Sunday Stash #92

First off, this delightful date nut pudding. It's really a moist cake, but I highly recommend it. My mother-in-law served this cake to me many moons ago and I flipped! It was so good! She adds a dollop of cool whip or whipped cream but it's great without.

It took her years to give me the family recipe. I think she wanted to make sure I was a "keeper!" Ha!

I always forget about this cake and everyone loves it. It was my husband's paternal grandmother's recipe.

Date Pudding

1 cup boiling water

1 tsp. baking soda

7oz. chopped dates (the dry kind)

Mix this together and let stand while you do the next step.

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 Tbsp. softened or melted butter

Cream together until mixed. I just use a spoon.

1-1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

The recipe says sift together, but I'm lazy and don't.

Mix everything together. The batter is kind of thin. Add 1 cup chopped nuts. I use walnuts.

Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

Cotton + Steel christmas snow globes! So cute!

Black and white with some cool typography.

Halloween!

Dots and sugar skulls.

Color words and polka dots galore!

Some fun fat quarters.

Yummy Kaffe Spring 2015 jelly roll.

Hollywood went to St. Augustine and perused the antique shops. She brought me this fun metal box and it was filled with old unique machine feet. I have no idea what they do, but they're funky.

Simply Saturday

I thought this Try The World food subscription service was kind of cool. My first box features foods from Argentina. I'm a sucker for home delivered items. Makes my day to get a package in the mail or on my front porch. I miss swapping when I received stuff all the time.

I also joined a spice blend of the month club. Too much time on my hands, obviously. That's really not the case, but I do tend to get easily distracted between projects at work.

Here's our guild's June block of the month. It was a fun one, even if I did mess up in the beginning. I love seeing all the blocks that everyone creates. Maybe I'll win this time!

The Inspector and I are proud parents of two college graduates! I was so happy they were able to graduate together. They both earned business degrees from UCF, my alma mater. So proud of these little boogers. I guess I can't call College Boy, College Boy any longer. Hollywood will always be Hollywood!

It's salad caprese time! My basil plant is thriving and the tomatoes are getting good. No one is happier about caprese than Miss. Hollywood. Buy stock in mozzarella.

I finished my jelly roll quilt top. Such an easy and fun pattern. I love how the white on the blocks create the look of sashing. It's time to gather some tops to send to the longarm quilter. I'm going to do the little quilts myself, but I need help on these larger ones.

TV is so boring over the summer. I did catch two good movies that are at RedBox. Gone Girl and Big Eyes. Now I'm cruising NetFlix for a fix. I highly recommend Grace & Frankie with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. I just started watching Between. I need some books on tape or fun shows/movies if you have any recommendations.

Have a happy weekend! I'm off to sew.

Sunday Stash #90

Oh hey! That was a quick April! May Day is Friday. Need to break out the May pole. Ha!

I've been busy with my first Corporate 5K. I only did it for work. Peer pressure. It was kind of fun. I liked watching the people. I think 18,000 people showed up for it. I'm no athlete, although I did bike 5.5 miles this morning with the Inspector. All this extra calorie burning means I can eat more, right? Isn't that why you exercise?

I tried this honey buttermilk bread. The recipe said to put a pinch of ginger into the yeast mixure. Boy, did it make the yeast bloom. Wow.

Here they are at the second rise. These babies rose like crazy. Tall bread!

Here they are all baked off. It was a good recipe and solved our out of bread problem.

A guild mate was collecting tulip blocks for twin girls. I'm not sure I like the purple one, but maybe she will. They were fun to make, so there's that.

The Inspector stopped by the seafood shop Friday and bought gigantic shrimp from Argentina and a huge filet of mahi mahi. I used some of the shrimp and fish to make ceviche. I could eat ceviche every day. Inspector Gadget had leftover a ceviche, hard boiled egg and mayo sandwich this morning. He's odd.

Here's the stash part, finally. Kaffe Fassett's 2015 collective. Swoon. I just bought them to pet them. I love his use of color. There are some fish in this collective. And his signature big blossoms. So pretty.

Friends, Family & Food

I love the blog Awkward Family Photos. The link has a cute story about grandma not being in the shot. The family even recreated the photo a couple of times over the years. Grandma got a kick about being published in their book and went along with the photo recreations with gusto. Fun, family memories. I've been meaning to go through my photo albums and scan in some of my fun family shots.



I found these videos so fascinating. I love watching our food stylists during restaurant photo shoots. This gal makes the tiniest little food. I kind of want her tea light stove.

My guild buddy Rene' knows me too well.

She also found me the cutest tea towel. I almost hate to use it! Bones, the house doxie is still kicking but is getting hard of hearing. The UPS guy slinks in silently now. And you can sneak up on Bones and scare him. Not that anyone does that.

I've had this Dill Pickle Soup recipe pinned for some time on Pinterest. I finally got around to making it. Yummy! Definitely a keeper. You could easily make it vegetarian by substituting vegetable stock for the chicken broth. I'm making this Cream of Mushroom soup tonight. Or maybe this Hungarian Mushroom Soup. I love making soups and must crave mushroom soup often. My Pinterest soup board is filled with all kinds of mushroom soup recipes.

Happy eating!

Happy New Year!

Have you seen this quilt contest by the Quilt Alliance? Might be a fun little challenge once I get through the Quiltville mystery. I really loved how the Grand Illusion reveal turned out. You can see it here. I'm up to 16 main blocks (17 actually, because I forgot I had one done already.) So my quilt will be 4 blocks x 4 blocks with added sashing. I'm a bit nervous about fitting the sashing and cornerstones, but I think I can do it. The pieced border makes me want drink wine. ;) I'm not quite ready for that, but I'm going to work up to it.

