In the Weeds

I have not forgotten you, blogging friends.  I have not been posting or reading blogs lately because I am deep in the weeds on a monstrous editing job.  In my giddy bid to obtain the work (a paycheck!), I grossly underestimated the time required.  So instead of blogging, I am hunched in front of my computer reading corporate jargon and nonsense.  I do not ask for pity, only heed my warning.  Be wary of corporations waving lucrative consulting projects.

Serenity Shawl

I am in love!  In love with this gorgeous yarn, Serenity Garden.  After seeing a fabulous crocheted shawl on Teresa Kasner's blog, (see her post about it here), I knew I had to make one too.  I shamelessly copied Teresa entirely, using the same pattern and the same yarn, although in a different colorway.

The pattern is called "Ruby" by Anastasia Roberts, and is available for purchase on Ravelry.  The yarn is Dralon microfiber, machine washable and dryable (love that!) and is part of the Deborah Norville Collection; the color is Sea.  I got the yarn at Jo-Ann Fabric, but I don't know if they still carry it.  I scoured three or four stores to find enough.



My shawl is pretty big, as you can see in relation to a double bed.  I added an additional thirteen three-row repeats in part one of the pattern to make it larger.  I think it would work well in a smaller size though -- it would be more like a triangular scarf.  It's hard to see the subtleties in the color changes of this yarn in these photos, but it is really interesting, and it feels luscious.

Thank you, Teresa, for inspiring me to make this lovely shawl.  You're my hero.

Hey Girl!

I'm joining in the Hey Girl Valentine link party!

Hey Girl is a Pinterest meme involving Ryan Gosling.  As a middle-aged woman, I surprise myself that I know what a meme is and who Ryan Gosling is.  Quick -- name a Ryan Gosling movie!  Okay, I can't, but I'm sure I've seen one. Um, I think I've seen one. Yes, I did -- The Ides of March.  Whew.

For the Hey Girl link party, bloggers are making their own Hey Girl images with pictures of husbands, boyfriends, pets, etc.  It's all in fun.  (Remember that, husband, all in fun!)

Join the party and see other Hey Girls at 

Bliss Ranch

Souped Up Meatballs

We've finally been getting our winter snow here in northern Illinois.  It's been beautiful.

Mourning dove taken from my office window.

Snow, however, calls for hearty, warming dinners.  As I walked through the grocery store the other morning, I thought about the oniony meatballs my mother used to make.  A package of ground chuck and a stroll through the soup aisle, and I was good to go.  This makes a very easy and flavorful change of pace for ground beef.

I served them over egg noodles, but they are also very good with mashed potatoes.

Souped Up Onion Meatballs

1 pound ground chuck

3/4 cup (approx.) fresh bread crumbs

1 egg

Salt and pepper

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

1 10.5 oz. can of French onion soup (I use Campbell’s)

1/2 cup water

Mix meat, bread crumbs, and egg together.  Season with cracked pepper and very lightly with salt (the soup will add extra salt).   Shape into 1 to 1-1/2 inch meatballs.

Heat oil in non-stick skillet over high heat.  Add meatballs and reduce heat to medium high.  Brown the meatballs, turning frequently.  Add the soup and water.  Cover and reduce heat to low.  Simmer over low heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove lid and cook over low to medium low heat for 15 minutes to reduce liquid.

Makes approximately 30 meatballs.

Printable recipe

Digest for Dreaming

When I was a kid, I used to love to look at catalogs -- Sears and J. C. Penney were probably the main ones.  If I could pick any bedspread on this page, which would it be?  Which outfit would make a ten-year-old look the coolest?   What about all that jewelry?  And how about those toys?  (Who can forget the Wish Book?)

When I got much older, I discovered Architectural Digest through my future mother-in-law.  Similar dreams, but on a much bigger scale. Imagine walking through that garden in Tuscany.  Or that kitchen in the Hamptons.  Sitting in that living room in Manhattan.  If only.

