Wednesday, May 31, 2023

...5.31...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...remember the green Bicycle shirt that Mom sent me a few weeks ago...
...I'm getting ready to to make it look just like my bicycle...haha...but first I wanted to make the shirt a lighter colour of green...so I put it into a bucket with some water and bleach...and I got a nice minty green colour...

...next I'm going to paint over the pink bicycle and make it black...and I'll probably take the shirt in so that it fits me a little bit better...

...I'll keep you updated on the progress...

...what's in your workbasket this week?...

~Have a lovely day!

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

...5.30...Tuesdays with Julia...

...we made another variation of Vegan Sweetbreads...Vegan Ris de Veau Braisés a l’Italienne...
...Julia says "Rice or risotto, and buttered peas or creamed or braised spinach go well with sweetbreads..."so that's just what we did...
...and it was really good...

...and all of the particulars are over at The Vegan Version...

~Have a lovely day!

Monday, May 29, 2023

...5.29...Over the Weekend...

...we started our weekend with vegan omelettes...
...stuffed with the vegan potato cheese and ham TVP...they were very yummy...
...I went to three stores...and I got a lot of stuff...
...Food Lion has Tuno...who knew...
...and I got a couple of non-grocery items too...
...I used up the rest of last week's loaf of bread to make some nice (not too hard) croutons...
...I filled up my old Chocolatina tin with two new boxes of cocoa...
...I love using my decorative tins to store things in...and I love this old tin...my sweet sissie gave it to us many many years ago...
...I made a pot of chickpeas in the Instant Pot...
...then filled up one muffin tin with just aqua faba...
...and another one with chickpeas...it's a perfect serving size to pull two of these 'muffins' out of the freezer whenever you need them...I love having them on hand...
...and then Sunday afternoon as it continued to pour rain all day...I decided to clean out my tea cabinet...it's the one over the range...
...I wanted to seal up my teas that are just in boxes...so I put them in recycled jars with tight fitting lids...and just cut the top off the box and taped it to the jar so I'd know what kind of tea it was...but I could pretty much tell by the smell if I just opened the lid...and the plain old Lipton bags have a tag so I didn't make a label...
...a few more tins...the green Lipton tin is from the fist year we were married...
...and everything neatly stowed away in the cabinet again...
...and then pretty late Sunday evening...I made Glen and Friend's Potato Spice Cookies...
...I had bought the molasses a couple of weeks ago...
...they happen to be vegan...they're really good...not too sweet...and they are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside...like eating a little crispy gingerbread...

From Glen's Post:

"Today our old cookbook recipe comes from a 1937 printing of Brer Rabbit's New Book Of Molasses Recipes. This molasses spice cookie recipe features potatoes. "

Potato Spice Cookies

1 cup brer rabbit Molasses
¾ cup shortening
1½ cups hot riced potato
½ tsp salt
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp cloves
½ tsp nutmeg
½ cup chopped dates

Method:
Heat molasses and into it stir the shortening until melted, add the potatoes hot, then the dry ingredients sifted together and the dates. Mix well and drop by half teaspoonsful on oiled paper, spread on a baking sheet. Bake in a slow oven (325º to 350ºF) 10-12 minutes.

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

Saturday, May 27, 2023

...5.27...Dinner and a Movie...

...it's the beginning of a really rainy weekend...but the Man fired up the grill anyway...and we had delicious veggie burgers for dinner...I made crinkle cut fries too...

...and the movie was a documentary Misha and the Wolves...it's a crazy true story about some people...real people...and it's a tale of a battle between Misha (the fraudulent Holocaust survivor) and the publisher of her book...but it's really mostly about greed...it was a strange story...

...what have you been watching lately?...

~Have a lovely weekend!

Friday, May 26, 2023

...5.26...Friday Update...

...Posting some comments to blog friends here...

...to my sweet sissie Karen who blogs from her boat at McCraw Sails...Hey K...Bummer about the old van...but I love the new one...y'all are quick decision makers for sure...hope all is well back at the homeplace...Love, T...

...to Beth from BLD in MT : Living a Simple Life in This Interconnected World ...Hi Beth...I'm definitely making your spice blend that sounds wonderful...and I'm so in love with your spice labels...I totally need to redo all of my spices...I did it once over ten years ago now...but it definitely needs an update now...

...to karen from Pumpkin Sunrise...Hi Karen...your lavender shawl and your pink blanket are so pretty...I'm still reading Agatha Christie too...some of the plots I remember and some I don't...but they are all pretty light and fun reading...sometimes I just have an inkling of an idea right from the get go of who-dun-it...and it winds up being correct...so I think that maybe subconsciously I do remember them...haha...

...to Éphée from L'éphémère quotidienneté des repas et autres trucs de magie...Hi Éphée...your asparagus crepes look amazing...both the crepes and the asperagus...and is that your BIKE???...it's amazing...

...to Penny from Snap That Penny...Hi Penny...your sky and park pictures are so pretty...stunningly...it's not been too hot here yet...we've really enjoyed a nice long spring this year...

