One Year Later

One year ago today I was doing this. Yes, I was having a hysterectomy. Boy how time flies when you are having fun. I have been thinking about what the year has been like for me since that time and I have observed some things. This will probably be boring but….

It’s my blog and I’ll be boring if I want to.

PFFFFFFFT!

Now, where was I? Oh yes, oneyearposthysterectomyobservations…….

1. Despite the removal of my ovaries and hence the removal of hormones I have not grown a mustache that rivals Burt Reynolds in the 1970’s. That is not to say that I don’t participate in the occasional use of Nair for the lip. But that predated the surgery. Are you grossed out yet?

2. Overall I have felt better this year then I have in many a past year. You honestly don’t know, sometimes, how bad you felt until you have fixed whatever the problem is. I had been so tired and worn down for so long with the anemia that it had just become normal. And the atrocious periods were just what happened every month. I was confined to the house. By 2008 I was even confined to travel in the US only. It was too difficult to be overseas with the thought that I might come upon “that time of the month” and be confined to a hotel room. I definitely couldn’t be traipsing around slums and the wilds of Africa.

3. Hot flashes are really…..hot. And not in an “Ooooo that’s really HOT” kind of way, like a teenager looking at Justin Bieber (HA, you didn’t think I would know who that is did you). No it’s more like “OOOOOOO I’m really HOT” like in Tucson in July kind of hot only with added dampness. But, they are manageable with Black Cohash.

4. I have always suffered from the occasional canker sore on my gums for as long as I can remember. Nothing major. But several years ago it seemed that they became incredibly severe, long lasting and continuous. Nothing that I did, or eliminated from my diet, seemed to really help. But what I didn’t know is that mouth ulcers are sometimes a symptom of severe anemia. Since the surgery, I still occasionally get a mouth sore or perhaps a small bunch of them but never as severely and never as big and they don’t last long.

5. I would experience, on an almost daily basis, heart palpitations. It would feel like my heart was doing back flips in my chest and then running fast. It was really scary at times. Again, it was a symptom of severe anemia evidently. Now, no more heart palpitations….unless of course I am gazing on HHBL in a suit. Hoo Boy, now that is a sight to give me a racing heart.

6. I don’t have crazy thoughts any more when it is getting close to “Aunt Flo’s Visit”. OK, well I don’t have AS MANY crazy thoughts. Aunt Flo doesn’t come to visit any more but no one said I was ever really normal even before that.

Oh yes, having HOT FLASH now. Palms sweating, face flushing. Remember this little ditty that I wrote to commemorate it.
My knitting buddies gave me this niffty little item. I can see that it is going to get a lot of use in the days to come.

But one thing to remember with this highly sophisticated wind device. You should not use it too close to you if you have long hair…..

Bad things happen….

I should know.

My Knitting Friends are the BEST!

I knit.

I knit every day.

I knit A LOT.

And when you are like me (you poor things) and you knit a bunch you want to belong to a group of knitters. Knitting is not a solitary pursuit, or at least it shouldn’t be. Yes, we all sit and knit by ourselves, sometimes in silence, sometimes in front of the TV, sometimes listening to books on tape. But we want to be with a group of like-minded people who we can talk to about our triumphs (Yea Tara and her first sock!!) and our tragedies…..and what we have had to TINK back (Knit spelled backwards), or if you prefer FROG back (rip it, rip it, rip it). Because, in the end, knitting isn’t a solitary pursuit. If you think it is then you should read The Friday Night Knitting Club. Knitters need to be together with other knitters. We spur each other on to try new things. We help with problems, both knitting and life. We play with pointy sticks…be afraid.