For a while, I subscribed, but once in a period of penny-pinching, I failed to renew my subscription.  Recently, we received a subscription pitch in the mail.  The price seemed good, so I sent in the card.  I've been eagerly awaiting my first issue for more than a month.  When the first of February came and went, I wondered if I would ever receive my new subscription.

Today, the mailman delivered not one, but two issues of Architectural Digest, plus a thin volume of celebrity homes, to my mailbox.  On this gray, snowy day, a curl up on the couch with a couple of grown-up Wish Books sounds just about perfect.

Diet Coke at hand, cozy blanket nearby.  Ready to dream.

The End of the Never-ending Blanket

If you were a young child in the early 1990s or the parent of such a child, you may know the TV show "Lamb Chop's Play-Along," which aired on PBS from 1992-1997.  My daughter was three years old in 1992, so she was part of the prime demographic for the audience.  The show starred Lamb Chop, of course, and Shari Lewis along with Hush Puppy and Charlie Horse.  Oh my goodness, the goofy skits, the knock-knock jokes, but mostly the closing theme song!  "The Song That Never Ends."  A preschooler can get a lot of fun out of singing that one over and over and driving her mother mad, mad, mad. Lamb Chop was a lot older than she looked though.  I remember seeing Lewis and Lamb Chop on TV during the 1960s, when I was a kid.  According to Wikipedia, Lamb Chop first appeared in 1957.  The point here is that "The Song That Never Ends" has been on my mind lately as I finished up my crochet sampler blanket, which seemed to become the blanket that never ends.  But it did end.

I started making the blanket before I even knew I was making a blanket.  Back in April, I purchased 200 Crochet Blocks for Blankets, Throws, and Afghans by Jan Eaton.  I thought it would be fun to try a few of the patterns.  Then in June, I showed you my first four squares.  At that point I was thinking about a little lap throw for my daughter.  As things seem to do around here, however, the lap throw got out of hand and turned into this:

Sixty-three squares of crazy.  I think when the daughter saw that I was making a big blanket for her brother, she was determined that hers would be big too.  No sibling rivalry here, folks!  Here's a view from the other side:

Is it perfect?  Goodness no.  Aside from the garish color combinations, let's just say the blanket has character, shall we?  The squares didn't turn out the same size, so there was a fair amount of adding and tweaking.  Still, I had fun doing it and almost each new square became my short-lived favorite.

No two squares are the same pattern.  Here, in alphabetical order, are the patterns I used: Alternate Bobbles, American Beauty, Anemone, Arcadia, Begonia, Big Round, Blocks and Shells, Briar Rose, Bright Flower, Candy Stripe Bobbles, Catherine Wheel, Centered Square, Chocolate Box, Christmas Rose, Coffee and Cream, Colorful Bobbles, Criss Cross, Dahlia, Daisy Chain, Danish Square, Diamond in a Square, Double Stripes, Edwardian Fancy, Four Patch Granny, Four Square, Framed Flower, Fretwork, Fudge, Gothic Square, Granny in the Middle, Granny Stripes, Granny with a Twist, Into the Blue, Italian Cross, Kingcup, Lacy Wheel, Lemon Stripe, Marigold, Nine Patch Granny, Openwork Square, Pastel Delight, Peach Rose, Peony, Primrose Square, Queen Anne's Lace, Saint Petersburg, Seville, Snowflake, Solid Square, Spinner, Square Target, Starflower, Subtle Stripes, Sunray, Sunshine and Showers, Sunshine Lace, Traditional Granny, Tricolor Square, Victorian Lace, Waterlily, Willow, Wisteria, and Zigzag Bobbles.

I think daughter plans to take the blanket back to her apartment next time she visits, but in the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy the color it adds to her room here at home.

A Savory Muffin to Ward Off the Gloomies

Yesterday was a dreary day filled with gray skies and freezing rain.  Fortunately, I had planned for such a day and had all the ingredients to make a big pot of comforting vegetable beef soup (recipe here) and savory Parmesan muffins.

