quiche

Sunday (12/29) was not a very good day here in SCCL.  A friend of mine was in a horrific car accident on Thursday, the day after Christmas.  From what little I understand, there was a stranded car on the road, and her husband swerved to miss the car.  Both Jan and her husband (for CT folks, this is NOT Jan & Walt) were airlifted to the hospital, but Jan was on life support and died Sunday morning.  She was in Stitch & Chat and Volunteers, and was one of the people who modeled my entrelac sweater when I wore it for the first time…and she looked the best in it J.  She was very tall and thin and just looked great.  S&C was on hiatus last week, but Jan and I spoke several times as she helped me out with a new resident who lived near her, and needed a lot of support.  When we were talking about her helping, she said ‘I feel like this is what God wants me to do’.  I can’t believe how quickly things can change…and my heart breaks for her husband who will surely live that moment over and over again for a long time to come.  Jan was a wonderful, kind and caring person and she will be missed. 

I read a lot in the afternoon, an interesting and very different book called PARASITE by Mira Grant.  It was an incredibly interesting look at the possible future of mankind…and thanks to my parasitology course in college…it gave me the CREEPS!

Dinner for Michael was spaghetti & meatballs (when he heard what he was having, he said ‘whose house are we going to’, because I only make it about once every 2 years!).  Dinner for me was a broccoli:

and caramelized onion quiche:

 

Does the crust look funny to you?  It should, it’s 2 burrito wrappers….convenient, easy and WAY less calories than a regular crust…it was yummy.  We spent the evening watching TV.

studio before & after

Michael had a frost delay on Saturday (12/28) and they did a shot gun start at 10 AM here at SCCL.  After breakfast, I continued cleaning in my studio and made great progress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After vacuuming the whole thing, it truly looks great!  Michael was not happy when he got home at 3 PM with an 89 L.  He said he didn’t have anything even close to a par on the front 9.  We both got cleaned up and headed over to a neighbors (Lynn & Mitch) for an open house.  They had a ton of really delicious food and we knew lots of people there as well.  Apparently Mitch has been doing pottery for many years and several of his pieces were stunning.  We left early to make it over to Sally & Jimmy’s to meet their friends who were in from CT.  Then it was home to read and relax and watch TV for the rest of the night.

clean up in studio, pizza

I headed out early on Friday (12/27) with 2 goals in  mind and accomplished them both with relative ease.  I hit WALMART and bought Christmas cards at 1/2 off (and incidentally picked up some 1/2 off peppermint patties J), and then went to Michael’s for some 1/2 off Christmas food bags and boxes.  Now I should be all set for next year’s food gifts!  I had lunch when I got home, and started working on the studio.  When the last craft fair was over, I just brought everything home and dumped it there, and went into my candy & cookie making mode.  But we will have a lot of people over for New Year’s Eve and generally people head downstairs to play pool….so it was finally time to put everything away.  The pool table has looked like this for most of December:

and got changed to this:

Michael was so excited that he actually played a couple games of pool while I worked on the rest of the room.

The bottom of the stairs started as this:

all of the polar fleece kits I scored for $2.50 at the Spring's sale
MONTHS ago!

and now looks like this:

 

 

We had pizza for dinner (with leftover dough from the rolls earlier this week)

 

and settled in to watch the movie UP (which wasn’t easy as it was filled with dogs….and Cookie barked at every one  L) and to stuff letters into our Christmas cards.

Michael’s tee off time on Thursday (12/26) wasn’t until 10:45, so he had a leisurely morning.  Janice surprised me with a call at 9 (we didn’t have our usual Wednesday talk because it was Christmas) and it was delightful to talk to her for an hour.  Otherwise, it was redding up, upstairs and down.  The upstairs looks great now, but the downstairs still looks like bomb city!  At 5 PM we headed over to Debra & John’s for dinner and game night.  Debra made chili for dinner and it was great, then it was on to the games.  We played Mexican Train, Phase 10, LCR, and Doodle Dice.  We had an absolute BLAST and can’t wait to play some of the games again.  Their son, John Charles, was there as well and he was positively delightful.

