Odds and Shapes

I should play the lottery because yesterday I certainly beat the odds.  After a day of cleaning the house in the morning and spending the afternoon being lazy at Fred Howard Park beach, Rick and I had dinner.  After dinner, Rick wanted an ice cream cone at Micky D's, and I wanted to take a walk.  I told him that we would let my blood sugar decide who got what he or she wanted.  If my blood sugar was 1 less than 125, we would have an ice cream cone.  If it was more than 125, we would walk.  I tested my blood and we both watched the meter record the results: 125!  I don't know what the odds of that happening really are, but I think I immediately should have gone out and bought a lottery ticket.

As it was, we went to McDonald's for a vanilla ice cream cone and then came home to walk off what we had just eaten.  Naturally, when I told Stephanie about all of this, she informed me that I had -- hm-m-m, what did she call that? -- something like an "undefined variable" which is why my math was, once again, flawed.  Sigh.  I guess it really does not matter since we both got what we wanted in the end.

Since we are out of remodeling money for the year, we have been working on trying to remember what we can do to relax.  After going at full throttle for the last 40 years, we both feel guilty if we don't do anything but sit around, read a book, take a nap in the hammock, or watch some TV.  I enjoy sewing, and Rick wants to get back into his Nantucket baskets, but we somehow feel that we should be doing something else.  I think our entire generation has forgotten how to relax!

I know that relaxing isn't the only thing I have forgotten.  A couple of bananas that we purchased a few days ago were too ripe to eat, so I decided to make some banana bread.  I dug out my recipe  for zucchini-banana bread, got all of the other ingredients at the store, and after an early afternoon appointment, I started to make the bread.

Pecans, bananas, zucchini, eggs, and all of the other goodies that go into the bread were soon mixed together.  The recipe told me to divide the batter into two pans.  Oh-oh.  I knew I had a glass bread pan, but I had forgotten that I threw out the other bread pan I had here in Florida because it had a "special" coating so nothing would stick.  Right.  Unfortunately, that special coating also made sure that everything cooked in the pan was raw in the middle and burned on the outside.  The last time I used the pan, I had had enough, so I threw it out.

So I was one pan short.  I knew I could call my sister-in-law and see if she had a pan I could borrow, but I figured they would be outside since they had two huge trees removed from their yard yesterday.  H-m-m.  Maybe I could call the neighbor down the street to see if she had a pan.  I could even give her a loaf back in the pan for letting me borrow it.  But I don't really know her that well, and I am not sure she would be thrilled to lend me a pan.

My loaves of bread look different but should taste the same.

The ingredients were too expensive to just toss, so I took a leap of faith and made the second "loaf" of bread in a round cake pan. The timing of the loaves was a little tricky because the round, flatter pan baked more quickly than the loaf pan, but in the end I have two loaves that at least look edible.  I hope that they taste good enough to serve to our guest, Bonnie, when she comes in tomorrow.