Look what came in the mail today. I was so excited I couldn't contain myself.
I am a big fan of Mrs.O and I am going to digest this from cover to cover!
Every year in August I go peach picking and then spend a whole day baking peach cobbler. I bake enough to give out to family and friends and to last us through the winter. (My gosh I sound like Laura Ingals.)
It took me a while through trial and error to perfect my peach cobbler recipe and I am darn proud of it. However, my husband and mother were pestering me to make apple cobbler. (My husband is still pestering me to learn how to make cherry cobbler. Does anyone have a great recipe?) I will admit there were a couple of things holding me back from making it. One, I only found recipes for apple crisp or brown betty and I wanted something that was distinctly like a cobbler with a cake like topping . I am picky about cobbler and do not like them made with a crumble or pie like top. Two, I am always a little intimidated of baking with apples. I don't know why but I just am. I think this is part of the reason why I shy away from making pies.
Well one day while perusing my cookbooks I came across a recipe for apple cobbler in the Frugal Gourmet Cooks American. (I have a lot of cookbooks and I will admit that was the first time I cracked it since I bought it several years ago.) The cobbler topping was very similar to the one I use for my peach cobbler, so I was sold in trying it. The recipe turned out to be very simple and fast. The hardest part was slicing up the apples. Plus it's super yummy. You can see I enjoyed it immediately with some vanilla ice cream.
Everybody asks me if I put crack in my sweet potatoes, because they are so yummy and addictive. I laugh and tell them no but there is a secret ingredient which I will divulge later in this post.
This recipe for sweet potatoes is the one I learned to make from watching my grandma make them countless times for our holiday dinner. I was always eager to help out in the kitchen but being too little to really do anything substantial I was given the job as the taste tester. My job was to taste all the food and let her know what else something needed, more salt, more sugar, more milk, etc. Through observation and my special job as taster I was able to learn all my grandmother's recipes. Making her sweet potatoes is my way of staying connected to her especially during the holidays since my grandmother is severely debilitated and lives permanently in a nursing home. I miss those special times in the kitchen with her and making this recipe brings back so many great memories.
I got the highest compliment from my mother last year when she said "You make the sweets just as good as momma used to make." That bought a huge smile to my face and is the best compliment I have ever gotten on my cooking.
Warning - this recipe is not for anyone trying to watch their figure. This is good old southern cooking at its best and it has the secret deadly ingredient of a lot of southern recipes, namely butter and sugar and LOTS of it. People are so surprised at how good they are but really its just the fact that they are so rich with real butter and sugar, something people appear to be afraid to cook with these days. Well I say live a little once in a while, especially during the holiday.
Also please note that I do not know exact quantities for this recipe and frankly I am too scared to measure. I just don't want to have any concept of the caloric intake of this dish.
Did not intend for this to be a DIY weekend but it is, to my dismay. We have to tackle the type of DIY project I hate - where there is no clear obvious difference in your before and after from a visual standpoint.
Our bathroom fan is not functioning correctly. So here is what we are getting ourselves into. Not sexy or exciting but absolutely necessary.
Yeah I know the post is a little late but what the hey.
I didn't have many packages to wrap this year and in fact two were gift cards in plain legal envelopes but I did try to make them look pretty.
You can also check the post on my business blog.
I remember my mother making cucumber salad during the summer when I was little girl. Her recipe was made purely with white vinegar and cucumbers. My mother loved it really tart. This is my take on her simple recipe but altering it to my craving for tart with a kick of sweetness. My father-in-law goes crazy for this recipe and I do too.
Like a lot of my recipes, especially the ones I learned from my mother and grandmother, I don't have quantities because I cook to taste. And frankly sometimes I am too lazy to measure and write down the quantities. For easy recipes such as this the quantities of the seasoning is subjective and really can be what ever suits you best. However, for other recipes where measurements are critical I will always give exact measurements.
I grew up on canned cranberry sauce and loved it. I didn't get to experience fresh made cranberry sauce till I was an adult. Because it was never made in my home growing up I just got it into my head that it was hard to make. Little did I know how easy it was until I found a recipe for it in Food Network magazine this past November. I made it for Thanksgiving and now I am cranberry sauce crazy. I could eat this morning, noon, and night. This recipe is so simple and tasty. It has just the right balance of sweetness and tartness.
Here is our little guy Donnie during Christmas dinner. Always ready at a moments notice for an errant crumb to make its way to the floor.
He may be old and he may be slowing down but he can still snatch a crumb faster than a blink of an eye.
