Merry Christmas!

I don't know where the last month has gone.


We spent Christmas Eve at my friend Judy's house.


I got up at about 9:30. Two of the girls were already up and getting anxious to open presents but we waited until David was up and showered. The girls seemed pleased with their presents. I got a beautiful bracelet from David:

I made a delicious meal in record time. David wanted beef instead of turkey. I got a Santa Maria Tri-Tip Roast from Trader Joe's and we had the Gruyere cauliflower we had at Thanksgiving and smashed red potatoes. It was really good and took a lot less time than the traditional turkey and all the trimmings. After lunch David and I went for a walk along Franklin Street in Chapel Hill to work off some of the calories. I like walking along Franklin Street when it is deserted. We came home and had Mrs Smith's Apple Pie and cream and then everyone did their own thing.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to the one or two people who might see this blog!
I am sure I will be spending tomorrow in the kitchen. I have a few things already prepared but it still seems to take me the whole day to prepare the food. And then it gets eaten in five minutes.
I'll post a menu tomorrow so that I can refer to it again next year if it was good.

Here's our menu:

Roast Turkey Breast (always allow far more time for this to cook than you think it'll take)

Sausage, Mushroom and Chestnut Stuffing

Colcannon (Paula Deen recipe) -- I made this when my parents were visiting and froze some to save time on Turkey Day

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Cauliflower with cheese sauce (Cooking Light recipe)

Sweet Potato Casserole

Gravy

Homemade Cranberry Sauce

Dessert was a Toll House Pie that I made before Turkey Day and froze

Fudgy Cups

Since we moved I have not been able to find my little photo album full of Penzey's Spices recipes. I just don't have the patience to sort through all of the stuff in the spare room which is where I think it is. I assumed I would not be able to make the Penzey's Fudgy Cups that I like to make each Christmas. However, I am more organized than I give myself credit for and I actually typed up a copy on my laptop. I am posting the recipe here so that I will always have a record of it. These little cups are so delicious and very easy to make. I have a little gadget that I love from Pampered Chef that makes the little indentation for the filling. http://www.pamperedchef.com/our_products/catalog/product.jsp?productId=184&categoryCode=BK It doesn't take much to make me happy!

So here's the recipe:

Fudgy Cups
From Penzey’s Spices

Is it a candy, or is it a cookie? You be the judge. Fudgy Cups can be made with many different flavorings – change them to your taste. Use all vanilla for a yummy chocolate filling, add orange for a zesty, rich filling, or almond for a smooth nutty flavor. If you like chocolate covered cherries, put half a maraschino cherry in the bottom of each cup before adding the filling.

Pastry:

¾ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup natural cocoa powder 1/3 cup butter, softened
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup sugar

Filling:

¼ cup butter, melted
½ cup sugar
1/3 cup natural cocoa powder
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. vanilla, orange or almond extract
12 maraschino cherries, halved (optional)

Sift together the flour and cocoa, set aside. In a small bowl, beat the butter, cream cheese, and sugar until fluffy. Add the flour mixture and beat until combined. The dough will be sticky, so refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 325˚and lightly spray two mini-muffin pans with vegetable oil spray. Divide the dough into 24 balls and press each into the bottom and up the sides, about 2/3 of the way up) of the muffin tin. Mix together the melted butter, cocoa, egg, vanilla, and additional flavoring of choice. Mix until well blended. If using cherries, place one half of a cherry, cut side up, in each muffin cup. Spoon about 1 tsp. of filling in each cup. Bake for 18 minutes, or until the filling is set. Cool for 10 minutes in the pans. Remove from pans and cool completely on a wire rack.

Prep. Time: 45 minutes (includes chilling time)
Baking time: 18 minutes
Yield: 24

Dinner tonight -- Monday 17th

Tonight I am going to make the Chicken, Mushroom and Spinach Bake from the October 2008 Delicious magazine. It gave a recipe for make-ahead chicken that gave you three portions of chicken to use at a future date to make dinner preparation easier. The chicken is cooked and seasoned and onion etc. is added. I just need to thaw it, add cooked pasta, mushrooms, spinach and cheese and bake it. Dinner will be quick and I'll have a little more free space in my jam-packed freezer.

Meals in the Freezer

I have so much food in my freezer. I need to make a list of meals that are in there so that I can use the food up and so that it will be easier to plan dinners.

