Tag: cookbooks

Book Sale Haul
Crafty · Life Posts · Sewing

Book Sale Haul

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I thought you all might enjoy seeing the cool books I found at the book sale this past weekend. We went on one of the days when we got another 10 books for every 10 books we bought. 🙂 Side note, I need more bookshelves.

I also picked up a couple of new cookbooks lately, but couldn’t remember if I had shared them yet. I’ll start with those. I blame Eric for two of them. We were at this weird bargain store called Ollie’s which has everything you can think of piled haphazardly on shelves. Right as you walk in, there’s a huge section of discount books. You know I can’t walk by piles of books. There are a lot of cookbooks there. I found this one which I’m hoping will help with dinner prep. (I did not pay $12.88!)

The Husband found these two and decided we needed to add them to the collection. I didn’t need too much arm twisting, as you can imagine.

This one needed to be ours for an obvious reason. The dork factor is strong with this one. 🙂 I was excited to see that there were both indoor and outdoor recipes. Not that I think we’ll have time to camp this year, but it’s good to know for the future.

He also requested we get this one. We have a lot of Asian cookbooks now. He may be trying to hint to something…

At least we’ll be set for the Lunar New Year!

We also found this cookbook at the used book part of the library a few weeks ago. I may be able to replicate some of these decorations.

I tried a walrus cupcake from one of the other cookbooks from this series and it was a total failure. A hilarious failure, but failure none the less. These might be a little less complicated.

I haven’t used these cookbooks yet, but will try to use them soon. I’m also going through my cookbooks to try to figure out which ones we are done with and can pass along. I have a couple specific themed ones I will be on the lookout for and the other book sales. I need a gluten free/dairy free cookbook for my friends who need both.

Speaking of book sales, here is the Husband’s pile.

He found some good music potentially for his next play, a couple of Dilbert comic books, and some Asimov books.

It’s possible I’m addicted to collecting books. Reading them too, of course, but mostly just having them surrounding me. I get nervous if go to someone’s house and I don’t see books around.

This is the semi-trashy romance and fantasy pile.

Note the Redwall mixed in there. I did find a couple of new authors to try and some new books from my regular authors. The black one on the bottom right has all three of the “Queen’s Own” trilogy by Mercedes Lackey. I found two of the trilogy at one of last year’s book sales and I never ended up getting or reading the third one. So now I will be able to find out how it ends and can give away the other two.

These are the fiction books that aren’t trashy romance or fantasty.

The bottom one is “A Child Analysis with Anna Freud,” which I thought was pretty cool! It will probably come to work with me, but I should probably read it first. This sale had a lot of older child therapy books, but they were mostly texts and I didn’t know if they would still be relevant or not.

Kate Jacobs writes easy reads about women and relationships and this one is all about food. I’ve read her knitting series and it was lovely, so I thought I’d pick it up.

“The Lace Reader” is a book that I read a couple of years ago and it has haunted me ever since. I picked it up on a whim at the library and promptly forgot the author. I had to read it twice though, because it was such a good and twisty book. I’m excited to re-read it and see if it is as good as I remembered. The Herriot stories are always lovely and Carl Hiaasen is hilarious. Wacky, but hilarious. The “D is for Dahl” book is a Rolad Dahl alphabet. It looked really cute.

Of course, there were some crafty books too. The top one has a ton of resources from websites, to books, to places, techniques, and all sorts of other info. The Singer books are always good resources. I found “Sewing Specialty Fabrics” and “Sewing Activewear” this time. There’s also a Rit Dye book called “To Dye For” and a Log Cabin idea books. The bottom book is definitely the coolest book I found.

It’s actually a binder to organize a subscription magazine called “Stitch by Stitch” that has crocheting, knitting, sewing, and needlework lessons. It’s from the 70’s, I think. It has original, never used sewing patterns, plus instructions for all sorts of knitted and crocheted things! I’m super excited to play around with it.

Have a peek inside!

There’s a pattern for the pictured wrap skirt. I plan to try it with my drapey woven black fabric from the discount store.

There’s always a mini project on the back cover.

Sadly the pants pictured here are from a separate pattern pack that I don’t have.

Here’s one of the knitting lessons.

And crochet.

Heirloom sewing!

Needlepoint!

