Such a long time...

It has been such a long time since I have blogged. I have thought of many topics to blog about:

How to: Christmas stockings
Arkansas Visit/ Fishing trip
Lenten Practices

But, alas, have not blogged on any of them, as you well know. : )

Latest news, my sister had an art show this evening, but I haven't heard how it went. I am hoping for a good turn out, and a great success.

I planted my garden this evening, or more precisely, I finally finished planting. Last weekend the hardware store had a giant plant sale and had a 4 plant container (the little ones) for $.89/ea. We bought WAY to many plants for our garden. We ended up sharing some of our extras with the neighbors. :) I started the planting last saturday, and finally finished this afternoon. Unfortunately, I need to finish planting flowers in the front flower bed. *sigh* I now have corn, green beans, carrots, broccoli, squash, tomatoes, peppers, watermelon, cantaloupe..... I don't think it is all going to produce, but if it does... we are going to have produce running out of our ears this summer. Wouldn't that be lovely? :) We planted some raspberry and blueberry bushes too, but the rabbits ate all the leaves off... I don't know if they will survive. I should get a haircut and go put it around the bushes. :D

Side note: I am very thankful and grateful to those bloggers in this world who regularly update and post new things to share with us all. I enjoy reading your blogs and getting to see a piece of your life. Thank you!

So long
~Scottie~

Christmas is here!

Christmas is here! Really? Already? I'm not ready for this! I finally conceived a place put my christmas cards, the very large number of them as you can see. : ) 

Life has been rather busy at my house. I've intended to post and simply haven't made it! Here is a bit of what has been going on:

Aries came through for one last visit before heading back to Hong Kong. We raked leaves and gave her another unique american experience. I made her jump in them too. :)

My grandfather brought me some Arkansas Black apples and I had to do something with them! They were picked in September and I didn't get them until December. Surprisingly only a few were really gross. The rest became dried apples, frozen apples, and a little bit of apple cider. Yum! Thanks, Grandpa!

Aries also brought me back some chocolate from Seattle, compliments of her and KV. Not the best ever, but definitely a nice full bodied chocolate. I really enjoyed it.

Oh, and while all the apples were on the counter, my hubby left me a message. :D

Oh, and one last thing.

Merry Christmas to all!

Thanksgiving Weekend

We went to the family for Thanksgiving. We had the typical turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and bread. I did make these Vanilla Mashed Sweet Potatoes. They were good, a lot more like whipped potatoes than mashed potatoes. I used probably two teaspoons of vanilla extract in place of the vanilla bean, and omitted the autumn infused oil.  For part of thanksgiving weekend, we decorated for Christmas. My sister took these pictures. Enjoy!!

My brother. Don't worry. No announcement needed. :)

Wedding Ornament

Chocolate Daze

I have recently been reading cookbooks (yes, reading) and done lots and lots of drooling. My current favorite drool has been over this book:

Well, I was in the mood this evening for something chocolatey. Something dark, decadent and delicious. Something more along the lines of Cupcakes, but alas, I don't live in San Francisco, nor could I find a recipe that looked as delicious as these.  I've been perusing David Lebovitz's blog (the author of the above cookbook) so I think I will blame my current chocolate cravings on him. :D Thankfully, he came to the rescue to satisfy my craving. I made Clotilde's Very Chocolate Cookies and let me say they are as dark, decadent and delicious as a girl could hope for. I used Lindt 85% dark chocolate bar and hershey's cocoa. I didn't have any cocoa nibs, so I left those out. I would love to try the cookies with those in them. For those out there who love bigger cookies, mine are about thumb size and are perfect. Each bite is so dark and so rich, anything bigger would be overwhelming. 

Enjoy!

What a mess.

So the bug guy is supposed to come and spray.... and he said for maximum effectiveness, you should empty your cabinets. *sigh* Now my kitchen (most of it) is all over my dining room, my family room, and inching out into the living room. Oh well. No more buggies?

Baking up a storm!

Can I just say "yum?!" Mike was gone this afternoon and I decided to work on some of my "projects". Namely, using or storing the roasted squash I had hanging out in the fridge. A friend of mine gave me a recipe for pumpkin bran muffins which I absolutely ADORE and had yet to find a good recipe for. I also wanted a pie. AND I needed to make dinner. So.. this is the result. : )

Butternut Squash Pie. It looks, tastes and smells like pumpkin! 

I made biscuits and then we had Chicken A La King.

Mike was helping me put away the muffins and looked confounded.

I went and picked some of the green beans out of our garden to use for dinner. They were huge! The top green bean is the huge one, the bottom one is the size I am accustomed to picking. I can't believe how big they got. I've been really enjoying going out to pick a handful of green beans every few days. I will have to plant a bigger patch next year. : ) Anybody have canning jars?

Pumpkin Bran Muffins

This recipe is the best bran muffin recipe I have ever had. We used to buy Krusteaz Bran Muffin mix and they stopped selling it in our store. : ( I think this recipe is going to be my replacement. I am curious to try substituting applesauce and peanut butter for the pumpkin and see how that works out.

Some things I did do, I used wheat bran instead of oat bran. I also used cinnamon and nutmeg instead of the pumpkin pie spice. An alternative would be cloves and ginger. For some added nutritional kick, yogurt would probably substitute well for the milk. 

Oat Bran Muffins

from food.com via Joanna Campbell

1 1/2 cup oat bran 

3/4 packed brown sugar

1/2 cup flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup mashed pumpkin, cooked*

1/2 cup milk

1 egg (or 2 egg whites), beaten

2 Tbls oil

Mix dry ingredients

Mix wet ingredients well then combine with dry ingredients until wet (don't over mix)

Spray or line muffin 12 muffin cups

Fill 3/4 with mixture

Bake at 425 for 20 min.

If you have never used fresh pumpkin or squash, it makes things even better!

Roasting Squash

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Slice pumpkin (or squash such as butternut) in half, empty the innards. The seeds can be roasted too. Place pumpkin skin side down and bake for at least one hour, until a fork easily pierces the flesh. Remove skin and puree pumpkin. 

Let me know how things turn out, everybody. : )

Oh, and this picture is just for fun. My sister took it.

Hugs!

~Scottie

Friends and Fun

So it seems this weekend turned into an intense people filled weekend. We had dinner with some friends, then some more friends arrived to spend the weekend, and then saturday we went to a party of some other friends. Whew! I crashed out last night and didn't want to wake up this morning.

Saturday we went to the Nelson - Atkins Museum of Art. We didn't look at more than a third of the exhibits and spent several hours. It is definitely on my list to go visit again. I enjoyed not feeling I had to see everything because I can come back. So often on trips to museums and what not, it is in a different city and if you miss something, the opportunity might not come again.

Here are a few pictures of the exhibits.

I forget how much taller we have gotten.

Mummy?

I LOVE this photo. Don't ask me why.

And.... some photos of us. : D

Photo bomb!

What? Nothing to see here.

Jump!

Now you see me

Now you don't!  :D

And last not but not least, a real picture of the group. : )

D.J, Anne, Hubby and Me, Steph and Gary.
Yeah. : )