One pan French chicken’ and thumbs up music

Last night my wife cooked an incredible new recipe called “One pan French chicken”. It was as beautiful as it was delicious; so much so, that I sent a picture of it to my gourmet cooking daughter, before putting the pan in the middle of the table and serving from it. 

It was too special for our regular meal at the kitchen dinette so we decided to eat in the dining room which we normally reserve for our big Friday night family farm dinners. But this looked and smelled too good to be just an ordinary meal. So dining room it was!

Now that we’ve both passed the “Three score and ten” mark on the calendar, I figure that every day is a bonus and any excuse for a celebration is good enough for me. And it’s hard to have a celebration without music, right? For sure, and that’s where the title of this column comes in.

I don’t claim to be tech savvy by any means but there is one app that I really enjoy: Pandora ® music. It’s a free app for your phone and/or computer that allows you to select virtually any music genre and artist and play it whenever you wish. It is wonderful and adds so much ambiance to whatever you’re doing that there’s no excuse for not filling the house with life-enhancing music. Not just for dining but for cleaning the house, paying bills, or just plain relaxing. It makes for a wonderful extra dimension. I guess that’s why you see so many Millennials with ear buds stuck in their ears all the time. Well, we seniors can pay that game too!

So back to last night’s dinner. My wife cooked it and I selected the just the right music for what she cooked: “Smooth Jazz dinner music”. In fact, I just went to turn it on to see if I could pull up a history of what we listened to last night and Oscar Peterson came on with “Love is here to stay” from his 1959 album, Oscar Peterson plays the George Gershwin songbook . I’m not tech smart enough yet to look up last night’s history, but suffice it to say that my wife and I were humming the tunes and recalling the words of most of the classics that were playing in the background as we enjoyed our dinner. Oh, Nat King Cole just came on with “They tried to tell us we’re too young”. Bring back memories to any of you? I hope so!

I know there are other music apps including Apple music, Spotify®, etc. which I’m sure are similar, but for whatever reason I got started with Pandora® and that’s what we’ll stick with until there’s a reason to change. I believe most of them have a free version which occasionally inserts an ad and a premium version which is ad-free if you pay a monthly fee, typically around $10. So far, we’re still using and enjoying the free version.

And best of all, the more you listen the more you can teach the app what music you like by clicking on the “Thumbs Up” icon if you like it or the “Thumbs Down” icon if you don’t.

I hope you decide to enhance your lives with “Thumbs Up” music too.

Thanks for reading All About Seniors…..see you next week!

Bill Milby is a Director of Visiting Angels® of Central Georgia, a non-medical, living assistance service for seniors. If you have questions or comments about this column you can reach him at william.mercylink@gmail.com or search for us at https://www.facebook.com/VisitingAngelsofCentralGA/