It’s the coolest set! I’m sure you’ll see more as I use it.

So far, I’m quite pleased with my new books! Fancy is cuddled next to me while I make plans for what to make next.

I can’t see how this is comfortable, but she has to be touching me. Have a nice night!

The Spice Must Flow
Recipe Roundup

The Spice Must Flow

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I’m such a dork. In other news, we’ve been using a lot of spice mixes lately and I thought you might be interested in hearing more about them. Most of them have been from Penzey’s. They have excellent spices and had a super good sale and now my spice cupboard is full of Penzey’s.

I’m using them though and it’s helped me get over my food funk. This isn’t a sponsored post, by the way. I’m just discovering new things to try and cook.

A couple of them have been good enough that the Husband has requested them “on everything.” 😁 The Galena Street rub was one of them. We had that on the chicken drumsticks. The chili powder was in the veggie chili that I made while the Husband was gone.

We had Mural of Flavor on the turkey pot pie for Pi Day. It had a stuffing crust on the bottom and top.

I knew it was a winner when the Husband said, when I walked in the door “We have a problem. You have to stop making such delicious food.”

We also had Cookies and Cream Pie for Pi Day from Icebox Pies by Lauren Chattman.

It was kind of a cheater pie. I mixed vanilla ice cream with crushed Oreos and used a store bought Oreo crust! But it was still delicious!

The Husband suggested this steak seasoning over the weekend. He had tried some as a sample at Costco and it was very good. I didn’t ruin the steak! It was actually very tender and juicy.

There were also roasted potatoes with paprika, garlic, seasoned salt, and pepper and a roasted carrot recipe from the Guarnaschelli book. (Pretty sure you could play a nice drinking game with how much I’ve been referencing that cookbook…) I was surprised the Husband liked the carrots. They had honey, cumin, coriander, and s+p on them. They were pretty good, although I forgot the finish of red wine vinegar, which would have cut through the sweetness nicely.

Fancy was mad that she couldn’t have the steak or the carrots. She drooled on my foot the whole time.

I made some things for our game night too, but of course, forgot to take pictures. We had chocolate covered strawberries, almond flour brownies, and chocolate chip cookies for sweets. Savory things included crab stuffed mushrooms, cheeses and sausage, and Firebreather salsa.

We’ve decided we’re done with winter, so last night had panko crusted shrimp with cilantro rice and homemade peach salsa. I also had a Moscow Mule and some tropical fruit.

I made lemon strawberry muffins (with lemon peel from Penzey’s) this morning too, since I was still craving spring.

I have been doing some sewing too, but not necessarily things I can post. I finally tried a bra pattern, but am quite sure my Dad doesn’t want to see it. 😂 So I’ll figure out a way to update the sewing posts soon.

The latest issue of Food Network included 100 Recipes for Butter Lovers and I got all starry eyed with a pitted patter heartbeat. Possibly from the thought of ingesting all the butter recipes! I can feel it calling my name too, so am going to go pick out some recipes.

Fancy is quite content at the moment, being adorable in her blanket. Any time she gets up, it gets stuck on her tail and she walks it all over the house.

We discovered tonight that she lives up to her name. She will not eat regular oranges or apples, but happily accepts blood oranges and Honeycrisp. Fancy, indeed!

Well, bad jokes aside, I hope this post gave you some ideas to spice up your cooking!

Catching Up- Lunar New Year Party
Party Posts · Recipe Roundup

Catching Up- Lunar New Year Party

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I had good intentions to write this post for the last couple days and then had very bad news at work and a couple of migraines. I’m feeling better today, luckily.

Our Lunar New Year Party was lots of fun! We had planned to watch Crazy Rich Asians, but I went a little large on the guest list and we just don’t have comfy seating for 13 people! So we’ll have to watch it another time.

We had a Dim Sum theme this year and didn’t have a big main dish, just a bunch of smaller ones. But there was still lots of food. I went to the Asian market and got huge bags of produce, which we are now eating in everything to use up. I foisted some off on my in-laws today though, so hopefully we can finish off the rest of it.

We did have some store bought things this year. I’ve given up trying to make egg rolls or spring rolls. They just aren’t worth the work for me and never seem to come out right. We bought veggie spring rolls from Costco this time.