Each year I choose one gift and give that to everyone. Some people may think this somewhat "tacky" and that it takes the personal element out of gift giving. But when you have a large list of people it just makes more sense. And this year I had even less time than usual to get gifts since work has been so demanding. I was ordering gifts as late as Sunday just making it in under the deadline for gifts to get there by Christmas.
I had two goto gifts this year.
One was Royal Riveria Pears from Harry & David. I constantly lament these days at the quality of fruit at the supermarket. It seems as though to get decent fruit you truly have to shop at higher end markets such as Whole Foods. So I look at Harry and David as an extra special treat. Their fruit is always the freshest and tastiest I have ever had. Unfortunately it is not something you can have every day and is reserved for special occasions. I would be over the moon ecstatic if I got a membership to their fruit of the month clubs. I keep promising myself that one day I will splurge and get myself a one year membership but I never do.
So while I was inside creating items for my etsy shop my husband was outside digging us out from the 14" of snow we got yesterday. While he was hard at work I stepped out to take some photos trying out my other lens (a 55-200MM).
Mathematics has always been a life long love of mine. It was my favorite subject in school and I would past the time as girl working the math puzzle books my mother bought me. So it was just natural for me to major in mathematics in college and I was even a PhD student in applied mathematics (I dropped out after 3 years - a story for another day).
Is it possible to make doing laundry fun? My answer would be a definitive NO.
Laundry is the household chore I hate the most. I wait until its absolutely necessary to do my laundry. Thank God my husband does his own (I truly count that as a blessing). Roosevelt is very disciplined in doing his laundry and takes it very seriously. Every Sunday afternoon is his wash day where he goes to the basement to enjoy football and do his laundry. While most of us separate our items into whites, light coloreds, and dark coloreds, he on the other hand has a complex sorting system based on color, fabric and use of garment. I was a little intrigued at first but at this point it is beyond my mental processing and makes sense to only him.
So laundry day which is really 2-3 times a week is the most despised task in my house. (I have to do laundry at least twice a week to keep up on all our linens. I am a towel fanatic and change towels daily so they pile up.)
To make laundry tolerable I splurged last week and bought new detergent from The Laundress. I was introduced to The Laundress a couple of years ago via a magazine article that exalted the benefits of their products and how the two founders, Lindsey and Gwen, have taken laundry to an art form. These two ladies definitely know about laundry and have great tips about proper washing and care of your garments on their site. I made the investment of buying their product after purchasing custom high end bedding. I figured that after making such a large investment in linen that I should also invest in proper care so that it wear as well as possible over time.
I absolutely love their detergents. They truly are gentle on fabrics and the smell alone is a dream. I love when I sink into fresh sheets that have been laundered with their products. It is like heaven. Plus their products don't have harsh chemicals and are more eco friendly than most brands you buy in the supermarket.
I may take the complete plunge and do all my wash with their products and not just our bedding and table linen.
Here are the products I use, but go over to their website and check out their complete line. They have specialized detergents for baby (which we will definitely use when that time comes), denim, wools & cashmeres, and even pet wash.
Hopefully Santa feels I have been a good little girl this year.
I have a fascination with Martha but I also have a love affair with Michelle Obama. I am always struck by her pose, down to earth attitude, and her clean yet simply elegant style. Yes I am a Martha Wannabee but I am a bigger Michelle Obama groupie.
So I was like a kid on Christmas when I rediscovered the Mrs O blog. I had it in my reader but somehow missed the message that they changed platforms and to update the subscription link.
Well they are back bigger and better! And Mary Tomer the author of the blog also has a book. I wish I had known about the book earlier so it could have made my Christmas list.
I am a stay at home wife. A faux stay at home wife.
I hold down a full time job in corporate America, however, I don't drive or catch a train to work I just roll out of bed and walk less than 20 feet to my desk. See I telecommute. After years of driving at least 100 miles a day roundtrip to work I now work out of the comfort of my home. Most of my day is spent with a phone glued to my ear ( I really need to invest in a headset) on conference calls with my colleagues in our central office. And the other half of the day I am banging out Excel spreadsheets looking at a bizillion numbers and calculating all the ways we can turn a profit.
Yesterday was game day in my house. Everything stops when the Eagles are playing. I was fortunate though to get the opportunity to have Roe be my model for pictures.
Here he is in his game day glory. Enraptured by the Eagles at play. It was the first time also I fully shot in totally manual mode on my Nikon.
So my husband came home with this last week. He can't resist bulk items on sale.
Now what am I supposed to do with 4lbs of peanut butter ????????
I just couldn't resist getting these at Target yesterday. They just called to me. We had a lazy day around the house and I have been lounging in them all day.
I think they are comfortable and cute. My husband thinks I am channeling JJ Walker from Good Times and is ready for me to break out with "Dyn-O-Mite!"
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