Bag of Spiced Citrus Dump Chicken (recipe from oamc.8m.com) -- using on 11/19/08 with roasted carrots
Bag of Garlic Lemon Dump Chicken
Lots and lots of frozen chicken breasts
Frozen lasagna (eaten on 11/15)
Chicken Portabello and another kind of prepared chicken from Trader Joe's Chicken to make recipes in October 2008 Delicious
Frozen salmon
Puff pastry (for chicken with boursin cheese, Southwest Chicken . .)
Pie crusts (for quiches, pies etc.)
Turkey burgers
Ground beef
Ground turkey
Beef round
Cheese tortellini (eaten)
Stuffing
Meatballs
Soup mix
Peppers
Green beans
Tomato paste
Turkey breast
Colcannon
Cube steak

Peppermint cheesecake
Cream puffs

I need to get some beef to make sauerbraten from the penzeys.com site and also for the Italian pot roast in the Art Smith Kitchenlife book.

Menu for Thanksgiving:
Turkey breast (in freezer)
Colcannon (in freezer)
Stuffing (in freezer) -- add sausage meat, mushrooms, possibly chestnuts (bought at TJ's on 11/15)
Brussels Sprouts -- buy
Carrots
Cauliflower (from Cooking Light)
Gravy
Cranberry sauce
Bread rolls

Pecan pie (from Cooking Light)
Cream puffs
Cheesecake
Toll House Pie (baked on 11/16 and frozen)

What a terrible blogger I am!

I haven't updated this blog for months. No excuses just laziness. I could have blogged about our trip to Disney World. I could have blogged about our trip to Atlantic Beach, NC. I could have blogged about the four mile walk in the Duke Forest that I take every day. Or the lovely meals, bread and baked goods I've made. But I just haven't got into the habit. One of these days it'll happen.

Where does the time go?

I can't believe it is already the middle of June. I had big plans for this blog but unfortunately I didn't follow through with them.

We no longer have the cat we planned to adopt as he had feline leukemia. Very sad.

Our oldest daughter graduates from high school tomorrow. I can't believe we are old enough to have a daughter in college.

We have been having some really hot weather lately. At least five days when the temperature went over 100. And it's not even summer yet!

Oops!

I was hoping to post every day and somehow three weeks have gone by without a single post.

I will make an effort to start posting again this evening.

Still tweaking . . .

I am still tweaking this blog as I've never had one before and I'm not sure how I want it to look. I have been doing research and looking at other blogs and I think one thing that I will change is the size of the pictures. I thought they looked OK but after looking at other blogs I see that they are a little small. Bigger definitely has more impact.

I'll practise by showing a photo of the cat that is in the process of adopting us. He has decided to live on our porch but refuses to set foot in the house. He is getting more and more friendly every day. When he first came to visit us he would hiss whenever I put food or water out for him. Now he doesn't hiss and he actually likes to be stroked before he starts eating his food. And he puts up with being groomed. He had been a stray in the neighborhood since before we moved in. We haven't agreed on a name for him yet. Here he is:

Out to lunch!

School vacation is almost over. I decided to take my youngest out to lunch today while her older sisters are at driver's ed as I don't get to have much one on one time with her. We went to:

Red Robin is a favorite of the whole family as the food is so good and there's so much choice. But I think the biggest draw is their shakes. They are so big that you can get two glasses full. I don't know why they bother ordering food too as the shakes look like a meal in themselves.

Every time we go I vow I'm going to try something else but I always order the Teriyaki Chicken Burger. It reminds me of a burger I used to get at Friendly's years ago and I love the combination of the teriyaki sauce, the grilled pineapple and the Swiss cheese with the chicken. My daughter had what has become her "usual" -- the soup and salad combo with the clam chowder and the chicken caesar wrap. Unfortunately we didn't get to talk much as there was a TV on showing cartoons and no kid can resist watching those.

I have beef, carrots and potatoes in the crockpot for tonight but I have a feeling that two of us won't be very hungry!

No fish and chips!

Last night I had a craving for real English fish and chips and mushy peas. We drove for over half an hour to London Fish and Chips in Cary, NC only to discover that it was closed and it looks like it might have closed down forever. We had to eat so we went next door to The Original NY Pizza. http://www.theoriginalnypizza.com/ It was really good. Probably the best pizza we've had since we moved here. Of course, we ordered too much food so we have a lot of Sicilian pizza in the fridge.

The camera is here!

My camera has finally arrived. I made a simple dinner yesterday instead of a big ta-da dinner as I wanted plenty of time to play with my new toy.

I made Hoisin Honey Chicken from my "The New Creative Crock-Pot Cookbook" by Rival and the sides were roasted Brussels sprouts and carrots and brown rice.

Here's a picture of the vegetables before:

And after:

My photography skills leave a lot to be desired but I hope I can improve once I am more familiar with the camera.