Tag: food

Gardening

Garden Update

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Hello friends! My garden is not doing well this year at all. After reinjuring my back, it’s been really hard to keep up with weeding it, coupled with super hot temperatures, it’s not looking great. Even watering twice a day wasn’t super great, so I’m not very hopeful for some of it. A few of the herbs are growing really well, but most are a bit crispy. I may have to buy at lot more produce than normal this year to make my salsa. The squirrels have eaten every single pepper that has started to grow and something else munched on my zucchini. It’s been a disappointing harvest so far.

Luckily, I took pictures quite soon after planting things, so they look nice! I’m looking forward to my blackberry harvest as well, because there are so many on the bush! Some of my tomatoes have fruit on them to, so hopefully those will perk up. So here’s what I planted this year and what I’ve gotten so far.

Tomatoes: Mr. Stripey, Green Zebra, Large Cherry tomato, Sungold, Bonny Best, Early Girl, San Marzano, Roma, Grape Tomato, Midnight Snack, Yellow Oxhart, and Celebrity.

So far I have gotten Sungolds, Midnight Snack, and Grape tomatoes. All my cucumbers (Gherkins and Japanese Cucumbers) died, I think. But I did stake them in the middle of the tomatoes to save space and they started to grow.

For peppers, I leaned into the hot pepper side of things, although I don’t know if I will get any. I planted Cherry Bomb, Jalpeno, poblano, Sweet banana, hot banana, and habanero.

I also planted tomatillos- which seem to be doing alright, peas, beans- squirrels ate them.

I did get two zukes before the plants got attacked and eaten, so I don’t know if I’ll get any more. I’ll have to see if the neighbor has any extras.

I planted three kinds of mint- Strawberry mint, variegated pineapple mint, peppermint, and I had spearmint, but it died. The rest of the mints are growing really well and I want to make strawberry mojitos, maybe this weekend, with the strawberry mint. It actually does smell like strawberries! I didn’t like the variegated pineapple mint, so wouldn’t buy it again.

I also had anise hyssop, cilantro, parsley, wine and roses thyme, common thyme, eucalyptus, variegated sage, dill, rosemary, and three kinds of basil- lemon, sweet, and thai. The thyme is still growing well, as is the rosemary.

I did have lettuce come back and planted bok choy, arugula, and swiss chard, but I think they needed less sun, so I may clear out the pots and try again in a shadier spot.

These are the blackberries! Excuse the weeds. I haven’t had a chance to manage them with my back.

The mulberry tree went crazy this year and I managed to pick a few handfuls to throw in some jam. Next year, I need to get a sheet and start shaking the tree instead of harvesting them one by one. This year I was foiled by an unexpected patch of poison ivy underneath the tree.

I’m not sure exactly when I’ll can this year. I think I might buy some produce ahead to freeze and can in the fall. We have plans that might disrupt my normal Labor Day Canning. It’s so satisfying to have rows of home canned things though, so I really want to keep doing it. This year I’ve just been off kilter a lot and not able to do what I would normally get done. Hopefully next year, I can plan a little better and figure out some easier ways to do things. I hope you enjoyed seeing my garden this year and that your gardening efforts are going well!

Party Posts · Wordless Wednesdays

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday- Disney Style

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I had a Disney trip planning day with a few friends and K2 made all Disney inspired foods for us! They were all delicious and very fun.

Cheshire Cat Tails- puff pastry chocolate chips, and vanilla pudding with a vanilla glaze.

Oreo Mickey!

Belle’s Enchanted (Apple) Rose Tarts

Sully and Princess Cupcakes- I completely forgot to try these, but I am sure they were delicious!

Glass Slipper cocktail- Elderflower, blue curacoa, and something else- pop, I think?

“Not Hei-Hei” Chicken salad is in the crossiant. Hei-Hei is the chicken from Moana. Also, Ariel’s pearl cookie. There were also fishcakes, but I did not have those.

And of course, it wouldn’t be a Disney Party without “The Grey Stuff” from Beauty and the Beast. This grey stuff is Oreo Pudding and it was lovely. The Husband also enjoyed it!

Hope this made you hungry!