I don't know where I got the recipe for these muffins.  I have had it several years and I had jotted it down on a scrap of paper, so I imagine I pulled it from a magazine in the dentist's waiting room.  The muffins are pretty homely and ordinary to look at, but they make a great accompaniment to soup or even steak.  It's easy to halve the recipe, which is what I did yesterday since there were only the two of us.  Serve them hot!

Savory Parmesan Muffins

2 eggs

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup olive oil

1 cup grated fresh Parmesan cheese, divided

1 1/2 cups flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon powdered or crushed dried rosemary

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon fresh garlic, finely chopped

  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease a muffin pan.

In small bowl, whisk together eggs, milk and olive oil.  In separate, large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, rosemary, salt, pepper, and garlic.  Add 3/4 cup of the Parmesan cheese, mixing until cheese is well distributed.  Add wet ingredients and mix until combined.

Spoon into well-greased muffin tins.  Sprinkle remaining cheese on tops.  Bake about 20 minutes.  Serve hot.

Makes 12 1/2-cup muffins.

Printable recipe

The other bright spot in a gray few days is this bunch of sunny daffodils the husband picked up at the grocery store. They were tight buds when he brought them home, but every one has opened into a happy little harbinger of spring to come.

Alfie Gets Cozy

Brrr!  It's been cold, and Alfie got chilly.  Okay, I just think Alfie got chilly because, after all, he didn't show any signs like shivering or his teeth chattering.  But with highs of 10 degrees Fahrenheit, I get cold, and, as my kids will tell you, if I am cold, I assume everyone is cold and will foist hats and coats on all and sundry.  So . . .

Well, okay, maybe I just wanted Alfie to have a sweater.  Especially after the husband told me it wouldn't work and that Alfie wouldn't wear it.  Alfie not only wears it, he wags his tail when I get the sweater out of the basket.

I pulled this gorgeous pure wool Pendleton sweater from the attic where it has languished since I stole it from my mother ten or more years ago.  My mother is a tiny woman; there is no way I was ever going to fit into that sweater.  So I cut the sleeves off (don't tell my mother), slipped it over Alfie's head and front legs, and he was ready to go.

Alfie might have had doubts right at first, but once we tried it outside, he got it! Warmth and style -- what could be better?

Alfie looking askance.  What the heck am I wearing?

With One Meatball

When I was growing up, my mother would occasionally make meatballs and cabbage.  It was never my favorite dish -- I prefer my cabbage raw -- yet I made it for my own family as they grew up.  It's a simple dish of porcupine-style, rice-studded meatballs, stewed with cabbage and tomatoes.

The most appealing thing about this meal growing up was it would usually prompt my dad to sing a few bars of One Meatball, a Depression era tune recorded by The Andrews Sisters among others.  Of course, I never heard a "real" version of the song until the internet came along.  In fact, I wasn't even sure there was a real version.  And frankly, no one else sings it like my dad.  Every time I eat this dish, I hear him warbling "You don't get any bread with one meatball."

Dad isn't much of a singer, but he did have one other signature song.  As with One Meatball, my dad only sang the "good part" of his other song, Jack of Diamonds.  Here is the part I learned as a wee little child.

"If the ocean was whiskey, and I was a duck/I'd dive to the bottom and never come up."  

This was followed by a loud hiccup.  I love the complete political incorrectness of teaching that song to little kids.  By the way, my father is the next thing to a teetotaler, so it's especially funny that this is "his song."

Just as I've shared the meatball cabbage meal with my family, I also passed my father's two songs along to my kids.  I hope they'll remember to sing them to their kids someday too.

Would You Like a Little Dog with that Yarn?

Check out my assistant who is "helping" me complete the never-ending sampler blanket.

If I stare at you long enough, will you stop crocheting and play with me?

Alfie -- Crochet Dog Deluxe!

Ice Water and Open Spaces

After a couple of days of unseasonably warm weather, winter is back in northern Illinois.  We've had almost no snow this winter, but it's turned cold again.  Mother Nature doesn't want us Midwesterners to get soft, after all.  I thought I'd share a few wintry shots I made today.

I stopped by a forest preserve and was rewarded with the sight of ice floating down the river.

