Saturday, August 24th "What's Cookin'?"

[annrms]

Good morning! It's a really nice early morn. Sun is bouncing off of the building across the street as it rises. It's a pretty sight.
Yesterday was good. My friend and I had a nice lunch. She had shrimp tacos, and I had a small "Baldwin" salad (apples, candied walnuts, dried cranberries with lettuce, onions, cucumbers, and tomatoes with an apple vinaigrette).
When she left, I mixed up the batter for the bread. Used the bread proof setting on the oven. Wow! The 95° made the bread rise really good both in the bowl and the pan. We had slices with our picnic supper. All delicious.
Went to the market and got mostly produce, but I did pick up a cooked chicken for supper. I scored some cider donuts on the sale cart.
I spoke to the maintenance man who was going to hang our pictures. We will have help on Monday. He apologized about the delay...he was the only one on duty due to vacations.
Birdy - Happy to read you enjoyed your special meal. Spices make all the difference in enjoying food. For the 'Bavarian shepherd's pie' I am going to make for the pot luck, I am going to use an onion free seasoning from Penzey's called Bavarian seasoning (crushed brown mustard, rosemary, garlic, thyme, bay leaf and sage).
Bet - That's so absurd about having to log in/out in a store that has poor cell service. Sorry your trimmer is in delivery purgatory.
Lori - I haven't had macaroni salad in ages. Really need to make some. There's a cookout Labor day...maybe it will be on the menu! Hugs for all of the health challenges you are going through.
Time for some homemade bread toast!!! I'll post the recipe if anyone wants it. Waving! Have a great Saturday.

[wilderness]

Good morning.  It was 55°this morning sunny and mid 70's again today.  First thing on the agenda is to get the kitchen cleaned up. I destroyed last night making sweet potato fries and Raspberry Melba.  The Melba didn't thicken up as much as usual so I have it on cooking down a little.  I have 2 cast iron frying pans to clean and need to stain the oil from making the regular french fries to freeze the other day.  There is food in the upstairs freezer to be packaged and moved down stairs and all 4 of my half sheet pans are in the freezers down stairs to be packaged and put in the proper freezers.  I still have things to clean and put away from moving everything looking for the mouse trap.  I have pretty much given up on doing anything about the weeds in my gardens.  At this point I need to be thinking about getting things cleaned up in the shop, the shed and the garage to get things moved in for winter.  That is an awful thought.

Ann I haven't made any no need breads in quite a while.  I have a whole cookbook of recipes.  My oven doesn't have the setting for raising dough but I just use my light in my oven and it works great.  Yeast dough proofs quickly and beautifully.

Have a great day.

Bet

[mamma482]

Good morning.

Up early this morning thanks to my bladder, but I did sleep pretty good last night.
I took Mandy out earlier this morning too and then plugged in the cart when we came back rather than tonight. I'm anxious to see how the new charger works. Then I have cleaning to do today and wash the towels. Not much else planned for the day. Ha ha, that is more than enough for me.

It was so nice heading out this morning with the dew point being so nice and low. I even swept off the car port a little bit after I plugged in the cart. One more nice day and then it will be a gamble as to what the weather will be. Monsoon season, UGH.

Is it just down here or did eggs take a jump in price everywhere? They are around $3.67 here and higher. What in the world caused the price jump this time.

Not sure what any meals will be today. I'll just wing it and see what pops into my head when I get hungry.

[cooktocook]

Hello there, friends! Today it is National Waffle Day and National Peach Pie Day. 
After the doppler on my legs yesterday morning, I got the word late afternoon that there are no signs of blood clots. Thank goodness, I don't think I could handle one more thing right now.

Last night we had macaroni salad with grilled fish packets. Today I'll be making a meatloaf and a new to us quinoa salad. I also brought a few sweet potatoes back from Michigan and after reading about Bet making sweet potato fries, I might do the same.  

Our MacDonalds down the street has been serving Krispy Cream doughnuts since June. I haven't stopped in to try one yet, mainly because we are a little spoiled by Krispy Cream. When DH and I lived in the Daytona Beach area, there was a KC shop that would flash on a sign in their windows that they had fresh, hot doughnuts. Never had a better doughnut in my life! Many years back, we found another KC doughnut shop up in Tampa when we were driving around that clicked on their fresh and hot sign---oh my, melt in your mouth good! Just this year, we found off of I-4 in Lakeland (to and from Disney) a new KC doughnut shop. No fresh and hot sign flashing in the window at the time, but we stopped. Yum, yum, yum!