Party Posts · Recipe Roundup

Food Is Love- Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day

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Hello! Such a belated post, but I still wanted to share. I’ll combine Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day, since we celebrated them on the same weekend. We had a small game night with some friends this year for Lunar New Year which turned out to be super fun! I think part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was that I was finally able to relax because I only cooked a couple of things and tried really hard not to beat myself up over not making everything. We held it potluck style, so everyone brought something. That way we got to try a bunch of different dishes, but I wasn’t chained to the stove all night. I ended up developing a really awful migraine the day of the party and so spent two hours attempting to nap it off and lost a lot of prep time. But the world didn’t end and everyone got enough to eat.

I was so busy eating and having fun that I forgot to take a picture of the whole table, but I’ll tell you what we had at least. We had: Egg Drop Soup, Fried Rice- veggie and chicken, veggie lo mein, and fortune cookies, of course. I made bao- pork and chicken and 5 spice fried donuts. There were also egg rolls, but they were pork, and we had enough food, so didn’t end up serving them.

These were baked chicken bao. A friend asked me for the recipe on social media and I had to laugh because I made my own chicken filling and used a steamed bun dough, but then baked it, guessing at the time and heat. They turned out really good! If I was going to follow a recipe though (ha! but it could happen!) I would use the Woks of Life recipe. They have a veggie recipe and a chicken one too, I think on the website. Here’s the baked pork bun recipe though, to get you started. https://thewoksoflife.com/chinese-bbq-pork-buns-cha-siu-bao/

I made traditional steamed pork buns as well. Some of our friends have an exchange student currently and he made my little Scandi heart just burst because he looked so excited about all the food and just ate everything. He’s very fun to cook for! I also found out that he knows the krumkaker recipe and since a friend from work gave me a set to make them, I’m totally stealing him one day to help me learn to make them. (So excited!)

Here’s a picture of our mantel decorations. It’s really fun to try to make them cool without repeating too much. I think I’m going to have to get some more décor soon. My paper lanterns are looking a bit shabby and we can’t have that! It’s bad luck! The little hanging lanterns in the picture are thick felt actually, with little gold paper scrolls in the middle. I had ordered a felt dragon too, but I didn’t get it until the day after, so we will have something fun and new next year. We forgot to get singles from the bank for the red pockets, so we used $1.50 in quarters (because 6 is a lucky number) instead. I’m sure my younger brother appreciated it at least. That’s at least part of a laundry load!

Here’s a picture of some of my plants! We had the Lego piece up near by, but I forgot to grab a picture. The white plant stake in the cactus is a serotonin molecule. 🙂 Everyone needs a little extra some time. The winter themed table runner is one I made and I love how it turned out. It just needs two little snowflake buttons. K brought me the little plant in the pink pot for Valentine’s Day and it is still alive!

So on to Valentine’s Day! We typically don’t do much, although this year, we did get each other presents. The Husband gave me a really cool canvas garden tote this year with tools that were so fancy I had to look them up to see what they were. Of course, I was super excited about them, but paused, looked at him and said suspiciously “This is so I stop leaving my tools over in the garden overnight, isn’t it?”

“It was part of the reason,” he said, but mostly it was so I would have proper tools to work in the garden. We have hand me down tools from a relative which work great, but I don’t have that many and we definitely needed duplicates of a few. I gave him a book of weird maps. There’s a bunch about video gaming and how far it’s spread, another about the internet, and all sorts of other ones. It’s very fun to look at!

Since Valentine’s Day was on a Monday this year, we both worked a full day, and both of us completely forgot what we had planned for dinner. We had canned soup and biscuits because we were both forgetful. I did try to get the cheese biscuits to have hearts on them at least!

The next day, I made our Valentine’s day steak dinner with butter herb noodles and stir fried bok choy, carrots, and mushrooms with Asian seasonings. It was really good!

We had heart shaped lava cakes for dessert! They came with raspberry sauce, but I would have liked a little more of the sauce. Excuse the terrible picture. We were probably playing our game at the times.

Well, I hope these pictures made you smile! Have a great day!