The barren fields certainly look cold and bleak, don't they?

I actually love to drive in the country when everything is frozen and bare.  There is nothing quite like rocketing down small country roads crusted with snow and being able to see forever across the wide open spaces.

Santa, Are You Reading?

I keep an electric hand mixer around for small jobs or when I just don't want to lug out the heavy Kitchen Aid.  I've been nursing mine along for a while -- one of the beaters had a broken wire.  And then today:

That peppermint filling was just too much!

Hello Santa, are you reading?


UPDATE:
My lovely daughter got me a new KitchenAid handmixer for Christmas!  Yay!

A Dark and Stormy Christmas Cookie

Twas the week before Christmas and all through the house and kitchen, the cookies were baked and frozen -- to prevent the spouse from snitchin'!

Last week, when I shared my Orange Chocolate Chippers, I mentioned that I had tried another new cookie recipe this year.  I'll admit, I snitched one of these before I packed them away in the freezer.  Well, after all, a girl has to make sure they are edible before sharing them with the family, right?

I clipped the recipe for Dorie's Dark and Stormies from a Chicago Tribune 2008 cookie contest article, but I never tried them before.  Now I kick myself for waiting so long.  Easy to make and so chocolaty scrumptious.  The recipe is available online on page two of this article from the Tribune archives.  The recipe says it makes three dozen cookies, but somehow I only got two dozen.  I did not use Dutch process cocoa, I used regular Hershey's.  For the chocolate bits, I chopped up five ounces of Ghirardelli 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate.

You know you want one.

Crafty Christmas Touches

Once upon a time, I was a Christmas decorator at a local house museum.  It was then that I began making Christmas decorations.  A good friend was my decorating partner, and we had some crazy ideas.  Being co-chairs of the event, we even got to foist our crazy ideas onto the other decorators because we chose the themes.  One year was jewel tones. One year we insisted on all blue and silver.  There was some grumbling from decorators that it was more Hanukkah than Christmas, but the house was unique and sparkly.  Another year, we chose a prairie theme.  Now that was unique! We pulled an enormous dead evergreen wreath out of my garage and hung it in the rotunda.  All the needles were still on it and they had turned a marvelous copper color.  We put sheaves of wheat in the windows and tied dried cockscombs to the staircase.  A flower shop created a tree from corn husks for the library, as I remember.  The house was wild.  Visitors either loved it or hated it I guess, but they'd certainly never seen anything like it.

Anyway, being cheap and creative -- as an artist, she is much more more creative than I -- we made a lot of our decorations.  The rooms in the mansion are large with very high ceilings.  What we soon realized, is that large rooms eat your decorations up.  Something that looks huge at home looks puny at the museum.  So we made do.  One year we decorated the maid's room with food.  (I've forgotten what the theme was that year.)  We made cinnamon cookies that we loaded with lots of extra cinnamon for smell, and then decorated with glitter.  Not edible glitter, just glitter.  We also made gumdrop trees.  My daughter was especially fond of those gumdrop trees, so we used them at home the following year or so until they looked mangy, and later made new ones.  This year I found a few old gumdrop trees in the attic.  I don't know how old they are, but they are well past their prime.  Some of the gumdrops were falling off and the color was a little weird too.  But instead of throwing them away, I decided to "frost" them.

Awaiting their finishing touches of fresh greenery.

I am using a lot of white in our dining room this year, which started with the coffee filter wreath I showed you last week. I completed the buffet under the mirror with white Dresden angels my mother passed down to me this year, crystal candle holders with white candles, and a white poinsettia.  I had the idea that I wanted some white trees on top of the hutch on the other side of the room, and here were these old gumdrop trees.  First I gave them a lightish coat of white spray paint.  Spray paint doesn't cover gumdrops all that well, but I wanted some of the original color to show through, so that was okay.  Then I saw Nici at Posed Perfection's blog post about using Epsom salt to frost pine cones. Brilliant! I picked up three pounds of Epsom salt at Walgreen's for less than four dollars.  That's some cheap craft supplies!  I slapped Mod Podge on the gumdrop trees and coated them in Epsom salt.  I like the way they turned out.  I won't be able to save them, but that's okay, they were due for the trash anyhow.