Two years ago I scored an invite for this crazy place called Ravelry. You can think of Ravelry as Facebook for knitters. It is a wild place to be sure and I have found friends there from all over. That is where I met Jess, who just happens to live about 20 minutes from me. She briefly attended the knitting group that I was, at that time, involved with. That group met once a month…most of the time. But there were plenty of times when the meeting would be canceled at the last minute. And most of the women who attended, but not all, didn’t pick up their knitting EXCEPT for the night that we all got together. They didn’t make any progress, there wasn’t a lot of learning and exchanging of ideas going on. They were really nice…but I was really bored. Knitters don’t like to be bored. It makes us squirrely.

Then Jess had the brilliant idea to start Tri-County Knitaholics. There were plenty of us that live in this area and who were connected through Ravelry. Why not! And so, TCK was born.

TCK meets every other week on Monday….but for some reason we tend to add “supplemental meetings” on the off Mondays so we end up meeting most Mondays. Funny how that works. We just like to knit together, so sue us. But if you sue us just remember that we all are very proficient with pointy sticks. Something to think about.

So where was I? Oh yes, my knitting friends are the very best. Now I remember…sort of.

Yesterday was Monday. We had knitting. We meet at Panera, cuz they let us take over one of the back tables and laugh and be, well, knitters. And we buy food too.

I get there. Barb and Kendall are already there. Where is Jess? She is always early. I turn around and there she is….

With these…..

Oh! Whose birthday is it? I don’t remember any other birthdays coming up. Hey, it must be someone else’s birthday. But that doesn’t make sense because I am the only one that has turned 50 recently. OHHHHHHHHHH.

You guys are so sweet!!!

I love boxes that have wrapping paper on them and are meant for me. And a tiara!!! Which I am going to get to wear in Panera.

At dinnertime.

SWEET!

No make-up, hair all fuzzy from the rain. Really nice look. Thanks Kendall!

  Oh what is in the box??? I was carefully opening the wrapping paper until they gave me permission to rip and tear. Old habits die hard. Grandma Pringle always made us save all the wrapping paper. NO TEARING!

Man that is a really good look for me. I am stunning with the half glasses and rolls of flesh.

What is in the box???

Is it…

No…..WAY!

Oh my word this is the most gorgeous blanket. And the color is perfect. And the blanket is perfect.

And you know what is so special about this blanket. It is that all of the squares have been done by the awesome women in TCK. They all participated. And they have been working on it for over a MONTH! Even Tara, our newest knitter did a garter stitch square. I know how much work this thing took for all of you to do.

I am touched beyond words.

Tri-County Knitaholics
Kendall, Jen, Barb, Erika, Jess, Me
(missing are Tara, Bonnie and Norma)

Thank you one and all. The gift and the friendship me more to me than I can say.

And I promise that I will work on my sweater today. PROMISE!

We’ve Been Accessorized

Well, the time has come to reveal the house as the stagers have done it. It is no longer my house, the home that I have lived in for the last 10 years, it is a house that is waiting for the next person. It is a model home.

Friday was a very interesting experience to be sure. Disorienting. Nerve racking. Insightful (we will get to that later). Joyce and Laura, stagers extraordinaire, arrived with a car and a van full of stuff. Stuff that they had picked out for our house. We don’t get to keep any of the stuff thank goodness, we just get the privilege of renting it from them. How nice.

They arrived, we unloaded and then the transformation began. Our house was a blank canvas, a tabula rasa if you will. Joyce is like the energizer bunny. An tiny, blonde energizer bunny who is flitting from here to there, moving furniture to just the right spot. Hanging pictures. Putting a vase here, a silk Ficus tree there. A blur in my stationary world.

I really just tried to be helpful if I could and that wasn’t all that often. I also tried to NOT interject my thoughts in the whole rearrangement of my world process. That was harder than I thought. Especially as they moved around the house removing things from shelves and putting things in. Putting most of the books that I had left on the shelves onto the floor so that they could be packed away because, sniff, they weren’t wanted. And then, what books were used were strategically placed on the shelves. Laura spent what I thought was a ridiculous amount of just moving one book so that it was sort of askew. NO ONE WILL CARE!! I wanted to say. But I didn’t.

