Present To Self

  I decided that since we are travelling so much this fall, that I had better get a start on Christmas shopping.  One year we went on a cruise right before Thanksgiving, and I swore I would never do that again.  Never say never.  We have all sorts of places to go before the holidays and I wouldn't miss any of them.  But, it is going to require some planning, and so I have started prowling my favorite stores, and investigating on the web.  Boxes are already arriving at our house, pretty much daily, and I'm sure our mailman is wondering what's going on here. 

 

Of course, once I start looking around, I manage to find all sorts of things that would be just perfect for ME!  I confess that this happens every year.  I see all sorts of wonderful things that I didn't know were out there, and I buy myself a "treat".  I have been looking to replace my hand mixer for a while now.  A small dilemma, since the one that we have is still working after 46 years.  It was a wedding gift, and a testimony to the Sunbeam Company that manufactured it.  I had looked in the stores at the new ones there on the shelf, and found that they are all pretty big and clunky, and wasn't happy to commit the extra shelf space.  And, there is a certain amount of Yankee Guilt in giving up something that still works and does the job.

 

But, then I saw this model, with a nifty little stand that will sit very nicely on my lazy Susan under my cabinet, and not roll around and tangle its cord with the other appliances that reside there.  Had to have it.  I found one online for a very reasonable price and my other favorite thing-Free Postage!  Present for ME!  Oddly, it too is a Sunbeam....Hope it lasts 46 years!

That Took Long Enough To Figure Out!

We have lived in our home thirty-seven years now.  When we moved in everything worked, plumbing, electricity, water, which was what we needed at the time, what with four kiddies aged 5 and under.  The person who did the decorating before we got there really had a liking for bright colors (shiny orange and red on some of the woodwork), and big loud wallpaper patterns.  Job one was getting the black and white striped sanitas off the walls in the front hall, and on from there.

We worked our way through the house, up and down, in and out, until it looks pretty civilized, and we enjoy living here.  Unfortunately, there are several rooms looking like they should be done over, but as I get older, it seems more daunting, and I am reluctant to look too closely at the flaws. 

There are several corners which have been ignored--the interior of the upstairs bathroom closet, the back stairway (whose woodwork remains an unfortunate beach cabana blue) and the dark red linoleum tiles in the downstairs bathroom closet.  All these places have doors that close...

One area that we always lamented was our front porch.  It had been enclosed before we got the house, with 18 windows wrapping around from the north side, across the front, and all the way down the south side of the house.  They were painted shut for years, a good air lock for cold winters, but making an oven-like space in the summers.  MT chipped out a few windows each year so that we could ventilate out there, but the porch's flat roof always leaked, and the paint on the ceiling was peeling away in little squares.

A couple of summers back, MT decided it would be the year of the porch.  Actually, years of the porch.  He rebuilt all the windows, with sash weights so that now they open, and easily, I might add.  He has made screens for most of the windows, and spent countless hours tracking down leaks and tarring the roof, so that when he scraped and painted, it would stay nice.  He replaced the old light fixture with a new lighted ceiling fan, and painted up the wicker furniture that we had brought down from the ancestral home more years ago than I like to think about.  Finally, we don't feel like we are walking our visitors through the garage when they come to our house.

We've always enjoyed eating dinner out on our little back deck in the summers, but this year due to weather conditions, there were many mosquitoes.  We were getting chewed up out there, and one night we decided to eat on the front porch.  We put the overhead fan on, and brought out a couple of candles, and suddenly have a new favorite sitting place.  Just goes to show--there's always something new in your life, even if you've been in the same old place for many years...

Eye Appeal

Cupcakes have made a comeback.  They seem to have appeal on so many different levels--you don't have to purchase a whole big cake, you can sample a bunch of different kinds in one bakery box, they are always pretty, and everyone gets their own. 

 

Someone came up with the idea of using Ice Cream cones instead of cupcake papers, and I wanted to give it a try.  It isn't quite so simple.  I think the directions said to bake them in a muffin tin, which I probably did the first time and it worked out pretty well until I tried to manage them after the baking was complete.  They tend to be top heavy once the frosting goes on, and transporting them was a nightmare.

I tried again, and decided if I cut holes into an upside down foil lasagna pan set onto a baking sheet, things would turn out better.  My first attempt was a qualified success, since I started with X slits in the pan that I enlarged to squares.  But they were uneven, and some of the cones again tipped over in the car.  Note--they still got eaten...