Another little touch of white is my farm animal collection.  I made some of these last year after seeing them on Viva Revival, a great blog by Michelle, a jewelry designer and all-around creative gal.  I made a couple more this year because my little barnyard needed to grow.  Check out Viva Revival for the how to's.

The lighting isn't good, so you can't see that they are sparkly.  

The last item is a picket fence we use to keep Alfie from bumping into the food tree.  The husband made this from inexpensive wooden garden fencing.  We also have a single panel that he put "feet" on that we use to keep Alf out of the living room.  It's much cuter than the old baby gate we used to use!

I can see that I need to center the tree a little better in the fence.

Orange You Glad I Made Cookies?

Remember that old knock-knock joke?  Orange you glad I didn't say banana?  Well, I made a new Christmas cookie that's no joke -- Orange Chocolate Chippers.

Christmas cookies are a big thing at our house.  There are some traditional favorites that I make every year, like the Italian Wedding Cookies, Candy Cane Cookies, and Butter Cookies that I shared with you last year.  I also like to add in something new.  Last year it was Martha Stewart's Cream Cheese Walnut Cookies, which became a favorite of the husband's, so they made it back onto this year's hit parade.

This year, I added two cookies to the repertoire.  Today I'll share the first one, Orange Chocolate Chippers.  I found a recipe in an old-ish cookbook from my husband's uncle's collection.  The book has an insanely long title: Senior Pilgrim Fellowship, United Church of Christ, Beacon Falls, Connecticut.  If there was another title, it didn't leap out at me.  This is one of those great cookbooks where all the ladies contributed their favorite recipes to raise money for their organization.  I like this kind of cookbook because the recipes are not trendy or "foodie;" they are tasty, do-able recipes that regular women made for their families and bridge clubs.  

When I saw the recipe for an orange and chocolate cookie, I knew I had to try it.  I changed the original recipe a little bit to include orange juice and baking powder.  I used orange peel and juice from some fruit my father-in-law had sent from Florida.  I don't know what variety they were, but they were not navel oranges; they were much more flavorful.  In looking at the website of the grower where he shops, I think they might have been Robinson tangerines, which is a cross of 3/4 tangerine and 1/4 grapefruit.  With navel oranges, I don't think you'd get the same strong citrusy pop that my cookies have, so I recommend tangerines or tangelos to really get that citrus flavor.

Orange Chocolate Chippers

Adapted from Audrey Gendron’s recipe in Senior Pilgrim Fellowship,
United Church of Christ, Beacon Falls, Connecticut cookbook, 1982

1 cup shortening

1 cup sugar

3 oz. cream cheese, softened

2 eggs

2 tablespoons grated orange/tangerine peel

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon fresh orange/tangerine juice

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder; set aside. 

Cream shortening, sugar, and cream cheese.  Add eggs, orange peel, vanilla, and orange juice.  Beat well.  Add flour mixture to creamed mixture.  Mix well.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet.  Bake about 7 minutes at 350 degrees F.  Cool on wire racks.

Makes approximately 56 cookies.



Printable recipe

Measuring Out My Days with Coffee Filters

With apologies to T. S. Eliot and J. Alfred Prufrock, I cannot measure out my life with coffee spoons because I don't drink coffee. Recently, however, I measured out a couple of days with coffee filters.

For the last several years, I have hung a white feather wreath on our dining room mirror at Christmastime.  Loved that wreath; I got it at a local gift shop long before feather wreaths were at the big box stores and everywhere else.  With each succeeding year though, the wreath got a little more bedraggled.  This year, I decided sadly that I really shouldn't bring it back out. What to replace it?