All in all it took about 3 hours to transform my home into a house that someone can walk into and see their furniture and stuff in.

So, I am going to do side by side comparisons of some of what they did. I am not going to bore you with all the rooms. I am kind like that. The pictures on the left will be what the rooms looked like pre-stagers. The pictures on the right, post-stagers.

I have learned a thing or two in this entire process.

1. You need to have a thick skin when you are dealing with stagers. They are there to make your home more “saleable” and sometimes you are going to hear things that you don’t like. It is hard to hear someone tell you that the things that you most like about your house and that make it your “home” are the things that most need to be changed. They aren’t being mean to you, they are just doing what you have asked them to do.

2. It is a good idea to every 5 years or so look at your house with an unbiased eye and think, what needs to be changed or updated. That way, if there are things, you can do what needs to be done and then enjoy them for a while. Otherwise you will be doing things at the last minute, you will like what you see when you are done and you won’t want to move.

3. I am not meant to be a home stager. I thought about it, I really did. But that was before I had actually seen how they work. I do not have it in me to pick out some of the things that they put in my house. I have no ability to know that the rather large and fuzzy picture of a house will look good in my dining room. I don’t really like the picture in the first place and I am someone who is going to have to like what I put up, even if it isn’t my own house. They have a 5000 sq ft warehouse where they keep all their “staging stuff” and they go over there and pull what they think would fit. I would have no ability to go and say, “I think these pillows and those paintings and these vases and how about those silk flowers.” No ability at all. Sigh, another possible carrier down the tubes before I could even start it.

4. However little stuff you think you have and have packed away in anticipation of selling your house…you haven’t packed enough stuff. Look at how much you have packed and then pack 50% more and you might hit it right.

And when you are done packing and cleaning and cleaning out this what your garage will look like…

And this is what your basement is going to end up looking like. Half of my possessions are now in boxes. And if it takes a while to sell the house, and I don’t miss any of these things I am going to wonder if I really need them at all.

Something to think about.

7 Quick takes (Vol 62)

1.
Life continues to be consumed by this darn getting the house ready for sale business. I have to say that I just don’t like my mind and time being consumed by this. There are other things that I need to think about and take care of and do.

Today, even as you may be reading this here blog, my house is being “staged”. I am sure that I will have plenty to say about it next week. It will now cease to really be my house and I will be living in a model home. Oh. Goody.

2.
Folks, I don’t have that many followers here at Chez Knit….just 34 of you. Or actually now just 33. I realized on Tuesday that someone had “unfollowed”. I don’t know who it was but when you only have 34 followers then anyone who leaves is like a neon sign. It shouldn’t bother me, it really shouldn’t. My life should not be defined by that small number, especially when I see other people who started their blogs later than I did and they have a ton more followers.

Oh the green eyed follower envy monster is rearing it’s ugly head. And it is ugly. And I don’t like that I feel that way. I struggled with envy for so many years. And just when you think you have a handle on “it” then you get sucked back in and by such a small thing.

And then I get to wondering why? Did something I wrote just so turn off that person that they decided to “unfollow”? I don’t think I will ever know. But I am trying to see the lesson in it.

Because God brings lessons in even the little things. I am just not seeing it yet.

3.
In the last 5 days I have been to four different Lowe’s in my area. I am truly sick of Lowe’s Home Improvement stores. And I have to confess that two of the four trips were necessary because I was in a hurry and didn’t count correctly. Man do I hate it when that happens.

I try to remind myself never to leave the house in a hurry and to know what I am supposed to be doing. This week it has been all about cabinet hardware. It needed to be updated before

the house goes on the market. Heaven forbid if everything doesn’t match. So on Monday I go to the Lowes that is closest to my house and buy just one of the handles and one of the knobs to try out. No problem, they look good.

