Making over flopped Amish Friendship Bread; Free garden seeds at TreeHugger

My Cranberry Walnut Bread Pudding with Vanilla Sauce is a riff on Charlie Trotter's Cinnamon-Raisin Bread Pudding with Vanilla Anglaise. Actually riffed on his Cinnamon-Cranberry Bread Pudding recipe but couldn't find the recipe online, and you know I am too LAZY to type it up myself! I used 3/4 cup of dried cranberries and 3/4 cup of chopped walnuts with the last of the Amish Friendship Bread that was in the freezer. I'd screwed up one batch of the Amish bread by forgetting to add oil, but the bread pudding recipe made DRY AS TOAST friendship bread into something moist and yummy! (My vanilla sauce recipe is much simpler than Charlie's: Put 1/2 cup melted butter, 1/2 cup canola oil, 1 cup milk, 1 tsp. vanilla extract into a small pan, add 1 cup sugar with 3 tablespoons flour whisked into it. Cook and stir 'til the sauce thickens and coats the spoon.)

Hey, check this out over at TreeHugger's site: "5 Ways to Get Free Seeds for Your Garden." Okay, time for me to get off the computer and do some seriously mindless activity for awhile. Such a BUSY day...my brain could use a rest! *wink* What mindless activity is in store for you tonight?

Make Over: Pimiento Cheese to Cheesy Baked Onions

Did Hubby REALLY put all that roasted garlic on his hotdog? Oh, yes, he did. Ugh!

Hubby finds my fondness for Cincinnati chili just as gross!

Just to prove hotdogs aren't all we eat--this pork loin came off the grill tonight. We'll eat it mañana, and of course, the leftovers from that meal will likely go into another three or so minimal-meat meals.

Made Blackberry Farms Pimiento Cheese recipe again. First time I used vinegar 'cause I didn't have any pickle juice on hand and we LOVED the stuff. Well, guess what? I don't like the pickle juice version as well. So, using the pimiento cheese and a bit of olive oil, I made Cheesy Baked Onions for Hubby, who is more of a pickle lover than I am.

Cheesy Baked Onions

Any leftovers being transformed over at your place?

You're either getting better--or you're not

"I challenge everyone to

consider the direction and the value of your days–

because like it or not, those days are going by and

either you're getting better at something, 

getting stronger and more experienced…

or you're not."

Steve Richert, Living Vertical

Trying to improve upon the original Cherry Swirl Coffee Cake (which we like but always room for improvement, eh?), I subbed blueberry pie filling for the cherry filling and added grated orange rind for my Blueberry Swirl Coffee Cake. Less sweet than a regular "cake," this is perfect for breakfast. Mighty fine for after dinner dessert too!

Roasted a chicken yesterday...
will get at least four meals out of this bad boy.

On surfing the top ten adventure blogs (link shared yesterday), I came across the quote above and absolutely fell in love with it. I figure "you're either getting better or you're not" applies to just about everything, including recipes. Never had a problem motivating myself to tinker with recipes. Wish I could say the same when it comes to motivating myself to exercise!
   Any tinkering going on over at your place lately?

Had planned to make chicken pot pie using some of the chicken leftover from the roasted chicken, but since we had Grandbaby today, I didn't have time to make a pie crust. So, we had Chicken Pot Pasta instead. ;)

Boomerang stuff interferes with my journey to minimalism

How am I supposed to become a minimalist when DD keeps bringing back stuff that we'd given to her? When DD went off to university, we furnished her condo with stuff collected over the years. These rainbow glasses I'd bought at an auction for only $7 bucks (in a box full of other stuff!) no longer fit in DD's life now that her home includes rambunctious kids. (We later came across a set of these at an antique store for $20 per glass.) Though I love these as much as she still does, I know I won't use them, so they've gotta go. *sigh*

As she was growing up, each year on DD's birthday we included a "good gift," something she could use later in life. For instance, we got her a couple of crystal lamps for her second birthday. Even though she hasn't kept all those gifts she received through the years, she's commented to me that she wished we still did that. Yet another birthday "good gift," this key caddy sat at DD's back door until Grandbaby's high chair recently claimed its floor space.

I'd been wanting a new fireplace tool caddy for ages (though it never made the priority list), so froggy turned the trick!

DD doesn't always bring me cluttering stuff; she brought me this turnip last week. Where she works, people often bring in produce to share. Determined not to let it go to waste, I peeled the turnip right away and cooked it in my small slow cooker with a little sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper.

Oh, happy day--my seed order arrived yesterday. I'm still finding it hard to believe that Hubby (chief gardener around here) agreed to add starting all these seeds to his to-do list!

