My love affair with beef textured vegetable protein.

A series of obnoxious political robo calls ruined a perfectly wonderful Saturday afternoon nap for me today FOUR TIMES IN LESS THAN AN HOUR. And all this hoo-hah is for the Mesquite City Council, no less. Two robo calls warned me that candidate Brian Hutcheson is accused of accepting an illegal campaign contribution from the Dallas Apartment Association — they must be confusing me with somebody who cares about this — and two more were from Brian himself, who clearly sounded hysterical trying to convince me that his opponent is a liar. Apparently I’m not the only Mesquite citizen who doesn’t give a crap, however, because I drove past our polling place this afternoon and there were 26,715 signs lining the sidewalk and ZERO CARS IN THE LOT. Brian Hutcheson is the dude standing on the left in the picture below. I’m sorry nobody’s wearing a cowboy hat.

From our Relatives-on-the-Go department, I’m pleased to report that Sam arrived safely in southern California today for a seven-day visit. I drove him to the Dallas/Fort Worth airport this morning and sent him on his way from Terminal D. For your possible interest here is a representative image of his American Airlines flight landing at LAX. The plane is exceptionally shiny.

And now I’d like to share the latest entry in our Holy Crap Gallery in case you frequently lose sleep wondering whatever happened to the original cast of “The Love Boat,” which sailed on ABC from 1977 to 1986. Personally, I would never recognize Ted Lange or Lauren Tewes in a million years but Gavin McLeod is amazing at 81 and Bernie Kopell still looks like Bernie, except pruny.

Tonight’s first Sam-less evening meal at Howdygram headquarters will be homemade mushroom barley soup, which I haven’t actually started yet because I’m still writing this post. I plan to use the freeze-dried mushrooms and chicken TVP (textured vegetable protein) I ordered not long ago from Shelf Reliance. These products are awesome and I love having them in the pantry. Beef TVP is my favorite, though. It’s perfect in soup or chili, tastes wonderful, rehydrates in less than five minutes and has the texture of finely-shredded brisket or pot roast. You can order it here. (I buy the #10 can. It lasts a long time.)

I’ll probably be writing lots of posts in Sam’s absence since I have nothing else to do this week except eat, check my blood sugar, bring in the mail and watch movies. Live and be well, okay?