The Weekly Ramble – February 13, 2026

Hello, hi, how are you?

Another Friday got away from me? How could this happen when I so carefully prepped for Friday on Thursday night so that I could get a photo shoot of three recipes done, have a fun catch up on the phone with a friend, and host a family of four new friends for pizza night?

Well.

Also on Thursday night I found floaters in the fridge water. Whispy white-ish things that don’t belong in water. So Friday morning I headed to the store to get bottled water until we could troubleshoot the fridge filter.

When I got back home after battling Walmart (where I also did a return), I was greeted at the front door by a child who reported that we were out of eggs. I did wonder about that when I was at Walmart… 🤔 I needed eggs for my photo shoot and didn’t realize that the morning crew had eaten the last eggs.

I turned on my heel back out the door, this time stopping at the closest store, Target. No problem, I think, I’ll get buttermilk, too, since Walmart was out of that. Found the eggs but Target was out of buttermilk.

So I tromped across the parking lot to another grocery store and got buttermilk.

What should have been a quick and early morning shoot became an all-day affair, so this ramble didn’t get written.

That is how life works, isn’t it? And I don’t even have a photo to illustrate it. #bloggerfail.

How about our Sunday lunch date instead?

Bryan and I discovered a lovely Italian place, very very casual and very, very delicious, but also not cheap. We’ve pretty much given up our weekly dates due to the high costs.

But, last Sunday we participated in a church project after church and took the time to get lunch afterward, so we went to Spirito’s. Back in the day they were featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives which Bryan and the kids often watched. That’s not how we ever found this place, but I should dig up the episode sometime.

Anyway, it’s really good. Bryan usually orders a pizza which is fantastic but due to their being slammed by Super Bowl orders, he opted for Chicken Parmesan.

I always, always, always get the manicotti. Straight up, no meat sauce. Just plain. It’s so freaking delicious. I tried the ravioli once, but it just didn’t compare. I love the manicotti so much, it’s not worth the risk to try anything else.

Do you have that? a certain favorite at a restaurant that there’s no reason to veer from the norm? That’s Spirito’s manicotti for me.

Though, the pizza is pretty fire.

Bryan is our only football fan, and even then, he’s not diehard, so we skipped the Super Bowl, but I still made football food for Sunday dinner. In the freezer there were still frozen appetizers that I had bought on sale in December for New Year’s.

I cooked those up, took the leaf out of the table since some kids were gone, and pulled out some games to play at Sunday Dinner. We ended up playing a round of Harry Potter Uno.

There are some unique rules to that one which the kids had to school us on multiple times. It was a fun alternative to scattering after dinner, so we may do it again.

On Monday morning FishChick17 and I took advantage of Starbucks’ free after-Super Bowl coffee. We actually double-dipped. I got her a free coffee on the way to school and she got me a free one on our way back.

Ha!

Here’s what else I’ve been doing, eating, listening/watching, and/or reading this past week:

What I’ve Been Doing

I’ve been working hard to get Good Cheap Eats cleaned up. Last year was a year of flux for the food blogging market with AI slop farms crowding out real cooks.

This year I’m hopeful that things will shake out okay. I’m glad I didn’t throw in the kitchen towel!

I’ve been shooting lots of food, both new recipes as well as old favorites. That’s been loads of fun and super delicious. [She says while munching on a slice of Applesauce Bread.]

I’ve also been researching quilting. Many, many moons ago I made the quilt pictured here. Unfortunately:

• It was one of those Women’s Day projects, “Make a Quilt in a Weekend”, so I didn’t really learn the art thoroughly. In fact, my aunt put the backing on it years after I pieced it together, albeit poorly.
• One of the fabrics wasn’t as good quality as the others. You can see in the picture where the white is fraying at the edges.

So, my task this year is to:

1. learn to quilt “properly”
2. invest in good quality fabrics.

My friend Susan suggests that I start with baby quilts, accumulate the tools on sale slowly, and very the quality of fabric. I’m still puzzling out how to do that last bit.

This research along with buying Miss 17 a Laura Ashley bedding set (I had one at 17, too!) led me down a rabbit trail, specifically, where is the leftover fabric from my flower girl’s dress?

I found it in a box of baby quilts! Ah yes, I put it aside to someday make a baby quilt.

So, if you can very that Peter Pan fabrics won’t fray over time, that would be appreciated! This will hopefully be one of my projects for the year – even though there are zero grand babies in sight.

It may take me so long that it will be right on time.

But, I have to finish my table runner first!

What I’ve Been Eating

This has been a fun project! Making homemade roast beef for sandwiches.

I had done this here and there over the years, but I’ve been doing it more regularly recently, thanks to finding top round roasts on clearance.

It’s so easy to make your own homemade deli style roast beef. Someday I might even take really good pictures and post it like a proper food blogger would.

I cook the roast one day and then chill it. Then it’s easy to slice for sandwiches. It’s been so good on homemade sourdough bread.

It feels pretty fancy to make this kind of food myself!

What I’ve Been Listening/Reading

Aside from my Bible study. all my reading this week was listening to audio books, so I’ve lumped those two categories. Compared to past month’s reading accomplishments, these were all very serious.

** Save the Cat by Blake Snyder – this gets a lot of buzz among writers, both screenplay and otherwise. It gives the formula for successfully sold films. Note: not the same thing as good films.

There is a later spin-off book called Save the Cat Writes a Novel which takes these hypotheses and puts them to books specifically. I read that one last year.

I’d been told that the original was better. I think it’s shorter and more simplified, but feels overrated to me.

** Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton – this classic is part of an online book club that a friend runs. She made me read 100 Years of Solitude last month. Ha! If you remember, my description was of Don Quixote fathering a tribe of sex maniacs.

This book is like a poorman’s version of The Great Gatsby. Pretty sad and depressing, but with consequences for everyone involved.

** Call of the Wild by Jack London – I read this when I was a kid and I remember liking it. This time through it gave feral Black Beauty vibes.

I don’t know why all the books on the list of classics makes me think of other classic books, but I’m entertaining myself with the comparisons.

Now that I’ve gotten the serious books out of the way for the month, I’m looking forward to some fun ones. I still have other serious books on my TBR list, so I am gonna go with my mood. Maybe.

What’s on the Horizon

I thought it might be good to add a forecast to my ramble each week in the hopes that my accomplishments won’t be as haphazard as they have been. You, dear reader, have always been an excellent accountability partner. Even if you didn’t know it!

Things I hope to do in the last two weeks of the month:

• finish tax prep and submit all paperwork to Deanna, my tax lady.
• invest the cash that’s just sitting in our Roth IRAs not doing anything; this requires me to feel like I know what I’m doing.
• submit eye glass reimbursement to health insurance.
• host Game night for the kids and their friends
• visit my mom
• finish my felt table runner project
• cull all the lemons and oranges from the trees in the backyard
• plant some herbs
• reboot my weekly cleaning schedule
• continue to clock 20+ hours on the business
• read That Hideous Strength – Fun fact: This is Mr 25’s favorite book. And lo! here is a photo of him with the book. He claims he wasn’t actually reading it when I took the picture back in 2013, that he just grabbed a book. But, I think it’s cool.
• potentially start a sugar fast – This idea has crossed my radar several times in the last week. We did a sugar fast as a family back in 2014 and lived to tell the tale. Anyway, I’m thinking about it.

Alrighty that’s it for me! Here’s a fun image of our one rainy day last week, the day where at least 2/3 of the normal traffic had evaporated. I guess Californians really don’t know how to drive in the rain?