Merry Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!  We started the day with coffee cake and mimosas for breakfast:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and addressed our Christmas cards (with a little help)

 

while watching HOLIDAY INN.  We saw FOR YOUR COINSIDERATION over a lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches, and ended the day with TOP HAT and puffy things.  A perfect and wonderful Christmas day.

lasagna, quiche, rolls, sandwich bread, Elsie & Cookie

CHRISTMAS EVE!!! - Michael was happy to be able to play golf on Tuesday, even though the course was rather soggy.  He said he hit every fairway except one, so his driver is still doing an excellent job.  I figured Jan would need to go to the store, so I gave her a call and we ended up going together.  I spent the afternoon in the kitchen.  I made up 4 pans of lasagna:

 

one for Donna & Lee, one for Anne & Bryce, one for us and one for anyone's future needs.  Then I made 2 mushroom and spinach quiches:

 

one for Donna & Lee and one for us, a pan of rolls (1/2 to Donna & Lee and 1/2  for us)

which my honey took a picture of as I flew out the door to
delivery Donna & Lee's dinner!

and sandwich bread:

 

(we gave away 1/2 a loaf to one of our neighbors).  I took stuff over to Donna & Lee’s (and she seems to be able to get around a bit since her surgery) and came home and had dinner with my honey.  He really wanted to go to the movies to see AMERICAN HUSTLE, but didn’t want to leave me alone.  I told him the truth…I was stressed because I hadn’t wrapped any of his gifts and I would gratefully relax and do that while he was gone.  I grabbed last year’s Christmas cards (we use images from those for our TO/FROM cards) a hole punch, a pen, my gift bags and all of his gifts and put on a movie and had a wonderful time figuring out which Santa his gifts came from (we use clues for our gift tags).  In other parts of the house ‘not a creature was stirring, not even’ Cookie & Elsie!

amaryllis, take out boxes

I ran some soup and rolls over to Donna early Sunday (12/22) morning.  She had surgery on her knee on Friday and Charlyn (their daughter and primary care giver for after the surgery) started throwing up on Saturday and had to go home!  Donna said she is doing well and is not in much pain.  Michael and I relaxed in the living room, eating breakfast and reading the paper for a couple of hours.

I thought I’d post a new picture of the amaryllis…it’s really shooting up:

I spent the afternoon working on putting away everything from the craft sale and starting to get my sewing room back into shape, while Michael watched the PANTHERS football game (it was a doozy) where they pulled it out at the very end!  Unfortunately I really didn’t make much progress in the studio…I have a lot more to go.

For dinner, I made Michael one of his favorite dinners….my 7 minute shrimp alfredo, while I had leftover Chinese.  Then, we settled in for A Christmas Story (you’ll shoot your eye out!) and some snuggling.

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 Monday (12/22) dawned rainy and dark, so Michael’s golf was cancelled.  I got a few things done in the morning before leaving at 10:30.  I made several stops (mostly food gifts and my hand cream) to several people before heading over to THE FLYING BISCUIT for lunch with Lisa.  She asked if we could have a holiday luncheon, and this is where we picked.  We both ended up ordering the same thing, which was wonderful!  It was a BBQ chicken burrito with onions and peppers and cheese (we both nixed the collard greens) and tomatillo sauce on top.  Even though we were there for lunch, I don’t think we stopped talking the entire time!  I hit Michael’s on the way home and scored some beautiful ‘take out’ boxes for next year’s cookies:

 

They were 1/2 off, but I only bought a few…I’m hoping there will still be some left (and that they will be cheaper!) after Christmas!  Michael and I got a bit of reading done in the afternoon and had a simple pot pie for dinner.We watched SNOW WHITE in the evening and I got a little knitting done.

Elsie & Cookie a trois

Michael left for golf on Saturday (12/21) and although he wasn’t happy with his eventual score….he said his new driver was doing very well for him.  I spent the morning and early afternoon watching TV and knitting with a couple of friends:

Michael finished up his wonton soup for dinner and I read for a bit of the evening while he watched his (very bloody and violent) TV shows, then we got together for a bunch of BIG BANG repeats (we’re trying to see them all, since we didn’t watch it for the first several years it was on) before going to bed.

jam/cheese log, Larry & Peggy, Sue & Dennis

Michael and I made a quick run to the chiropractor Thursday morning (12/19), then I dropped him off at Reagan’s for breakfast (he walked home from there) and I continued on to quilting.  I turned on the ovens first thing and 20 minutes later the jam/cheese logs were done.  I actually remembered to take a picture before they were all gone:

 

We had 20 people at quilting and I think everyone really enjoyed their breakfast!  I got a bit of knitting done, and a lot of socializing, and dropped the rest of the jam/cheese log off at the library on the way home.  I was home by 1 and for some reason both Michael and I were tired, so we took a nap in the afternoon (ah…the joys of retirement!)  We had Chinese for dinner and enjoyed some TV and knitting in the evening.

