13 January 2020

Returns and leftovers

First, regarding the two extra display adapters that The IT Buffs in Leigh (England, U.K.) sent me over the holidays after I ordered just one, well... I contacted Amazon.fr, who in turn contacted the outfit in England, and I have authorization to send back the two extra adapters at no cost to myself. I'm glad to do so. All I have to do is print out a shipping label, wrap the adapters in bubble wrap, put them in a box, stick on the label and seal up the box, and then take it to any one of 6 or 7 businesses in Saint-Aignan, where it will be picked up by the DPD shipping company and delivered to Leigh. Sounds easy enough, especially since one of the drop-off points is SuperU, where I go to buy groceries every few days.


Speaking of groceries, above is what I'll call une estouffade* de bœuf au vin rouge that Walt made for my return from North Carolina last October. I discovered it in the freezer, where we had stored the leftovers, and added to it the leftovers of my recent basse-côte with a red wine and mushroom sauce. First I cut the remaining piece of basse-côte into cubes and braised rhem to get the meat to the same point of tenderness as the estouffade beef was. This was our lunch yesterday, with some potato gnocchi and a green salad.

It occurs to me that freezers — we have two of them — are a little like external hard disks, where you can store things that you might want to get your hands on and enjoy at a later time.

* One dictionary says l'estouffade is une manière de faire cuire très lentement et dans leur vapeur certaines viandes. One example is the famous bœuf bourguignon — it's a braise or a stew. The Larousse Gastronomique describes une estouffade this way: Plat préparé à l'étouffée (ou à l'étuvée). Il s'agit de viande de bœuf ou de veau, cuite avec beaucoup de légumes, et parfumée au vin.

14 comments:

  1. Good that your method to return those adapters is worked out and you can put it behind you except as a bit of conversation! That meal looks delicious, as usual.

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  2. "All I have to do is print out a shipping label, wrap the adapters in bubble wrap, put them in a box, stick on the label and seal up the box, and then take it to any one of 6 or 7 businesses in Saint-Aignan".... and Debbie will wonder where they've got to in 6 months time....
    But, at least you don't have to store them anywhere!!
    Best take a photo as you hand it over.... there's no proof of postage with that system....

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    1. The clerk at the accueil at SuperU will have to sign and date the paper to prove I left the package there. Then it's out of my hands.

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  3. I should have waited until after my breakfast to open your blog! Now, I don't think a bowl of tea and a slice of my own machine-made bread with some jam will be enough to stop my stomach's grrowlings induced by the sight of your estouffade!

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  4. ‘freezers are like external hard discs’, love it! And your lunch looks delicious.

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  5. I am confused (nasty people would say it is my natural condition!) about why when I google 10 top external hard disks, I get the best external drives? If it's not the same, why use it interchangeably?

    I am on the market for two new external hard discs/drives to store what's in each of my two MacPro laptops. I've been very happy in the past with WDs. Any suggestion of better ones?

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  6. Depending on how much data you want or need to store, you might consider an external SSD — no moving parts For example, this 1 TB Samsung model.

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    1. Reading customer comments about th Samsung SSD on Amazon.com, I see that there are some compatibility issues with MacOS, so proceed with caution. Before you copy data to the SSD, format it to make it compatible with MacOS.

      My external hard disk are Samsung, WD, and Maxtor models. Fingers crossed, all are running just fine for the time being.

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    2. I checked the comments on the Sansung 1TB and it looks like some people had problems, but there was some good advice. The SSD is tempting. I'm looking at the WD's G technology to find more info.
      I might just buy another My passport from WD!

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  7. That meal - the estouffade - looks wonderful. Comfort food, right up my alley. When I open my freezer hard drive, I don't see anything like that. Just a tin of Folger's, tub of cool whip, and a bunch of Weight Watchers meals.

    I assume the adapters will go in a smaller box than that giant thing they sent you previously...

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    1. Yes, I have packed the two display adapters in a much smaller box. I have put inplenty of bubble wrap to protect them. It came in that huge box back in December.

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  8. Snow is forecast for tomorrow (I'm guessing it will start tonight). Your estouffade would be perfect for my lunch if I'm to stay home because of the roads - BUT - my freezer hard drive doesn't have one in it either!

    I can just taste that wine/meat/vegie/gravy combo, too... wonderful!

    Mary in Oregon

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  9. We have easy ways to return merchandise here also. Our UPS store just needs a little paperwork with that bar code and often no box. Lewis recently returned a Spectrum tv device there. It makes life easier for sure.

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  10. Your lunch looks delish!
    Good that you can return the excess computer goodies. I've notice that a number of the ship-direct companies now make it much easier to return things that way -- box it up and drop it off, at UPS or similar for me, SuperU for you.
    On cloud storage: I didn't have my phone backed up and when Apple had a major brainfart (you should excuse the expression) a month or so back, in my impatience to figure it out I managed to delete all my contact info, which I am still reassembling. A friend who works for one of the ultra-tech outfits said even she has bitten the privacy bullet and uses the cloud to backup her phone. But I can see the point of external drives for big-ticket items like movies.

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