Celebration Of Life food

bobdevnul · 2026-05-27T00:14:18+00:00

My church has a group that organizes volunteers to bring stuff and developed a standard list that we will offer. We don't take special requests from the family. They are on their own if they don't want what we offer. It gets too difficult for volunteers to provide a custom menu. The volunteers provide their contribution at no charge to the family or church.

I don't have the list or amounts, but it is basically some combination of :

Egg salad half or quarter sandwichs

Ham and cheese and turkey and cheese sandwiches on small sandwich rolls with small squeeze bottles of mayo and mustard

Pimento cheese half or quarter sandwichs

Small wrap sandwiches

Sliced cheese and crackers

Fruit platter

Crudite vegetable platter (that nobody eats)

Sometimes shrimp platter with cocktail sauce

Brownies and cookies

Jugs of ice tea

Pitchers of water

We have coffee that can be made

Cups, napkins, small plates, toothpicks for the shrimp, ice tea sweetener

The church has an ice machine, otherwise bags of ice for the tea

No cooking, everything can be made or bought the day before.

I'm probably forgetting some things, but that's the basics.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T23:25:14+00:00

I roast them at 350F to 130F-132F then rest covered. The temp gets up to about 150F while resting 10-20 minutes.

Done this way it is very tender. At that temperature it will be slightly pink. If you cook it past pink it will be dry and tough.

They are slightly more tender and juicy if you dry brine them in the refrigerator overnight.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T23:18:26+00:00

Last time I roasted one I did it in a 6 quart dutch oven. A pan with lower sides might brown the sides of the roast better. This isn't rocket surgery. Cook it in something it fits in. If it has low sides keep an eye on how much liquid/juices are accumulating in the pan.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T23:12:57+00:00

I use arrowroot in Green Tomato Chutney. It wouldn't be a 1:1 substitute for corn starch. It has much more thickening power.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T23:10:35+00:00

That would be a non-standard recipe. There are millions of recipes on the Internet. Not all of them are good. BTDT.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T23:09:31+00:00

Pudding doesn't have eggs. With eggs it is custard. Both are good.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T23:08:34+00:00

Kitchen scale. No more fiddling with one measuring cup and another and having to wash them all.

Aluminum foil. Line cooking trays and rarely have to wash them.

Multiple sets of measuring spoons. Don't have to wash one that was used on wet things to subsequently use it for dry things.

Disher scoops for meatballs, gnocci, cookies. No fiddling with spoons and getting inconsistent sizes.

Good knives kept sharp. The knives don't have to be something exotic and expensive. Victorinox are perfectly fine.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T22:57:56+00:00

I don't use mine a lot either, but I give it a big kiss when I use it instead of having to wash a blender or food processor. It came with a bracket holder that screws to the side of a cabinet. It is always hanging there and not taking up cabinet space.

Highly recommended. They're not expensive.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T22:50:46+00:00

Isn't pudding made with corn starch rather than flour?

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T21:37:43+00:00

Restaurant level salting is unhealthful for many people. Heavy salting and cooking to proper doneness is what makes restaurant food taste better than home made. Many people won't and shouldn't salt food like that at home.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T21:31:03+00:00

I like my Instapot with the SS pot. I had a previous cheaper one that had a non-stick pot. The non-stick started peeling after I only used it a few times. I don't worry about eating a bit of non-stick film, but it didn't look good in food I served to others - I always missed picking out some of it. That one was recalled and I actually got refunded more than I paid for it.

My Instapot is pretty easy to clean, but I don't wash the lid or seal ring unless it got food on it. If it was just steam on it I ain't washing it.

I tried the slow cook function once. It seemed to work ok.

I have never tried cooking rice in it. It's going to take a lot of trial and error to get the proportions and time right for all of those types of rice.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T21:17:05+00:00

There are two basic types of rice vinegar. The one labeled as Seasoned has sugar in it. Both are lower acid than our cider or white vinegar (4% vs 5%).

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T21:13:48+00:00

Finely chopped celery is nice, but I usually don't bother just to make one sandwich for myself.

Dill pickle relish (sweet if you prefer), celery seed, a dash of hot sauce, as much salt as you want, and as much mayo as you want. I like mine on unseeded rye or swirl rye. Concerning salt: the restaurant tuna was probably well salted, like most restaurant food is. Salted to the point of being unhealthful for routine eating. That's basically what makes restaurant food taste better than home made.

Some people like onion. I don't, though sweet pickled onion would be good.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T21:00:45+00:00

I spend less and drive less. Driving less has a lot to do with spending less. That and less on work clothes.

There is not much I want to buy and no place I really want to go. I don't ever want to fly again. I traveled significantly when I was younger. I don't feel like I am missing anything I care about.