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Friday morning (12/20) we were up and out early for an ear doctor appointment for me.  My ear has been feeling blocked for about 2 weeks, so I finally decided it wasn’t going away on its own (which is ALWAYS my fervent hope for ANY medical discomfort!!!)  Anyway, I went to a doctor recommended by Jan and liked him immediately.  He said there was only a small amount of wax in my ear, but it was actually on my eardrum, so was preventing it from vibrating.  Out came the tiniest vacuum you ever saw and whoosh….problem solved.  Michael and I stopped for breakfast on the way home and then he headed off to the golf course, while I got our dinner (Italian Wedding Soup) going in the crockpot.  After that I finished another run of turtles and 2 runs of homemade Bailey’s and dough for rolls for dinner.  By then Michael was home and we packed up around 20 food gifts for delivery to the Lake House staff.  Once we got home and I got to relax a little and polish off a breezy read called SUMMER RENTAL by Mary Kaye Andrews.  Then it was time to get cleaned up and greet our guests:

 

Larry & Peggy

Sue & Dennis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had soup and rolls for dinner, then played PIT for a spirited hour before stopping for dessert.  I was going to bake cookies, but decided to just put out a platter of all of the goodies I have been making….and our guests really seemed to enjoy that.  After noshing on dessert, we decided to calm the evening down with several games of Mexican Train dominoes (Michael and I haven’t played in forever!!) and by then it was late and everyone said goodnight!

hot cocoa cookies, caramel pecan bars, jam/cheese logs

Michael left for golf on Wednesday (12/18) and I finally got some cookies made.  I made the dough for the hot cocoa cookies DAYS ago…but just never baked them…so today was the day.  You bake a chocolate cookie bottom, then place 1/2 a marshmallow on them and bake a few more minutes:

then you drizzle a chocolate mixture on top and add a few sprinkles:

 The MINUTE I saw these cookies on the internet…I said “Joanne’….that’s the friend that picks me up every week for Stitch & Chat.  Usually on my recipes I make notes that say ‘excellent’ or ‘easy to make’ or something like that.  On this recipe…I just wrote ‘OMG!!!!’  Her hubby (who does woodworking projects for me) doesn’t like chocolate AT ALL…..so I made him some Caramel Pecan Bars:

 

That took me until almost 2 PM, when I hopped in the car and headed over to Nancy H’s house.  We haven’t seen each other in FOREVER…and it was wonderful to sit and chat and chat and chat!  When I came home, Michael was just going out for a walk with the dog, but I asked him to make it a short one as we were going over to visit with Sally & Jimmy.  I also asked him if he had tried the new cookies…and he said ‘OH MY GOD!!!  I had 2 and they are great’.  I packed up a bunch of goodies for delivery along the way, and we spent a wonderful hour with S&J talking and drinking tea!  We were home by 6 and had soup and cornbread for dinner, then settled in to watch TV for a bit.  Janice called (she has been in class during the day for 2 weeks, so we’ve had our weekly phone call in the evening) and we talked for about an hour.  I put together 2 jam/cheese logs after that (for breakfast at quilting):

 and settled in again around 9:45 to watch a bit of TV before bed.

baby sweater

Michael headed up to the golf course early on Tuesday (12/17) to hand out many, many food gifts…which everyone was totally excited about!   My kitchen buffet is slowly being cleared of bags, but since I’m still making more (and since we haven’t given out all of our gifts), it’s still looking pretty full.  We also got 3 flat rate boxes packed full of goodies that Michael took to the post office at lunch time.  I spent most of the morning updating the SCCL website with Volunteer minutes and other documents necessary to the running of the club.  I wanted to make sure everything is available to the incoming secretary….I don’t keep hard copies of anything, it’s all electronic.  Joanne picked me up at 1 PM for Stitch & Chat and there was a LOT of ‘free’ yarn (yarn people have leftover from various projects, seemed like mostly baby blankets) that I picked up for future baby sweaters.  Paula sat with me and we got all of it wound and it gave us a nice chance to chat as well.  I got cleaned up once we got home and Larry & Evelyn picked us up at 6 for dinner and a movie.  The movie was PHILOMENA (with Judi Dench) and it was INCREDIBLE!!!  It was based on a true story and we all really loved it.  We were home by 10 and read for just a bit before bed.

