T Stands for Voting and Food

 Hi everyone.  It is time for T once again over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog. I hope everyone has had a lovely week.

Bear with me for a minute (or 2) as I talk briefly about primary voting in my state. I know this might not be interesting to some of you, and my point is not to get into political views, but to tell you about my state's primary, and what's going on  with it this year. If you don't want to read about the primary voting, you can jump down below the asterisks (*).

Besides T day, tomorrow is also Primary Day in New Hampshire. For those of you unfamiliar with how the US chooses a president (and also for some other government positions), the primary is a lead up to the presidential election in November. It is not a national day of voting, but different states can run their primaries on different days, all within a matter of a few months. Candidates need to register to be on the ballot, and then voters get to vote for who they like in the party of their choice. 

Different states have different voting set ups. Here in New Hampshire you can be registered to vote one of 3 ways. You can be a registered democrat, a registered republican, or a registered independent. If you are a registered democrat or republican, you must vote within the party  you are registered in during our state's primary. If you are registered as an independent, you can chose which party to vote in, and then if want to remain a registered independent, you must change your affiliation (and you can change it before you leave your place of voting) back to independent. 

This year's primary in my state of New Hampshire is one of the strangest ones I can remember. 

The current president (Joe Biden), doesn't want NH to have the first primary in the country. He moved that Democratic primary to South Carolina. But New Hampshire has to be first according to our state law, and I think almost everyone in this state is proud of that and is not willing to have our primary moved. Because of that, Biden will not be on the ballot, but senior level state  democrats are asking for a write in campaign.  The national democratic party wrote a scathing letter to the state attorney general that the democratic primary cannot be held on January 23. Well, legally here it has to be, and it will be. However, none of the democratic votes will actually count towards the delegates at the convention when the final democratic presidential party candidate is chosen (unless something changes by the convention.)

On the Republican side the candidates are going all out. Some of you in the US might also be inundated with political messages . We've had what seems like hours a day of TV ads for over a year. I get almost daily texts to come and meet a candidate. Saturday I also had 10 political phone calls (none of which I answered). Every day I get at least 5 flyers in the mail. This has been going on for months, and I think I could wall paper a room in the house with all the flyers I have received. Lately most of the flyers have been from Nikki Haley, but  before many of the other candidates dropped out of the race, we received a wide variety from various candidates. 

The voting results will be interesting. The stats I found about NH voters are that just over 30% of the states registered voters are democrats, just under 30% are registered republicans, and just about 40% of voters are registered independents.

For some independent voters there will be a bigger question at hand. Perhaps if a person leans republican then they  will vote for one the republican candidates. If someone leans democratic, they might write in Joe Biden, even though those votes don't presently count. Or they could vote republican.    Many people I have spoken to in the last few months will   vote republican to try to keep Trump from winning. And I should mention there are some  democratic candidates that aren't going along with the national democratic office and are running on the democratic ticket. Some people might even vote for one of them.

 I for one am curious to see what the results come out to be.  I know how I am voting, but it's a secret ballot so I'm not saying. 😏 (Plus it's T day, and I think our weekly international catch ups are not a place to discuss my political views.)

*****

In other things, last week was another fairly quiet week for me. It was cold, and I spent a lot of time keeping the woodstove going. I also seemed to do a lot in the kitchen, a nice warm place to be on a cold day.

I used some browning bananas and made a banana, chocolate chip and walnut coffee cake (made in a bundt pan).

I made a 16 bean and veggie soup.

And on Saturday, my sister-in-law had a small family brunch to celebrate my mother-in-law's 90th birthday (which was a couple of weeks ago). I made a pumpkin quiche to bring.  

I always make pumpkin quiche appetizers for Thanksgiving, and my sister-in-law requested pumpkin quiche for the party. This time I decided to make a big one.

Here's my T day drink for this week, along with my lunch, which I did not make.

 

After my allergy shots last Wednesday, I picked up my husband at work, and he took me out for lunch. I had a Diet Coke and one of the best tuna melt sandwiches I've ever had. Last time I showed a photo of a tuna melt from the Round About Diner, some of you asked what the fried "thing" was on top of the  sandwich. It is a friend pickle. And very yummy. I was jealous the husband got 2 put on his sandwich. 😏

I've also been knitting my latest sweater.  Here's the  sleeve I have just about finished.

That's all for me.

FYI- I am going to be out of town for a few days early next week, so I will be missing T. Not only have a great T day this week, but for those of you who I only see for T, have a great couple of weeks ahead.  For everyone else I will be around all of this week and much of next week also. just not here for T day.

Enjoy!