Tuesday evening I am back at the closest Lowes to buy all the hardware, only I had forgotten my piece of paper that told me how many pulls that I needed. But I have been in this kitchen for 10 years so I just sat in my car and mentally counted….69 pulls are needed! And there is no way that they have that many. So I buy all that they have and the fellow in hardware checks the inventory at the other stores and I toodle off to get the rest at the Stow store. No problem! Except that when I get home I realize that I am…..7 pulls short. I forgot to count one spot. DAGNABBIT!

On Wednesday Kevin, who was hanging some fixtures for me, came to tell me that two of the glass covers in the chandelier box were smashed to smithereens. GRRRRRR. So it is back in the car and over to a THIRD Lowes. Where I switch out the covers for new (they had to open a box) and buy the rest of the handles…..I come home and finish installing them….and find that I am STILL one short. Oh for the love of Peter, Paul and Mary when will this end.

So after Kevin leaves, because I don’t want him to know that evidently I cannot count worth beans, I go back to Lowes a fourth time. For one handle.

4.
I am totally obsessed with watching “The Owl Box”. Have you seen this? It is a Barn Owl named Molly and you can watch her in her owl box and as she has her owlettes hatch. She laid 4 eggs, three have hatched so far. It is total addiction. And if you are especially lucky you can watch her eat something like a rabbit or a rat or a mouse. Excellent!

5.
I actually fixed the vacuum cleaner yesterday…all on my own. It was the highlight of the day which is just really sad when you come to think about it. We have an in house vacuum system that I really love….99% of the time. But if something goes wrong and it doesn’t work, say when someone vacuums up something that gets lodged in one of the tubes and shuts the system down, then I don’t love it. I don’t love it because they charge me $75 just to walk in the door to LOOK at the thing. That is painful.

So the carpet cleaning attachment, the “Turbo Cat”, hasn’t been working correctly. It really has been slowly dying since the repair person put in a new belt, which I could have done myself but he was here fixing something else too. I have been nursing it along because I didn’t want to buy a new one. Yesterday it wheezed it’s last. There is vacuum power, the beater bar just wouldn’t turn. So, I disassembled the whole thing (which I have done before), cleaned it all out, put it back together and it worked, arthritically, but it worked….for about an hour. Then total shut down.

By this time it was late in the day and I wasn’t having a great day and the last thing I wanted to do was disassemble the darn thing again. But that is what I did. Took it all apart again. Having a hissy fit the whole time.

“Lord I just want this thing fixed! (sniff, sniff) I just want to vacuum!”

And then I looked at it again. And realized that when the repair guy had reassembled it he had put a part back together backwards. I switched it around, put everything back together and…. it vacuums like new!

6.
It snowed yesterday. Not that much, just “a skiff” or as The Dillards would say, “Just enough to make everything slicker than deer guts on a door knob”. Thankfully it shouldn’t last long but such is the nature of Spring around here. I don’t think I remember a Spring in the last 24 years where we haven’t had snow on the daffodils. And sometimes they get buried.

Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. I am sick of shoveling snow.

7.
I have been going through files. I have tons of files that don’t ever seem to see the light of day. And when I have these “clean out times” I wonder why I keep these pieces of paper. They take up space in files I never look at. But they are interesting. What to do. What to do.

And then the light bulb flickered to life. Hey, you have Adobe Acrobat you dingbat. Why not scan those things into the computer where you can save them electronically.

So I am. And I am cleaning out the file drawer. And it feels excellent.

Do you save massive pieces of paper and then forget about them or why you saved them in the first place? It seems that I do.

Have a great weekend.

I Wish I Was at the Beach

It is cloudy. It is gloomy. It is Spring in Northeast Ohio. We all know it gets like this.

Why do we complain about it?

Because we can that’s why.

I have a long and wordy post with a picture or two thrown in. I apologize. It wasn’t supposed to be this long but I just got carried away. Surprise!

I thought I would look back, back, back…

OK only back to January when we were in Peru. We got to go to the beach for two days. It was fun. It was warm. It wasn’t here.

