Pansy Orchid

Blooms right about now--for Mother's Day.  Isn't it gorgeous?  I purchased one last year at this time and it is sending up tiny stems but wouldn't be ready to have flowers by Mother's Day.  So I put in an order for another, new one, on one of my days at work in March/April.  They sent 10.  So, we have some for sale now for the holiday at work.

The new orchid has two flower spikes and the potential for many flowers.  Two are open right now. I am thinking the other plant has different colored flowers.  We'll see. It would be nice if it was different.

I must have gotten the hang of orchid care as most, if not all, my plants (12) have flower spikes and/ or are in bloom right now.  I have a coffee table in front of a South facing window with full sized sheet trays from a restaurant on the table top (to keep any water off the wood surface).  I lift or lower the blinds to give more light (winter) and less (summer) to the orchids.  We walk past them dozens of times each day--creating enough "wind" to keep things fresh. I have them in "self watering" pots that have a plug in the bottom to drain water.  I fill the pots with water every 4 to 6 weeks, let sit for 30 minutes and then drain.  I mix a very diluted orchid food in with the water.   Then pull the plugs and drain and put the plug back in and return the plants to the window table.  I rub any dust of the leaves with a damp paper towel and once a year clean the leaves with banana peels rubbed over the surface. The banana side of the peel.  Makes the leaves shiny.

One of the food blogs I visit recently had a review and recipes for the Instant Pot.  Which was interesting.  I had also been wondering about the Air Fryer and today's post was about the Air Fryer. the author of the blog bought both on the same shopping trip.  She was rather disappointed with the fryer's performance and went looking at other food blogs to see if they had better results.  Found that best result was with frozen foods directly out of the freezer.  Though one blogger made crispy tofu cubes in the fryer.  Crispy and tofu are not usually used in the same sentence.

Not that I will be making crispy tofu.  My main food allergy is soy products.

Which makes a pure vegetarian diet very very difficult. I have looked at many, many vegetarian diets and SOY is the backbone of 99% of them.  Recipes for Tofu Turkey, Tofu Bacon, Tofu Pad Thai etc.
Also soy milk and soy yogurt and soy cheeses and soy mayo.  The vegetarian world is all about soy.

So--Air Fryer for frozen sweet potato fries, Tater Tots (when you aren't putting them in the waffle iron) and chicken nuggets.  Worth it?  Nope.

Time to make another big pot of vegetable soup.  But before I do that--I need to check the crisper drawer for ingredients.