With this being the start of Thanksgiving week, you may be looking for some recipes to try out. Well, you’re in the right place. By clicking on any of the categories listed to the right, you will get to that section of the recipe index for a selection of holiday appropriate recipes. Happy Hunting, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Status Update and Time Out
Wow, you guys, I can’t believe we are at the middle of August. Where has this summer gone so suddenly? Everywhere you look there’s talk of ” back to school”, and I’m just now ready for some vacation and summertime fun. You know why—I’ve been preparing myself for a Ballroom dance competition and it’s been a lot of work. Well it’s over!!! The competition was held this past weekend and today I’m doing the “happy dance”. I did quite well over all with enough first-place awards to satisfy me and the rest of my entries were high placements that indicated an improvement in my performance over previous competitions.
This is me and my partner.
It was a combination of lots of fun, nervous tension, and little sleep, but well worth it. It’s always rewarding to compete and see the difference–improvement–in yourself over time.
Another shot of us.
This was the biggest competition ever held in this region; over 3000 entries (not number of folks dancing, but number of times they went onto the dance floor to compete in a heat.) Of that number I danced 25 times, all in one day, Saturday. And I danced all smooth dances i.e.., waltz, foxtrot, tango, and Viennese waltz. Even though these are slow(er) dances than rhythm dances, they are more strenuous to dance because they require muscle strength and control. So I have been conditioning myself since this spring.
Below are some photos of dancers on the floor to give you some idea of what a competition looks like. The theme for this competition was “Once Upon a Fairy Tale”, thus the “Magic Kingdom” backdrop behind the judges. Each heat lasts about 1 1/2 – 2 minutes, and in that time the judges make a determination for placements from first to sixth. As those dancers are leaving the floor the next group of dancers are walking onto the floor for the next heat; so you see, events move along quickly. On Saturday we began dancing at 9:00am and the heats continued non-stop until 6:00pm. Then a banquet and dancing follows that includes a wonderful performance by a professional couple. The weekend flies by and when it’s over you are exhausted but ready to sign up to do it again. MAYBE!
Oh, the potted plants in the middle of the floor? They were used to divide the floor into Ballroom”A” and Ballroom “B”, to accommodate more dancers–all dancing to the same music, but in different categories, i.e., beginner, advanced, etc. So while you were dancing you needed to careful that you didn’t fall into a planter. Just another challenge thrown into the mix!!
Now that it’s all over I will be spending some time with my family who are visiting here from North Carolina for a week. While I am thus occupied the blog will continue with posts that I have prepared in advance to run in my absence. A week with house guests will require some cooking on my part so I expect to have some goodies to share with you all when I get back on track.
In the meantime, have a great week, and I’ll be back at my keyboard real soon.
Blog Awards
Today I reached the milestone of having published my 300th post, all in a little over a year. During that time I have had the honor of being nominated for two awards: The Liebster Award and the Beautiful Blogger Award.
The nomination for the Liebster Award came to me from Rose, at forestmtnhike.com. The Beautiful Blogger Award was passed to me by Anthony at sexycuisine.wordpress.com. I want to thank these two people for their kind words in nominating me. Rose is a very positive person who finds joy in many of the simple aspects of life, especially the outdoors. Anthony is a creative chef who writes a most interesting and informative blog. Please check out these two blogs. I’m sure you will enjoy reading them as much as I do.
Both times when I was notified by the nominating bloggers I felt surprise and a certain amount of pleasure and I sincerely appreciate that they both selected me to nominate. Since I was nominated I have allowed some time to elapse before responding, basically because I wanted to give some serious thought to the issue of blog awards on the whole. There are certain aspects to this whole process that I find troubling, and for the reasons that follow, I have decided to decline the nominations.
In my experience when one is nominated for something, a selection process of some kind follows and then one of the candidates who was nominated wins–the prize, the title, etc. In the case of blog awards it seems that being nominated IS winning. The blogger, in accepting the award, must then select a predetermined number of other bloggers to “pass the award” to. To me, the process of passing along an award seems a lot like a chain letter, which I have never participated in.