By the way, I finished another baby sweater (no, I’m not lightening fast, I was working on this new one while I was having problems with that last pink one….so they were keeping pace with each other…it just took one more day to finish the brown):

 

The surprising thing to me was that I don't like the color of the sweater (yuck, brown!), but several people at S&C commented that they really liked it!  It's like Jan always says....I can't just work in colors I like J.

minty crisps, Elsie

Michael left for golf on Monday (12/16) and I left for my Volunteer meeting.  This is the last meeting I will be writing up the minutes for…next year I will be co-president.  That means this month I have to spend a bit of time posting everything out on our homepage (minutes, guidelines for the drives, etc).  I made a quick stop at the library and grocery store after the meeting, finally getting home around 1.  I completed 2 runs of minty crisps:

 

oreos......

plus rice krispies.....

plus minty chocolate equals YUM!

 and when Michael got home from golf, we spent several hours driving around in our golf cart, handing out some of our gifts, and getting to talk with our friends.  We had leftover pizza for dinner and watched TV and knit for the rest of the evening.  When we went to bed, we found out Elsie’s new favorite place to sleep.  Michael got a pull in his blue sweater last time he wore it, and it has been living on my bureau ever since to be fixed.  Apparently it is JUST the spot for a nap:

 

Field of Flowers, baby sweater

It was a cold and rainy day on Saturday (12/14), so instead of golfing, Michael and Phil headed off to a golf club demonstration at one of the stores, and Michael came home with a new driver.  I got Mexican Chicken Soup in the crockpot, weighed out all of the ingredients for corn bread, and made a new cookie dough (hot chocolate cookies) that needed to chill.  I did a couple of sympathy notes I had been procrastinating about, and then settled in to read my book:THE STRANGERS ON MONTAGUE STREET by Karen White, the 3^rd in the series.  I believe these were recommended to me by Ginny, which is both wonderful and terrible.  Wonderful because I have loved reading the books….but terrible because when I went to order the 4^th book from the library…I found out it won’t even be published until January 7^th!!!!!  That means the library probably won’t even have it for another year!!!  Oh well, guess I’ll have to move on to another series for a bit.  At 3 PM I got cleaned up and put together the cornbread to bake.  Lisa and Dean arrived at 6:15 and we had soup and bread for dinner, then headed off to Rock Hill to see A BROADWAY CHRISTMAS CAROL.  This was basically the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, with songs from many, many Broadway musicals with the words changed to fit the stories.  It was very cleverly done, especially as there were only 3 people in the cast.  Lisa and Dean stopped in briefly when we got home, then it was a little reading and off to bed.

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We had a leisurely breakfast in front of the fire on Sunday )(12/15), then Phil came over to help Michael hang this:

I finished this over a year ago as part of a challenge in Scrap Happy Quilters (in case you can't tell, the flowers are 3-D), but it’s been out on loan ever since.  Now it’s hanging in the bedroom and I love it.  I was supposed to work on more Christmas food, but just didn’t feel like it, so I sat and read for part of the afternoon while Michael was out golfing, testing out his new driver.  We had crab stuffed flounder and baked potatoes for dinner, then watched WHITE CHRISTMAS.  I knit during the movie and finished another baby sweater:

 

It's out of pink chenille type yarn and is super soft.

cacti, pizza, shredded chicken

Friday morning (12/13) my honey headed out to do a bunch of errands for me (he is so sweet….he said it was a ZOO!) and I got busy with my last runs of caramel popcorn and sugared pecans (no pics of those, you’ve already seen them.  Instead I took another picture of Michael’s Christmas cacti, both of which are now blooming):

 

I got my popcorn and pecans done (this time the oven was only on for 3 hours!) and even got to read in the afternoon.  I finished THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB by Lily Koppel, an interesting true story about the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo crews and how their wives had to cope with what was happening.  We got a chicken/bacon/artichoke/spinach pizza from Papa Murphy’s (which you bake at home):

 

 And just before the pizza came out, I retrieved my chicken breasts which had been cooking on the back porch, and got them shredded and frozen:

 

If there is an easier way to make cooked, shredded chicken for my recipes than using my crockpot and Kitchen Aid mixer, I don’t know what it could be.  The whole thing including loading the crockpot in the morning and shredding and washing everything at night took literally 15 minutes.  Anyway, we enjoyed out pizza and relaxed and watched TV and knit for the rest of the night.