Picture if you will driving down to San Antonio, which is on the coast south of Lima. Driving…..driving…..driving……

First off let me tell you that even though we were out of the city, the drivers are still nuts. That is all I want to say about it other than we lived through the experience. Remember, the rules of the road are OPTIONAL in Peru and each man does what is right in his own eyes.

Amen.

I love these little mototaxis. They are everywhere. I have not ridden in one in Lima but I have in India. Once was more than enough. Note the traffic. California has NOTHING on Lima in the traffic department.

It was about an hour and a half drive…and I was stuck in the middle seat in a Rav4 with my mom-in-law on one side and Cousin Ella on the other with my knees up around the level of my reasonably ample chest AND my backpack on my lap. Cozy. You know, it is not that much fun to drive that way for an hour and a half when you have to rest your feet on that little bump in the middle and they keep wanting to slip down and when they do you inadvertently stomp on some one’s toes.

For an hour and a half did I tell you?

The landscape is….dry. Very. Very. Dry. The coast line of Peru is desert after all. Actually the first word that I typed was dessert. Wishful thinking I would guess.

So back to the desert.
This is often what you see when you get outside of the city. The land on the left has been planted with olive trees not so much to bring in a crop, although there is that. No, the reason is because of what is at the right of the picture. If there is land, and the land owner hasn’t made an improvement or planted something on it, then chances are people will start to put up shanties and after a while a small community grows. They don’t have any running water or electricity for many years afterwards but they are there and it is nearly impossible to go back once they are. We have visited several of these communities but that is a story for another time.

We are driving, we are driving.

We are hungry. It happens sometimes.

So we stopped for something to eat. Alberto (step father-in-law) was driving and all of a sudden we were pulling off into this very small parking area in front of this small outdoor building.

Deb: Hey Alberto what is this place?
Alberto: Debbie (said with Peruvian accent) this is a place that Bruna (his daughter) always stops at. They have bread.
Deb: Alberto you are speaking my language. I am always up for bread.
Alberto: Yes, it is filled with cheese or with olives.
Deb: Olives?? Like Kalamata type olives? Like just about one of my favorite foods in the whole world and I would eat them every day if I could olives?
Albert, after a slight pause where he looked at me sort of strangely: Yes.

Oh look at those luscious little pillows of goodness. Right out of the big beehive oven. And they were hot let me tell you. And they were yummy and filled with salty olives.

And I am drooling. Thankyouverymuch.

I am sure that I could make something like them at home. But they just wouldn’t taste the same. Sigh.

And because it was fig season in Lima we had to stop and buy some from one of the many stands that are along the road. And of course we had to eat some on the way. And no, I did not wash it before I ate it. Nor did I peel it. Just bit right in and damned the intestinal distress gods to do their worst. Sorry I said damn. There I said it again!

And finally, after that hour and a half drive that I mentioned previously we arrived at this. Now it wasn’t quite as easy as that sounds. You have to know where the entrance to the resort is. And then we had to go through three check points. This isn’t Fort Knox people!! But we had to

     Drive up to little guard kiosk.
     Guard had to take time out from doing whatever it was they were doing to look over at us.
     Take out their clipboard and look at their list.
     Look at Alberto’s membership card.
     Question whether he could bring all these people in here let alone his wife.
     Tap into the antiquated computer.
     Look at all our id’s.
     Write down the information from HHBL’s driver’s license. Didn’t ask to see mine because….
          I was only the wife!
     Question again whether we had a reservation & were all these people authorized to enter.
     Sigh and wave us through.

And we did this 3 times.

Finally we arrived and parked right outside our “Boongalow” (as Alberto would say).

They gently put all your belongings into these little carts attached to bicycles and ride it over to your front door.

So, we had been told that the boongalow could sleep up to 8 people. Sweet! There are 5 of us and we will have room to stretch out and we won’t be on top of each other. So we open the doors and walk in and start counting beds and bedrooms.