To brighten up this gray winter day, I'm looking for adventure, so this is where I'm headed next: Top 10 Adventure Blogs. Where are you headed next?

Chocolate chip cookies I can't eat; Buffalo Garbanzo Dip I can

Have to give up caffeine for awhile, so these Lazarus Chocolate Chip Cookies made with dark chocolate are off limits to me. No need for Hubby to suffer!

Cookie dough in the freezer now--yea!

Subbed out garbanzo beans for the chicken in my meatless version of Add A Pinch's recipe for Buffalo Chicken Dip, which we both love. Thanks, Add A Pinch!

Aren't you proud of me? I finally found a way to disguise my last bag of those won't-buy-again mock "meat crumbles." They actually tasted good hidden under the Buffalo Garbanzo Dip on my taco. Honest! 

Hope everyone had a fabulous Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!!

Make do: Fix broken powder makeup

Don't even want to think about how many of my face powder compacts have crashed and burned in my years of wearing makeup. Wish I'd known all along that there IS a way to salvage the shattered mess and keep from wasting my good money!! If interested, check out: KatrinaLomidze.com: How to: Fix your broken powder makeup. Just found a video on youtube too, if you'd like a tutorial of the general process. Happy saving!!

Take with frozen doughnuts; Extreme Frugality guy is back!

My ear's still pounding like the ocean during a hurricane, despite two nights of steroids/decongestants-induced insomnia. Though I'd hoped to get by with a phoned in RX, guess I'm gonna have to go see the doc after all. Meantime, I will wonder about these possible causes found by googling: injury caused by earphones at too high a volume (bought these in hopes to avoid that problem in future) or prolonged hyperextension of neck (a problem for bicyclists and maybe couch-sitters. When I spotted this cause, I realized that since rearranging the furniture, I've got a lot of tension in my neck when watching the telly). Oh, well, it's always something!

On a brighter note, Extreme Frugality writer W. Hodding Carter is back. Used to follow him back before Gourmet Magazine went defunct, but just now realized he's back writing for Gourmet Live. Yea! If looking for some motivation in frugal living, check him out: Extreme Frugality: Well, Nobody's Perfect.
   Time for me to go get updated on the heartbreaking, ongoing saga over at Our Simple Lives. Mark's blog has been amusing me for some time now, but now his loving family is threatened by discrimination/deportation. Thanks, Practical, for giving me the idea to share his story here. Now, why didn't I think of that? (His four beautiful children's faces are enough to compel me to get off this couch and write a letter of support to Secretary Janet Napolitano, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Washington, D.C. 20528.)
   Hope everyone has a splendid weekend. And for all those couch sitters like me: Be Careful Out There!

Wish I hads and had nots

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

Carl Sagan

Wish I had not been wishing there were more hours in the day. Woke up this morn at 2am and couldn't get back to sleep. Ugh! Blame it on the decongestant I'm now on. Guess the bright side is my loss of appetite. I cooked a soup at lunch (a riff on La Cuoca Ciccia's Chard Chick Pea Stew recipe), so I ate a protein bar for supper. As you can see from his plate of Venison Stir Fry, Hubby had something better in mind.

Wish I had bought this motion-sensing nite lite years ago for night trips to the mud/laundry room. Now I don't have to turn on the multi-bulb ceiling fluorescent light when all I need to do is put one little thing in the washer. Btw, LOVING my new camera (Sony Cyber-shot; sure beats the TWO that I tried and then returned. Wish I had bought this one first!

Wish I had tried growing mung bean sprouts long before now. Soo easy--some of these are destined for our salads at lunch today. Not sure if the leaves should be discarded. Anyone know? Guess I'll find out soon enough!

Hope your wish I hads and wish I had nots grow fewer and fewer every day...and I wish the same for me!

Winter blooms freak me out!

For the second year, unseasonably warm temps have forced blooms on this bush in our side yard. Here in western Kentucky, daytime temps have been see-sawing from 50°F one day to 30°F the next. Unexpected blooms in winter freak me out. What if the same happens to our fruit trees? And what will happen to fruit prices if "global weirding" burns all the blooms on trees across the nation?

DD finally gave up some of her beloved, old ratty t-shirts. Around the house (whether hers or ours) she would wear shamefully worn out clothing. Awhile back I finally convinced her to let her Grandma repair the underarm on this blue T...she was wearing it even tho' it had holes in it! I'm of the "always dress nice 'cause you never know what'll happen" school, so you will NOT catch me wearing holey anything. Goes without saying maybe, but I did the happy dance when DD brought these old Ts over. I quickly cut them up into rags, so she won't have a chance to change her mind! ;)

My cousin's barbecued pork was the star at our family get together over at my folks house Friday evening. That man can grill!! Pot lucks are actually my favorite kinda parties--informal feel and delectable food!