I liked the look of some of the coffee filter wreaths I've seen on Pinterest, and it sounded easy, so I got the supplies and got to work.

coffee filters, glue gun, glue sticks, old t-shirt, scissors, straw wreath

No matter how good my iPod playlist is (and, honeychild, I have some good stuff on there), there is a limit to how long at one sitting I can fold and crunch filters and burn my fingers with hot glue, so it took me part of two or three days to complete my wreath.

wrapped in t-shirt strips                                                               the inside edge of glued filters

I'm not going to write a tutorial since there are scads of them online already.  I will just say I used a fourteen-inch straw wreath, which I wrapped with strips of old t-shirt, and about 280 filters.  I started out trying to place the filters in rows like the tutorials suggest, but I wound up just sticking them in as close together as I could, which no doubt explains some of the finger burns.

back of the wreath

After I had glued on as many filters as I could, I trimmed the edges slightly, but my wreath is not perfect.  It's kind of cockeyed, which suits me just fine as I'm a bit cockeyed myself.  I initially planned a ribbon hanger wrapped around the wreath, but soon scrapped that and filled the entire thing with filters.  I attached a length of ribbon to the back with straight pins and hot glue.  I used one of those cool 3M Command hangers directly on the mirror.  In years past, I took the mirror down and hung the feather wreath from a ribbon taped to the back of the mirror.  The 3M hook was so much easier -- love that!

For those of you who have been wondering why I haven't posted lately, I have indeed been busy, but I had also run out of photo space (again!) on Picasa.  I am now trying a Flickr account.  I hope this will be the ticket.

Frosty Times Call for a Frosty Dessert

Winter is almost here, at least in most parts of the U.S., so why am I writing about ice cream?  This year on Thanksgiving, I served ice cream in addition to pumpkin pie.  Not pumpkin pie a la mode, after all, whipped cream is the proper topping for pumpkin pie.  (In the husband's case, lots and lots of whipped cream.)  In our family of four, there are only two pumpkin pie eaters -- the husband and our daughter.  Daughter likes it so much she has even been known to request a pumpkin pie for her month of May birthday!  Our son and I, however, are not pumpkin pie fans.  So when I asked him what he wanted for his Thanksgiving dessert, he asked for "that ice cream dessert."

I got the recipe for "that ice cream dessert" when we lived in the little town of Harvard, Illinois.  Harvard is the end of the train line, so when we were ready to move out of our Chicago condo and into a single family house, that's where we wound up.  We just kept going out until we found something decent we could afford and, before we knew it, we were at the end of the line in Harvard.

Harvard is a really small town.  When we lived there, the population was around 6,000 people.  It has increased since then to more than 9,000.  At one time, Harvard was the center point of an area with the greatest milk production in the nation.  Thus, the big event in Harvard each year is Milk Days, complete with a parade, a carnival, a Milk Queen, bed races, and big wheel races.  Our daughter was in preschool when we lived there, so the big wheel race was important. She competed and lost.  Our neighbor, whose daughter was the same age, put his child in training for the big wheel race.  I am not making this up.  He took his four-year-old daughter to an empty parking lot several times before the race for training.  She won her age category.  In a couple of years, she was entered in the Milk Days Princess competition and eventually was crowned Milk Queen.  So I suppose that early training paid off.

The logo my husband designed.

I belonged to a women's group named Women for Harvard.  It was a good group of women, mostly young. We raised money to stock a little store that was set up one weekend in December for Shopping with Santa.  Children could come in, visit with Santa Claus, have their picture taken, and be taken into a secret store -- no parents allowed -- to shop.  Gifts cost no more than a couple of dollars.  There was a sample of each item and the rest were wrapped, so the child could surprise a family member on Christmas morning.  That was such a wonderful event.  Sadly, I don't think they have the store anymore.  What they do have is the same group logo that my husband designed for them twenty years ago.  It features Harmilda, the town mascot.  I really can't believe they are still using a cow logo for a women's group!  Anyway, we always had dessert at our monthly meetings, which rotated among the members' homes. One meeting, Julie, that month's hostess, brought out this yummy ice cream dessert.  All the women, including me, raved!  We had to have the recipe.  Julie kind of laughed about that.  It's the easiest thing in the world, and you can change up the flavors any way you like.  I have made this with mint ice cream, pecans, any combination would be good.  For Thanksgiving, I made the original version, Peanut Bar Ice Cream Dessert, one we might call the Buster Bar Dessert if "Buster" wasn't trademarked by Dairy Queen.

