Just in case you are completely over me, since my life is too messy for regular posting, I shall now remind you that I am kind of a nutt.

Some people get short of sleep, and just get tired. I however, become insomniac for days, then fall into a deep sleep that spawns really weird dreams.  Like Dad, threatening to haunt me. Dad was a mostly nice guy. But he had a well earned reputation of being the quiet guy who could suddenly lose it and get sent home from work for fighting. Yes really.

A lot of cussing went into the making of this kite

Add to that endless stories in childhood of taotaomona and you have the perfect recipe for an overtired adult freaking out about mungo beans, at 3:00 AM.

I hadn’t cooked mungo beans since 1991, or possibly never. No need. If Dad wasn’t soaking the achiote, I could find it at Auntie’s house. Then cousin paranoid rubbed her Cold War paranoia off on me. And I had to find achiote, and ham hocks, and make them work together to avoid eternal haunting. Or haunting until Dad got bored with me, which would be painful but not that long.

I forgot that ham hocks smell horrific initially, which is hours. And the only places that sell achiote around here are Indian groceries. And I prefer haunting to curry smell. So I settled for Mexican achote, no “i” and it is crushed with garlic. I consider it substandard to actual seeds. But potential haunting is an emergency.

Shockingly, I did not ruin the mungo beans. The hocks fell apart. The beans remained bean shape. DH ate a bowl of them. And baby ate a gigantic portion and rubbed it in her hair.

Haunting averted.

Last year one of my SILs made a turkey sage soup. And that is probably my most favorite use of turkey leftovers yet.

So today, I get to the Kroger, and there is almost no chicken for sale. Which is weird since there are dozens of poultry farms nearby. Are they called farms if it’s for chickens? Chicken ranch? Anyway, I saw only a few types of chicken. And all of it is more expensive than last week.

Am I the only person trying to buy chicken this week? How odd.

I made cadon for dinner. Pronounced kuh-doo. It’s Chamarro beef stew. I did this by accident, which seems to be how it always happens. I make lots of Guamanian food on purpose, especially the fried rice. But the cadon is always a surprise. I just put stuff in the dutch oven, and might even think to myself beef stew. But out comes cadon.

I submitted it on allrecipes. But it isn’t approved yet, so can’t share it yet. But I have two other recipes showing there.

DD ate a whole lot of it. I gave her a bowlful and she wolfed it down and asked for more. My dad would be so proud.

Cadon

We moved from a condo when I was seven, into a house. My optimistic mother called it a fixer-upper. Daddy called it a dump. But he bought it anyway.

It was a hideous post WWII tract home. All the homes in the neighborhood were originally built with exactly the same floor plan. It had one previous owner, and had never been painted. However, it did have a master bathroom referred to as the addition and a dark room in the garage. The only advantage to the dark room was that it had a sink. Since my parents weren’t photographers, dad promptly cut a massive hole in the side to allow in light. He then piled a bunch of useless crap in it and never went in there.

Since the house was unpainted grey stucco and could have starred in a horror film, one of the first orders of business was to paint it: Baby blue, with Royal Blue trim.

Our house became an instant landmark.