Helen, sorry you found the Dole Whip not to your liking. As I said, I've never had the version they sell in the grocery stores. Hoping to get some "real" Dole Whip in late October.

Oh, somebody asked if I will be getting PT soon or if I need to wait. I'm really not sure at this point, but after I called to set up an evaluation appointment, I wouldn't be surprised if I had to wait. Unfortunately, I could not read the diagnosis code my doctor wrote on the script, so they can't set me up until they have that. I will call his office on Monday, but really no rush...I was told they aren't setting up any appointments at this time until September, maybe the 2nd week she said. I will be starting the OT on the 3rd, so I'll hope on that day something can be set up.

mamma, the price of eggs have gone up here too--ugh! Maybe the golden goose laid them, I don't know, but everything just seems to be up in prices right now. I saw a box of cereal in the store for #9.99! Called DH over to look and see if I was imaging it or what---nope, that was the price!

Need to get moving, even if slow is such the case this morning after a rough night. Waving to all!
Lori 

 

[Jan in BC]

Good morning everyone.
    Ann, that Baldwin salad sounds delicious. How I loved my salads. Can’t eat any raw veggies at all any more, in fact, can’t eat a lot of foods I liked before. Good you straightened out the problem with maintenance man.
   Bet, as usual, you’ve got your day planned out for you. Do you ever stop to rest? Hope it all goes as planned.
   Mamma, hope the new charger works for you. I plan on doing towels tomorrow.
   Lori, none of those foods will be on our table today, but might have waffles sometime this week. Glad there were no blood clots, that’s one worry off your mind.
   Birdie, tried dictating last time I posted. Much too many mistakes, faster to type. One I would have left in though was when I addressed Chris. Too funny. Her name came out Brisket!
   Beautiful day yesterday. Got honey crisp, prune plums and DH got his corn. We’ll share with both DDs. An hour after we got home, the storm hit. Pouring rain and thunderstorms. It’s raining today and to continue all day.
   Taking it easy today. Bedding in dryer, will make beds, pop the banana bread in oven, and get ingredients going for applesauce raisin cookies, might make them this afternoon. No cooking tonight, pulled Irene’s Beef patties from freezer, have rice and ??  Dryer calling. Bbl.  Jan

[emr]

DH & I are both enjoying this quiet Saturday. Homemade pancakes for breakfast, and then a little bit of "bumming around" -- carried off the trash & recycling, then looked around at our favorite local furniture place. We need new chairs for our kitchen table but this place had mostly dining sets. The few chairs that were available individually were upwards of $200 each! I don't think so! IMO we'll do better looking at consignment stores, since there are several in town. 
The next stop was Target, for a new electric skillet, since I dropped the previous one -- broke the handle and one of the legs. We got one for DMIL as well and will take it to her next weekend.

I've enjoyed watching college football today -- Florida State v. Georgia Tech, playing in Dublin, Ireland! A humdinger of a game, too. Our Gamecocks won't play till next weekend but we'll be watching then.

I'll find something easy for tonight but before that I need to get laundry finished. Towels are dried & folded, and now I need to get the sheets in the wash. 

Ann, would love to see that recipe.

Bet, I've never tried using the oven light. I've always used my mother's method: putting the dough in a cold oven with a pan of hot water on the rack underneath. It's always good to learn something new!

Mamma, I'm watching our forecasts too -- looks like cooler mornings will last a while longer but afternoon temps will be climbing into the upper 90s.

Lori, we hardly ever buy Krispy Kreme doughnuts but I always look to see if the "Hot and Ready" sign is on when we drive past! 

Jan, sounds like you had a good day yesterday and definitely brought home some good stuff! I love Honeycrisp apples. That reminds me to be watching for them at our local produce place. They always have mountain apples from NC.

[cooktocook]

Congrats to our very own Ann! While DH was out this morning, he bought me a copy of the TOH August/September magazine. I went through the magazine and decided that I would make the Colorful Quinoa recipe on page 36 to go with the meatloaf. Just now after I finished in the kitchen, I opened up the magazine once again, starting on page 6. Good ole' Arthur wouldn't let my fingers do the walking and begin on page 4 for some reason, but I finally got the page turned back and wow, if it wasn't sweet Ann looking right at me!! Ann is at the bottom of the page with the Community Cook's Recipe Review for Cheesy Zucchini Saute. Way to go Ann!! I'm looking forward to trying your recipe, maybe next week, after I go shopping.

