Category Archives: Recipes

Black Friday

Click on over to the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog to see the easy recipe for these French Toast Rollups that are a fun way to serve breakfast or brunch.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at the home of dear friends with so much good food and good cheer. There were 44 of us!

When we came home last evening we noticed several homes in our neighborhood had put up their Christmas lights. It’s time for the “Season of Light”. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:5 (ESV)

Today is Black Friday. Are you shopping today?

Game Day Snacks

New recipe up for these Spicy Chicken Roll-ups on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog today.
We had an intense wind event in the Puget Sound area yesterday with trees and power lines down all over the region and lots of branches and leaves. Thankfully our power persevered here at this old house. Thousands are still in the dark today.
Our counters are now scheduled for install next Tuesday, the 21st of November. That will work out well for us since we aren’t hosting Thanksgiving day festivities. I’ll still have to choose a day to have a turkey cooking in our oven after Thanksgiving day.
Happy day to you!

Three Days Shy of 7 Months…

These photos were taken Tuesday October 17th. Auntie and Baba were Addy sitting while her mommy was at Bible Study.

We got a kick out of all her expressions and those eyebrows!

Looking at Auntie Katie and reaching for her hand.

We were tiring her out.

Tuesday the guys made a run to the dump and then were in the forest getting a supply of wood with a permit. When they brought the Lodge Pole Pines home they cut it down into sixteen inch rounds to Chop later.  I was watching Addy while all the wood activity went on so I didn’t get a photo of the wood. After they cut and stacked it we got ready for dinner out at our favorite Mexican restaurant in Chewelah, El Ranchito.

Addy looks like a pro in the restaurant highchair. The padded high chair and shopping cart seat covers are such a great invention. I found this one in near new condition at Goodwill for $3.99. This was another full day with everyone dropping into bed early.

Back to the present: Our kitchen is ready for measurements to make templates to cut and prepare the quartz for installation. The new sink arrived today and the new cook top arrived last Friday. We picked the tile company we are going with for the back splash. We won’t purchase the tile till after the counters are installed. I’m parting with some items that have been on my counters forever and a day. I hope to get good photos for the before and after.

Today is Halloween. No tricks but I have a treat for you over at Mennonite Girls Can Cook. Click here to get the recipe for this treat…

I’m looking forward to seeing all the cute little trick or treaters tonight and shouting out a hello to their parents standing back and watching them approach our door. I’ll try to keep track as to how many come. I’ve got my old tupperware bowl full to the brim with a variety of candy. Do you get many trick or treaters?

Apple Walnut Crisp

Click over to Mennonite Girls Can Cook for Flashback Friday featuring my Apple Walnut Crisp.

I think I’ll use the same recipe using some of our ripe pears. It’s a recipe we enjoy.

Yesterday Dear and I worked hard for several hours moving things around at this old house and taking some things out to the garage to store. Before I could take photos Dear had things moved about. I’ll share some before and after photos soon.

Hello September! We’ll soon be singing that great Beatles tune with these words in the lyrics, “Will you still need me, will you still feed me”.

Blueberry Cobbler

Head on over to Mennonite Girls Can Cook to see the recipe for this cobbler. I like it because you can use frozen or fresh fruit and the cake topping doesn’t get soggy. I made a larger one with a mix of apples and blueberries, too. Serve it cake side up or cake side down.

They say we are finally going to get some relief from our dry days and heat and smoke filled skies soon. I hope so.

Marinated Cheese Platter

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Click on over to Mennonite Girls Can Cook for the instructions to put together this Marinated Cheese Platter.  It’s easy and great for a crowd.

Hope your last day of 2016 is filled with good things and here’s a prayer for 2017…

A New Year’s Prayer

May God make your year a happy one!
Not by shielding you from all sorrows and pain,
But by strengthening you to bear it, as it comes;
Not by making your path easy,
But by making you sturdy to travel any path;
Not by taking hardships from you,
But by taking fear from your heart;
Not by granting you unbroken sunshine,
But by keeping your face bright, even in the shadows;
Not by making your life always pleasant,
But by showing you when people and their causes need you most,
and by making you anxious to be there to help.
God’s love, peace, hope and joy to you for the year ahead.

