Adventures in housewifery: Cooking, crafting, and not a lot of cleaning
“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
“Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.”
― James Herriot, James Herriot’s Cat Stories
“A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.”
[Letters of Note; Troy (MI, USA) Public Library, 1971]”
― E.B. White
“When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
“Any kind of creative activity is likely to be stressful. The more anxiety, the more you feel that you are headed in the right direction. Easiness, relaxation, comfort – these are not conditions that usually accompany serious work.” – Joyce Carol Oates
I’m still not sure what I want to do with the food portion of the blog. It’s a little hard to write about it when you don’t actually want to make food most of the time. Here’s some pictures of our meals lately and some food puns, because they are hilarious!
We had fried chicken and “velvety mashed potatoes” for dinner tonight from Fried and True. It was a Tyler Florence recipe, so we watched Food Network while eating. 🙂
I think we’ve decided we don’t like the texture of purees. They end up feeling funny. This one tasted good, but not enough for me to make them again. The chicken had a little bite to it and was delicious.
We had lo mein last night. I tried to use a recipe, but ended up just making one up. The sauce from the recipe wasn’t good, so I made my own with soy sauce, a little sugar, sesame oil, rice wine, and garlic powder. Oh, and a little water. It was enjoyed by all. Fancy freaked out and then napped, since we had a friend over for dinner.
We had caramel or macaroon brownie cupcakes. Okay, now, I have a super secret here… The brownies are the triple chocolate Ghiradeli box mix! I love them. The macaroon recipe was on the side of the box and I have been meaning to try it forever. The Husband doesn’t like coconut, so I added caramel bits to half of them instead. The brownies separated in the wrapper, but still tasted good.
Spaghetti and lasagna made an appearance as well. There were garden tomatoes, oregano, and basil in the sauce this time. 🙂
This was my tomato haul today, so I had plenty of them for the sauce too. I’m contemplating the multiple ways to use up the tomatoes.
I think this is a 2 or 3 quart bowl? Mr Stripey has give us a few, you can see one at the edge. They are very pretty!
We had herbed french bread to go with the spaghetti.
Carbs on top of carbs!
The Husband had pork this week and I made an alfredo sauce with mushrooms, garden tomatoes, fresh parsley and garlic to go over noodles. Mine looks much prettier! I picked out all the tomatoes for the Husband.
I made a roux and then added the veggies, cooked them all down, added the cream and cooked it until it was all bubbly. Added grated parm too, for extra fanciness!
One last pun, just because… 🙂 Have a great night!
We have had a busy weekend, although it did involve sleeping in a lot. Apparently Fancy was very upset this morning when I was still sleeping and she couldn’t cuddle with me.
She probably hasn’t had as good of a weekend as we have. Her weekend involved lots of baths. This was her before one of these baths. She’s probably wondering why her treats were going into the bathroom.
She’s normally pretty good with baths. We have given her lots and lots of treats during them, but this is probably too much for her. Luckily, the smell is going down so we should be able to cut down on the baths for now. Hopefully she’s learned that the stripey kitties are no good!
The Husband and I had separate fun things to do on Saturday. He went to a friend’s house for video games and I had some ladies over for crafting fun. K brought her sewing machine and B brought scrapbooking. S helped me make Harry Potter wands for our party in October. They turned out so cool. It was definitely a group effort, as K brought the chopsticks we used, and B helped pick the end stones. Here’s some pictures!
The bottoms of the wands. It was fun to use up bits and bobs from my bead box.
A fancy styled shot. This banner turned out to be a very tiny banner, perfect for a little space, or a dollhouse. I got it online and it’s a reminder to check my sizes before I buy it. I was expecting it to be bigger. We made the wands with hot glue, paint, chopsticks, and beads.
I also made faux Mercury glass vases for a multi use decoration.
Sewing wise, I have also made a few things that haven’t been blogged about. I made a pair of white cotton lycra shorts to go under dresses. Specifically this dress:
The fabric is from Girl Charlee and I think is a rayon spandex. It’s very light and silky. I haven’t worn it yet because all my shorts are too dark to wear with it. I’m excited to finally be able to wear it. This was one of my floral fabrics that was on a massive sale a few months ago. It’s hard to resist fabric that is $3.00 a yard!
I made this floral dress too. This one is out of DBP- double brushed poly- from So Sew English. I quite enjoy this one too, although it can be a little hot sometimes.
I can’t stop making these shorts! I think I’m up to 10 pairs? I have a maroon pair. I don’t have good pictures of them though and they are currently wrinkly from being worn. My latest pair is made from lightweight denim, with both front and back pockets.
I got brave and tried a pair of pants from this pattern and I adore them. They look spiffy and are super comfy. They are a black rayon linen blend from Fabric.com.
I used a yoga waistband, because why would I use anything else? They are super comfy. I will probably get some other neutral colors of linen. I like these pants.
Speaking of pants, this fabric was running through all my sewing groups and I finally succumbed. Who doesn’t need Marauder’s Map leggings?
I enjoy wearing them and will have them for the Harry Potter Party. I have enough scrap fabric left to make a cute tank or shirt from them.
