...10.31...Tuesdays with Julia...

...we made another stuffing for the Gigot...

...this one is vegan pork and herbs...

...it's really good...and all of the particulars are over at The Vegan Version...

~Have a lovely day!

...10.30...Over the Weekend...

...this was the weekend of the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT...the Man announced his retirement from full time called ministry...at the end of the year...

...so that made Sunday afternoon full of phone calls...leaving a congregation is always bittersweet...and after nine years here that is certainly true...

...but before that...Friday...it was Trunk or Treat...

...so we headed over to the Church parking lot at 5:00...and it was still over 80° F (27° C)...way too warm for Halloween...

...there was already a good crowd...

...the fire truck was there...

...and it was fun seeing all of the decorated trunks...

...so fun to watch the little ones so excited for the candy...

...this one is a car wash...and you have to go through the bubbles and plastic hanging 'scrubbers' to get to the candy...how neat...

...the kids ran for a seat on the hayride...when they got back I heard two little girls call to their mamas...'we're going again'...so fun...

...the trip around the graveyard isn't too spooky before nightfall...

...the baby goats were there again...they're so sweet...

...and the playground was a really busy place...it was all a lot of fun!

...and then Saturday...I made another trip to Goodwill...we have SO MUCH STUFF...it's insane...I really NEED to move every few years...just to make myself go through everything and get rid of what we don't need...and...I'll be making at least one trip to Goodwill every week between now and the end of the year...

...the only food prep I did was to make another batch of croutons...I know I just did that last week with sissie...but I made those super sized for topping our Caesar salads...and they are almost all gone...so I made some smaller ones...I like them smaller...

...and then I worked on our Christmas cards a little bit...so here's a sneak peek...we're using one of our family photos from Okinawa...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

...10.28...Dinner and a Movie...

...the Man made a delicious pot of lentil stew...not sure what all was in there...but it's very french...I can taste thyme and bay leaf for sure...

...and we had it with spinach, rice and a salad...

...and we finished up The Pickwick Papers...the Man said 'finally'...haha...I've not finished the book yet...but I should have it finished by next week...and I think Nicholas Nickleby is the next novel...(and Penny recommended the 1947 version of the movie...so the Man will have that to look forward to...HAHA)...but I just got Christie's Come Tell me How you Live...so I'll probably read that first...and sissie said she's going to read David Copperfield as a parallel to a book she's reading...Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver...so maybe we'll read that one at the same time...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...10.27...Friday Update...

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

...to my sweet sissie Karen who blogs from her boat at McCraw Sails...Hey K...I loved seeing the old Church...so many memories there...your book club looks like fun...not sure that book is for me though...sounds like a pretty hard subject...glad your barnacles didn't stick...haha...reminds me of a joke on some Brittish comedy about volunteering to scrape your bottom...hahaha...and such a pretty sunset...

...to karen from Pumpkin Sunrise...Hi Karen...your granddaughter's sweater turned out so cute...and your fall leaves are gorgeous...

...to Éphée from L'éphémère quotidienneté des repas et autres trucs de magie...Hi Éphée...you and the Man really do love eggplant...and we really like mapo tofu...so this will be a good switch...such pretty fall pictures too...

...to Penny from Snap That Penny...Hi Penny...what a pretty waterfront...looks like a lot of fun...and beautiful sunsets too...

...on the reading front...

...I'm about halfway through Dickens' Pickwick Papers...it's got 848 pages...and also about halfway through the series on TV...

...what have you been reading lately?

...and our yellow tomato is still producing...maybe a handful every other day instead of every day...and we're bound to have frost soon...but there are still several little green tomatoes on the plants...this is definitely one to grow again...so prolific...

~Have a lovely weekend!

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

...in the grocery shop over the weekend (that I did'nt snap a photo of/didn't get written to disk)...I got some Just Egg on sale...I don't normally buy it at $5.99...but at $3.99 I sometimes do...haha...

...so I made a nice vegan sausage and egg scramble...

...and had that with some toast...and the fig preserves were a gift from a parishioner with a fig tree...the Man and I had neither one ever had fig preserves...they're very good...somewhat like the vegan Bee Free Honee...

...morning snack was an apple and walnuts...of course...

...and then we were out running errands in a different part of town than we normally find ourselves...so we tried a new to us deli...and they had this mixed veg cold behind the glass...and when you order it they fry it up on the grill so it's nice and hot and fresh and not wilty...it was really good...

...and from the salad bar...I got some edamame and this corn and quinoa salad...it was all very tasty and filling...not sure we'll be back over here anytime soon...but it was a nice lunch...

...afternoon snack was some chips and guacamole using my 5 for $1 avocados...

...and for dinner...we had leftover spaghetti and vegan meatballs...and I didn't remember to take a photo so I'm reposting one from the weekend with my sissie...it looked pretty much the same...haha...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...10.25...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...I'm almost finished with the back section now...

...I've just got to do the shoulder and neck shaping...and then the left front side should go pretty quickly...I just have that small ball of yarn left so I think I'm going to need one more skein of yarn to finish the sleeves...so I'll have to get that...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...10.24...Tuesdays with Julia...

