Family Day

Family Day is a statutory provincial holiday that is just what it sounds like, a mid-winter day off for people and families.

Come morning, I gathered the ingredients for a big pot of Chicken Corn Chowder. The rotisserie chicken is already shredded in the container to the left, under the evaporated milk cans. Behind the bacon is a similar container of chopped onion, celery, red pepper and garlic, which had taken me a very long time to chop because I am an incredibly slow chopper of veggies. Well, let's face it, I'm just plain slow.

Once I had gathered all of the ingredients, I took my time getting everything lined up in the order that I would use them. I have to do it this way because otherwise I tend to miss steps. Well, the bacon was out of order because it was actually the first item to be cooked, followed by the flour+thyme which was in the container between the evaporated milk and the diced tomatoes. The rest is pretty well in order of deployment.

I cooked the chowder in the morning in order to get it out of the way for company in the afternoon when we reheated and served. It also gave my aching back time to recover.

What a big pot, eh? It did the five of us for that supper, three of whom had seconds. Then we sent some home with the family, and there was enough left over for Sue and me to have two more meals.

By the way, it was very good. I can't remember when I last cooked it, but this rendition seemed extra tasty. Maybe taking my time in the morning was beneficial because I did seem to get it right.

We played games, first UNO . . . 

JJ was peeking at my hand while the rest of us posed for the picture.

. . .  and then Wizard.

Our Wizard scoresheet: two columns under each person, the first being the running total while the second column is the hand just played. If you make your bid, you get 10 points plus whatever you bid. I (last column, J)  bid and made 2 tricks in the final round, which gave 12 for the hand and 55 for the game. We sometimes go back down from 7 to 1, but we broke for supper and didn't get back to the cards.

We have been playing variations of Wizard in this family for probably close to 50 years. Once upon a time, we played with a regular card deck and called it Oh Heck.

The visit, with games and food, lasted for three hours or so. Sue made composites of the event as only Sue can do.

After supper, Lacey got some prolonged loving from JJ, which was appropriate since it was the fifth anniversary of her arrival to our family. We think she is 13 years old. We also think that she didn't have to best possible life before we came along. I can tell you that she was thinner, five years ago.