We took a quickie cruise to the Bahamas in the new year. I really like cruising. It's relaxing. No phones or internet, fun people watching, endless food, entertainment, sunshine, etc. I had never been to the Bahamas. Nassau was crazy town, but it was fun to visit. And the water is so pretty and blue.

Look! Pirates! Just kidding. This boat guided us into port. I have trouble backing up a car in my driveway. I can't imagine backing a huge cruise ship into a slip. Our captain did it though. First try! Ha ha!

I did see a couple of pirates in town.

Hollywood cruises all the time. Here's the loot she brought me back from her last cruise to Mexico. Hot sauces and the Talavera pottery I collect. She and her boyfriend's family went with us to the Bahamas. We had a lot of fun.

I was surprised to find such nice tomatoes this winter. I'm going to go search for more today. They were delicious.

Artichoke spinach dip is my favorite. I made a huge vat of it basing it loosely on this recipe. College Boy gifted me P-Dub's two latest books for Christmas. I didn't have feta or pepper jack cheese, but I added in some pecorino romano, cheddar and a couple of slices of smoked Gouda. I was trying to make it healthy. Ha! It was really good. I like the heat of the cayenne pepper.

Today's cooking is bone broth or brodo. Bone broths are all the rage right now. I love making stocks and soups, so this isn't new to me, but I don't normally just sip the broth for health. Apparently it's filled with vitamins and minerals that are good for you. This one has seaweed, allspice, bay leaves, parsley, onion, celery, carrot, garlic, salt and pepper.

I roasted inexpensive beef neck bones and chicken wing tips. We eat a lot of chicken wings, and I save the tips. I also found some leftover carrots from a veggie tray in the freezer. You could easily use a rotisserie chicken carcass or even all vegetables to make a vegetarian broth.

I tossed a plum tomato in the pot at the last minute. Here's a step-by-step for making bone broth and the health benefits.Mine is simmering away on the stove this chilly day. I'll strain it this evening, so I'll get a good 10 hour cook time, but you really don't have to let it simmer that long. The recipe above says 48 hours for beef bones, 24 hours for chicken bones, but I'm never that patient.

Happy new year to you and yours! Let's get this year started!

No Labor Day

Happy Labor Day to all my US friends. I have the day off from real job, so that's fun. Plus, there's potato salad. How better can the day get?

Everything is better with cheese! I won a $50 gift certificate for President cheeses. Yesterday, the Inspector and I had brunch at Hamburger Mary's and stopped by Tar-jay to get my cheese loot. They didn't have a huge selection, but I had fun! Manchego, goat, and brie. Hooray! I'm going to stuff slices of brie in baby bella mushrooms and bake them later today.

My cousin got me hooked on the documentary "Grey Gardens" made in the 1970s. It's about Jacqueline Kennedy's relatives that lived in the Hamptons. I've been meaning to watch the film adaptation with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange. I found the DVD at the library when I was there for Sew Day. The film version provided some back story that explained a lot. If you haven't seen these, check them out.

And lookie what else the library had. They call them "Playaways," and it's an all-in-one audio book. You put a battery in it, attach your earbuds and away you go. Beats watching episodes of "Snapped" all day when I'm at the sewing machine. I think I've seen all the sordid episodes anyway.

My guild buddies gifted me with pretty selvages at Sew Day Saturday. I must play with these soon. As usual, everyone is creating with gorgeous fabrics. It's fun to see what they're using.

Today I'm going to play with my spider web blocks and eat potato salad. I might take a boat ride around the lake later when the gang's all here. Have fun!

Goodies from Japan

Yumi surprised me with a big box of fun. I can't believe she gave me her very first "soccer" bag. It's tiny, so that makes it even cuter. The hexies are only 2.5" across. Yumi made several of these bags while her dad was getting better in the hospital. Her pop is home now and reunited with his beloved kitty.

The soccer theme continued with nori rice ball wrappers that transform rice balls into fun soccer balls. I guess Yumi has World Cup fever too! The green curry tuna looks delicious. I can't wait to try it. I'm going to give that coworker that opens tuna every afternoon a run for his money!

Hollywood and her charge are going to make the candy sushi. There's a video that shows how to do it. Hollywood's Japanese language skills are nil, so she might need the video.

The beautiful fabrics on the left are from kimonos, I believe. I also received the prettiest scarf, which is gigantic. Maybe I'll be able to wrap it fashionably. I love scarves, but I can never get them to look right. I bet there's a You Tube video that could help me.

College Boy was able to preview the new Harry Potter area, Diagon Alley. He bought a wand that interacts with items in the park.

One night after work, Inspector Gadget decided we should ride our new SunRail commuter train. We parked our car at the depot close to the house and sat in the upper level for the ride. I'm happy to say we didn't hit any cars along the way. Apparently, people in central Florida like to disobey railroad crossings. Luckily, no one has been hurt, but this train has only been open two month and four cars have been creamed.

We got off the train in Winter Park and had a hard time choosing where to eat. There are so many places we wanted to try. We settled on Blu on the Avenue, which had a rainbow sushi roll special. They were also practically giving away Blue Point oysters. We ate those so fast I didn't have time for a photo!

After our huge appetizer course, we split a lobster cobb salad. The presentation was so pretty.

The lobster grilled cheese was very good too. We split that as well. Definitely no room for dessert, but we did have time to wander the area and stop off for a night cap before our came to get us.

 Here comes the train. Time to go home.