Can’t Get Enough

I can’t seem to get enough of the following:

1.  Downton Abbey-  I found this quite by accident this past summer when the temperatures were blasting and I wanted something to watch in the comfort of the air conditioning.   I found the first season on Netflix and I watched the entire first season and patiently waited for season two to start on Sunday nights on PBS.  You can watch it on Sunday nights at 9PM on PBS.

2.  The Chicken Noodle Soup at Chik-fil-A -  It’s made with white meat chicken, I think a bowl cost something like $2.50, its full of carrots, and it’s delicious. 

3.  KMS Hair Play Spray-  I LOVE this stuff!  It’s a dry spray that perks up your hair.  If you have somewhere to go in the evening after a long day, give your head a spray and finger fluff your hair and you’ll be amazed at how much this perks up your hair.  Lock it down with some regular hair spray and you are good to go! 

4.   Sirius Radio-  The mini van died last month.  Right before Christmas the transmission blew.   I wanted another mini van but my family intervened and said absolutely not.  It was time to move on.  So now I am now driving a new vehicle (and it’s not a mini van and I am learning to love it) that just happened to come with a 6 month subscription to Sirius Radio.   So many choices of what to listen to!  It makes me happy.

5.   My new treadmill- It’s been a rough couple of months and somehow, somewhere I hurt my back and back trouble is something I’ve never had to deal with before.  Well, I am on the mend after being a very good patient and attending all of my physical therapy sessions.  Decided a treadmill would be a nice replacement for the stationary bike that was collecting dust and serving as a clothing hanger in the corner of the bedroom.  I never liked riding that bike but I am enjoying the treadmill. 

6.  Red Dragon Cheese-  This is so good.  It’s a Cheddar that is made with ale and mustard seeds.  Very flavorful and delicious.  I know I’ve mentioned it before but I kind of forgot about it and recently re-discovered it.

7.    My Kindle Fire-  I love it but why can’t I find a cover/case for it that I like?   I love browsing and shopping for books online at Amazon with it, obsessively checking my email,  reading blogs and doing web searches while I am watching TV.  I am currently reading a Kindle Single called “My Seinfeld Year” by Fred Stoller.   He played an annoying boyfriend of Elaine’s in one episode and also wrote an episode as a writer for the show one season.  If you google his image you might recall seeing him.  He’s played quirky characters in other shows.  He ‘s what you would call a struggling actor but his quick little book is an enjoyable read especially because it gives you a glimpse on what it was really like on the set of Seinfeld.   If you are a Seinfeld fan and you have a Kindle you might want to give it try.  And the best part, it only cost $1.99.   

8.   French Lemon Cake-  This is a recipe worth making.  I made two of them last weekend.  Did you know you can get a bag of  12 lemons from Harris Teeter for $1.97?!  Anyway, use fresh lemon juice if you can for this cake.  It’s amazing.  We ate the first one before the weekend was over.  I sent the other back to school with the college student daughter.

9.  Quilts on my bed-   Something about cotton quilts stacked high. I have four on it right now.

10.  Wine and cheese, and cooking classes at Southern Season-  I took another class last night on cheese with a couple of very fun people.  We got to taste wine, sample some new cheeses, and then went out afterwards and enjoyed a cocktail, split an order of sweet potato fries, and split an order of pork belly sliders.  Ok, here is where I remind myself of why I sometimes think of myself as a “reluctant” foodie.  The sliders arrived and mine looked suspect.  I took off the top bun and picked at the chunk of meat.  I pulled off a few threads of pork and the rest of the chunk jiggled.  It was basically a 2” x 2” cube of fat with a couple of mini streaks of meat.  I should have known and embraced  the pork belly for what it was. It was pork belly!  What did I expect?   In the end, there was no way I was going to eat that cube of jiggilyness.  Did I mention that I liked the bun?  And the sweet potato fries…I had more than my share.  Delicious.

Castle and Cottage Is Having a Giveaway

Castle and Cottage is giving away this great Farm House Sign! 

Or you can select this personalized sign with your family name and year on it if you are the lucky winner.  This is a great giveaway!  Stop by and give Paula a visit at her blog Castle and Cottage to enter.