Peanut Bar Ice Cream Dessert

40 Oreo cookies, crushed into crumbs

1/4 cup melted butter

1/2 gallon softened vanilla ice cream

15 oz. hot fudge topping

2-3 tablespoons chocolate syrup

8 oz. Cool Whip

1 cup peanuts

Reserve about 2-3 tablespoons of cookie crumbs.  Combine remaining cookie crumbs and melted butter in small bowl.  Press crumb/butter mixture in bottom of a 9x13 inch baking pan and refrigerate for about 15 minutes.

Layer remaining ingredients as follows, spreading each layer as evenly as possible:

Cookie crumbs, ice cream, fudge sauce (fill in bare areas with a little chocolate syrup), nuts, Cool Whip, reserved cookie crumbs (these should not fully cover the Cool Whip)

Freeze several hours until firm.

Note:  You can use any flavor of ice cream you wish and change the nuts as well.  Chopped pecans make a nice change.

Printable recipe

Excuse Me, What? Word Choice and Rocket Chicken

I love words.  As a writer and an editor, I guess that's not much of a surprise.  Written or spoken, words are what get me.  I've never been a fan of action movies, for example, or slapstick.  Give me good dialogue anytime.  Take this classic scene from The Thin Man.  William Powell and Myrna Loy are unbeatable actors, but the script by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, based on Dashiell Hammett's novel, also gives them a lot to work with.



I love witty dialogue, especially when it doesn't rely on curse words to get a laugh.  I also get a kick out of unintentionally misused language.  Years ago, I got quite a chuckle when someone on PBS said the network would be having a special program during pledge time featuring "Pearl Bailey and just a list of guests."  I imagined Pearl Bailey standing onstage with a scrap of paper.  No way, old Pearl knew it takes at least "Two to Tango."

A parkway --
or is it a devil's strip?

Another fun thing about language is regional variations.  In the United States, for instance, there are numerous ways to describe an Italian sandwich -- submarine (or sub), grinder, hero, hoagie, po' boy, and doubtless other variants.  And you can wash that sandwich down with a soft drink, a Coke (as a generic term), a soda, or a pop.  When it's cold, one can wear long johns or thermals depending on where you live. The strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street?  What I call a parkway is also known as a tree lawn, a nature strip, a sidewalk buffer, and even a devil's strip.  When I was a teenager, my group of friends was fond of decorating people's yards with toilet paper -- what we called rolling yards.  The first time I heard a Midwesterner refer to tp-ing a yard, I honestly had no idea what that meant!  It even took me a while to figure out why it was called tp-ing (duh).  Having a mother from the south and a northern father, I got to hear some different word choices growing up depending on which side of the extended family I visited. My northern grandfather called flowers "posies," which I found charming, and which led to the name of this blog, and instead of saying something was small, he would say "little wee," as in "Look at the little wee posies."

Of course, if we start comparing American English to British and Australian English, we could go on forever with the different words for things.  In my work, I edit employee surveys for consulting firms.  One company that I used to work with has a lot of clients in Australia.  The first time I came across an employee saying "here at the coal face," I found that expression fascinating and much more evocative than the common U.S. expression "on the front lines."

Okay, you're no doubt saying, what the heck does all this have to do with chicken and what is rocket chicken anyway? Well, one of my favorite word variations has to do with food.  What we in the United States call arugula is more commonly called rocket in England and Australia.  When I adapted a Gordon Ramsay recipe for Sticky Lemon Chicken into a less sticky dish with more sauce and served it on arugula, I decided Rocket Chicken sounds much more fun than Arugula Chicken.  Rocket Chicken will blast your taste buds and take you places!  (Well, maybe it won't transport you, but it will blast your taste buds.)