As for the Colorful Quinoa, after finishing up putting that together, DH and I had a quick taste. Delicious! I know that grain has a tendency to soak up the dressing, so I did double that, but otherwise, it's a keeper. DH says dinner time can't get here soon enough this evening.

Currently 92* with a feel like of 104*, there's some talk that we could possibly see a bit of rain after 6PM, but right now nothing out there to give that indication.
Lori

[tamaralynn]

Hi !
Just the same old routine here. The people providing dinner last night went to Joe's Italian and brought chicken murphy, salad and rolls. Our friend made banana pudding that was awesome. The chicken dish was angel hair spaghetti, a pink sauce, artichokes, mushrooms and jalapeno's. There was very little chicken I think because in my portion I did not even get one bite of chicken, and the few jalapenos were too spicy for me-I did not eat them but they managed to make every bite spicy. I enjoyed the rest of the meal though.
Tonight we go out for Mexican food.
It was slow at the shop. Only $105.00 in sales, but that's money we did not have yesterday! We did not have anything featured on sale because next week will be our Labor Day sale and everything in all rooms will be half price. I'll have a clearance rack of tops 4 for $1.00. There will be some other special flash sale throughout the shop too. I'm going over Wednesday to get things set up.

I could go for waffles or peach pie but alas, none to be had here.

Waving to everyone. Time for a wee little nap. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

[weebill]

[wilderness]

Good evening.

Ann congratulations on being in the Taste of Home magazine.

Momma, I understand eggs have gone up here also.  Who knows why.  The only was to shop is for things on sale and when possible stock up on them at that time.

Lori, good news, no blood clots.  I sure hope you are able to get some relief and soon.  I like quinoa but use it often enough.  I started eating it when I was dieting about 5 years ago and really enjoyed it.

Jan, I sometimes feel like I spent more time resting that anything else.  Glad you enjoyed your drive yesterday and sounds like shopping was pretty successful.  Seem that you are able to do a little more these days but as you said don't over due.

Elza, you breakfast sounds great but that would be dinner for me.  I don't do breakfast and haven't since I was a kid.  Sorry the chicken just ran through the pot last night.  I like spicy but it can be overdone.

Elaine, thanks for posting the page in the magazine with Ann.

It has been a beautiful day here.  Not too sure how warm it go but I did see 90° on the thermometer a bit ago but that was in the direct sun.  There has been a breeze all day and with the windows and door open it felt cool here in the house.

I have managed to stay busy all day but not quite sure doing what.  Never did get outside.  Spent some time first thing this morning cleaning out my emails.  All of the food has been packaged and move to it proper home in certain freezers.  Also cleaned up the kitchen and the dishwasher did it thing and that is all put away.  Cleaned out the refrigerator before there were an science projects in there.  I have a bad habit of decided I want to try a condiment of some sort for a meal, make it, have it for that meal and it goes in the refrigerator but of course why label it or date it so have no idea what it is.  Had one thing I think I tasted it 10 times before it dawned on me it was Abry's Horsy Sauce I made last week.  Spent quite a bit of time following Alice around trying to figure out why she wasn't cleaning only part of my kitchen but have no idea so mapped the whole main hour again when meant moving a lot of chairs etc.  Finally she cleaned everything and the kitchen is mopped.  Need to get everything back in its place now.  Can't go to bed until I do as there is stuff moved in there that has to come out.

Dinner tonight is leftover meatloaf from my trial dinner the other night, sweet potato fries with Melba sauce and hot Italian cabbage.  There was cabbage in the refrigerator that needed to be used so made the cabbage but got a little carried away with the cayenne.  Fortunately I have more cabbage that I will add to it and not add any cayenne when I make more.

Enjoy your evening.

Bet

[Jan in BC]

Back again and I am done, done, done!
    Emr, I’ve always used the oven light when rising bread dough. Works every time.
    Lori, pouring rain here today and to continue through the night. Should clear up tomorrow.
    Tammy, sorry you didn’t enjoy the chicken dish last night. I don’t like too much heat in my food either.
    Elaine, thanks for posting the article on Ann.
    Bet, I guess I probably did overdo. Told DH after cookies are done, I’m finished for the day. Was out of the shower shortly after 2 pm. DH has already had a long snooze so he finished up the dishes and will take care of supper. Just some heating up.
Might turn the dishwasher on after, but won’t be emptied until tomorrow. Will do a towel wash tomorrow, folding won’t be too hard for me. Then I’ll just read for the rest of the day. Will probably visit with DDs when then come for their goodies. Jan