Anon.

Everything Nice Five…

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1. For my Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice Friday post I’ll start with this Pumpkin Spice Cake that’s easy to make. I posted it on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog this week and you can click HERE to get the recipe.

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In tandem with my cake above is this collage. Do you have a Jiffi-Sift? We’ve never given ours a name but everyone in the family knows what to grab when you want to lightly dust powdered sugar on anything like French Toast and Spice Cake. I have a post about my Tupperware Jiffi-Sift here. Some of you call powdered sugar icing sugar.

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2. On a nice day it’s good to take a little drive to see something different from your regular views. This was taken from the car while we traveled on Highway 9 north past Snohomish. That’s Mount Baker covered with snow and just beyond are our Canadian neighbors.

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3. Never stop singing! That’s my motto amongst a few others. This is our little girl (sweet and sassy) singing at her wedding. Photo credit to Jeremy Leffel.

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4. Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice that’s what little girls are made of. Continuing on with my Friday theme this week I’m sharing this news again because it’s worthy of repeating. We are grandparents for the first time and our granddaughter should be born sometime in late March or early April if she decides to be late. We are praying for a healthy babe and uncomplicated delivery.

5. And here is this next photo my sister took of my dear old pop who is 93 and is carrying on. Still enjoying his recliner and making jigsaw puzzles. When I call him he says “I’m getting weaker, but I’m okay dochenka”. Dochenka is an endearing word for daughter in Russian. Then he always asks us to pray for him.

10570497_10211352172425902_7840964481559702568_nThankful for these nice things in my life: Cake and other sweet treats, views to enjoy, daughters that delight, new life to anticipate with joy, old Pop to cherish.

What are some of your favorite things that you are thankful for?

Linking up to Friday’s Fave Five with Susanne and Foodie Friday and Everything Else at Rattlebridge Farm.

Signs, signs…

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This was a sign at the grocery store I frequent and it was enough to motivate me to buy the ingredients and throw them in the slow cooker the next day. I didn’t go wide enough on my photo to show a little tag sign that said “Take a photo”. I thought this was a smart marketing idea. They also positioned the sign over a case full of the ingredients just as you entered the store.

I changed the method up a bit and added some ingredients and it turned out good. What I did differently…

I seasoned the meat and seared it on all sides. I put all the vegetables including 2 stalks of celery cut into thirds into the pot, set the seared meat on top of the veggies. I mixed 3/4 cups beef broth, 1/4 cup red wine, the Worcestershire, salt and pepper together and used this liquid to de-glaze the pan that I seared the meat in and then poured all this liquid over the beef and veggies in the pot. I left out the cornstarch and water but after 6 hours I took the meat out of the pot and I added a mix of 2 Tablespoons flour and a couple tablespoons of water (mixed well) to the pot mixed it in well and let the pot stay on high for another 30 minutes. Then I put the pot on low and added the meat back to the pot and let it sit till we were ready to eat. We had good crusty bread with the pot roast.

Since this is a food post I’d like to share two other recipes that I posted recently to Mennonite Girls Can Cook Blog.

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Chile Relleno Breakfast/Brunch bake. Click to see recipe. The second time I made this I added a layer of cooked Chorizo on top of the chilies before baking and that was a nice addition.

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Today on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook Blog I posted this simple Tuna Noodle Skillet meal.

Hope you are reading this post on a full stomach!

Thank you to Lesley for signs, signs. Click over to join in!

A Merry Hummus Appetizer

Do you need a fun idea for a Christmas Appetizer?

 

I posted the directions on how to make these hummus Christmas Trees on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook Blog.

You can be more creative than me with some diced cucumber and diced red bell pepper to make more ornaments and garland. A yellow pepper star would be cute on top, too.

We’ve had lots of rain here in the Pacific Northwest with many rivers at flood levels. We are getting another round of rain today. It’s great decorating and baking weather if we keep our power! How are things in your neck of the woods?

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007-2015 hostage on their site. All my photos that I stored and uploaded from that site are now big ugly black and grey boxes with a message to pay big bucks to get them restored to my blog. It will take me a long time to restore thousands of posts.