Rocket Chicken

3 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, well trimmed (slice in half if needed to reduce thickness)

Salt, freshly ground pepper

1/2 teaspoon powdered thyme

3 tablespoons olive oil

4 large garlic cloves, cut into halves or thirds

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar or rice vinegar

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup honey

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce

3/4 cup hot water

1 bunch of arugula (salad rocket)

Season chicken very lightly with salt and with freshly ground pepper and the thyme.  Heat the olive oil in a large, non-stick skillet over high heat.  Cook chicken and garlic, turning as needed, until cooked through.

Add vinegars and cook over medium heat for about five minutes.  Add honey, lemon juice, and soy sauce.  Mix together.  Add hot water.  Cook at medium to medium high for 20-30 minutes to reduce liquid.

Place chicken on bed of arugula.  Drizzle sauce over top of chicken and arugula.  Serves 2-3 people.

Printable recipe

Pumpkin Festival

Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere, and not a pie in sight!  Pumpkins have invaded the courthouse lawn in Sycamore, Illinois, so it must be Pumpkin Fest.  Each year right before Halloween, the town goes crazy for pumpkins.  Pumpkin Fest has all the usual small town festival trappings -- a big parade, a carnival, a craft fair, food booths, and actually it's not true about not a pie in sight because there is a pie-eating contest on one of the festival days.  The festival also has something a little unique (and my favorite part) -- a pumpkin display and contest which covers the courthouse lawn for four days.  Carved pumpkins, painted pumpkins, funny, scary, silly, ugly -- all kinds of pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns.

Pumpkin Fest began in 1962, and the pumpkin display is quite a popular feature with local folks.  Parents bring their children to see the pumpkins, and I imagine many of them came as children themselves with their own parents twenty years earlier.

This section contained large groups of pumpkins from preschool and school groups.

There are eleven categories for the contest, five age groups, and first, second and third places, so there are lots of winners. The categories are Theme Pumpkins (this year's theme is "Happiness is . . . the perfect pumpkin"); Happy and Fancy; Weird, Ugly, and Scary; TV, Nursery Rhyme, News or Current Events (weird combo, huh?); Carved; Scarecrow; Youth Organization; Adult Organization; Family Entry; Adults -- Carved, Scarecrow and General; and Largest Pumpkin.  This year there were 1,146 entries and, since some entries contain multiple pumpkins, there are lots and lots of pumpkins.

I'm glad I managed to make it to Sycamore this year to see the pumpkins.  I have no interest in the other festival events with the big crowds, but it is fun to tour the pumpkin display. Even on an early Friday afternoon, however, there was a sizable crowd milling around -- young parents with strollers, some school-age children, middle-aged folks with or without grandchildren, attorneys taking a break from court, and a few elderly people walking carefully along the storm fences which enclose the display.  The pumpkins made me smile even as they made me a little wistful for the days when my own children were young.

The Big Winner

Rainy Days and Mondays

Front porch wreath, burlap wrapped for fall

Today I am relaxing and working at home on this rainy Monday to recover from a whirlwind weekend.  Both children blew through for a couple of days to celebrate the husband's birthday. When they are here, it's a firestorm of cooking, laundry, and activity.

Will we ever need to eat again?  Big breakfasts of sausage cheese balls, omelettes, and pancakes.  Lasagna stuffed with cheese and meat sauce.  An enormous dinner at the local steakhouse.  What a dinner that was!  I tried flaming saganaki for the first time and think I'm smitten!  For those of you who are unfamiliar with saganaki, as I was, it's a dish of fried kefalograviera cheese, flambeed in brandy and topped with lemon juice.  If only our waitress had been a little more exuberant with her "Opa!"

Just a sample of the leftover goodies.

And the baked goods, which are still around.  I had made shortbread, the daughter brought a coffee cake, I made a fresh apple cake for the birthday boy, then the son wanted chocolate chip cookies to take back, but he left behind the slightly overcooked ones, and I had a craving for chocolate haystacks.  I didn't use enough chocolate in the haystacks, but they are still pretty tasty.  Daughter took some of the cake, shortbread, and haystacks away, but there is way too much still here.  My waistline does not need this!  I'll have to try to get a little disciplined again before holiday feast time rolls around!