Busy couple of days...

In spite of the heat I decided to bake yesterday morning. I made carrot raisin muffins using Mimi's Cafe Carrot Raisin Bread, which I doubled, but forgot to double the sugar so I “had” to make a cream cheese frosting to balance out the flour taste. Even without the frosting they were pretty darned good. I will make them again, and remember the sugar! For Chris I made Grama's apple muffins , shown above. Finely I made Betsy's granola (thought I'd gotten this from My five men blog but couldn't find it when I went to link to it... but you should check out her blog anyway, she's got other great recipes I'll be trying). Wish I'd taken a picture of the granola after I added all the fruit, it was very festive, tastes great too! For lunch I threw together some steamed asparagus and sautéed shrimp with an Asian salad dressing. Surprisingly good...

Spent the rest of the day working on changes to the blog and my Etsy shop. Very productive day. Unfortunately the geo-thermal system decided to have issues so that house wasn't nearly as cool as it had been on Tuesday, that made dinner interesting. Chris wasn't interested in the left over Chicken fingers so we tried Betsy's trick of BBQ'ing a pizza, though ours was frozen and her's was homemade. We used a double insulated pizza pan on the grill. She's right, it gets a bit of that oven baked burn-ness but it was pretty darned good. Only next time I won't add Romano cheese, it doesn't melt.


Today I've got a meeting that will last well into the afternoon....

So I didn't get the above posted before I left for my meeting.... after my meeting my friend Carolyn invited me to her home to meet her roommate Alice. Alice and I worked for the same company several years ago but had never met. Listening to Wm Paul Young, the author of The shack, a few weeks back, he said the best compliment a friend gives another friend is by giving them their friends. That happened today. I spent a lovely afternoon getting to know, and be known, by new friends. Very happy day! BTW, if you are interested in Paul's conversations, that's what they are rather than a teaching or a sermon, here are the links. The afternoon session he spoke more about how and why he wrote The shack, the evening session he spoke openly and candidly about his life, which was the testing grounds for the lessons taught in the book. You will need to create a user account with Bethel, and I believe you will need to pay for both of those videos, but very worth the time and money.

Now that I've played all day, it's time to make dinner. On the menu: pork parmesan, but I'm using mozzarella and a pasta with some sort of a red sauce.

The week in pictures...

Been a busy week and I didn't take the time to post something everyday this week, so here's a visual log of the week:
Monday I was running into town, as I came down the hill I saw this quaint scene, turned home for my camera and pulled off to take the picture... and backed into a ditch. I couldn't get out by myself so I called Chris and then shot more floral pictures as I waited for my knight in shining armor. Forgot to get the car in the ditch though... Driving into town I enjoyed the American flags that the local Grange decorated the town with and the flowers in bloom in the medians. Took pictures of the flowers but not the flags. Came home and enjoyed the sun on the deck, and a bowl of cherries. For dinner I cooked Buttermilk brined pork chops. Chris said he preferred my regular pork chops. The recipe said to toss the rest of the brine but it looked like a gravy to me so I made gravy with it. Very good but waaaay too much salt. Not sure that I'll make them again, but I'll remember I can use buttermilk to make a gravy...

Tuesday I got together with my Friend Valerie. As I was leaving she toured me through her garden. Got lots of beautiful pictures and was inspired to plant a vegetable garden this year... not sure yet if I'll take the plunge... This is flower caught my eye while we visited.
Dinner Wednesday was another new recipe; Lemon and garlic chicken. Not only did it sound good, but there was also a recipe for any extra chicken, Lemon and cream pasta. The Lemon and garlic recipe lived up to expectations, I will make this one again! Tonight I'll try the pasta recipe.
Wednesday I mixed up a batch of overnight bread dough, today I made biscuits and scrambled eggs for Chris and an egg cup for me. To make the egg cup I cut a piece of dough, pressed it into a muffin pan, added spinach, bacon bits, cheese and cracked an egg into it. It came out pretty good. Need to find a deeper or wider cup... Chris preferred the biscuit with strawberry jam. I formed the rest of the dough into balls and froze them to be used as needed. Not a bad dough, kinda yeasty and sweet. The jam definitely made them.
So that's the week, so far, in pictures. Now I'm off to the deck, the sun and reading I've been putting off to long...

Good morning!

I love days like today. When Chris and I were finishing the house, I told him I wanted an East facing bedroom, because of the way the house was laid out, we bought the house as a framed and plywood sided shell so we couldn't change the floor plan all that much, that wasn't possible so he placed two 3' square windows on the bathroom wall which is to the East, you can do that with 11' ceilings. So this time of year, about 4:30, I am woken by morning light flooding in from the East windows and bouncing off the sky and flooding in the West facing window. The birds are singing, and as a special treat this morning, the Canadian Snow Geese were honking their good mornings as well. All that is why I was up early this morning. By 8:30 I was well on my way through my morning chores, and decided to make breakfast. I've been exploring cooking blogs lately. Ran across one yesterday where she had made a new lasagna type meal for herself from leftovers in the fridge. Somehow all that flooded into my brain and I decided to make a French toast dish, of a sort. I cut up the last few inches of a cinnamon apple bread we'd picked up a the Farmers market, cut leftover sausage links into small pieces and mixed a cinnamon and egg mixture pouring it over everything. Baked it for a bit then served myself a generous portion with Trader Joes Honey vanilla Greek style yogurt. Nummy good.