Cooking the NYTimes and Other Assorted Retirement Activities

Greetings and salutations--or should I say, pawlutations?  JK. I'm Hank, Mary's (the author of this blog), beagle and today is my 11th birthday.  We thought it would be fun if I put paw to keyboard and blog about my life with Mary and her spousal unit, Dan, while they're in Florida.  Since typing is quite challenging, I decided to mostly post pictures.  Isn't that what humans say, a picture is worth a thousand words?  In the dog world, a smell is worth a gazillion words but for today, we'll go with pictures. First, this gives you an idea where they got a place for me to stay in Florida. There is a sign that says No Dogs Allowed on the beach, but Mary took me on just for a minute.  I discovered I like it and now, whenever they take me out, I head right for the beach.  There are birds and water to chase there and talk about the smells!  WOO HOO! You might be wondering what I do all day, since I can't go on the beach.  Here's an ove...

So about this Clean Food movement... I googled Clean Food to ensure I understand this concept.  Lo and behold, I do.  Clean Food is what my grandmothers and aunts and great aunts cooked.  Fresh meat and produce, often purchased the day of the meal, served as the backbone of our meals.  As kids, we preferred canned vegetables over fresh--what was wrong with us?--and a small box of frozen veggies provided a special treat.   Once my grandmother sent me back to the store with a head of broccoli because she thought it looked terrible.  Freshness was paramount to her.  She also knew how various foods were good for you.  Onions contributed to shiny hair.  Carrots kept your eyesight sharp.  An apple a day keeps the doctor away.  Red meat put protein to build muscles and iron for red blood cells.  I'm sure there were more and I wish I remembered them. The Panera commercials touting their clean and real food caught my attention...

It's a stunningly beautiful day here in the upper Midwest.  Please don't blame the Mothers' Day temperatures in the 70's on global warming.  That would take away all hope that the chance of frost has come and is now gone until at least next September. I've been writing this blog post in my head for at least a couple weeks.  In fact, I had a couple false starts while we were still in Florida.  I think I'm finally ready to get it onto the computer screen (remember when we used to say we were ready to get it onto paper?) In Florida, we rented in a townhome complex in Indian Rocks Beach.  My youngest sister lives there, which is how we found the place.  That factored into our decision to rent there.  We've been there a couple times and had a sense of what the community was like, where stores and restaurants were located.  We both liked that it was a little more laid back Florida beach town, less touristy than other nearby places.  Plus being ...