   Time to end this post. I'm headed over to Apartment Therapy next, to read "Start 2012 Off Clean: Best Cleaning Tips for a New Year." Please let me know if you come across any URLs worth sharing!

Maybe we'll all eat more veggies than meat in 2050

Had this Cashew Chicken Stir Fry right where I wanted it...until I remembered some leftover restaurant Chicken Pad Thai in the fridge. *sigh*

Last time I bought cashews in bulk, we ate them all toot sweet and none were left for stir fries when needed. So, this time I packed some up for the freezer in snack-sized plastic bags I'd bought years ago...before Hubby retired and I stopped working outside the home. Before I started watching money more closely. Before I started watching how much plastic we used. These will be washed and reused ad infinitum--then NOT replaced. (Also in pic: my baby mung bean sprouts--too young for this stir fry!)

Oh, yes, I did wait until 2012 to buy a calendar so I'd get one 50% off!

This is how my stir fry ended up once the leftover Pad Thai was added. Knew Hubby was sick of the Pad Thai, as he'd already eaten it TWICE; yet, there was still about a cup and a half left.  Believe it or not, I ordered and ate some at the restaurant--that's how much freakin' food they gave me! Though I liked my stir fry better before incorporating the leftovers and adjusting the seasonings to boot, it felt good to know nothing would go to waste.

   Stumbled across "What We’ll Be Eating in 2050" over on Gourmet.com and learned a thing or two. Did you know that "Around the year 2000, the world’s population surpassed 6 billion, and then added a billion more over the next 12 years." I knew we were at 7 billion, just didn't know how quickly we managed to add a billion. The article is at once hopeful and scary, but I agree with the one guy that "we’ll be eating lots more veggies than meat in our meals of the future."
   What do you think we'll be eating in 2050? More veggies? More meat? Soylent Green? ;)

My New Year's Resolution: Do it up right this year!

Captured this gal with her tea tray at an historic hotel in Cincinnati. Pretty sure this was at The Cincinnatian, where we ate lunch in 2009 but didn't have the reservations needed to partake of this tea.

Well, yeah, I made some New Year's resolutions. Just because I rarely keep 'em doesn't mean there's no value in shooting for better habits! So, for what it's worth, here's my list:

1. Do it up right in 2012...meaning: put out the necessary energy to eat better food, enjoy better-planned vacations and host more get togethers, all while spending as little as possible and saving as much as possible.

   Okay, that's it for my list. Impossible in the chasing windmills kinda way? Mebbe, but what have I got to lose by trying?!
   HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!!

Finally can breathe again -- party time!

We went with a carefree tapas-style celebration. Pictured here is Hubby's Garlic Thyme Chicken, alongside some hard cooked eggs with a smoked salmon topping that I made. (Combine 4 ounces of smoked salmon with 1/2 cup mayonnaise, then pipe over hard-cooked eggs.) Sorry, no artsy shots this time around. Hiding behind the chicken are a corkscrew and my mom's medicine box!

FINALLY got to celebrate Christmas with my family! On Christmas eve, Mom had a mild heart attack, but following a heart stent procedure and three grueling nights in CCU, all is good with the mumsy. (I slept in a recliner at her bedside during those nights. Don't know how folks without an advocate get proper care when unable to fend for themselves. Wasn't until the second time I had to go retrieve a nurse that I realized the nurse call buttons on the hospital bed were non-functioning. *sigh*)
   When Mom got home, we had plenty to celebrate! She went from being in the hospital one night to throwing a party the next! Of course, her darling children (*wink*) brought all the food, so our matriarch just got to sit and look pretty while being pampered and fed.

As you can see, taking pics was an afterthought. By the time I thought to take a pic, here's what was left of my Vegetable Empanadas: eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes, cooked down and seasoned with garlic, salt and pepper, then baked in a puff pastry crust.

After spending too many days/nights at the hospital with Mom, it was soo good to be home. For some reason, I had the need to "reclaim" my space, so I scrubbed a floor and decluttered some things on my first day home. Still goaling toward becoming more of a minimalist. These books didn't make the cut--donated them to the library yesterday.  Felt downright cathartic to downsize.

These were some of the keepers.

   Sadly, I learned something yucky about myself: I am a fair-weather friend to green and frugal. In those stressful days spent with mom at the hospital, I forgot my water bottle one day, so drank out of a Styrofoam glass; another day, I ate pop tarts out of the vending machine even tho' I had Clif bars in my bag. When I finally got to stay home, I tossed a few perfectly good foods because I knew they'd go bad before I got to use them...didn't even think about freezing them to use later. Oh, the shame of it! ;)
   No worries, I will cut myself some slack due to the circumstances, but our little family crisis makes clear that it does take time and clear thinking for me to be frugal and green.
   Hope your holidays weren't half so stressful. Around here we now celebrate a new lease on life for my mom's heart.