I also used these rice packet things from the Asian market. We get these for Dim Sum, but I can’t eat them because of the pork sausage that is in them. These ones just had dried shrimp, so I picked them up. They have some lovely spices too and were nice for lunch. They are wrapped in tea leaves, so you only eat the inside.

Another Dim Sum favorite of mine is the steamed Chinese Broccoli, or Gai Lan. It’s very much like broccoli in taste, but has leaves instead of the the florets. I’m sure I was the only one to eat it, but it made my heart happy. 🙂

I did make two kinds of bao, although these are just the pork ones. I had 5 spice chicken bao as well, but they got eaten up quick. These were both made up recipes, although I did use a recipe for the Bao dough from The Food of China. I think I posted the recipe last year in the party post, but can repost it if you’d like it.

I roasted a whole pork loin in thinned out char sai sauce (Chinese bbq sauce) and chopped that for the pork filling. The chicken filling was ground chicken, sauces, bamboo shoots, garlic, and scallions in them.

We had pork shao mai, which was from the Husband’s family recipe book! According to the Husband, his mom and dad may have collected the recipes from his paternal grandma. Most of them are typed, but there are a couple that are handwritten. The shao mai were eaten before I started taking pictures.

The crab stuffed mushrooms were also from the book and were delicious! They called for a “creamy white sauce” so I made one to go in it. Fake crab was used. We’ve discovered that we don’t always need real crab. It was exciting to use it and there will certainly be some dinners from there as well.

The lettuce wraps look a little sad in this picture, as we had eaten most of them. These were made with ground turkey. These were my own recipe, meaning I threw a bunch of sauces and sauce ingredients at them until the filling tasted good. 🙂

A new recipe, that I may not make again, was fried pork ribs. I texted the Husband from the Asian Market and he was very enthusiastic. I was, of course, thinking I didn’t have enough pork and would need one more dish. I was told they were good, but only fried half of them. They spit at me a lot and burned me.

The Husband baked the rest of them for dinner during the week and said that worked too. They marinated for a long time in a 5 spice based marinade and were then battered and fried, or baked. These were from the Food of China.

We had Clementine Cakes from The Woks of Life. https://thewoksoflife.com/2014/10/clementine-cakes/

I highly recommend this website, as it has so many recipes and information on it for all your Asian culinary dreams. Someday I’ll get brave enough to make the coconut buns!

Back to the cakes though. I used blood oranges. The clementines were hard to find and I didn’t want to use them. I also didn’t glaze them and intended to make a frosting, but they didn’t get frosted. I did use super cute silicone cupcake molds though that had fortunes on the bottom!

Traditional almond cookies were also served. I used the recipe from my Food of China book and didn’t have blanched almonds and just left them off the tops. These didn’t brown, except on the bottoms, so be aware of that if you make them.

I think that was all the food! We didn’t manage a picture of the whole table, but I do have a picture of a table to share!

I found this Lego version of a Lunar New Year Dinner on Amazon really randomly while looking for the lucky coins we gave as favors this year. It was only available in Malaysia, but was somehow being sold by a toy company in New Jersey. I had no idea of any of this, the Husband found out after I gave it to him. 🙂 One of his superpowers is research. It was perfect for us though! It even has the Chinese broccoli!!

Here’s a close up of the table.

We also have started collecting the Lego zodiac sets, so here’s last year’s dog and this year’s pig.

I’ll leave you with some other pretty pictures of our decor. I nerded out a little and made the bookshelf display Firefly themed. I couldn’t help myself!

It was very fun and next year we’ll have to do some experimenting with how we want to run it. I made all of the fillings ahead of time, which helped, but I still need to rethink how we do this party. I end up making everyone feel awkward, I think, while I’m racing around trying to finish things. When I suggested a potluck idea to the Husband, he said “I’m surprised you can even say those words!” Ha.. Ha.. Ha..

I’ll let you know how it turns out. 🙂 Have a great weekend!

Canning and Preserving · Monthly Review · Recipe Roundup

Not So Simple Sunday

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Well, it has been a long time since I posted a review! I have made a lot of things lately. I pulled the tomatoes from the garden and still have some green ones left. I’m researching ways to use them up. I have green tomatoe salsa in the freezer already. My Dad keeps hinting about green tomato mincemeat, so maybe if he’s nice to me, he’ll get some. 😉 

I did end up buying some tomatoes to round out my recipes, but there’s a good portion of garden tomatoes in each recipe. I was pretty happy with how the garden performed this year. Next year we will be putting it in earlier though, I don’t want to end up with as many unripe peppers as I did this year. 