This aspect of the awards process is troubling to me in that there are no clear criteria for selecting other bloggers to nominate. Thus the whole idea of blog awards becomes rather empty and not very meaningful. I would like to see definite criteria introduced into the nomination process such as “thought provoking, informative content, use of humor, use of photography,” and I could list a host of others, but you get the idea.
Each and every time I sit down to write a draft for this blog, my goal is to write something you will enjoy reading, or learn something from, or be entertained by. The fact that the number of readers and followers has been growing steadily since I began this journey, is all the satisfaction and reinforcement I need to keep going. Writing this blog has put me in touch with people all over the world with whom I feel a certain bond. Thank you so much for your friendship, your interest and your support. I love your comments and feedback.
To the two bloggers who nominated me: I thank you sincerely for the honor, it means so very much to me that you made that effort. I hope that you understand and can accept my reasons for declining the awards.
A Day to Celebrate
My perennial garden with garden house.
What is there to celebrate today?—-ME! Today is my birthday, and I’m taking the day off because its going to be a very busy day.
Just thought I would share a few thoughts with you before the day gets started; a break from my usual blog format.
This evening I am dancing in a special show called a “Showcase Ball”, where I’ll be dancing a solo routine with my teacher/dance partner. We’ve been working on this since February; first choreographing and learning the routine, then practicing it, then tweaking and polishing it till it’s performance ready. Hope all goes well. I don’t usually get nervous at these performances, but you never know what may happen and I need to stay focused.
Early morning sun filtering through the young leaves of a red maple tree.
So far this month, the weather has been spectacular. The sky is the deepest blue, and the light green of budding trees silhouetted against it is so awesome . All the homes in my neighborhood have beautiful flowering trees in full bloom.
Flowering Crab-apple tree.
Kousa Dogwood tree; white flowers now, red berries in the fall that the birds love.
Purple phlox, and chartreuse Euonymus, a striking color combination.
There is so much beauty everywhere I want to photograph it all. I think May is the prettiest month, and I feel so lucky that it’s my birthday month. It makes me want to celebrate.
A tiny beauty peeking out.
Another tiny beauty; a species tulip.
More of the same. Aren’t they cute?
The photos I’ve included in this post were taken in my yard. Although I love to see mass plantings of one kind of flower for its impact value, when I take pictures I like to focus on just one or two flowers and bring out the details. I also look for color combinations that I find striking.
An all white daffodil, so lovely!
Flowering Quince
Grape hyacinths, a mass of them planted outside the garage welcomes us home.
I hope you enjoy my photos. You probably have some of the same in your yard, but its kind of fun to see others, too.
This azalea provides a bright spot of color at the side of our deck.
Sunday, coming up, brings with it Mother’s Day. Another wonderful day for celebration. Honoring our mothers (and fathers, too, on their day), is a wonderful thing to do. We owe them so much—we wouldn’t be who we are, or where we are without them. So if you still have your mother with you, give her a big hug and kiss, and do something really nice for her. And for all you mothers out there I hope you have a wonderful, love and family-filled day. Be good to yourself, and have a great weekend. See you on Monday with another really yummy recipe.
View of the perennial border.
Early May morning.
All photos taken by yours truly. If you would like to reuse them, you may do so only with my permission.
I Need to Eat a Skinny Person
If the saying “you are what you eat”, is true, then I need to eat a skinny person in order to become one.
Since beginning to write this blog I have wanted to provide my readers with a broad variety of recipes and that has included baked goods and desserts. Sweets are treats that I used to make only for special occasions and holidays. I made scones now and then or a sweet bread like banana or zucchini bread. But over the past year I’ve used any reason to bake up bars, cookies, and desserts. Once I get turned on to sugar, and carbs in general, I become a carbohydrate addict wanting more and more. I have to get this under control in order to lose a few pounds. This will be difficult because I’m a petite person and not really overweight, just a little curvy in the wrong places.
The amount of dancing that I do no longer provides the extra calorie burn to keep off the weight like it used to. The body adjusts to the exercise you do, and soon the exercise that once worked doesn’t do it anymore. So what is the answer to this problem? Eat less and exercise more! Gee, haven’t I heard that somewhere before? But that is the only thing that works. So, folks, I plan to cut back on carbohydrates, particularly sugar, potatoes, pasta and breads. Therefore you will be seeing less of those foods here for a while anyway. The reason I am starting this effort to lose a few pounds is because I’ve made a commitment to compete in a regional dance competition in August.