Attempt #3 worked out very well.  I traced the base of the cone onto a piece of cardboard, enlarged it a bit, then scribed the circles onto the foil pan, and cut them out with my kitchen scissors.  The cones set much more solidly in the pan, and even though these never made it out of my kitchen, I'm sure the transportation issue would be solved.  They bring a smile to the faces of the kids--they can't wait to get them!  And some of them aren't so small...

Goldfinger

Doesn't it look like I'm just being "out there", older woman in crisis or something?  I confess to not knowing what to do with my hand--since I closed my finger in a kitchen drawer, totally bruised up the nail bed, and now it is all black, and just plain ugly.  Past experiences tell me that this is going to take months to grow out, and I really hate looking at it. 

For whatever reason, my nails only harden up enough to wear polish for one month every year--usually July, some years August.  This year it was July.  I have a pretty good collection of nail polish colors, and I had my nails nicely done up when we went on vacation, but by the time we came home, they were all layering again, and the polish was peeling away.  I did what I usually do, which is to clip them down, and take the polish off.  Except for that black one there in the middle.  Ugh!

So, for my own amusement, I will sample every color in my basket, and see which ones I enjoy the most--came across this gold glittery one, and there is a silver one too.  Maybe I can try some seasonal colors, since this is going to be with me for a while.  I can't see that the bruising is moving away from the cuticle and I don't know if this is normal or not.  Anyone know how this goes?

A Learning Process

Whenever people ask me about sewing, I tell them to get really good on the machine, maybe starting with something that they won't be wearing, like place mats or potholders.  It takes some practice to manage the technique.  The same is true for outdoor grilling, and I am still working on it.  But, unlike place mats that you don't have to wear, you have to eat what you grill.

A couple of years ago I got weary of MT complaining every time I announced that something needed to go out onto the bbq, so I got myself a gas grill that I thought looked snazzy over in Lowes.  I've been working on it, but still have a ways to go, since not everything has been an unqualified success.  Last night there was an abundance of chicken to cook (Garden Fairy freezer meltdown), so I decided to stack it all in there and get it all done in one pass.

I "spatchcocked" a Cornish game hen, (thank you Steve Reichlin) and got the timing about right.  I pulled a Buffalo wing sauce recipe off the computer (could have been a little zippier--maybe use some smoked paprika next time) and did a nice job on the wings.  The packets in the center were sliced red potatoes, salted and buttered, with some mystery spice concoction hanging out on my spice shelf--very tasty.  Less successful were some bone-in pieces over there on the side that flared up, probably due to the rosemary marinade that had some oil in it.  I guess I'll chop them up for salad or maybe a pasta dish--maybe something with pesto.



If I did more grilling, I would get better at it, this I know.  And certainly in all this heat we have been having, it is a nice alternative to turning on the stove.  But I confess, in this weather, I don't feel like eating anything hot--I've been cheating and just using leftovers and fresh vegetables to feed us both, and now I have cold chicken to get through for a few nights more.  Yay!

I got "Chopped"!

Isn't "Chopped" that tv show that gives the chefs a bunch of ingredients, and they have to make something delicious?  (As we are one of the handful of households who do not have cable, I can't keep up with the food shows  and besides, I don't enjoy watching people under pressure.) 

I got a call this morning that Garden Fairy's freezer had unfortunately defrosted overnight, and there was melted meat all over her kitchen.  Mike already had chicken soup going on the stove (it's 90* for heaven sake...), with plans for more dishes, and would I take some of the other stuff and use it?  Hmmm--cooking multiple dinners in the middle of a hot August.  Oh well.  My challenge for the day!

I figure in this heat, the crock pot and the bbq are the way to go.  I had some wonderful carrots from the garden share waiting in the vegetable drawer, so the two packages of beef got seasoned and browned up and went onto a big sliced onion, a little leftover chicken stock, red wine, a cube of tomato paste, veggies on top, crock pot on for the day.

There is some shrimp (soon to be salad with shallots and dill), chicken wings, (headed for the grill, buffalo sauce to follow) two chicken thighs from the Reading Market (special--gotta think about them) and a lone Cornish Game Hen.  I'm thinking that hen may get roasted outside next to the wings and find it's way into some cold pasta of some sort. 

Not only is it too hot to cook, it's too hot to eat.  The stew will likely land in my freezer, and probably reappear on a cold fall evening, with GF and Mike at our table, and we'll all have a good laugh, and remember how hot it was!

Thanks to Mother Necessity for the inspiration to write again.  It's been a whole year since my last entry--did you miss me?