For canned items, I made little jars of hot sauce and some homemade Rotel style tomatoes and peppers. The hot sauce recipe was from the Ball Canning magazine and called “Red Hot Sauce.” The Rotel was from this recipe: https://amp.thekitchn.com/recipe-rotel-style-tomatoes-recipes-from-the-kitchn-206851

I forgot the lemon juice in the Rotel and had to recan a couple days later, so went from 11 jars to 9, after reboiling. The hot sauce was canned in little tiny jars and I got five out of the batch. I used all of my homemade garden peppers, so I know it will be spicy. I also found out why gloves are necessary for cutting that many peppers. My hands burned off an on all through the next day.

Speaking of peppers, we have used our homemade salsa in a couple of dishes including, chicken tortilla soup- no pictures, and tacos! The tacos also have homemade pico on them. 


I haven’t made any more jams, but do have some jellies planned, including a pomegranate one and a cider whiskey one. But those can be all done at any time.

I know I haven’t been talking a lot about food lately. I think my original purpose for starting the blog was fulfilled, at least in theory. I didn’t use all of my cookbooks, I don’t think, but I was more successful in making more new recipes and such. I’ll continue to use them, but I have also been able to think more about which ones are useful for us. 

I have been trying to use new cooking techniques and equipment as well. I made lentil soup in the Instantpot for dinner last night and the house is still standing. That recipe is here: https://www.cookwithmanali.com/instant-pot-mediterranean-lentil-soup/

It was pretty good. I used brown lentils instead of red, so pressure cooked for 16 minutes instead of the 8. I also replaced the garlic with granulated garlic as I had run out of fresh. I used a Za’tar spice mix to replace everything except the parsley, salt, and pepper. I left out the mint because I didn’t think it would go well with the Za’tar. I had some garlic bread with it. 

I made chocolate peanut butter pudding one night. The Husband is not a fan of pudding in general and especially peanut butter, so I had a lovely bowl for dessert for several nights. The recipe is here: https://www.smartnutrition.ca/recipes/chocolate-peanut-butter-pudding/

It was pretty good, although I think it needed a bit more peanut butter. 

I also made these chocolaty muffins from garden zucchini. They were extremely good and you definitely couldn’t tell they had zucchini in them. Recipe:https://www.mybakingaddiction.com/chocolate-zucchini-muffins/

We had General Tsao’s chicken from “The Chew” cookbook. It was pretty nice, but needed a bit more sauce.

I used the Pampered Chef Stoneware book to make a Corned Beef Philly Cheesesteak ring. I used the crescent roll dough and then pretty much followed the recipe, except using cheedar instead of American cheese.

I wouldn’t make this again. It wasn’t the best and the meat got a little weird after baking it. 

We had Mac and Cheese from the “Vegetables!” Cookbook. It made me giggle, since it was called “Grown-up Mac and Cheese.”

It was super rich and we had to eat small servings at a time. I used different cheeses, since it called for blue type cheeses. I decided breathing was more important than recipe following. 🙂

I’m going to write a separate sewing review. I don’t want to overwhelm you all. 

I’m still trying to decide what to focus on with food, now that the cookbooks aren’t my main focus. The Husband has had several good suggestions including having themed weeks/months, using recipes from movies and books. Or focusing on a series for specific techniques or ingrediants. I also plan to try to write out some of my personal recipes. And, of course, the 25 days of cookies is coming. I think this year I will spread it out and make it the 25 kinds of cookies instead. Then I won’t be so rushed or frazzled in December. 

So let me know what you’d be more interested in reading about food-wise. I’d hate for you all to get bored!

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday

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“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
― Charles M. Schulz

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”
― Julia Child

“If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.”
― Julia Child

“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”
― Laurie Colwin

Canning Galore!
Canning and Preserving

Canning Galore!

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Hello! Besides canning this weekend, we also did some yard work. A lot of yard work. It was slightly unexpected yard work, but it made the yard look a lot better.

