Girly things

Spring is springing all around us, and that naturally makes me think of clothes!  Time to get rid of the wools and sweaters and heavy things.

A new shoe store opened near us, and isn't that always dangerous?  I don't actually have a “thing” about shoes, except to the extent that they have to look good and be comfortable.  But let's face it, in the last few years it has become the other way around: be comfortable and look good.

I ventured into the new store and did not come away empty handed. 

(Is that a surprise?)

I bought this cute little pocket book.  I am trying to get away from always carrying a huge one (although I am proud to say, even the huge one is not so full that it weighs a ton).

Then there was this cute little wallet.

Pair of shoes number one:  dark pink canvas casual shoes.

And a side view.  This sort of wedgie heel is so comfortable.

Same heel, but dressier:  light pink, almost patent leather.

Lots of pink here:  I think we have a trend.....

But there are other colours in my wardrobe. These are actually sort of a milky brown, couldn't get the colour to photograph right.

Now we just need to wait until things warm up just a tad more.  The weather is moving in the right direction, just hasn't entirely gotten there yet.

The other big purchase today -- much bigger than the shoes -- was at Obi, Lucas's employer.  (Now, isn't that a surprise?)

We have decided not to gut the kitchen and start over.  After much discussion, we decided it just wasn't necessary, and that we could make a number of smaller changes.  Some have already been made, and I will discuss those next time (since I haven't photographed them yet).

We have an open layout, that is, the living room, dining room and kitchen are one L-shaped space.  There is a half-wall between the dining room and kitchen to serve as a divider.  Right now it is covered in (fake) bricks and looks like this:

But that will change!  That will be the first visible step in converting our kitchen.

Here is another look:

So, stay tuned as the fun, excitement and disarray continues.......

Susan

Spring Washday

Spring is springing, rather slowly, but definitely coming.  I decided to honour the occasion by hanging out the first load of wash of the season.

The first things to be washed were these two shirts:

Lucas is required to wear a work shirt every day.  Five days a week.  But they only gave him three shirts.  Sigh.

As long as the wash line was in operation, I decided to go further.  Every spring and fall, I hand wash all my scarves and let them dry in the open air.  This also gives me the chance to decide whether to keep them.

And it is pretty, too!

Speaking of pretty, here is my first daffodil of the year:

A little Tete-a-Tete, of course.

These fellows are struggling to catch up:

The crocus are doing their thing, too.

The sun didn't stay out long though and I had to throw the shirts in the clothes dryer to finish them off.

Still, it was enough to give me at least a feeling that maybe winter will actually be gone one of these days!

Susan

Hi ho, hi ho, a-shopping we will go

Finally found some good sales on meat this week!  So after my treatment session this morning I went to the grocery store (complete with wet hair).  Here are the results:

It is a combination of things needed anyway (bottled water, milk, juice, oranges, bread and so on), and stuff for a big cooking session.

One of the meat was pork chops.  I planned for meals around 18 chops but wouldn't you know it, they came in packages of 5.  So I bought 4 packages.

I ended up with one package of two plain chops, two packages of three plain chops (planned for baked pork chops and rice), two packages of three chops in Weber Grill white wine and herb marinade (bought on sale in US last month) and two packages of three chops in a homemade marinade.

They were easy, it was just a question of throwing stuff into bags.

On to the ground meat!

A huge pan full of spaghetti bolognese sauce, to make three meals.  (Lucas looooooooooves spaghetti).

Oh look, three packages of spaghetti sauce!

Next on the agenda were Frikadellen. Tese are a German specialty, which are somewhere between a hamburger and a meatball, usually eaten as is (that is, with no sauce or bun or anything).  Here they are ready to go in the oven.

Meanwhile the crockpot is chugging away with a double portion of chili con carne.

And the first batch of Frikadellen out of the oven!

This is a double batch of meat mixture for Mexcian Cornbread casserole:  meat, tomatoes, corn and taco seasoning.  When it is served, it is spread in the bottom of a pan and covered with cornbread dough, then stuffed in the oven.

And here the two bags of Frikadellen and three containers of Mexican cornbread casserole.  The two smaller containers can make one smaller meal each or be combined for a larger meal. 

So if I count right (which is highly doubtful) I now have an addtitional 14 meals in the freezer! 

I have Wednesday off work as well so I may well go back and pick up some more ground meat to make hamburgers, taco meat and salisbury steak.  Or not.  Although I do want some salisbury steak with onion gravy........

And the best part of the whole thing is, I don't have to worry about dinner tonight!  It is my sister-in-law's birthday and we are off to her house!

Susan

Do unto others....

One of the main things I wanted to do while at Mom's was cook.  Of course I do that almost every day at home, too, but this was different.  She is not into cooking much any more, so one of my goals was to fill her freezer as much as possible with single serving sized portions of various entrees and breakfast foods.  She can then just pop them in the microwave and have a good meal!