First bedroom is about 8x6 and had two BUNK BEDS in it. OK

Second bedroom had a double bed. OK.

Looking for next bedroom….looking….looking. We see there are two bathrooms. There is a small kitchen. There is a little area that is in the front of the boongalow where there are two long concrete built in benches with cushions. No other bedrooms. We are looking for perhaps stairs that lead to the second storey where we can see that there are more rooms. No stairs.

And then I start to actually count the beds. The bunk bed room sleeps 4. The other bedroom sleeps 2…..and the concrete couches with the cushions….sleep 2. That makes 8. Hmmmmm.

Yes folks. The boongalow could sleep UP TO 8 people. If you don’t mind having 4 of you share a room the size of a bathroom. HHBL and I elected to sleep on the concrete couches.

But first…..we had to take care of the small ant problem that seemed to be going on around one of the benches. There was a very steady trail of little ants that started outside and made it’s way inside along the edge of the bench. And if you dropped anything that resembled food?

SWARM!!!! 

So we, OK Alberto, called someone somewhere and almost immediately a girl showed up with a can of Raid, or the Peruvian equivalent of it. Makes you think this isn’t the first time that they have had to deal with ants. She sprayed, the ants died and we hoped that we wouldn’t suffocate from the fumes. But the ants did die. HHBL itched all night and we chose to attribute it to the bug spray and not some other infestation.

Then for the next two days we did pretty much…nothing. And we liked it that way.

Rather than prolong the agony that this post is becoming I am just going to give you pictures and short commentary. That way you don’t leave right now. I want you to come back.

                  Boardwalk. This was good because the sand would get REALLY hot.
                  Birds, lots of birds. I felt like I should be looking for Alfred Hitchcock.
A gelatinous mass of something on the beach. I have seen the movie “The Blob” and I so wasn’t touching this thing. 
                          Don’t you take pictures of your feet in the ocean?
             These are rosquitas. They are wonderful. We ate them every day if we could.
The palm trees at the top of the hill made me feel like I was in Lawrence of Arabia when I walked on the beach. Well, all except for the chairs and umbrellas. Where is Omar Sharif when you need him.
        It is a hard life but someone has to step up to the plate and take one for the team!
                     Oh look, Deb’s feet again. At least my toe nails are painted.
                                           WEEEEEEE I’m at the beach!
And as we walk off peacefully into the sunrise…I wish I was back at the beach and not stuck at home watching the HVAC guys replace an entire air conditioning unit because of ice damage.

Don’t worry, I am going to tell you that story next week. After I get over the sticker shock.

Sometimes Bad Things Happen in the Winter

So, this winter was on the more harsh side as winters go. I can say that now that Spring is officially here. I am not sure yet what the official snowfall total will be but….it won’t be a small number of that I am sure.

I fully expect that we will get dumped on by the gods of snow at least one more time before they are done. We always do. You can just hear them laughing as the snow pours down and dampens the joy that we feel in our hearts that Spring has sprung and the flowers are blooming and the birdies are singing.

Off topic already am I?

Are you really surprised at that?

At any rate sometimes bad things happen in winter around here. Take this for instance.

This little beauty was a fern. A rather nice fern I might add. One that I actually paid some money for at the local plant nursery. Looks pretty sad doesn’t it.

I forgot it on the deck when I was bringing stuff in for the winter.

And ferns don’t like winter.

It punished me by dying a quick but horribly cold death when the snow came. But just to dig the knife in deeper after it’s demise it hung around on the deck, under the snow, and slowly emerged in the spring like some bedraggled wooly mammoth. Only without the monetary value a mammoth might bring if you dug one up in your back yard.

I was sad. I stood there and mourned a lost plant friend who gave me joy last summer but who I cruelly thrust aside in my race to get inside where it was warm.