...we one of Julia's stuffed lamb recipes...

...it really is a pretty slice...

...I liked it...the flavors were an interesting combination...there are 6 of these stuffing recipes...I've already done the next one as it was referenced in some other recipe...but I'll do it again with the vegan lamb...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...10.23...Over the Weekend...

...we started the weekend with buckwheat pancakes...

...and then I took some of the breakfast sausage crumble and just mixed in enough flour to make it stick together...and fried those up as patties...

...it was a perfect breakfast...

...and then as usual...I did the weekly shopping...and photographed it...or thought I did...but there were no pictures on my camera...my old (really old) camera that I use for almost all of the pictures on this blog is having some issues...sometimes it warns me that it didn't write to disk... and asks if I want to recover...and sometimes it does successfully recover the photo...but not this time...it didn't even ask...you can imagine it though...pretty much the usual things...

...and I did get a couple of photos of the clearance items...these 5 avocados were $1...earlier in the summer they had been 50¢...but now for some reason they are over $3...so this was a deal...and I was a little bit worried that they might be brown on the inside as they are quite ripe...

...but you can see they're just about perfect...and they're going into the freezer for guacamole later in the year...

...and on the same clearance rack I got a bag of limes...also $1 for all of them...instead of 68¢ each...

...and then Sunday afternoon...my sweet Sissie and her hubby stopped by for a visit...YAY!!!this will be the last time I see them before they head out on their boat for 6 months...

...so we made the vegan Reese's recipe again...

...they were a little dry this time...I think because I used the vegan I can't believe it's not butter...and I don't think it's as dense as the plant based stick butter that I used the last time...and I measured using the water displacement method...and it must be a little bit whipped up...

...anywhoo...still pretty delicious...and I won't make that mistake again...

...for dinner we had the Man's spaghetti that you've already seen...we started with a nice salad...and I had made some rather large croutons in the afternoon for that...no photo though...

...and I served it in my snowflake casserole that is an exact replica of Mom's...and she used hers to serve spaghetti when I was little...as far as I know she still has it...the boys found one just like it in North Dakota and gave it to me...

...my pasta bowl...Trader Joe's vegan meatballs...and the Italian bread was delicious...

...we had such a nice visit...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

...10.21...Dinner and a Movie...

Guess what...

...we did Brinner...again...haha...Griddler-ed tofu, peppers and onions...

...and grits...

...we rarely have this big meal for 'actual' breakfast...and we both really like breakfast food...so we love to have it for dinner...

...and the movie was just more of the Pickwick Papers...and the Man basically said he was done with that...haha...and there's still about 7 hours of the series left...oh well...I guess I'll be watching those by myself...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...10.20...Friday Update...

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

...to my sweet sissie Karen who blogs from her boat at McCraw Sails...Hey K...so glad you got to visit with Robert...and Mom...and ME...in a couple of days...I guess you're busy getting everything 'provisioned'...

...to karen from Pumpkin Sunrise...Hi Karen...I love driving on backroads too...the places you see are so much more interesting than buzzing down the interstate (which definitely has it's place too)...the leaves are starting to change here too...

...to Éphée from L'éphémère quotidienneté des repas et autres trucs de magie...Hi Éphée...we love Greek inspired foods around here...and that look on your pup's face is adorable...

...to Penny from Snap That Penny...Hi Penny...your scones look delicious...and the weather looks lovely in your photos...November is usually a pretty rainy month here...

...on the reading front...I've finished all of the novels...

I've started Dickens' Pickwick Papers...it's really really long...I think I was probably in Junior High School when I read this the first (only) time...some of the 'scenes' I remember when I'm reading them (not really before)...this book was one of his serial publications and you definitely get that feeling while reading it...

...what have you been reading lately?

...in other news...

...the Man took the last of the gifted tomatoes and made a big pot of spaghetti sauce...

~Have a lovely weekend!

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

...it's quite chilly here...relatively speaking...of course...haha...it's in the 40°s (less than 10° C) when we get up in the morning...so I thought that oatmeal sounded good...and cooked oatmeal almost never 'sounds good' to me...I do like oatmeal raw though...

...and like when I was little I had it with brown sugar and toast...the only way to eat cooked oatmeal if you ask me...

...one of our parishoners have us these massive apples...

...I put my pint mug beside them so you could see the scale...they're HUGE...

...and here they are dwarfing a regular-sized apple...

...so I ate half of one of those...

...lunch was leftover Greek tofu over leftover rice...steamed broccoli and cucumber and tomato...so that took about 5 minutes to make...

...afternoon snack was a bowl of leftover noodles and some violife vegan butter...

...and brinner for dinner again...YAY!...

...I griddler-ed some tofu peppers and onions...and just some slices of tofu for later too...

...and then I melted some Violife cheddar over...

...and made a pot of grits...

...and y'all know that breakfast is my favorite meal any time of the day...

...what did you eat yesterday?

~Have a lovely day!