In non clothes items, I made a little progress sewing on the star quilt. Fancy likes to cuddle with me while I’m quilting, so I haven’t worked on it in a little bit.
I made some pattern weights, but seem to have lost the picture. I used a bunch of scraps and they have been very useful. Much better than using random things like cups, canned goods, and dog toys.
Foodwise, I thought it had been a bad month, since I had several weeks where I didn’t make anything new, but it turned out to be a pretty good month. The party and canning recipes helped.
My favorite recipes this month were the cardamom plum jam, chocolate bundt cake, Dilled green beans, margarita shrimp.
Misses were the Basil Pecan Pesto, which we had with a chicken leg over pasta. I don’t think I ever had a picture of it up, it was kind of a greyish looking paste. I used a recipe from Southern Living Small Jars, Big Flavors.
Everything else was pretty good. My numbers overall were 36 recipes with 23 new recipes. I have a lot of things canned for the winter, which is nice. Yesterday I canned a Chunky Tomato Salsa and a Roasted Garlic Pizza Sauce both from Better Homes and Gardens Canning.
I am running out of time before work, so will have to report my goals for the month later. I’m not sure what to do with my food side of things, especially if I am still in a food rut. Please bear with me as I experiement with different food ideas.
Have a great week!
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.
I’m sitting on the couch, watching sharks of course, with a dog who is quite certain that she needs pets on her head to help her sleep. 🙂 It makes typing quite difficult. The Husband got me a fancy keyboard for my IPad that’s bluetooth enabled, so the typing part isn’t as bad, but the constant nose nudges under my hands do make it more difficult. Dropping my IPad face down without the cover on the screen didn’t really help the other screen issues I was having. It’s kind of interesting to watch the spiderweb cracks spread across the screen. :\
We just came back from what was about a 3 mile walk on the river. That’s where the featured picture comes from. It was just sunny enough that I wore my shark shorts and a tank top, but there was a nice breeze, so it was a very pleasant, shady walk. Fancy is snoring away. We’re hoping to have her mind less that we’re in and out all weekend.
I have not made any new recipes this week! We had delicious food, but we hadn’t meal planned, so we didn’t really have new ones.
I had grilled cheese one night with chips and veggies. Probably an apple or something too, but I don’t remember.
We had Taco Salad with garden lettuce and fritos on top.
It was delicious! I used my taco meat recipe which is a pound of ground beef, half a jar of salsa, about a tsp or so of ground cumin, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. I also used chili powder this time, but not all the time. It was a little spicy from the salsa and we had pepper jack cheese too.
We also had Shepherd’s Pie with ground lamb and garlic mashed potatoes. No recipe, just cooked up a pound of lamb, threw in some Worcestershire sauce, chicken broth, salt, and pepper. I used half a bag of frozen veggies and cooked off some of the liquid. The potatoes were smaller yellow potatoes, mashed with cream, butter, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
Bake it for 20 or so minutes at 400 until the potatoes get a little brown. We had this on a cooler day that had been pretty grey and rainy. A garden lettuce salad went with it.
I made blueberry muffins too, but ate them all! I remembered to take pictures of our waffles this morning that we had with maple syrup made by our friends in their own sugar shack. It was delicious! I don’t typically like maple syrup because I find it too sweet. This is slightly thinner and has a smoky taste. It’s sweet, but not sickly sweet.
MMMMMMM! I enjoyed breakfast very much. We have bottle for my parents too, but it’s going to be hard to keep it for them until we see them. They’ll have to be very nice to us! I think we’ll get two bottles next year, if we can.
The garden is still growing very well. I was a little concerned because we’ve had some really hot days and have a soaker hose in only one of the beds. The tomatoes are so big, it will be tricky to thread the hoses in there.
Speaking of tomatoes, we have a tomato that is orange! Which means soon I can eat a garden tomato!
It might be a Roma, or an Early Girl. These four are definitely on one of the Early Girl plants. 🙂
And Mr. Stripey has a tomato started, as well as blossoms.
No stripes yet, but they will come. I’m so excited to start using the tomatoes. The hot peppers are growing well. They look about the same, so no pictures. The red peppers may be fighting a losing battle with the giant zucchini plant.
This is the view from the front of the garden. You cannot see the back, but the plant now covers the entire box… Maybe next year, I’ll see if there’s a smaller variety. 🙂
We still have some lettuce growing and the marigolds are hiding, but still there.
Well, I should probably go do some meal planning for the week. Have a good day!
My week got all thrown off by a concert and being still sick. I did go to the doc yesterday and don’t have bronchitis, just really severe asthma flares. I have a stronger version of my meds, so hopefully that will help me kick this. In the meantime, I have been trying to get through it.
We saw Evanescence and Lindsey Stirling with a full orchestra and they were both amazing! Here are a couple of pictures.
It was really hot, but definitely worth it.
I haven’t been wanting to cook or eat, but we did have a couple new recipes this week.
We had chef’s salad with lettuce from the garden! We have so much lettuce right now. It’s been very hot, so the salad was nice and cool. Today it’s already 75 and I’m going to stay hiding inside. My lungs aren’t handling anything well.