Her signs are amazing.    And I highly recommend that you take a few minutes and browse some of her work on her shop's website castleandcottagesigns.com.  Of course, some of my favorites are the French signs like this one here below:  You can take a peek at some of the other French signs here. 

Tres belle, oui???

Banana Chocolate Chip Snack Cake

As I was searching the recipe index of my blog this morning because I had some extremely ripe bananas that I didn’t want to waste, I realized that my recipe for Banana Chocolate Chip Snack Cake was not listed there even though I was sure that I had posted the recipe to my blog once upon a time. It turns out I did post it way back when I was a novice blogger, so much of a novice that I didn’t even know how to upload photos yet but there it was….a sad little post from June 23, 2009, in plain ordinary text,with no bells, no whistles, and saddest of all, no pictures.

This recipe is so good and I make it so often that it deserves renewed attention. It’s a favorite around here.
Banana Chocolate Chip Cake
1/2 cup butter ( 1 stick), softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs 
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 cup apple sauce or sour cream
1 cup mashed bananas (about 2 very ripe bananas)
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips


Cream the butter and gradually add sugar. Add bananas. Add eggs. Mix well.
Combine flour and baking soda and add to the creamed mixture. Add the apple sauce or sour cream. Add the vanilla. Mix well but do not over beat.

Pour the batter into a greased 9 inch square baking pan. (I have a square stoneware baking pan that I just love to use for this, but any square pan will work. Sprinkle the top with the chocolate chips till well covered. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes. Use a tester to make sure it is done in the middle. Cool. And enjoy. I hear it’s delicious with a tall glass of ice cold milk. Me…I like it with a hot cup of tea.
I am linking up this post to Sweet as Sugar Cookies Blog where you can find lots of other great recipes.

Peppermint Oreos

Another quick and easy holiday cookie and with Christmas less than a week away I need all the quick and easy I can get!

My daughter made these and is going to give them to some of her friends all dressed up in some cute candy cane bags. 

  Here is all you need to make them:

1.  A box of White Oreo Fudge Covered Cookies

2.  Some white chocolate chips ( you don’t need a whole bag, we used about 1/3 of a cup

3.  A couple of fresh candy canes. 

Melt your white chocolate chips in a heat proof dish and microwave for 30 seconds.  Stir, and then microwave them again in 20 second increments being sure to stir in between each time you heat them until they are smooth and melted. 

Unwrap your candy canes and put them in a zip-loc bag sandwich bag and crush them.  We used a rolling pin.

Spoon a small amount of the melted chocolate on top of a cookie and spread it evenly around.  Then immediately sprinkle with the crushed candy canes.  Turn any of the candy cane pieces over to show the color red.  Set aside to cool.   I suggest you do one cookie at a time so that your chocolate does not harden before you have a chance to add the candy canes.    That’s it!

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!!

Tour of Trees

   On Friday night,  it was our turn to host part of the Tour of Trees.  Every year about 24 of our neighbors get together and do a progressive Christmas tour of 3 houses.  We started with appetizers and drinks at the first house, dinner this year was at our house, and the night ended at house number 3 for dessert and after dinner drinks.  It was a very fun night and I am glad my turn is done!  We don’t have to host again for 3 more years. :)

I served a lasagna and was biting my fingernails worrying if it was going to be enough to feed 24 people but in the end it was big enough and we even had some leftovers.   That lasagna was in the oven for two and a half hours and thankfully it was perfect when it was time to serve.  I had visions of  it being cold in the middle but it was nice and hot and I didn’t burn it!   Alongside the lasagna I served a big Caesar salad, lots of bread with olive oil for dipping or garlic butter, a big bowl of my Cranberry Pecan Orzo Salad, and a tray of Rosemary Ham with some salami and mozzarella pinwheels.  Beer, wine, and Pellegrino sparkling water and all was good.

   

I decorated three trees.  Too much!!  Anyway, the tree in the sunroom was fun to do.  I had picked up a bunch of aqua blue and silver Christmas bulbs at Good will last year and saved them not sure what to do with them.  When I saw the giant snowflakes at the dollar store the idea came to me to do the sunroom tree in aqua and silver with the icy snowflakes.  It turned out cuter than I expected and was VERY inexpensive to do. 

