...3.31...Friday Favorites...

...just some random things I'm in LOVE with right now...

...when we were at the super fancy-schmancy Delta Sky Club in Tokyo...they gave us these little goodie bags when we left...we each got one...and they had these little packets of crackers and a delicious Japanese tea...

...my new blue dishcloth...I love it...but it sure did turn the water blue the first time I used it...I had to rinse it out really well and then drain the sink and refill it...

...and then...I hope it's starting to be spring where you are...it's glorious here right now...

...I remember my sweet sissie's first home had a wisteria arbor in the front yard when they moved in...it's more common here than I thought...we don't have it in the mountains...

...there are blooms everywhere right now...

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

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

...I made a big bowl of Daddy's favorite cereal...

...Cheerios and bananas...(really Organic OateeOs not actual Cheerios...but we generically use the name Cheerios for this sort of cereal)

...and then I took it out on the back porch to enjoy the early morning sunshine...we're in for a couple of days of spring rain so I thought I'd enjoy it while I can...it was chilly though...

...for lunch I made a tofu and mustard sammie...it's so simple...but it reminds me of all those days I spent on horseback as a teenager...we'd pack a lunch (of sorts)...usually bologna and mustard on white bread...haha...and some chips...usually an entire can of Pringles which we ate all through the day...we'd leave early...cross the river and meet up with our horse-y friend on the other side of the river...and ride ALL DAY through the woodland trails...and return home at dusk...tired and hungry...we usually drank water straight from the river...eeeeuuuwwww...I know...all that crop and cattle run-off...oh well...must have been good for our immune systems...haha...

...AND...another nostalbic trip down memory lane...I wonder if my sweet sissie remembers this Denkel's Chocolatina tin...she gave it to me YEARS and YEARS ago...I used to have a little rail around the top of my kitchen cabinets and I had a whole row of pretty tins up there...and this was one of them...it came full of chocolate though...and now that I don't 'collect' the tins anymore...I just use it to store chocolate...

...so that was lunch...it was delicious in so many ways...

...for a snack before my bike ride...I gathered my deconstructed 'candy-bar' ingredients...

...mixed those up and ate it out of hand...

...and then...DINNER OUT...we really don't do that as much as we used to before the pandemic...

...I had a delicious bean burrito...and a TON of chips and dip...

...I think the only other thing I had was this ginger breakfast black tea...a gift from a dear friend...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...3.29...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...still working on the Carnaby Street pullover...this is the progress on the first sleeve...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...3.28...Tuesdays with Julia...

...we made VEGAN GRATIN AUX FRUITS DE MER...using some vegan canned tuna...

...it was OK...not sure what I though it would be...it's basically canned tuna in a white sauce...

...we had it over toast...Julia did say you could bake it in a pastry shell...so maybe that would have been better...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...3.27...Over the Weekend...

...we started the weekend with PANCAKES!...

...and not just any ol' pancakes...but Buckwheat Pancakes...

...and some veggie sausage too...

...my first pancakes never turn out quite right...just not that perfect crispiness to the crust that makes a really excellent pancake...so I usually just eat it out of hand with a little bit of Earth Balance on each bite...while I'm making the rest of the pancakes...

...because...after the first near miss...the rest of the stack was superb!...

...just look at this gorgeous spring sky...the trees are starting to leaf out...

...I did the weekly shop...and I went to FOUR different stores...I just made a loop...Adli...Stuff-Mart...Harris Teeter and Food Lion...

...a pretty regular grocery haul...the French bread was marked down to 53¢...it's sell by date was today...and the two big bunches of collards were $2.22...

...so then...of course...it was time for some food prep for the coming week...the collards will go in the InstaPot...

...and there was a passel of delicicous stems...

...there...I got them all crammed into the pot...they will cook down considerably...

...cooked a pot of rice...

...and baked some tofu...

...the turnip greens went into a regular pot on the stove...

...and while the oven was on for the tofu...I mixed up a coffee cake of sorts...

...it's called Pineapple Squares...and it's from Glen and Friends Old Cookbook Show on YT...

...easily veganized and it turned out so pretty...I omitted the almonds in the topping as they both said in the video that the almonds overwhelmed the pineapple flavor...

...and finally we were treated to a beautiful sunset...after some pretty heavy spring rains...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

...3.25...Dinner and a Movie...

...I Griddler-ed some broccoli and carrots...

...and we had a half package of these large shells tucked way back in the cabinet...so I used those to make a delicious vegan mushroom stroganoff...

...and the 'movie' was a docuseries about some Indian children of the lowest caste who are usually denied jobs and education...the movie follows several girls over 7 years who are chosen to attend a special school Shanti Bhavan...and follows some of them as they enter college and the working world...it was about some real people...and full of hope...I enjoyed it...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...3.24...Friday Update...

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

...to my sweet sissie Karen who blogs from her boat at McCraw Sails...glad y'all are settled at Hog Cay again..and I can't believe you're already talking about heading home...YAY!...Love, T...

...to Jackie from In the Land of the Living Skies...I love seeing your Frugal ideas...

...to Beth from BLD in MT : Living a Simple Life in This Interconnected World ...Hi Beth...not sure I mentioned before how awesome Matt's patchwork shirt is...

...to karen from Pumpkin Sunrise...your Seashell shawl is gorgeous...and such a good colour for you...

...to Éphée from L'éphémère quotidienneté des repas et autres trucs de magie...you have a lot more fauxmage options than we do...and what a sweet blue eyed pup...precious...

...to Penny from Snap That Penny...your flaming spring skies are gorgeous...and it's too bad about the dog ruining your community garden work...

...a few more Agatha Christie Books:

I finished Death in the Clouds - 1935
...and then I read the short story collection Parker Pyne Investigates...I think only two of the stories actually had a death in them...Pyne calls himself a "detective of the heart"...and he advertises that he can help people be happy...I enjoyed the sort of upbeat series...
The A.B.C. Murders - 1936 - we had watched the new BBC series with John Malkovich as Poirot a couple of years ago...we had watched The Orient Express too...
Murder in Mesopotamia - 1937

...and here's Kitten...just doing what she does best...haha...

~Wishing you a lovey start to your weekend!

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

...peanut butter banana toast for breakfast...

...lunch and dinner were both soups of a sort...it's really chilly here right now...so soup sounds good...this is the Yeung Man Cooking lentil soup...

...for afternoon snack...the Man made us a protein shake...and I had a little bowl of BBQ chips along with that...

...and for dinner we took the leftover wild rice...and made a wild rice and chick'n soup with it...and it was really good...griddler-ed sweet potato, salad and homemade dressing with that...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...3.22...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...so after I finished the back...I went ahead and stitched the shoulder seam so I could go ahead and finish the neckline...

...it's just a few rows of garter stitch...but do you see all of those little holes...

...maybe...washing and blocking will fix it...but maybe not...these two bamboo yarns have no inherent elasticity...

...and I don't think they look like a 'design feature'...haha...

...so what I'm going to do to "fix" them is...lift up one side of the hole-y stitch with a needle...

...and then lift up the stitch beside it...but not as much...so that they extra yarn of the too wide (hole) stitch gets distributed across multiple stitches...

...so here's what that looks like close up...it's better...the process is a little bit tedious...and it will still need to be blocked...

...the left side has it's holes worked here...just working my way around the circle...I think it will be all right...and there are actually a few too large stitches (i.e., holes) in the middle of the stockinette stitch as well...so I'll work the same treatment on those too...

...oh...and start the sleeves...

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

~Have a lovely day!