25 Treats of Christmas
Party Posts · Recipe Roundup

25 Treats of Christmas

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Hellooooo out there! I’m still here! I had some bad depression episodes and am still pulling myself out of the hole a bit. It made it really hard to have any motivation to do anything other than read silly things and pet the dog. Part of my coping skills for these were to try to do things as normally as I could and that meant that I made Christmas treats for work again! We did have an Epiphany party, but it was super tiny. We were okay with this, as I couldn’t find the table cloth- I put it “somewhere safe” while we were setting up the Christmas decorations and I’m sure will find it again as we put them away. I did have people sign a strip of white fabric though, as I’m going to add a white border and a red border on it to make it fit our table a little better. So when I find it, I’ll add that on for this year.

I didn’t get as many treats made for work this year as I thought. The new staff at work was super excited to be there for this tradition and I got lots of good feedback.

The surprise hit of the year was the gluten free ginger cookies. I got the most compliments on them and am going to send the recipe out to the staff as a whole because I had a bunch of requests for it. It is also nut free and can be made dairy free too, so essentially can be both gluten free and vegan.

The second batch of these were thicker. I think I must have messed up the ratios somewhere. They both had crystallized ginger in them, but the second/party batch also had Chinese 5 Spice in them instead of just ginger. https://smallfarmbiglife.com/gluten-free-ginger-cookies/

I made marshmallow fudge as well and I was told someone hoarded it in the kitchen and was jokingly telling everyone that it was horrible and that she would “save them all from it.” I don’t think anyone believed her because the entire tin of it was eaten up by the time I went home. I was glad I had kept some back for the Husband, who also liked it. https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/perfect-chocolate-fudge/

I made these orange cranberry snowballs too, which I didn’t like- they were too dry, but our Practice Manager loved them. I like trying new combinations of flavors. It’s fun to see what people will respond to and what they don’t like. These weren’t as sweet as most cookies are and people liked that they were a little bit unusual. The orange and cranberry combo was a seasonal hit, of course! https://thegoldlininggirl.com/2016/12/cranberry-orange-snowballs/

The last cookie I made for work was these pistachio thumbprints filled with bittersweet chocolate ganache. They were made using pistachio pudding mix! They were definitely green and apparently made the Husband uncomfortable on a visceral level. He wouldn’t even try them and he likes pistachios! I used mini chips in them. they had a powdered sugar frosting for the top originally, but I had a bunch of melted chocolate already and think they were better this way. These were from A Quilter’s Christmas Cookbook.

Of course, for the party, I made all sorts of things! Knowing it was going to be small, I didn’t go as big with recipes as I normally would.

One of my favorite party experiments were these Finnish Blueberry Buns. They’re like Nissu, but have blueberries on the top! https://www.womanscribbles.net/finnish-blueberry-buns/

They were yummy! I would definitely make them again.

Next up is the pickle tray and relish tray, of course. I made homemade dilly beans and squash pickles for the table. Both recipes were from my Small Jars. Big Flavor Canning book.

I didn’t get many pickles this year, although I did have a bunch of cucumbers because I had two jars of pickles burst in the canner. I was pleased with both of these pickles though!

We had Rulle. My favorite years are when I get to eat it twice at Christmas! This batch did not hold the shape as much as I would like, but it was super tasty. And I had just enough to not waste any.

I wasn’t going to make a cake, but I had leftover sparkling wine jelly and mascarpone whipped cream (side note, who is this fancy person with this in their fridge… I feel like this isn’t actually me,) and it’s traditional to have a filled cake on the Scandinavian Christmas Table. Plus, I said something about it to one of my friends from work and she got super excited because I was going to make a white cake. So here’s my fancy Christmas Cake. I opted to leave it undecorated to celebrate the snow (Hahahaha! You know I just didn’t have time or ideas for decorating, right?) It was delicious!

Here’s the whole table with the things I didn’t get individual pictures of: Peanut Butter Balls, clementines, Caramel Chocolate chips, crab dip, sandbakkels, the second batch of ginger cookies, and the blackberry almond cookie cups. The sandbakkels and the cookie cups were from my Modern Scandinavian Baking book by Daytona Strong. The cake is from the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook. We also had fruit soup, but it was on the stove and I think I did not get a picture. (The elbow in the corner belongs to another K named friend I think she’d be K5? Too many Ks.) the truck in the upper corner is actually a cookie jar! A friend gave it to me a couple of years ago and I was finally able to have room to use it.