Notice anything missing? Here, I’ll show you another one…

We took the trellis down! Hooray!

We can see the garden from the house! We can watch the dog when she runs away at night and tries to find the skunk.

We are going to have to rent some equipment to get the two bushes out and are repurposing the trellis by retraining roses to grow on it instead of through the fence.

It was killing the apple tree and whatever else it could reach and really didn’t fit what we wanted our backyard to be.

We can also see the compost, which I forgot to say we started. I think it’s going well. I certainly added a lot to it this weekend. My full-blown canning run took up pretty much two whole days. I had to restrain myself on Sunday from canning more. I still have a list going of other recipes, but not enough time to make them all!

The only one not pictured is the ginger dill pickles from Epicurious. https://www-epicurious-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/ginger-dill-pickles-56389773/amp

I had one today and they need a little more time to cure, but will be good to serve for the summer party.

Here are the other pickles:

Hot Garlic Pickles and regular Garlic Pickles. They are from Better Homes and Gardens Canning from 2015.

I used the little tiny, but super hot peppers from the garden! They need to sit for a week, so I haven’t tried them yet. They should be both garlicky and spicy.

Squash Pickles! This is a recipe I’ve been wanting to try since last year, but I never had the ingredients at the same time. I halved the recipe. The Husband doesn’t eat pickles… I know, I don’t get it either…

These were made from the zucchini from the garden. The recipe came from Southern Living Little Jars, Big Flavors. 

These beans were not from the garden. 🙂 They are also from the same cookbook. I want to make almost everything in it.

This Spicy BBQ sauce was from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. I made this recipe before, but with less spicy peppers. This year’s peppers were super spicy. I made this two weeks ago, I think. I used tomatoes from the freezer.

Also from the Blue Book is this Spicy Tomato Salsa. We are officially calling this Firebreather Salsa. I used all garden Jale-fuego peppers and a couple of tomatoes.

We have peach salsa too. No garden items in this one, but it smelled good. I’m excited to try this.

The peaches were wonderful. I will have to go back and get some more. More recipes to come!

I will be joining this puppers shortly.

I have to keep my strength up for party prep and more canning! Have a great night.

Monthly Review
Gardening · Monthly Review · Sewing

Monthly Review

LSiehLeave a comment

Hello again! This month has been a strange month with getting sick, a blown tire, and many, many social events. We sometimes look at each other and say “did we really plan this much?!” It’s nice to see friends and do fun things, but I am grateful for the chance to just relax tomorrow. I do have some sewing and maybe even some canning plans.

Fancy was with the dogsitter this weekend, as we went to the Toledo Zoo with some friends. We got periodic dog pictures and she looked very content. This was the look I got all week from Fancy when I tried to go sew in the basement.

I made sure to walk her a bunch this week and tried to get some longer walks in. We went for two walks a mile or more and this was her face then.

Then, of course, this was her when we got home.

Silly dog. 🙂

I wore new shorts to the Toledo Zoo this weekend and since we had gone with my sewing friend, she was wearing shorts, a tank top, and a hat she had made herself! The shorts and tank had jungle animals and the hat had sea creatures, so she matched the environment very well. Here is a picture of my shorts fabric. They are very wrinkled from wearing them and are in the wash, so I don’t have a better one yet. (This was taken before we dropped Fancy off on Friday, hence the tiny dog paw in the corner.)

They are Bermuda length and a very light cotton I got at the fabulous discount store. I have about a yard left and need to decide if I want a tank top out of it, or a little cotton skirt. They have a blue cotton lycra yoga style waistband and were extremely comfortable for walking around all day in the 80-90 degree heat.

Here are a couple of other pictures from the zoo. Notice that there don’t appear to be any penguins or flamingos missing… 😉

It was a very fun day and I’m glad we could go. I have never been to that zoo and the Husband had been when he was small, but not recently.

Now for the review part of the post.

I did finish two things from the UFO box; a bag for my friend and the blue floral shirt.

The owl cardigan is done too and I wear it a lot, but it’s hard to take a picture of it, since the owl is on the back. I didn’t finish the blue striped skirt and don’t quite have enough material for the star tank top, but am working on what to do. I think I’ll pair it with a plain black back and go with that.

