FYI...Just for Fun

Today we had 72 degree F weather.

Go figure!

Take care.

Super Bowl Sunday

Yay! It's Super Bowl Sunday! I don't give much of a hoot for the game, but I sure do LOVE to make foods for the occasion. Today's menu is for one of the unhealthiest meals of the year. You have to do this once in a while, right?

Super Bowl Sunday Repast

I started yesterday with coleslaw. Actually, I made enough slaw for about 3 meals. I didn't want to have to repeat making it today. I chopped my celery, carrots, bell pepper, onion and cabbage. Then I made my slaw dressing. It is really yummy and puts the store-bought stuff to shame.

Slaw Dressing Recipe

1/2 jar salad dressing or mayonnaise, your choice
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 or 2 tablespoons white sugar, or to your taste

Mix all together and let set for about 10 minutes. This will give the sugar enough time to dissolve and you'll have to mix again. Refrigerate until ready to mix with the chopped cabbage mix. I mix only as much as we are going to eat at a time. Otherwise, it will get runny if you have leftovers for the following day.

Note: Do NOT substitute anything for the lemon juice. I tried vinegar, thinking "It's an acid. It will be just as good." WRONG! It was not good. Also...do NOT put salt in the dressing mix. Salt will pull the juices out of the cabbage and make the whole thing really runny. You don't want that.

Then I was going to make potato skins, but Hubby mentioned twice-baked potatoes. So I blended the two recipes and spiked it up a bit. No booze in here. Just extra cheese, garlic and sour cream are the ingredients to the 'spike'. I started these this morning with baking the potatoes.

Twice-Baked and Spiked Potatoes

Potatoes
Bacon, cooked and drained, one slice per potato half
Sour cream
Garlic, minced
Butter
Salt & Pepper
Yellow cheese(s) of your choice
Oil and Fryer

Wash and bake your potatoes. After they cool enough to handle, cut the potatoes in half longways. Hollow out the halves with a spoon until you have about a 1/4 inch of skin and potato shell. These should look like little boats and should lay by themselves on a flat baking pan. Save the potato you dug out of the shells. Set aside. Set the potato shells aside.

While still very warm, take the dug out potatoes and add a minced clove of garlic to the potatoes. Add butter, salt and pepper. Mix these together using a mixer or blend by hand. Put some sour cream in to make them creamy and set this potato mixture aside.

Take the potato boats and deep fry them at 400 degrees F until golden brown. Remove and drain. Place on a baking tray or dish that will go into the oven. You'll have to fry a couple of the potato skins at a time. Don't worry about keeping these hot. They will get baked again later.

Now fill the potato skins with the cooked bacon, a dollop of the potato mixture and top with the yellow cheese of your choice. I used two different kinds of cheese...smoked gouda and sharp cheddar. I put the gouda in after the bacon and sprinkled the cheddar on top to make them pretty.

Bake at 350 degrees F until the cheese melts on top. Or, broil and watch them carefully so they don't burn.

Lastly, I made the fried chicken. I began this first thing this morning. I pre-boil the chicken before I fry it. The chicken went into the fryer after the potatoes were put into the oven.

Needless to say, we pigged out on this meal. We each ate two halves of potato skins. I ate one piece of chicken and Hubby ate two. Add coleslaw and we're stuffed! I definitely have to get my seven miles in on the stationary bike tonight!

Our next snack will be sugar-free pumpkin pie I made the other day. We'll eat that at kickoff.

I hope all of you have a great Super Bowl Sunday.

Take care.

After The Ice Came

Here are some pics of what our place looked like after last Wednesday's ice storm. As you see, it was just under 30 degrees. For us, this is cold.

Just under 30!

Here is part of what we got on Tuesday night.It was icy rain, sleet and some snowflakes. It was more icy rain than anything else. It was enough to shut down three major bridges, cancel schools and work and a lot of other things came to a standstill. There are no winter treads here. Everyone thinks they can drive on the ice. Well, I hate to say, I stayed home from work because I'm VERY familiar with trying to drive on ice.

Porch on Tuesday Night

Here is what we woke up to.  Here is a picture of what we had. Everything has about 1/4 inch of ice on it. Everything is crunchy.

Doesn't Look Bad.

 Here are the chickens.

Clueless Chickens

The chickens don't really care too much about what is going on as long as they get their feed. I made them a special treat of plain oatmeal while it was warm. They weren't too sure at first, but they finished it all off. Their waterers are frozen solid, so I had another waterer in the coop under the heat lamp. These are all of the chickens I have left at this time. Loren is coming out of the door. (Sophia just died a few days before) She's a Buttercup. Tigger is the roo. He's the color of Tigger on Winnie the Pooh. I don't know his breed, but he's a good rooster. Ethel is the big brown leghorn. (Lucy died last year) Ooma is the white Lakenvelder. Don't ask how I got that name. It just came to me.

Trixie in the Back 40

I had to go and check out the Back 40. Of course, it's not 40 acres, but it is a haul to go back and forth from the barn or house to here. Especially to the garden which is by that big plastic container way in the back of the picture. I'm afraid my worm farm probably solidified this night. Maybe not. It was protected from the elements pretty well. We'll see when I change out their container for a new one.

Lovely, wasn't it? It was a nice mid-week day off for me. I did laundry, cooked, read and watched a marathon of one of my favorite shows...Haunted Collector.