Lisa & challah, sandwich bread

I just have to tell you this story, because I believe it is the very definition of serendipity!!!  Last Thursday I stopped in the library to return some books.  I saw my friend Jan setting up books for the sale and went in to talk to her and to give a casual glance at the books.  I was only glancing because my house is FULL of books (especially cookbooks) and I really don’t need any more.  Anyway, as you probably know, I am a big fan of King Arthur Flour (and cookies) and I saw the KAF cookie compendium and thought to myself ‘I’ll just stop up on Saturday and see if it is still here’ (Saturday was the big book sale, and friends of the library get in an hour before the rest of the hoi polloi which includes me J).  Well, one thing and another happened on Saturday and I never remembered to stop.  On Tuesday (after the Saturday sale) I was again at the library picking up books and thought I would check the book sale room to see if my book was there…I even asked the librarian if they kept cookbooks in a special place and she helped me look for it to no avail L.  OK….I decide that God was telling me I didn’t need yet another cookbook, particularly a cookie book as I probably have more of them than any other.  As you already know, I spent the entire day Wednesday in the kitchen, working on candy.  At one point in the afternoon, I see Willa (president of the Thursday quilt group) come up to my front door (which we generally leave open, with just the storm door closed), open it up and place something inside the door…I go and look…what do you think?  It is the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion book that I had seen before the sale started!!!!!!!!!   I am FLABBERGASTED!!!  We talked later and she said she went to the sale late, and when she saw that book, she immediately said “Deb’!!!  Is that an incredible story or what!?!?!?

Anyway, Thursday morning (12/12) I get all packed up and head off to quilting.  I have 3 gifts, and 3 thank you notes….all written on the FABULOUS, personalized, quilting notecards that Ginny has made for me.  Naturally, the 3 quilters are PEA GREEN with envy over these cards J, not to mention the goodies I gave them.  I had a wonderful time at quilting, and Jan and Lisa and I met several other quilters for lunch at 521 BBQ before heading home.  Lisa wanted to learn to make challah bread, so she followed me home for a lesson.  Lisa put together the challah dough, then since we also needed sandwich bread (and I wanted her to see how the doughs differed) she mixed up that as well.  By then it was time to shape her dough and head for home so that she could bake it up:

 

She sent me a picture of her baked dough:

it's beautiful, isn't it?

 

and here’s ours:

 

 

along with the sandwich bread. 

Loree & Reg and Angie & Kevin shared the loaf in the back!

For some reason (I think it was Wednesday finally catching up with me) I couldn’t keep my eyes open and I headed to bed at 9:30.

caramel popcorn, sugared pecans

Michael had a golf delay on Wednesday morning(12/11) due to frost, so I was already working before he left.  My oven went on at 10 AM and didn’t go off until 4:30 PM.  Barrie came over for a visit in the morning, and we talked and talked while I worked on making Donna’s caramel popcorn:

making sure the coating is dry before bagging up

 

and sugared pecans:

getting the pecans wet so that the coating will adhere

they've been baking for an hour...the
library people said 'these are as good
as you could buy anywhere!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made several runs of each and here they are all bagged up:

only 21 more gifts to go and I will be all done!

Barrie is doing Christmas at her house, and looked through several of my cook books for recipes.  I have one cookbook of miniature desserts and we’ve decided that we’ll take one morning a month in 2014, and make one of the recipes from that book!  I took a short trip to the library to drop off some goodies, and you should have heard them actually moaning as they sampled the sugared pecans, caramel popcorn and white trash.  Michael came home with an 85 for his golfing efforts and took the dog for a walk after running a quick errand for me.  He decided his back was really hurting and he was still a bit cold from being out golfing, so he took a long soak in the whirlpool tub.  That gave Susan and me a chance to have a nice, long chat about nothing in particular…we just haven’t seen each other in awhile!  Michael and I had leftovers for dinner (all of my Italian Wedding Soup is gone) and then watched TV for the rest of the evening.  I’m happy to say that all of the yarn I ripped out of my newest baby sweater has been knit back in…and correctly too J.