...a few more Agatha Christie books read:

OK...first of all I read a collection of Short Stories:
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories 1939 - which contained...
"The Regatta Mystery"
"The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest"
"How Does Your Garden Grow?"
"Problem at Pollensa Bay"
"Yellow Iris"
"Miss Marple Tells a Story"
"The Dream"
"In a Glass Darkly"
"Problem at Sea"

...and then if you look at Agatha Christie's bibliography...a lot of those stories were then published separately or with other names or in other compilations within just a couple of years...
The Crime in Cabin 66 1943 Also called Problem at Sea
The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest 1943
Poirot and the Regatta Mystery 1943
Poirot on Holiday 1943 Containing: The Regatta Mystery, The Crime in Cabin 66, Problem at Pollensa Bay and The Christmas Adventure
The Veiled Lady and The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest 1944

...so the only two I had to find just as short stories were The Christmas Adventure and The Veiled Lady

...and then for the novels...
...I finished The Moving Finger 1943
Towards Zero 1944
Absent in the Spring 1944 As Mary Westmacott
Death Comes as the End 1945 - this one was set in ancient Egypt...so that was quite different...
...and I'm a little over halfway through Sparkling Cyanide - 1945...it's kind of the same story line as the short story Yellow Iris ...obviously more developed and definitely not the same murderer...

...and so far...my very FAVORITE book of all is the Mary Westmacott Absent in the Spring...it's definitely just a book about some people...definitely not a murder mystery nor a love story...it's about a woman who does some serious introspection for the first time in her life...very deep...and the very unsatisfying ending is probably the most likely one...sadly...

...Christie herself loved this book the best...she wrote the entire book in just three days...and it's never been adapted...
"Agatha Christie described Absent in the Spring as 'the one book that has satisfied me completely - the book I always wanted to write.'
The title came from Shakespeare’s sonnet 98: “From you have I been absent in the spring…”"


...this has been quite a wordy post...

...so here's a couple of Kitten pics...
...her favorite snoozing position...I love to catch her like this to clip her nails...I can usually get one paw done before she's awake enough to protest...and then I immediately leave off clipping...
...and this is her "Don't you dare touch me look"...haha...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

Thursday, May 25, 2023

...5.25...What I Ate in a Day...as a Vegan...

...started with a bowl of butter-y rice for breakfast...
...morning snack was a bowl of canteloupe...not the best one ever...
...Sauce Stache asked the question "Can You Turn a Potato into Cheddar Cheese?" over on his youtube channel...and I thought that was really worth a try...
...and I put it into a square tupperware to set up and cool off...
...unmolded after some chill time...it's a nice solid sliceable cheeze...
...tried it on some Ritz crackers...it's a nice tangy sharp cheddar...
...now for the real test...how is it in a grilled cheeze sammie...
...I made a quick vegan cream of asparagus soup with some leftover asparagus stems...
...and the potato cheeze was really really good in a grilled cheeze...the texture is good...it doesn't get 'runny' like a lot of the commercial vegan cheezes...I'll definitely make it again...
...for an afternoon snack...I just heated up the leftover sweet potato fries...I had made a whole purple one and a whole orange one...and that was just way too much for the Man and I...I should have only done one...and I was surprised at how good they were leftover like this...I don't think leftover regular fries heat up in the oven this well...
...and dinner was just my typical baked potato/baked tofu/salad meal...I ate the tofu with steak sauce...so easy...

...what did you eat yesterday?...

~Have a lovely day!

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

...5.24...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...a few more rows on the pink afghan for the prayer shawl group...I ran out of the lavender/pink-y colour and added a darker dusty rose colour...and I'll probably just use that up and call it done...

...what's in your workbasket this week?...

~Have a lovely day!

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

...5.23...Tuesdays with Julia...

...we made the Vegan Bavarois au Chocolat...

...quite a few steps to this one...but you could for sure serve it without the vegan creme anglaise...

...all of the particulars are over at The Vegan Version...

~Have a lovely day!

Monday, May 22, 2023

...5.22...Over the Weekend...

...the weekend started really early with the Car Show over at the Church...so many cars and so many people...it was a lot of fun...
...then I made a quick grovery run...we really didn't need hardly anything...but you can see my nearly empty corn starch jar on the counter...so I did actually 'need' that...
...when I got home...they were raking the hay in the field beside our house...
...after I put the groceries away...I did just a little bit of prep for the week ahead...
...I always like to have some baked tofu at the ready...
...and I whipped up a batch of my favorite little oat/date/nut balls...
...and we're ready for the week ahead...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week...

Saturday, May 20, 2023

...5.20...Dinner and a Movie...

...the Man wanted hot dogs for dinner...and since I didn't plan for that with the groceries...we had exactly one hot dog bun in the freezer...so of course I let the Man have that...and I had my veggie dog just on a folded piece of white bread...and it was just fine...and I made some delicious crinkle cut fries and vegan coleslaw too...

...and of course we're still in the middle of the Ted Lasso series...still enjoyable...but the episodes of this newest season are a little bit 'different'...the storylines of the side characters are a little bit more prominent and the episodes are longer too...I think we're all caught up now so we'll have to watch the new episodes real time...haha...

...what have you been watching lately?...

~Have a lovely day!

Thursday, May 18, 2023

...5.18...What I Ate in a Day...as a Vegan...

...we had gotten the rare box of Vegan croissants when we were up at Mom's last weekend...
...so I pulled one of those out of the fridge for breakfast...
...for lunch I just made a quick tofu and mixed veg stirfry and had a bowl of fruit with that...
...then for dinner you'll have to use your imagination for the finished plate...haha...I didn't take any photos at the table...sorry... but we made a pot of yellow eyed beans in the instant Pot...
...beet greens...
...and fresh beets...
...and we shared a rather large white sweet potato...they're also pretty rare...
...Griddlered ...of course...
...well...it all made for a delicious dinner...even with no photo...
...and I think the only snack I had was some yummy watermelon...

...what did you eat yesterday?...

~Have a lovely day!