Right now, at 6:56 pm, I hear a hooting owl outside of my window. I don't usually hear them this early. But it's out there. I just got the measurements for a Screech Owl box. We have at least four of them screeching at 2 am every night during the summer. Good for another post, ain't it?

Take care.

It's Been a While...

Sorry about that. It's been a while since I've posted. The holidays came and went quickly. Then January came and went. My, how time is flying!

Thanksgiving we had a house full, like I mentioned. What I didn't mention was that we had a power outage the day after Thanksgiving. So, we ate dinner outside the following night because we had to. It was REALLY cold. My niece and nephew brought tamales from Florida that they made. You can't beat homemade food! This was a real treat for me to eat fresh tamales. I've never been invited to a Latin home for dinner. That is kind of hard to believe since I have so many culturally diverse friends.

Here is how we cooked the tamales.

Tamales Cooked Outdoors

We started to cook them on the grill my hubby made, but the water didn't boil fast enough or hard enough. My nephew brought over parts of his turkey fryer and my canning pot served us well. I had enough cooling racks to fit inside to hold the tamales while they steamed. Yummy stuff! I got the recipe!

Then, we went to Florida to visit these relatives for Christmas. We had a really nice time. We took some very small gifts this year. I made dish towel angels and they turned out really nice. I can't find my original pattern on the internet. When I do, I'll link it here. In the mean time, check out the internet for your own. There are several styles to make. I should've taken a picture.

Here is a picture of the whimsical part of my Santa Claus collection.

Whimsical Santas

 OK. There are a few snowmen in there, too. They are still cute. My porcelain Santas are on the other mantel and I didn't get a pic of them this year.

Here is the village we set up on our buffet.

Christmas Village

I have a small collection of porcelain houses that we usually put under the tree. The tree needs a bit of a hike off the ground to fit these under. I don't want to do that with the dogs traipsing around. I also collect aluminum ware. I love the stuff. Most of it is from yard sales. I like using these to serve dinners for company. Sometimes just for us, too.

The new year came and Hubby and I sit and wait for the ball to drop. This year we had a cheese tray, spread with crackers and doggie biscuits. I was in the kitchen getting our small snack tray ready and Hubby asked me to wait while he set up the living room. He put a tablecloth down and our pillows up against the back of the couch. I didn't know about the table (stool) and cloth for the table. He's so sweet!

Trixie Eyeing the Goods!

Well, the ball dropped in Times Square and we woke up at 12:04 a.m. We missed it! We must be getting old or something.

Our weather has been really up and down this year. One day we'll have 70 degree F weather. The next it will be in the 30's. Up and down and up and down. Today was in the 60's. It was nice and sunny. Tomorrow, we're expecting 30's and freezing rain. Wednesday may bring 2-3 inches of snow. I need to start planting my garden and it's hard to figure the weather out this year.

If we get the weather, look for pics. It is a novelty down here to get snow and icy rain.

Take care. 

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

We have a house full of people for this Thanksgiving holiday. Relatives came up from Florida and our house is full. The weather was in the 30's and 40's this morning but it warmed up to the 50's and the breeze died down. We made a really good dinner and ate outside. My brother-in-law wanted to have a real Thanksgiving outdoors just like the Pilgrims did. I think we got the correct weather down here. We had 3 portable heaters outside in our pavilion so we could eat comfortably. It was a great day! Good food! Good people! New friends were made!

Our little nephew wanted to collect chicken eggs from our hens. Our hens aren't laying and they haven't been laying for a long while. We didn't have the heart to let him come back empty-handed so we planted a few for him. He was so ecstatic to get the eggs. It was too cute to watch him. He's the kind of kid that talks in exclamation points. "I got four eggs in one nest!"

I  hope all of you had a really great day, too!

Take care.

Curtains

Here is a pic of the curtains mentioned in a previous post that I made for the kitchen. I love the pattern. It is the same as the set I made for the guest room but it is in light green.

Kitchen Curtains

The green is very light. Some time in the near future, I'll be painting the walls a light green like this. I plan to split the wall with a chair rail and paint white on one side and green on the other.

Take care.

Before & After - Project Completed

Here is the project I mentioned a couple of posts ago. We started with this coffee table which we rescued from the swap shop.

Rescued Coffee Table - Before

This shows the extensive water damage and messed up veneer. We sanded this then I remembered to take a picture. Hubby sanded it again then fixed the chipped veneer with Bondo.

Bondo on Coffee Table - Before

Here is the Bondo job hubby did and he finished it beautifully. First of all, I wanted to stain each section of the design in different colors of stain. After seeing how bad the veneer was messed and chipped, I decided to paint it instead. Hubby put long legs on the table and replaced the apron under the table with solid wood. It was previously particle board that had moisture damage. Paint would definitely take care of all of the problems. Angel, our oldest, is under the table. She loves to be under things.

Rescued Coffee Table - After

Here is the table. Using the design from the original veneer, I taped and painted the brown. Then, I taped and painted the almond white. Then, I measured and taped off for the pinstripe. Then, I put on 4 coats of satin polyurethane. Then, I waxed and buffed the whole thing. Now we have a pretty darn nice breakfast table that we can sit at when we eat. It's more of a bar-style and we'll have a view of our back yard in all seasons. As you can see, it took about a week of after-work work to finish this project. Worth it!

A lot of project planning will take place around this table.

Take care.