In the competition world often times the judges’ decisions comes down to how fast a dancer’s spins are, how clean and precise are her pivots, how fast does she move from here to there? NOT how correctly does she know her steps/footwork. Does this surprise you? Its true, and having a few extra pounds can slow you down and effect your overall performance. Not to mention, I want my gowns to fit properly!!!!
It seems then, that the two things I love to do; cooking and writing this blog, and dancing, are colliding with each other. For a while at least the dancing side of me is going to be getting more attention as I try to get back in shape. However, the cooking and blogging will continue with hopefully less “calorific” but still blog-worthy foods. (I think that was a new word I just made up.)
I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going. Wish me luck! Included here for your interest are a few pictures of me at previous dance competitions.
Relaxing at the banquet after its all over.
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
The new refrigerator. YEAH!
Going through this experience of living without a refrigerator for almost a week has generally been a good thing. It was a challenge on several levels. The biggest was how to keep my frozen foods frozen. That was solved with coolers where I put the frozen foods immediately, and packed bags of ice around it all. I was amazed that most everything was still icy after a total of 6 days. The few items that did thaw, I used right away.
Because I have an unheated room where it has been very cold, I was able to save and use most all of my produce and fruits. I made salads for my husband’s lunches each day with added in cold cuts and cheeses or cooked meats left over from meals. Other perishables such as milk, cream, butter, eggs, cheeses, all did well in the cold storage room. So I didn’t really loose anything.
Inside the door; lots of storage for bottles and jars.
The bad was the inconvenience of not having my food source right at hand in the kitchen. It was a nuisance ( and chilly) having to go into the cold room for everything, and usually forgetting something and having to go back! Another inconvenience was not doing any grocery shopping for over a week, so my choices of foods to work with was limited. But that was also a good thing because it forced me to be creative and look at how some ingredients might work together. In fact it was kind of fun to see what I could come up with for meals.
The ugly? There were a few forgotten items that became, how shall I say it, Black and Furry? You know what I mean. Only a couple things, though. So in all, we did pretty well
What I’ve learned: not to save small amounts of things and then forget about them; like a marinade. When I found it I didn’t remember what it was or what it was for. Don’t save tiny bits of stuff in big jars. The jars take up too much space for what’s in them, If there is too little to use up, toss it. And finally—test my creativity now and then by not going to the market so often and using up what I have before buying anything new. That’s a must!
Inside, lower section; a full width deli drawer, and two deep crisper drawers
Inside upper section.
Freezer main compartment with ice maker. Roomier than it looks! And a light inside.
Freezer door; two deep shelves.
As I was writing the draft for this post the delivery service arrived with my new refrigerator. Hurrah! I thought since you all “saw me through” this disruption in my life I would give you a first look at it. Thanks, everyone, for hanging in there with me.
Out With the Old, Waiting for the New
I feel as though I’ve lost an old friend. Even though I’ve met a a replacement, we haven’t gotten acquainted yet, so I’m in limbo-land.
Friday of last week while I was out doing errands, my refrigerator decided it’s time had come. When I came back into the house there was a strong smell of something burning. My nose told me it was the refrigerator, so I quickly turned it off. It had served us well for 25 plus years, so I knew it was beyond repair. But then the questions began: Where shall I shop for a new one? What kind shall I get? Will a new one fit the limited space where the old one stood? and, most importantly; will I be able to save all the food in it?
A good friend for 25+ years.
I’ve had some practice with that last question, what with the power outages we’ve had here in the Northeast in the last couple of years. So out came the coolers, and I spent the evening sorting the food into the various coolers, and packing it with ice. Luckily it’s winter and quite cold here, and I have a sunroom that is not heated. I like having that room; it’s like having a walk-in cold storage space, so that’s where the coolers filled with food are now residing. A side benefit occurred: I found some things I’d forgotten I put in the freezer, and I made an inventory list of all the frozen foods currently on hand.
The freezer, now empty of its contents.
The almost empty interior.
