I grew them two years ago, they seemed to grow smaller than the crop I had the previous year. But they were plentiful and tasty. They also weren’t isolated last year, and won’t be this year, so I’ll see what I wind up with. If too far from the original, I won’t save those seeds this year, and start fresh next growing season.
 

The seeds sown and covered over with a light layer of coco coir.
 

The humidity dome on top until germination.
 

This is going to sound out of the ordinary, but I’m germinating my seeds in my bathtub. I don’t have any place to set up a heat mat, and I have found the warmest place in the house to be in the enclosed bathroom with no window. So, until germination the seed tray will sit on the floor of the bathtub. The shower curtain will be drawn closed, and the bathroom door will be kept closed. I figure the occasional light from the bathroom being used won’t disturb the germination process too much.

 

We’ll see what happens in a week or so.

 

[magickallight]

[HomeinKS]

On 3/13/2025 at 10:23 AM, Gator Pam said:

Ouch. Is he OK?

Did the deer run off? Or do y’all have venison to look forward to?

 

Tonight starts the festival of Purim, with Shushan Purim following on Shabbes. It’s not in my tradition to bake cookies for the winter festivities, but I do make hamentaschen for Purim.

 

This year I kept the count of each kind between a half a dozen for each of fruit filled, and closer to a dozen for the specialty ones. So we have:
6 fig
6 apricot 
6 prune
7 espresso martini 
and
10 s’mores

 

That’s still nearly three dozen for the three of us. That will definitely see us through the festival, and then some!

 

Since each kind of the traditional fillings made about a dozen, I have enough to deliver them to some friends as well. Hopefully it will make their Purim, or at least their weekend, merry.

Yummy!

Hubby opted to not process the deer, and went to work instead.  He is okay.  

[Gator Pam]

The Luck o’ the Irish Americans to Ye!

Sliced corned beef.

I used a flat cut, rather than a point cut, even though I prefer the extra fat of the point cut. But the past few years the point cuts have shredded rather than sliced nicely.

 

However, I also added an extra step of resting the brisket for half an hour after the 12 hour cook in the crockpot. It definitely firmed up the meat a little; in fact the taste was a little too dense for my liking. Not dry, but dense.

 

 I think I’ll try the same method next year, but I’ll go back to the point cut and see if the extra step works.

 

Carrot, parsnip (was supposed to be turnip, but another member of the household picked up the ingredients and apparently misheard me), onion, potato, and cabbage

 

Fresh out of the oven Irish Soda Bread

 

The top buttered and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

 

Removed from the Pullman loaf pan and cooling before slicing.

 

An interior view of the soda bread.

 I used dried cranberries instead of raisins or currents. I reconstituted the dried cranberries by simmering in whiskey for 20 minutes and allowing them to cook before stirring into the dough. I find mixed straight into the dough they remain too chewy for me. This was perfect.

 

My dinner plate.

[magickallight]

[tracy0504]

[cllehto]

[amdskip]

Bring on Spring Break! 

[deelite]

March check n.

[Gator Pam]

We have germination!

 

I just got this set up yesterday, and even as compact as it is, it’s precariously balanced where I had room for it. Hopefully I can find a board the perfect width and length to give it stability.

[magickallight]

2 minutes ago, Gator Pam said:

We have germination!

 

I just got this set up yesterday, and even as compact as it is, it’s precariously balanced where I had room for it. Hopefully I can find a board the perfect width and length to give it stability.

 

What kind of plants are these? I love watching them all grow and produce through your posts.

[Gator Pam]

3 minutes ago, magickallight said:

 

What kind of plants are these? I love watching them all grow and produce through your posts.

Eight different varieties of tomatoes, two in each pellet and two pellets of each variety. My two raised beds have room for 16 plants total, so I hope to get two strong plants of each variety to transplant in eight to ten weeks. If I wind up with more, I’ll offer them to friends or at a seed and plant swap.

 

This is still all experimentation for me. Last year I started seeds I saved from the previous years San Marzano-style tomatoes, which were planted with other varieties in the same bed. The plants grew and produced, but I think they were smaller overall than the Roma tomatoes I had saved seed from, so they may have cross pollinated with the other varieties I grew. I’m growing two plants from Roma seeds I saved last year from the smaller tomatoes. We’ll see how they produce this year.

[Gator Pam]

I had my most recent annual physical in mid December. At that time, my weight has been the highest it has been since before I started keto, my blood pressure was slightly high, and my a1c test for my type II diabetes came back over 7 again, which it has done every three months for the past two years, even with the diabetic and high blood pressure medication I am on.

 

A couple of weeks later, around New Years, I started seeing the ads for the “natural Ozempic,” as one tends to see weight loss ads at the start of the year. I mostly ignored them, but my curiosity finally convinced me to watch one, which said there was a simple three ingredient recipe that could be easily made and taken daily to help weight loss and blood sugar. So, I watched it.

 

Of course it was for a pill that was being sold, but I decided to do some searching and see if there was anything that could made at home. I had heard of the anti inflammatory benefits of ground turmeric in the past, so I looked to see if there was anything that could be made at home that could at least help.

 

I found some articles which claimed the combination of ground turmeric, ground ginger, and black or cayenne pepper has been studied and found to be beneficial in some participants. I decided to add each to my two cups of coffee each morning.

 

I started off with a quarter teaspoon of ground turmeric and an eighth of a teaspoon each of ground ginger and fresh cracked black peppercorn into each cup of coffee. This is in addition to the half a teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon I have put into each cup of coffee for the past decade or so. The combination is reminiscent of chai in my coffee, but it’s not totally unpleasant. I made no other changes to anything in my daily routine.

 

At the end of January I had a follow up hematologist appointment, and was surprised to see my weight was down five pounds since my physical the month before. I seriously expected it to be up a few pounds, as had been the trend for the past year or so, as well as having just gone through the holiday season.

 

The next week at the start of February I increased the amount of ground turmeric, ground ginger, and ground black pepper, basically doubling each, so I was now having a teaspoon of ground turmeric, and a half a teaspoon each of ground ginger and fresh cracked black peppercorn daily in my coffee, as well as the teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon. Again, I changed nothing else in my daily routine.

 

Today I had a three month diabetic follow up at my primary care physician. My weight is down another seven pounds since I saw my hematologist at the end of January, my blood pressure was 113/75, and my a1c was 6.7, the first time I’ve been under 7 in a couple of years.

 

I know, it’s very gradual and possibly very circumstantial, so I’m probably being silly to be hopeful about this. I need to stop the turmeric, ginger, and pepper for the next couple of weeks, as even western medicine admits that turmeric is a blood thinner and I have a procedure coming up the first week of April. 

 

But, trust me. Once the procedure is finished, I’m going to be adding them back in for as long as they seem to benefit me.

[HanShotFirst]

You know you live in the Southern Delta lands when a 2-hr drive at night requires 2 separate stops to clean your windshield of the mass of dead bugs piling up on it.  Poor bugs but that was a first for me and I have lived here all of my 54 years of life. The front bumper of my white car is black from it. Spring has sprung for sure.   

[Cubsfan23]

Checking in for March. I hope everyone is doing well!

[magickallight]

On 3/5/2025 at 11:27 AM, bribri25 said:

We also have birthdays and travel planned for March. Good to see everyone still here!