The Husband and I knew we’d probably be wanting actual dinner, since we didn’t think people would be coming all day, so I made this yummy Swedish Meatball Pasta Bake. You make the gravy and cook it like a casserole. It was actually something I think we’ll make for our Christmas years by ourselves. I didn’t have the make the Husband gravy this way and it reheated very nicely and kept the meatballs moist, even though I over broiled them slightly. Not the prettiest, but tasty! https://thebeachhousekitchen.com/swedish-meatball-pasta-bake/

I didn’t quite make it to 25 Treats this year, but I’ve definitely been feeling the urge to keep baking, so I think I might be in a better mindset than before. Hopefully that spirit will continue to be uplifting all year. I hope your year is filled with little comforts and joys, just like our party!

Recipe Roundup

Almost Forgotten Food

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I keep forgetting to take pictures of our dinners! They haven’t been super exciting lately, so maybe that’s why. We’re both back in the office as well, so they are later than usual. I’m normally really hungry when dinner time rolls around (Ha! Pun intended!) Last week, while playing Scattergories with a client, almost all of my words were food related, for example. 😁

I do have a few pictures of things we’ve eaten though. We had quesadillas with turkey taco meat one night. We’ve discovered all our garden salsa is super spicy. I am trying to find a mild recipe to make some more. The cheese and tortilla helped calm it down some.

I made a hash of sorts with potatoes, chicken andouille sausage, garden zukes, peppers, mushrooms, and onions all fried up together. It was simple and yummy. I believe I used garlic and some paprika based seasoning blend on it.

Pot roast made an appearance. It was quite good, although we both like it better from the stovetop than the crockpot. But crockpot was what I had time for that day, so that’s what it turned out to be.

While picking peppers, I discovered that I had planted some Swiss chard seeds near the peppers and they got covered up by the monster squash plants. So I sautéd them up with some garden tomatoes, garlic, and some spinach and arugula salad mix. It was served alongside ocean creature themed mac and cheese, as we’d been doing far too many adult responsibilities that day. 😆 I couldn’t find my breadcrumbs, so used crushed up Ritz crackers instead. It was yummy!

We had leftover noodles from spaghetti earlier in the week that we fried (Forgot the pictures, but it wasn’t pretty. Too runny from the freezer.) I made some veggies to go over it and we looked up a recipe for a basic Chinese white sauce. We also had store bought egg rolls because I loathe making egg rolls. The noodles didn’t work as well because they were too thick, but it was good to use up the leftovers for once!

We had this Mexican Chicken with Cheese Sauce from the blog Every Day Made Fresh, but I cheated and used a Spanish Rice packaged side. It was actually really good! I would definitely make this again. Here’s the recipe: https://www.everydaymadefresh.com/mexican-chicken-with-cheese-sauce/

And we had tacos one night, that I don’t have a picture of, but on the weekend we had enchiladas, which I do have the picture of.

We had fruit and I had veggies as a side, but they weren’t on the plate, obviously. These were also super spicy, but tamed with the sauce so didn’t make us cry as much. We had our friends over with their Norwegian exchange student and he also enjoyed the enchiladas. I had been going to make ham and cheese Stromboli and a pesto and cheese Stromboli, but when I opened up the ham, it had suspicious spots on it. So we had pesto cheese bread, salad, and some of us had enchiladas too. I served the cardamom sugar cookies again and they were a hit!

I shall leave you tonight with a picture of my actually organized snack/lunch drawer at work, because I was impressed I got all of this to fit! Ignore the pharmacy in the top. 😳 Isn’t it a thing of beauty?

I hope it inspires your own snack drawer! Have a great day!

Recipe Roundup

Forgotten Food!

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Not in the “bad, now kinda fuzzy, what exactly was this?!” Kinda way though. Ha! This is more in the “I know I took pictures, but maybe not all the time” way. I’ve fallen back on some simpler fare lately, sandwiches, soups, and freezer things. Apparently our AC was worse than we thought and it’s been hard to want to cook. Now that everything is getting repaired, I can hopefully start cooking again.