The next day, Mr. D. and I went shopping for a new refrigerator, measurements and space requirements in hand. After visiting four appliance stores and looking at about six different models we narrowed our choice to The One, and placed the order. I was surprised that in the space I have available I gained 2.5 more cubic feet, and a reconfigured interior in the new model. Excited as I was, I was hoping it could be delivered the next day. But no such luck. Four days, they said. What? I said—–oh, no!
So, here we are, waiting in limbo-land. I told Mr. D. that I’ll have to get creative, and design some meals around what’s defrosting and what needs to be used before it spoils. You can expect to see some interesting foods coming up in the next few days. The challenge will be to see how many meals, lunches, and baked items I can create without going to the grocery store. HMmmm! Let’s see, what shall I make today? 🙂
Looking Back–and Ahead
To begin this new year I first want to thank my loyal readers and followers for joining me in this adventure called blogging. It’s been nine months now since I started this and the number of readers is increasing steadily. That is so very gratifying for me and so much fun too. My plan when I started was to write about the foods I cook and bake and share some of my recipes, tips, and experience with you. That hasn’t changed, but some new things have crept in like travel and restaurant reviews. Photography has gained greater importance as I work to make my food photos better and better.
I feel as though I’ve made a whole host of friends as some of you leave me notes and comments about what I’ve written. Thank you so much for the positive feedback. You keep me interested and stimulated to strive to be better.
As I looked back at my blog entries thus far it was quite evident that the most popular posts are ones devoted to baked goods. These are some of the ones you liked the most.
Red Velvet Crinkle Cookies
2. Chocolate Caramel Pecan Thumbprints
Chocolate Caramel Pecan Thumbprint Cookies
3. Salted Butterscotch Blondies
Salted Butterscotch Blondies
4. Tropical Pineapple Cupcakes
Tropical Pineapple Cupcakes
No-Bake Strawberry Pie
Bacon Date Scones
I look forward with great anticipation to 2013 and all it has to offer, especially continuing to write this blog about my adventures in the kitchen. I also wish for all of you the greatest and happiest of New Years. Carolyn
Time for Reflection
Like so many others throughout Ct., this country and the world, I am in shock and disbelief over the events that took place here on Friday. The enormity of this tragedy is incomprehensible. I cannot get my mind around the fact that one angry, disturbed person could commit such a deed, resulting in the death of so many children.
I am having a very hard time trying to carry on with preparations for Christmas for my family when I know that so many other families are grieving for lost family members, and Christmas present and all future Christmases will always be a reminder to them of this awful time of loss.
All across the state tonight prayer services and vigils are being held for those who lost their lives. We had a similar service this morning in our church, following the Christmas Pageant. The children portraying the Christmas Story were as cute as always, but there was something poignant and sad about it too, and it was hard to watch because we adults were thinking of other children, now gone.
I needed to take some time out to say this, so that I will be able to carry on and continue to write my blog as usual. Thank you for “listening” , and please keep these families and all those affected by this tragedy in your thoughts and prayers. Carolyn
Waiting for Sandy
11:00am. ESDT. I’m not in the habit of posting on Sunday, but I wanted to let you all know what may be happening in the next few days here on the East Coast. Everyone seems to be scrambling around getting stocked up and filled up while we wait for the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy. I, like everyone else have done the same, so I’m as ready as I can be. In addition to preparing for the storm, I baked yesterday for my father-in-law’s big birthday party which is today. I finally decided to make apple cobbler cupcakes with caramel frosting, which I ‘ll be telling you about real soon. For now though, I want you to know that I have a series of postings lined up to self-publish, however if we lose power for any length of time the internet will go out and you will not be hearing from me.
The weather here yesterday and today has been so weird. The skies are dark and threatening with hugh dark clouds, but the air is so still; not a leaf is moving. I guess that’s what is meant by the calm before the storm.
It is now 7:00pm EDST. and we have returned home from the party. Outside a misty rain is falling and the wind is picking up. Forecasters tell us to expect the storm to start earlier than previously predicted. I took some photos of the sky on my way home to share with you. As I close down my computer for the evening I will note that we are expectantly waiting, but hoping things do not get as bad as the weather forecasts are predicting. I hope to be back on line and “talking” with you very soon.
Delicious on a Dollar 