The next tree was in my dining room.  Not a great photo but that is my favorite tree.  It’s a skinny tree and I collect ornaments that look like food and candy and that is what I decorate that tree with.  And then we got a real tree from our friends who have a Christmas tree farm.  If you live in the Greensboro area the real trees you can get from Bruce Wagoner’s Nursery are beautiful and fresh.  They run the tree lot at The Friendly Center outside of the Sears and soon to open Whole Foods and they have a new location at the corner of Church Street and Highway 150 in the Summerfield/Brown’s Summit area across from the new Lowe’s Foods.    They sell Fraser Firs and the smell of their fresh trees will put you right  in the Christmas spirit.

Now for that tree I needed a topper.  I decided to make a snowman hat topper for it and added an old red plaid scarf.  The hat was easy to do.  For Halloween this year, I dressed as Mr. Peanut and decided to give my Mr. Peanut hat a new life as a snowman hat. If you want to make one for yourself, I found the plain black hat at Party City.   I cut out a red band out of a sparkly red felt and glued it around the base.  Then I cut out two holly leaves out of green felt and glued them on along with three bright red pom poms.  Easy and cute.

And this is one of my favorite new decorations that I did this year.  I told you I had a lot of aqua and silver bulbs compliments of the Goodwill.  I added them to my terrarium and I love it.

More silver bulbs added to a tray in the dining room.  You can’t get any easier than that. 

And finally, my very small Santa collection.  My Dad carved out four of the Santa’s and I love to put them out grouped together each year.  C’est tout!  It was a wee bit stressful getting decorated and entertaining so early in the season this year especially since I did something weird to my back and I have been trying to clean and cook and work  and not feeling all that great.  Back trouble is new to me and not much fun.  Anyway, whoa is me…it’s nice now to have it all done!

Cranberry Cashew Clusters

 

Tis the season for all things cranberry.  These might be the ticket if you are looking for something quick, sweet, easy, crunchy, and chewy.  And they were very easy to make.

Cranberry Cashew Clusters

12 oz. bag of white chocolate chips or vanilla-flavor candy coating, chopped.

3/4 cup dry-roasted cashews

3/4 cup dried cranberries

You can either melt your chips or candy coating in a double boiler or in the microwave like I did.   I placed 1 bag of white chocolate chip in a heat proof bowl and micro-waved them in 30 second intervals being sure to stir them in between each interval until they melted.  Then mix in your chopped cranberries and cashews.  You can either chop your cashews or leave them in big pieces.  I left mine in big pieces.  And I also saved a few chopped cranberries to add to the top for more color while the clusters were still wet.  Drop them on a cookie sheet lined with either wax paper or I used a silcone non-stick mat.  Let them cool.  Store at room temperature for up to 1 week, or freeze up to 3 months.

These are very sweet and great to make ahead of time.  If you freeze them, pull them out about 30 minutes before you want to serve them. 

Quick and Easy Snowflake Pillow

This Christmas Snowflake Pillow was a happy accident. Yesterday, I posted my Père Noël Pillow so I must have Christmas pillows on the brain but anyway, I was shopping in Pier One Imports today, (and wow did they have a lot of cute things for the holidays!) and I came across this felt snowflake cutout placemat. Pier One is selling them for $2.95 each. I was looking at it and I thought that I might take it home and try to use it as a stencil. My plan was to take some red spray paint and lay it on a pillow cover and then paint it. Well, of course, I could still do that but after I got it home and I placed it on my pillow, I thought it looked beautiful just the way it was and thought why not just glue it on???????

A little bit of fabric glue is all it took and WOW! I think it looks great. YOU can do this! You can either make your own cover for a pillow out of Painter’s Cloth like I did or simply add it to any other decorative pillow you might have. I like the simplicity of the red on the plain canvas background. And the red felt placemat already had the sparkly rhinestone embellishments on them. This could not have been any easier!!

I am linking this post up to Funky Junk Interiors. Lot's to see over there!!