I am looking forward to soup season! I was promoted at work to a Clinical Director position and it comes with a slight increase in hours to manage the program development and such, so now three days a week, I will be working until 8. I see more crockpot dinners or having the Husband prep more for us in our future. This summer has been definitely more fun than last year, but I am definitely looking forward to fall. It’s my favorite season! I do come down heavier on the apple cider side of the autumn spice war though, than pumpkin spice.

Anyway, here’s some food pictures of things we’ve had recently. I’ll try to note if I used a recipe, but more than likely it’s a me made thing, or didn’t need a recipe at all.

We’ve had a lot of Chinese food lately. I made Scallion Pancakes and wanted to devour them all on the spot. I used the recipe from thekitchn. https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-scallion-pancakes-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-107405

Woks of Life has two recipes for them, a shortcut method and a longer one, but I was in a hurry and didn’t have the ingredients. I’m sure their recipes are delicious too. These are super flaky and delicious! Definitely season liberally though! They are technically laminated, I think, because you fold them and roll them out that way, but the only oil is on the inside of them.

We had hot pot too. I will admit to some silliness as we probably said “Hot Pot!” To each other in weird voices all night. It was tasty, especially with the store egg rolls. I just used beef broth, carrots, green onions, mushrooms, soy sauce, white pepper, and 5 spice powder. We had super thin shaved beef too that I had found at the store.

I don’t remember what we had along side the chicken dumpling extravaganza, but these were yummy. I think they changed the dough recipe, or we normally get a different kind for the wrappers, because they didn’t steam well and were kind of gummy. They only had wrappers that specifically stated they were vegan at the store and we must get egg ones normally, I’m guessing. We really need to go to the actual Chinese grocery store and stock up on authentic ones. I can make the wrappers, but it’s very tedious. We fried some as well. They were delicious!

We had corned beef and veggies, followed up by corned beef hash the next night. I forgot to get a picture of the hash, but it was also yummy. We probably had fruit with this. I thought briefly about making soda bread, but we had this on one of the nights our AC was being replaced and I didn’t want to heat the house more than I had to. I actually put it on high in the crockpot for 6 hours and it came out super tender. I used an awful lot of broth in the pot too though and that helped.

Since it’s been so hot, we’ve been making Chef Salads a lot. This has garden greens, tomatoes, and beans in it. Also, fancy cheese, turkey lunchmeat, and pecans. I would show you a picture of the Husband’s but it is absolutely covered in ranch most of the time. Mine are always much prettier!

I had really good peach and nectarine luck until this last time, when they all molded from the inside while remaining hard. Ugh! These peaches were great though! I made fancy chocolate waffles as well. They were good. I just used the regular waffle recipe and switched out some of the flour for regular cocoa powder.

I made these cheesecake bars for K’s tie dye birthday party! It’s so 90’s bowling alley! It’s a lemon cheesecake with an oreo crust. The crust didn’t work as well as it should have. I really needed to use the food processor, but didn’t feel like pulling it out. As a result, the crust was too thick and hard. The cheesecake tasted good though! The recipe was on the box of the cream cheese, so I don’t have it written down. I would definitely make these again!

These fancy melt sammies were really, really satisfying. I sautéed some onions and mushrooms and used turkey with provolone on a hoagie roll. The Husband had pastrami and roast beef on his. They really hit the spot the day we had them and were super quick. We had them again with the rest of the shaved beef from the hot pot as well. I will admit that I’m glad the Husband requested we get a toaster oven.

The Husband actually made these Asian seasoned pork chops all by himself! I only provided supervision. He pan fried them and used soy, sesame, garlic, and white pepper. I had a lentil curry which was most assuredly not photogenic, so I spared you all the picture. We were both pleased with our meals!

We had grilled boneless rib eyes tonight with grilled zucchini (for me) and cilantro rice with homemade pico.

I used a southwest seasoning blend- Arizona Dreaming, on the steak and the Husband did an excellent job grilling everything.

You can’t really see it, but there is a brownie under the ice cream! I had ordered some strawberries which were not in good condition at all, so I ended up chopping them up for shortcake. Being out of milk to make biscuits though, I made brownies instead. Best idea ever!

