Today’s deliveries include TicTacs, foam plates and exciting socks for Sam.

News flash. Remember the can of freeze-dried ground beef I ordered last week from Shelf Reliance? I tried it Sunday for the first time and the stuff is REALLY AMAZING. You just soak some in an equal amount of warm water (lightly salted) and 15 minutes later you’ve got really normal — and lean — ground beef for any sauce or recipe. In my case I rehydrated about half a cup and tossed it into homemade tomato soup. Seriously, this was so good I went back to Shelf Reliance and ordered cans of freeze-dried chopped chicken, freeze-dried mushrooms and freeze-dried diced potatoes.

Shelf Reliance promotes their products for food storage and emergency rations but they’re definitely missing a bigger audience beyond survivalists and religious nutjobs. I think freeze-dried food is BRILLIANT for lazy people in general or seniors like me who only want a ¼-pound of ground beef to throw in a bowl of soup or a few mushrooms for an omelet. This is so much smarter than buying fresh mushrooms from Tom Thumb that get slimy in the fridge after three days and wind up in the garbage.

Just in case they’re reading the Howdygram, I think Shelf Reliance should also consider freeze-dried Mongolian chicken and freeze-dried baloney. I’m just saying.

Sam’s Aunt Adie sent the following photo of her granddaughter Hailey a couple of days ago. Hailey’s doing the “Sam wave” at Huntington Gardens in San Marino, California. Hi back, Hailey!

This is a monumental week around here for package deliveries and all of the following essentials will arrive at Howdygram headquarters either today or tomorrow. Pictured below are diabetes test strips, a case of wintergreen TicTacs and 12 boxes of Lipton Hearty Chicken Cup-a-Soup from Amazon.com and foam plates, Efferdent and exciting socks from Wal-Mart. The exciting socks are for Sam.

And finally, I’d like to introduce BABY KIWI FRUIT. Apparently they’re grown domestically in California and Oregon in September and October and get imported from Chile and New Zealand in March and April, which means you should be able to buy them NOW at a local supermarket. Holy crap, are these cute or what? If you manage to find them somewhere please send me a few attached to an email.

For the record, baby kiwis may be teeny and exceptionally sweet but they’re NOT as teeny and sweet as Baby Sam (see inset). Thank you for reading this.