When I pulled out the blue stripes, I wasn’t sure that I wanted it to be a skirt. I realized I didn’t have a lot of colors to pair with it and now am conflicted. The picture makes it look like a darker blue, but it’s actually very bright. It is also more see through than I realized, so I might have to line it.

I’m still thinking about what else I could make with it if it’s not going to be a skirt.

I did make 8 pairs of the Linen Loungers, plugging a huge hole in my wardrobe. I have consistently worn a pair of them at some point during the day every day this week. There were two that I didn’t blog about, both sleep shorts. One has sharks, made at the beginning of Shark Week, and the other pair has yoga frogs. 🙂

So overall from this one pattern, I made two pairs of shark shorts, the yoga frogs, the plaid Bermudas, purple linen shorts with fancy pockets, the grey/teal/purple with lace, Minion sleep shorts, and flamingos. Whew. That’s a lot of shorts! It’s been so hot lately though that if I’m at home, they are all I want to wear. I had no sleep shorts too, just had been wearing my normal bike shorts, which then caused problems when I had no clean shorts to wear under skirts or dresses. It’s nice to have fun sleep shorts! The Husband can shake his head all he wants, but he also likes his Minion shorts I made him last month, so he really doesn’t mind.

I made two other items specifically for Shark Week this year, a shirt and a pair of every day shorts. Here is my shark week wardrobe! I enjoyed wearing them all and surprisingly, no one really commented! My fashion sense must be either pretty cool, or pretty weird, so no one really wants to say anything. 🙂

I kept thinking I had made more things this month, but I think I was remembering mending some things and doing some organization. Only 11 things got made. My brain seems to want to make 20 every month, but I had to tell it to chill out. 11 is fine. 🙂

The garden is growing well, although I did have some blossom end rot again. We’re trying to be very consistent with watering and it’s been rainy the last little while, so I’m hoping that helps. Here’s some garden pictures. These tomatoes are still orange on the bottom.

There was a bee in the zucchini blossom.

The peppers look about the same still. I’m going to harvest some peppers to use for salsa for our Big Summer Blowout Party. Hopefully I’ll have a few tomatoes to throw in it too!

Foodwise, it was a very blah month. I didn’t make a lot of new recipes. I was better about getting pictures, even if I though it wasn’t a new or exciting recipe. We did eat a lot of garden lettuce and still have some to eat up this week. When I went through my blog posts, I think I must have missed a recipe post, because I didn’t have much going on. Both the Husband and I seem to be in a food funk. Normally it’s only one or the other, so it’s enough tougher when it’s both. We’ve also been out with friends for a lot of the weekends, which tends to be when I do a lot more new cooking.

I made 14 recipes total… That’s so low! Out of those recipes, 6 were new recipes. Luckily, all of the new ones were hits. I only had one miss, the manacotti which didn’t cook.

The Husband’s favorite was the Turkey Parm.

I did use a new recipe from Voracious by Cara Nicolleti- The Olive Oil and Yogurt Cake.

It was pretty good and I ate it for breakfast. It had less sugar and was almost on the edge of savory rather than sweet. It had citrus in it, but you could definitely taste the olive oil. The Husband didn’t eat any. The olive oil weirded him out. I ate it with cream when I wanted sweet and yogurt when I wanted breakfast. It was pretty dense, with a crispy outside and tender inside. The citrus didn’t come through very much.

This post is getting super long, so I won’t type out the whole recipe, but if you want it, I can do it at a later time, or you could visit your local library! 🙂

Overall, I think my sewing is growing by leaps and bounds, but my cooking has fallen by the wayside. I think I’m a little burned out and don’t really want to plan things. It’s very confusing. I think I might go through my cookbooks and see which ones I haven’t used yet and decide if they should really be on my shelf if I don’t get excited to use them. This coming week is fully booked and I think I have mostly late evenings, so I’m going to see when and what I can prep ahead.

Goals for the month:

Food:

  • Go through cookbooks and weed them out.
  • Meal Plan consistently.
  • Try 1-2 new dishes (main, side, dessert). I keep getting stuck on just having dinner new and I can do other things to count towards this goal.
  • Use garden produce and herbs.

Sewing: 

  • Work on October Bellydance costume.
  • Sew/Finish one UFO.
  • Catalog fabric.
  • Go through craft books and weed them out.