And last, but certainly not least, I’ll leave you with my avocado toast with garden tomatoes. i thought maybe I’d reached peak Millennial status, as I was eating avocado toast while waiting for house repairs to be finished with my dog. But my older brother, who is a more Elder Millennial, told me that I had a way to go yet, as there were no fermented items, “ironic text or decorative mustaches.” 😂

Regardless of peak status, it was delicious and I’ll you with that. I hope you have some delicious food planned this week!

Recipe Roundup

Foodie Fun

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Hello! We’ve had some food adventures lately. Slowly, I seem to be getting excited about cooking again which has helped. One thing we did try while in our slump was one of the meal kit services. We tried Hello Fresh and were sadly, not super happy with the quality. The end results were good, but some of our ingredients came spoiled or moldy, so I had to replace them. We only tried two meals because I was annoyed and cancelled before the end of the trial. Probably should have waited on that, but I didn’t feel it was worth it if things weren’t actually going to be fresh.

This was a Korean beef dish with stir fried veggies over rice. It was pretty tasty! I would make this one again, although I would double the amount of sauce, as it was pretty dry. The Husband liked it too.

The second one was this Crispy Ranch Chicken with Ranch potatoes. It was supposed to have green beans with it, but they came spoiled, so I subbed our own carrots. We liked it, although thought the crust could have been a little more flavorful.

It was a fun experiment and we may try again with a different company. Some of our issues with it were the amount of plastic waste that came with it. It also doesn’t allow you to make mistakes at all, because everything is pre-packaged.

I made these Strawberry Birthday Cake cookies a while ago for Mother’s Day. We had the inlaws over for dinner and these were dessert. They were the second recipe I’ve tried from Procrastibaking. Everyone enjoyed them, although I found the buttercream a little too sweet. The Husband thought they were pretty good, but didn’t like the texture from the dried strawberries. Next time, I might blend them down to a powder and try that.

We had this recipe for baked Chicken and gnocchi for dinner. I subbed swiss chard for spinach. It was pretty good, although the sauce separated and wasn’t as appetizing as the picture in the recipe. https://thecollegehousewife.com/creamy-chicken-gnocchi-bake

We had turkey and dumplings too and it was yummy. We would eat this again. I did use canned biscuits as I was in a rush. I cannot find the recipe I used unfortunately.

We were going to have tacos one Tuesday, but wanted something slightly different, so I made shrimp fajitas instead. We served them with homemade pico to which I added some chopped red onion. Both were delicious.

Pancakes for dinner are my favorite “too tired for recipes“ option. We ate them with homemade syrup from our friends’ sugarbush. Yum!

Grilled cheese and chips were my go to meal when the Husband was away on business. Simple and delicious.

I’ll have more exciting vegetarian meals to share in a later post. I was good about trying new things for meals while he was gone, at least the first week. The second week was mainly easy stuff.

I’ve been doing some more experimenting with some homemade bitters which has been exciting and has made me feel fancy. Canning season is starting up again too. I’ve got more rhubarb growing waiting to be made into new recipes! My tomatoes are growing slowly, but I’m hoping some will be ready soon.

I hope these pictures made you hungry!

Recipe Roundup

Delicious Foods

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Well, hello! I’ve been cooking more than sewing, so you’re getting another food post. These are in a very mixed up order though.

First up, we may as well start with dessert! Easter dessert to be precise. I made a new recipe of Key Lime Pie Bars from this recipe: https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/key-lime-pie-bars/

They were very yummy! My MIL made brownies as well, so we had a little sliver of each. This bad picture is from later in the week when I realized I hadn’t gotten a picture yet. 🙂 I would make these again for sure!

After getting an unexpected ham in our grocery order on top of this ham, which we had ordered from another grocery order, I decided we obviously needed to eat some of it. We had glazed ham, rosemary roasted potatoes, and roasted carrots. The carrots may look slightly burnt, but they were certainly not. Now, what to do with the 10 or more pounds of ham in the freezer…

I made a fancy drink too. This is a grapefruit, elderflower, and gin drink. My Star Trek drink group had mentioned that it was National Gin and Tonic day and I wanted to join in the fun. It was fun! The pink color is all natural and it had a very interesting combo of flavors from the bitter tonic and grapefruit. I will definitely make this again. https://theforkedspoon.com/elderflower-grapefruit-gin-tonics/

This is one of the things I did with the leftover ham. Here’s the recipe. https://iwashyoudry.com/cheesy-leftover-ham-and-rice-casserole/

We didn’t have condensed cheese soups, so I used one can of cream of chicken and one can of cream of mushroom. It made a lot of casserole and I got super tired of it after the second day. It was a little bland and salty at the same time. The Husband liked it though!