We also had a new brand of all beef hotdogs.
They were the Teton brand from Costco and were pretty good. I have to be careful with hot dogs. One of the all beef brands was still in natural pork casings, which wouldn’t have helped me.
I had a friend’s kids over for Lego time and made tacos with homemade tortillas. We had taco meat leftover, so I made a beef taco soup.
I roasted peppers, onions, garlic, and tomatoes and threw everything in the crockpot while I was at work. It turned out good. I like using the leftovers.
We had baked chicken with garden herbs on Thursday, but ate separately, so I have no pictures.
Speaking of the garden, it is growing very well. I do need to water the herbs a little more, but I have lots of tomatoes started!
The zucchini plant won’t even fit in a picture. 🙂 I keep seeing new blossoms on it too, so we’ll have to see how many squash we get.
Here’s the lettuce:
A bunch of the pepper plants have flowers and buds too, so I’m Excited about that. Everything is growing much better than it was in pots!
Well, I’m going to see if I can sleep some more. Hopefully I’ll feel up to doing some sewing, baking, or canning today. For now, I’m content with not coughing quite as much.
Have a great day!
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!
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!
I am a newer social media convert and still think it’s still silly to take pictures of restaurant food, but the desserts I’ve had have been so delicious and adorable, that I tried to get over it. 🙂
On our Disneyland day, we were lucky enough to attend the California Adventure Food and Wine Festival and it was so much fun.
We fell on the food like starving beasts though, so I didn’t get pictures. We also had some friends of my sister-in-law with us too and I didn’t want to be weird. I should probably work on that…
We tried to have something from every booth, but missed a couple. My inlaws had wine, but I was too thirsty for that.
Here’s a list:
– Korean BBQ beef short rib tacos from LA Style, which were delicious! I think they had pickled cabbage on top. The meat was so tender!
– White Cheddar Lager Soup in a Sourdough Boule from California Craft Brews. I didn’t eat this, but apparently it was good. The Husband didn’t enjoy it, too much beer flavor.
– Jalapeño Popper Mac and Cheese, Sustainable Salmon Peruvian Poke with Cucumbers and Salsa, Lime Margarita with Jalapeño Garnish from Peppers Cali-Ente.
The drink was not the greatest and not worth the price. 🙁 The poke was delicious, according to the inlaws, and the mac and cheese was lovely and creamy. It had bacon!
– Sparkling Wine Tropical float from California Uncorked. This was interesting, but also kind of weird. My sister in law thought it was too sugary. My MIL got the wine flight too.
– Strawberry Pineapple Float with Strawberry Popping Pearls from Strawberry Patch. This was very refreshing drink. It didn’t taste heavy at all. I was surprised that I liked the pearls, but they had a little extra strawberry juice in them. My SIL and the Husband also liked it too.
– Crispy Orange Chicken & Rice with a Garlic Cracker and the world’s biggest Meyer Lemon Macaron from Citrus Grove. Seriously, this cookie was about 4-5 inches across and had raspberry jam in the middle as an extra surprise!
– Grilled and Chilled Artichoke Hearts with Romesco, and Fried Artichoke Carbonara from I ❤️Artichokes. These were both good. The carbonara gave me heartburn. I think it might be time to admit that bacon and I are not friends… I had it tonight again and it gave me some trouble.
– Salt and Beer Vinegar Parmesan Chicken Wings from Cluck-a-doodle-moo. I didn’t eat these, but was told they were very good.
– Shrimp Boil Tacos with Andouille and Caramel Corn Crispy Treat from Off the Cob. The crispy treat was not satisfying. It was a little too bland for me. I didn’t think and ate the tacos, so the andouille may have contributed to the heartburn. They were good though.
– Creamy Mac and Cheese with Garlic Bread Crumble and a Black Garlic Soy Braised Pork Belly Banh Mi. I liked the jalapeño popper mac and cheese better. This one wasn’t as creamy. I looked on sadly while other people got to devour the banh mi. It smelled amazing and was delicious according to everyone else.
I also got these cute macarons from Kayla’s Cakes.
I picked six flavors to try. The unicorn was vanilla, the grey starry one was salted caramel.
I also got an oreo cheesecake one, raspberry, peach Bellini, and of course, Belgian chocolate. So far they have all been delicious. I’ve been eating them for breakfast. 🙂 We also had ice cream, but I don’t have that picture yet. 🙂
Today it was raining and gross while we explored San Francisco, so we stopped for an ice cream break at Ghirardelli Square.
I had the small one in front- Muir Woods Black Cherry sundae, the Husband and MIL had the Ocean Salted Caramel sundaes, and my FIL had a Salted Caramel Shake.
My goal is to eat ice cream as often as possible. We have a gelato place picked out tomorrow already. 🙂
Our dogsitter told us Fancy is being very good and is a fantastic snuggler, so although we are missing her, she is well taken care of. We also have a dog place picked out and will probably being home treats. 🙂
Tomorrow is a big day, so I should probably head to bed. Have a great weekend!