Garden:

  • Keep things alive.
  • Use produce and herbs.
  • Develop canning list and plan.

Wow! That post got a lot longer than I thought it would. Thanks for sticking with me! I hope you enjoyed the pictures from the zoo!

Recipe Roundup
Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup

LSiehLeave a comment

Hi everyone! I hope your long weekend is going well. The Husband and I keep reminding each other that it’s only Saturday! We took Fancy to the pack walk on Friday morning, since the Husband had the whole day off. She enjoyed herself and since we walked for 45 minutes and went for three car rides, she was one tired out pup.

We’ve planned small yard work projects for each day this weekend. Yesterday’s was putting down mulch and today’s was chopping the lilac tree that had fallen and cleaning up the rest of the spot. The tree actually fell on our neighbor’s daughter’s car! Luckily, there was no damage. The tree core was hollow. It looked like ants had gotten to it. We’ll watch the rest of the trees there to make sure they aren’t dangerous too.

There were so many different kinds of trees in this tiny little spot, that I thought we could play an excellent drinking game. A shot for every different tree… We would be smashed in about 10 minutes. We had other things to do though, so we declined.

It’s been super hot lately, so we had a cold chef’s salad tonight. I left my salad on the tray table and went to get a drink tonight. I came back to a suspicious wet spot on my table, cheese outside the bowl…

And a very innocent looking dog…

Now, I’ll let you decide what you will about it, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’s tried to steal a taste of my dinner… Please excuse her toys. We put them away and she has such fun spreading them all over the floor again. Silly dog.

Last night we had broiled chicken sausages and fancy seasoned fries.

We also had strawberry shortcake for dessert. Store bought angel food cake and ice cream. The Husband loves berries macerated with sugar and we can “have them any time.” 🙂

They are quite delicious.

We had Chicken Bao or steamed buns last weekend and watched the Firefly episode “Our Mrs. Reynolds.” It seemed appropriate, since it includes the line “Did she really make fresh bao?” 🙂

They were delicious, as usual.

We had a crockpot meal this week as well. Scalloped Potatoes with Cheese from The Spruce Eats.

https://www.thespruceeats.com/crock-pot-scalloped-potatoes-with-cheese-3055527

I added cubed ham and spices. It was alright. Not my favorite thing. I probably won’t make this particular recipe again. The cheese separated in the sauce. Dairy is hard to manage in crockpots.

We also had a sandwich night, but no pictures, as we were in different spots.

I’m excited to start the garden. We have plans to dig out the spot tomorrow morning and get some flowers for the front boxes as well. It should be a fun day and we will still have a whole extra day! Just think of the things we could do!

I’ll leave you with this picture of my favorite part of summer; all the berries I can eat!

Have a great weekend!

 

Recipe Roundup
Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup

LSiehLeave a comment

Somehow this week, I got two pictures. 2. Granted, I wasn’t home too much for dinner, so that’s why. I did take the great picture of my hamburger buns though. The buns are from Small Breads by Bernard Clayton. I have used the book bere, but this may be a new section.

We had hamburgers with Chophouse Seasoning from The Pepper Palace in San Francisco. It was spicy and delicious.

Toasted homemade buns, mushrooms and onions, and garlic butter carrots accompanied the meal. There’s cheese on the burger too.

We used the leftover buns for pulled chicken sandwiches on Tuesday. My lovely mother was in town after antiquing her way across the state, so she got to enjoy some too. No pictures, because I wasn’t home until late. The recipe was from Natasha’s Kitchen. https://natashaskitchen.com/slow-cooker-bbq-chicken-recipe/

I did have some when I came home and it would make a good freezer recipe.

The Husband had pork chops with the Chophouse Seasoning and said it was spicy and he would have liked it seared first. He’s going to learn how to sear things soon. 🙂

My Mom was headed back home yesterday, so she stayed with us again. We had homemade pepperoni pizza, but I got distracted and forgot pictures. A certain dog wouldn’t stop jumping on the couch and forcibly cuddling Mom. She’s a terribly vicious, you know, even if she is scared of the wind rustling her poop bags…

Tonight we were going go have pot roast, but were having such a good time at a friend’s birthday party, that we stayed until after dinner. I’m going to make it for lunch tomorrow. 🙂 We’ll have some excellent leftovers.