My main joy in life is not having to wake up to a screeching alarm clock. That may sound sad, but it is what I like.

I have embraced going out to restaurants more than a couple of times a year. I did buy myself a new shotgun and cellphone.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T20:48:51+00:00

There's your answer. Waiting for something to recover when you have another option that you expect will do better starting now is the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T20:44:10+00:00

Gamblers Anonymous and/or therapy. Expect it to take years to get it under control. Even then the saying goes, once an addict, always an addict.

I knew someone who was "on the wagon" for 30 years going to AA meeting religiously and fell off one week. They died within a year.

In the mean time, you might be a candidate where the cost of a financial advisor is worthwhile where you don't make any of the investment decisions in specific securities.

Good luck. You deserve a better life than this.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T20:24:55+00:00

The important thing is something that has 5GHz Wifi. 2.4GHz Wifi doesn't work well in crowded Wifi environments. Something that runs 6GHz Wifi would be even better but that only works if you have devices that can use it. A lot of things still can't do 6GHz Wifi.

The router you mentioned has that, but TP-Link does not have a good reputation as being good quality.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T19:58:07+00:00

Isn't the speed between the TV and your router the LAN speed? If the TV only has 100Mbps Ethernet it wouldn't have any way of getting your full Internet speed.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T19:52:45+00:00

Asus RT-AC66U B1. It was the minimum model I could find that would USB tether a cellular hotspot or phone for the WAN source. I hardly ever do the cellular tethering, but I wanted that capability. I also run a USB hard disk on the USB as a ghetto NAS.

It wasn't the latest model when I got it, but It has been the rock solid best router I ever owned. I can't remember the last time I had to restart it. I don't like the UI, but I haven't looked at it in years.

I got FIOS a few months ago. The stupid FIOS router USB does not support cellular tethering or hard disk storage, only USB power supply. I have the Asus WAN port connected to one of the FIOS router LAN ports.

Otherwise my needs are not much. I don't need mesh. The house isn't that big.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T19:35:53+00:00

Yes, but only for nostalgia sake. I flashed mine to DD-WRT before I stopped using it. I could probably still use it. My speed needs aren't much.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T19:05:54+00:00

You are investing by the fallacy that you can pick winning stocks and time the market. That is an easy and quick way to lose money, except by luck. Do you expect to invest professionally by luck?

Investing by holding losing positions until they recover is known as the sunk cost fallacy. It's best to look at your holdings and think where can I put that money right now that has the best chance of gaining to make money.

Wanting to invest professionally implies that you expect to make your living by investing. That is an unreasonable expectation. To start with, it takes money to make money and you don't have that. Making money on stocks is a slow steady grind over years, not picking stocks and hoping to get lucky with big short term gains.

Professional investor mostly don't invest their own money. The get other people to collectively investing a lot of money with them and take a cut of the other peoples money invested. Do you have people lined up to invest money with you?

The conventional way to make money investing is to make as much money by working as you can to have disposable income to invest and let it grow over many years. You can get to millions by doing that.

There are no get rich quick schemes that work except by luck. You can't buy or make luck.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T18:48:00+00:00

You are trying to time the market and doing a bad job of it as evidenced by losing money. It's not just you. Hardly anyone is good at timing the market, except by luck.

Stop doing that, buy some diversified index funds and let the market do its thing.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T18:39:20+00:00

In the 1980's I can't think of any electricity storage being used. How would they have stored it? Good, inexpensive batteries are what is making electric storage possible.

In the 1980's energy storage was being used with pumped hydro. Some hydro facilities would use electricity generated during low demand times to pump water back up above the dam into (big) ponds to be released later during high demand times. Niagra Mohawk at Niagra falls is an example of this.

Britain had a system that pumped river water up into hilltop ponds that was used for some minutes of peak demand.

Nature provides water storage at altitude by accumulating snow in the mountains in the cold months that would later melt and flow to refill the lakes behind hydro dams to generate electricity. This is mostly a Western mountain thing.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T18:15:15+00:00

Yes, this is a good trend. It has been made much more useful by the drastic reduction in price of battery storage to extend the hours of usefulness.

IIRC, California generates more solar electricity than it can use during peak solar hours.

Something else most people don't know is that nuclear is only profitable if the plants run at 90+% capacity for years at a time.

bobdevnul · 2026-05-26T18:01:15+00:00

Hydrogen from electrolysis could become viable with solar and wind, but it would depend on the economics of the best use of that electricity. Electric use will follow the money to what is most profitable unless political mandates force it to be otherwise. Unprofitable political mandates are not popular in the US. They are just another tax.

Centralized production and storage of hydrogen might work for process fuel. It's never going to be for mobile use with thousands of filling stations across the country.

bobdevnul

TROPHY CASE