The other goal was to help others.  Her church, St. Paul's Episcopal, keeps a large freezer full of food for those in need.  When the hurricane went through last fall, it cut off the electricity to the church, and they lost all that food.  The church has been good to Mom, and I love to cook -- the answer was obvious.

Six cooked chicken breasts and other supplies, waiting to be used.

I thought muffins might be nice, so I baked two batches.

Muffins and a crock pot full of chili.  Had I thought of it, I would have made corn muffins to go with the chili, a great combination.

And there my contribution to the church:  two different chicken casseroles and one chili, plus four bags of six muffins each.

Remember those chicken breasts?  In the interest of saving time, I boiled them.  We saved the water they had cooked in and Norbert used it as the basis for a chicken noodle soup with lots of fresh veggies. 

And we filled Mom's freezer, too, with muffins and soup and chicken casseroles and chili and lots of left overs!

The cooking itself is fun and it is gratifiying to do something to help others.  Who knows when we might need that help ourselves?

Susan

Brunch with Mom

Norbert and I flew over to the US for a week in mid-February (flew on our 21st anniversary, as a matter of fact!  Where does the time go!!!!

Our plan was to spend lots and lots of time with Mom, and to cook up a storm.  I think we accomplished both.

The first main thing was brunch on Sunday.  Mom had found a recipe to try out.  First you line a casserole with rolled out croissant dough, as above.

Then you brown up a pound of sausage.

 Whip up a dozen eggs, throw in some grated cheese and milk, and pour over the dough.  Then throw the whole thing in the oven.

Time to eat! We added some fresh baked muffins and some fresh canteloupe and pineapple.

The casserole disappearing.  By the way, the leftovers freeze well.

 Mom liked it!

And so did Norbert!

I did too, but didn't take any photos of myself......

Susan

Cupcake day

 I realized that I have been ignoring my baking lately, which is not good, because it is something I enjoy.  So I made up for that today, as you can see above.

First though, I made Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes.  How could I possible resist anything with a name like that?  The first step is to make a topping mixture of egg, brown sugar and chocolate chips.

The dough itself is quite stiff and much more like, well, chocolate chip cookie dough than regular cupcake dough.

 The dough bakes for 15 minutes (and it really helps if you actually set the time instead of just thinking about it.) Mine ended up being a bit overdone.  You take them out and give them each 2 tablespoons of topping, and bake them an additional 10 minutes.

Here they are out of the pan.  I found them quite good, totally different from most cupcakes.  They taste best fresh out of the oven, for sure.  Will try warming them up before I eat the next one.

That didn't seem like enough so I made a batch of plain yellow cupcakes.

I then made lemon frosting for them, which Norbert said was "very lemony".  The first try was too liquidy, (see above).

So I added even more powdered sugar and was able to pipe it.

Then I decorated them a bit, and they are ready to eat!

Yesterday Lucas started working at the Obi store in Hückelhoven (close to us), although they weren't supposed to start until Monday.  It is a HUGE store.  Yesterday and today they unloaded and carried in all of the shelving for the store.  Someone else will install it over the weekend and on Monday they start loading the shelves.  Should take about 4 weeks!

He is very happy with his job, likes the work and the people.  He is very motivated, so we are all happy.

The bad news is that we are still having winter weather.  Another dusting of snow yesterday and more this weekend.  Enough already! 

Looking forward to our trip to the US next week with hopefully nicer weather!

Susan

Baking and such

Actually all I meant to do was to clean out the cupboard with the baking supplies.  It tends to get out of control very quickly.  But as so often happens, on thing leads to another.

In this case, 2.5 bags of dried cranberries led me to find a muffin recipe.  Now I have 1.5 bags of dried cranberries, but the muffins have received the Lucas seal of approval.

I also made a batch of dried mix for a substitute for cream of ... soup.  I can no longer buy Cream of Mushroom soup here, and the first substitute I tried wasn't terribly satisfactory.

Then I remember the seven huge sweet potatoes cluttering up the counter.  We already had eaten several, baked, for dinner one night.  I left three out for dinner tomorrow, and put the remaining four in the microwave while I continued to tidy.

Once out of the microwave and having cooled a bit, I peeled them and threw the chunks into a bowl.

 These guys are still awaiting their destiny.

Then I pulled out the trusty heavy duty potato masher and went at it.

I ended up with a three-cup container of sweet potato puree for a sweet potato pudding, and five containers with 1/2 cup each, for muffins.

These are the three for Monday's dinner.

Things have been changing around here so much that I have definitely gotten out of my usual routine.  But now that Lucas has settled down in his job, I can get back into my routine, or rather, into a new one.  The cycling season has started up again, so there will be more work again, but one of the joys of working from home is being able to take the laptop into the kitchen and typing alternately with baking or cooking.......

Susan