I’ve acquired several new cookbooks. My parents gave me two and I found some at the book sales, and I found a “Book of Festive Tarts” at the thrift store with my Mom.

My dad got me this one for Christmas and I think it got put in a “safe place.” You know the one where everything goes to never be found again?

So I finally got it and it fits in well for the blog theme. I’m excited to try some of the recipes.

They also gave me this pretty one called The Virgina Housewife. 

It has super old recipes and cooking tips. Some are slightly horrifying, especially when talking about killing chickens and pigs. It’s pretty cool. I’ve not had a chance to go all the way through it, but it seems useful.

So that’s my roundup for the week. We’re having the Husband’s parents over for Mother’s Day dinner tomorrow and I really need to clear the table. It’s been taken over by sewing things.

Wish me luck!

Party Posts · Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup

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The rose is my beautiful birthday rose from my Dad. I’m a very bratty daughter and wouldn’t let him stop sending them even after I got married and got old. 🙂 I literally send him flower store information and where I will be on my birthday about a week before. 🙂

He started the tradition when I was seven, sick with the flu, and couldn’t be close to my new baby brother. Even though it was Easter, it was a terrible birthday, but the flower helped. So obviously, it can’t stop. I enjoy getting them and my work ladies were very impressed. It’s stayed good for a long time. This was yesterday and my birthday was over a week ago!

This post isn’t all a birthday recap though, it’s about food! For familiar recipes this week we had spaghetti and the Husband had Asian marinated pork. I’m making lasagna for tonight with fresh parm and fresh mozzarella.

A new recipe was English Muffin Bread from The New Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. 

It makes very good toast. I’ve made rye bread for the Husband before too. He likes toast in the morning. He liked this one, but I’ll have to make more rye for him to compare. It’s been a while.

I also made yogurt again. Last time, it was a terrible failure and I have no idea why. I used part half and half, but that should have made it thicker. This time, I followed the recipe and it turned out just fine.

This is it with cherries and granola at work. Mmmm…

I also made a really good chicken stir fry from the Food Network Magazine, March 2018, V 11, N 2. It was Stir-fried Udon with Chicken and Vegetables.

I don’t know if I’ve had udon noodles before. They are a thicker wheat based noodle. They soaked up the sauce nicely though and tasted delicious. The Husband was very impressed and said we could have it anytime. I subbed pretty much all the veggies. We had broccoli, mushrooms, garlic, onions, bok choy, and carrots. It  was tasty.

We finally had a movie night again and watched “Coco” with some of our friends. It was a terrific movie, making me cry, as Pixar does. We had pizza with the movie and made out own personal pizzas.

I made a white sauce from this recipe from Bon Appetite: https://www.bonappetit.com/story/white-pizza-sauce-recipe-joe-beddia

I didn’t listen and tried to cook it and it eventually worked itself out, but do yourself a solid and actually follow this recipe… Then you won’t panic in front of guests because your sauce isn’t working. 🙄

I didn’t get a picture of the topping buffet, but we had mushrooms, ham, pepperoni, onions, garlic, sautéed Swiss chard, red and yellow peppers, and chicken sausage. We also had the traditional red sauce. I made my pizza with the chard, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and sausage. It was delicious!

It worked out perfectly. We had six people and three pans are all that can fit in the oven. Kayla brought a birthday chocolate cheesecake and it was delicious as usual. Also, as usual, everyone laughed at me when I started cataloging additional foods in case the pizza wasn’t enough…

I used The Pioneer Woman’s recipe for the pizza dough, but tripled it, as the one that came up was for one pizza. We had one portion of dough left over that I made into a pizza the next day.

In other news, Fancy is being a terrible brat at the moment. I know many of you won’t believe that, but it’s true.

She really wants the lasagna and someone to play with her. She seems to like it best when we are both in the same room so she can keep an eye on both of us. She also gets concerned when I do yoga. I think she thinks I might be dying when I’m laying down. Then when I do child’s pose, she gets all excited thinking I’m play bowing. She also tries to lick my face and sit on my head. Here’s a cute picture of her guarding me while I stretched.

I’d better go give her some attention and spare the Husband. Silly goof.

I hope your weekend is full of fun and goofy moments!