And then, because it was a nice day on the day that I discovered his lifeless corpse, I became enthralled with looking at it close up. Which meant that I had to sit on the deck and take pictures.

And enjoy the beauty of his little dead leaves. And wish for a Macro lens. Someday my lens will come. I am too busy right now to use one even if I had it.

And so he gave me, even in his dry and brittle death, some pleasure on a Tuesday morning.

That is until I threw his carcass into the ravine.

A Heart Attack Guarantee

No, I am not talking about that monstrosity of a Health Care Debacle. Don’t get me started or I won’t ever finish and I might just have the above mentioned attack.

No, I am think that today we need to talk about comfort food. Food that makes you warm and fuzzy and makes your tummy go, “Oh YES!”.

What sorts of dishes in your house qualify as “comfort food”? PB&J? Fried Chicken? Broccoli? Well, in this household the list is long and varied. But one of the favorites, that is requested for most birthdays, is Party Potatoes. Or as we like to call it “A Heart Attack in a Bowl”.

These are all the ingredients. What dish wouldn’t be good with the addition of sour cream, cream cheese AND butter. We can see that I have been shopping at Wally Mart. I used red skinned potatoes in this dish because…that is what I had available. And I didn’t skin them. You can use whatever kind of potato your little heart desires.

Ah butter, I sing a song to you. Of all your creamy goodness. The joy you bring.

First thing you do is cut up the potatoes and put them on to boil. I forgot to take a picture of the cutting and dicing. I think you guys have that all figured out…at least I hope you do.

Don’t have a heart attack at all the salt. Remember that you really need to salt the water the potatoes are cooking in or you will never be able to get the salt right in the rest of the dish. I know….I have forgotten the salt before…..it was bad.

When the taters are done cooking, drain them and throw them in the bowl of your mixer. Or just throw them back in the pot and use a hand mixer. I would say that you need some sort of mixer to do this dish. To mash all the stuff together by hand is really difficult.

Eat a piece of potato or two here, just because you can.

Add salt.

Add pepper.

Add garlic powder. If you use garlic salt then omit the other salt.

Add the milk. I just usually add a “glug” but I will give a measurement with the recipe just so that Lauren doesn’t hyperventilate. I want her to make this because the girls are so going to love it.

Add the butter. Yes the whole thing. All 1/2 cup of it. Go on. It isn’t going to kill you….at least not right now. And what a way to go.

Add the cream cheese. Yes the whole thing. Look at all that creamy goodness. You can use a lower fat cream cheese but you CANNOT use the no fat cream cheese. It doesn’t taste the same.

Don’t try it. I will know and I will not be happy. Remember, an unhappy Debbie is a bad thing.

Add the sour cream now too. I forgot to take a picture of this step. The brain went haywire for a minute.

Now turn on your mixer and incorporate everything together. Just remember not to work the potatoes too much. If there is a lump or two that is OK. If you beat the life out of them they get gummy.

Just remember that if you are, hmmmm, over exuberant about turning on the mixer the potatoes tend to fling themselves out of the bowl. Of course, these cannot be returned to the bowl. Guess I will just have to eat them.

Darn.

When you use red skinned potatoes it does tend to clog up the beater a bit.

There all clean. Washed it in the sink? Are you nuts! I licked that sucker clean is what I did. I didn’t want to be wasteful.

Then put all of it into a prepared baking dish. REMEMBER to grease the dish before hand. It is a real mess later if you don’t. '

I should know….

And then spread the potatoes out all nice, and maybe taste them a bit just to make sure that they are OK. You wouldn’t want to serve an inferior product would you?

Sprinkle with paprika and you are good to go. At this point you can actually refrigerate the dish for a day or two. If you are thinking ahead enough to have done the prep that far in advance. It can then be baked at your convenience on the day that you are serving it.

This is the link for the recipe.

LINK-> Party Potatoes <-LINK

Now go forth and make them. You won’t be sorry.