True to form, I've gotta end with food. For our family's belated Christmas celebration, my "little" brother made bruschetta! (My little 'brudder' is 6'3"!)

Loved baby brother's pâté bruschetta!

   Wishing you and yours a VERY Happy New Year!!

Better than gifts: A Christmas Breakfast

Each holiday season, my Aunt M has a Christmas breakfast to which she invites family and friends. The breakfast is her "gift" to each of us. Gotta love that! We drove my folks and picked up another aunt on the way. The four-hour trip was well worth it. We were well fed, but more importantly, we got to reconnect with family we don't often see. Btw, there were plenty of Christmas sweaters around. I'm not a Christmas sweater kinda gal, but I was wearing Christmas socks! ;)

Okay, tho' I took lousy pictures, the spread really was yummy: breakfast casserole, country ham, homemade wheat bread, lemon cake, homemade cherry and berry cheese braids, a fruit salad, coffee cake made from a 100 year old recipe, plus assorted fudges and some commercial petits fours. My fav was a Yuletide Log; though I didn't manage to get it in the pic, it was the best chocolate roll I've ever eaten.

Found my dumb camera. As I'd suspected, it fell out of my purse under the table at a restaurant we'd visited the other night. Best of all, after realizing I was downright happy over its being lost, I called the store today and discovered that I am still within the return policy. Sayonara, crummy camera!

Lost camera leads to Photo-palooza!

Hoping this Kentucky State Fair showcase will inspire me to get off this computer and go create something equally yummy in my own kitchen!

Well, maybe it was inevitable: I LOST my little camera I'd been dissing lately. Hopefully at some point I'll find it and be able to post the pics I took of the absolutely scrumptious spread that my aunt M presented yesterday at her annual Christmas breakfast. Meantime, here's a mish mash of photos I've collected over the past year but never got around to posting. Mostly a bunch of quirky, disparate sights that caught my eye.

Evidently some things are more important than grammar. Yeah, it's risky laughing over someone else's grammar, when I've no idea how many grammatical errors have slipped past me here. ;)

Our meat slicer has more than paid for itself over the years; keeps us from eating thick slices when a thinner slice will do.

While motorcycling through rural Kentucky, we happened on this tiny polling station.

Some free spirits in Owensboro greet visitors with this "yard art" placed in front of their home. The mechanical horse's tail swishes back and forth. Makes me smile every time I drive by.

Can't even remember in what Kentucky town we happened upon this crooked house, but what a hoot!

Finally got smart and put our commercial dishwasher detergent in a container that lets me spoon out only one tablespoon per load, as recommended by the manufacturer. Using the pour spout on the original container made it too easy to use too much detergent. Yes, I still alternate using a commercial detergent with my cheaper, greener homemade detergent.

Hubby repurposed a couple of wine corks to extend this baby toilet seat, so it would fit onto our elongated toilet seat without slipping back.

 This city's sign, which has been there as along as I can remember, never fails to crack me up!

Because I would always rather look at food than anything else, I'll end with this pic taken at Moonlite BarBQ. This locally owned joint--biggest feedbag in town--is a favorite of out-of-towners, so we're sure to have a family get together there sometime during the holidays.

   There are ten HUGE apples in my kitchen waiting to be baked into a pie. Trouble is, I soo do not feel like cooking today. Wish me luck in getting motivated!

On My Mind: BBQ chicken, Cherries

Still hate my camera; still don't feel like posting. Life goes on here tho'. Still cooking as many meals at home as possible. Mostly because home cooking tastes MUCH better than that found in most of the restaurants around here. Hubby barbecued a (humanely raised) chicken for us the other day and we ate its leftovers tonight. Oh, YEAH! (Btw, Hubby tests a chicken for doneness by twisting the legs; that's why the leg bones are missing.)

Just discovered that I still have some cherries in the freezer! When my disorganized freezer yields such an unexpected gift, I'm thinkin' jam...plan to try a new recipe, but then again, we really liked it last time I made Cherry Jam using the basic recipe on the box. I do plan to check out Rhonda's blog first. Maybe she's got something more interesting for me to do with those cherries? (Photo taken at Kentucky State Fair 2011.)

"Grimm" is on TV...intriguing me. Maybe it's time to get off the PC and watch? Hope something FAR MORE INTERESTING is going on with you tonight. In fact, hope you have a wild and wooly weekend!! Don't you just love the holidays?

On My Mind, conceived by Rhonda at down-to-earth