Speaking of the Husband, he had pork one night while I had curry.

We had lime cilantro chicken with pico and cilantro rice as well. It’s always good and relatively quick. I chopped everything for the pico using the food processor this time. I like it better that way, but the Husband prefers the bigger hand chopped pieces. I had a tendonitis flare while trying to finish a big sewing project, so the food processor was the way to go this time. It’s always a hit.

This potato soup was the Husband’s serving. I thought he did an excellent job with the bacon bits. I didn’t eat the bacon myself as it didn’t treat me right last time. Boo! This was good and I was able to use up potatoes that were terrible when roasted, but softened really well in soup form.

These were turkey lettuce wraps. Nothing super special, but very refreshing, light, and scrumptious.

We had mushroom cream sauce pasta and I added broccoli to mine. The Husband really doesn’t like green things sometimes. Piggy likes broccoli though! It was a nice quick and easy meal.

And last but not least, a warm, comforting bowl of oatmeal. I always forget I can make oatmeal and that I like it. This bowl was topped with brown sugar, butter, pecans, and a golden raisin and dried berries mix.

So there you have it! I haven’t been cooking much this past week because the Husband has been away on business and I’ve enjoyed eating sandwiches with sides. I’ve acquired a few more cookbooks lately, so really need to pick my next one to focus on. For now, I’ll say goodnight!

Recipe Roundup

Scrumptious Saturday

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Well, hello! I’m way behind on food posts lately. I’m taking a new med and it’s unfortunately dropping my appetite way down, so has made it hard to want to eat and cook. The Husband has suggested several new angles for food posts, so maybe I will try some of those soon.

My Mom sent me this book for my birthday too and it’s lovely! I’m excited to try some of the recipes in it. It’s got some fun facts about procrastination and other funny things too. I’ll have to use it as my next cookbook to review.

Speaking of my birthday, we had take out from the very fancy winery that we went to a long time ago. The Husband had a breaded chicken dish with fancy mashed potatoes and I had a chicken and veggie risotto. We also each had a bittersweet chocolate truffle. I ended up finishing the Husband’s truffle the next day, as he thought it was too dark for him. We shared an order of chicken potstickers and it came with pretzel bread. It was a delicious dinner and I didn’t have to cook for three days after!

I got two mini ice cream cakes from Coldstone too and they were ridiculously cute! I had a devil’s food cake layer topped with chocolate ice cream with peanut butter and fudge sauces, as well as Reese’s cups. The Husband had a devil’s food and Oreo cake with M&Ms and chocolate chips mixed in. They both had chocolate ganache as a topping as well. Yum!

I made a Trader Joe’s run the day before my birthday, as it’s conveniently located next to the Coldstone. I picked up these croissants and fancy coconut yogurt for my birthday breakfast. One has chocolate and the other has almond filling. They were so good! They also had Kibbe and falafel in the freezer section, but apparently I didn’t take a picture of my birthday lunch.

I did take a picture of the Balela salad, shawarma chicken, and naan I had a few days later. It was also quite delicious and I would get it again!

We haven’t just had decadent restaurant food though! Below is pasta with homemade arugula and herb pesto from the freezer. Always a delicious choice!

We had an appetizer night. I made steamed chicken dumplings, homemade fried crab rangoon, and we had store bought mini chicken egg rolls.

I used the rest of the crab to make crab stuffed mushrooms the next night. We had the leftover dumpling meat as meatballs! I stir fried bok choy and peppers in a sauce too.

We’ve had mac and cheese too. This time it was stovetop shells and cheese. Cooked carrots and fresh green beans rounded out the dinner. There may have been fruit as well.

We’ve had some interesting meals and some comfort foods lately. I’m gearing up for jam and gardening, so stay tuned for a garden plan post soon! Tomorrow is one of my planting days! I’d better go make sure my seedlings are marked before I play “Guess what I planted in this spot?” With my garden. Wish me luck!