Dan and I both cook so we can generally put together something relatively edible and nutritious for a meal. We do have the occasional day when we lose track of time or do not feel like cooking. Yesterday was one such day – the not feel like cooking type of day. Fortunately, we went shopping earlier this week and came across a sale on TV dinners.
Turkey TV dinners it was 😁For desert, Dan indulged in a couple of his favourite chocolates.
I opted for an early night, which was obviously a good choice, as I did get up feeling much better than I did yesterday. Dan is also feeling better, so hopefully our bug is behind us.
That is it for today. Tonight we have a more ambitious supper plan.
This month on my blog, I am sharing a meal or a dish that we indulge in each day. I am not a professional cook by any means and it was never about creating a collection of recipes. This is simply me keeping it real. This is how and what we eat on a day to day basis – because that is a reflection of who we are. In words better than mine…
“Food is our common ground, a universal experience. – James Beard
“We all eat, and it would be a sad waste of time to eat badly.” – Anna Thomas
“Food may be essential as fuel for the body, but good food is fuel for the soul.” – Malcom Forbes
“Food is symbolic of love when words are inadequate.” – Alan D. Wolfet
That last quote reminds me of son Dan who has always loved food – eating it, preparing it, and serving it to family and friends. From the youngest age, he would say “It is always good because you put love in it.” (Unless it was fish sticks. There was never enough love to save fish sticks. 🙄)
Last night, we did not have fish sticks. I took out the T-fal Air Frier and made Mexican Air Fry. I began by cubing a couple of chicken breasts, sprinkling them with olive oil and taco seasoning, and air frying them for twenty minutes. I transferred the cooked chicken to a bown and moved on to step two.
For step two, I sliced a tortilla shell into strips, spread the strips in the air frier, sprinkled them with olive oil and a bit of taco seasoning. I air fried the seasoned strips for about ten minutes. I had to stop the process a couple of times to re-spread the strips. (They want to pile up.)
While the tortilla strips were cooking, I prepared the vegetables for step three – red onion, red pepper, fresh mushrooms, pickled jalapenos, and black olives.
Once the tortilla strips came out of the air-frier, I put in the vegetables with a little sprinkle of olive oil and a bit of taco seasoning. I cooked the vegetables for six minutes and then added the cooked chicken from step one and about three tablespoons of hot salsa. I cooked for a further six minutes, before transferring to a bowl and topping with crispy tortilla strips.
Ready to serve!
I cooked rice to serve with our main dish. I was concerned it could be a strange combination but it worked well – even with soya sauce on the rice. 👍
That is it for today. Take care and have a great day!
I can’t believe we have made it almost mid-month and last night was our first meal of beef dip. It is one of my favourites, so we have it relatively frequently.
Dan has been under the weather for a couple of days, so he wasn’t up for too much. Supper was basic, but totally delicious and the protein seems to have done him some good as he is looking a little better today.
Shaved roast sirloin with onions and horseradish on Villagio buns, served with air fried sliced potatoes, gravy, and au jus.
The only thing I go rogue on is the au jus. We buy Club House Mix but I only use half a package mixed with two cups of salt-less Campbell’s beef broth instead of water. It tastes just as good but is considerably less salty.
After supper, we finished off our individual cartons of Haagen Daz ice cream. Am I the only one who has an overwhelming urge to snack while watching ‘My 600 Pound Life’ ? I love that show, root for each week’s guest star, and am totally happy and inspired by each success story. But every week it is the same thing – I am straight to the ice cream, popcorn, or potato chips. 🤦
The obvious solution would be to quit watching ‘My 600 Pound Life’ but good television is hard to find – especially on Wednesday nights.
I still haven’t found a new winter project. I am torn between cleaning out closets or searching out seed catalogues. Decisions, decisions! Retirement is such a taxing time in one’s life. 🙂
That’s it for today. Take care and have a great day!
We are still enjoying the break in our weather with the mercury reaching temperatures on the positive side today. It is only here for a few days, but we will take anything we can get.
Since I made a relatively hearty breakfast yesterday morning, we opted for another quick, easy supper. We enjoyed the last of the smoky beans from a couple of nights ago, served up with hotdogs and a handful of potato chips. For desert, we finished off the last of the saucy butterscotch pudding that I made earlier this week.
I am not a fan of condiments but a little of my homemade garlic dill relish on a hotdog definitely kicks it up a notch.With all that cooking time I saved last night, I was able to finish the puzzle I have been working on. 😉
Now all I have to do, is find myself a new winter project. It is bit early for bedding plants, but I could spend some time perusing seed catalogues! This warm spell has me seriously dreaming of spring. 🌱
My 2021 Seedlings
That is it for today. Take care and have a great day! 💞
I was so excited about sharing my amazing Saucy Butterscotch Pudding yesterday that I forgot to include the recipe. 🤦 It has now been added and the post updated here or you can just check it out below!
From ‘The New Purity Cookbook’
Our ventures out and about yesterday went well. Kat was a perfect little pup when she went for her blood tests – and she aced them! She is ready and cleared for surgery. We brought her home and went our to run the rest of our errands, rounded off by a nice lunch at The Barley Mill. The food was good and the portions generous.
Neither of us were up for much at suppertime, so I grilled a couple of porkchops, made a box of macaroni and cheese, and served with some fresh broccoli. We do not used boxed macaroni and cheese as a rule. In fact, I am not that into pasta other than the occasional plate of spaghetti with tomato/meat sauce or fettuccini/shrimp Alfredo. Dan loves pasta and does make homemade macaroni and cheese for work lunches. We bought a couple of boxes of this Cheetos Mac’N Cheese at a specialty food shop in a gitchy mall here. Dan got overpriced Mac’N Cheese and I got a jumbo Gummy Bear which I wrapped and gave to daughter-in-law Amanda for a wedding present. 🧸
Keeping it real. 🙂
It is a beautiful 2 above Celsius today. Dan has some shovelling to get caught up on, so I made a heartier than usual breakfast this morning.
Fried a little bacon and green onions in butterWhipped up an omelet and wrapped it up in a warmed tortilla with some slightlymelted cheese.Wrapped and ready to go! (Mine had shredded marble cheese and salsa).
That’s it for today. Take care and have a great day!
We have lots of out and about this morning, starting with a trip to the vet for blood tests for Kat. She is scheduled for dental surgery next Monday so we have to do a bit of pre-work to make sure she is good to go.
Yesterday was a quiet day spent hunkered down through another frigid day. I puttered around and worked on my latest jigsaw puzzle. It is much easier than the last one.
Last night we enjoyed the second coming of our homemade beef soup for supper. Since that didn’t take a lot of my time or effort, I pulled out my trusty ‘New Purity Cookbook’ and whipped up a quick family favourite desert. It is relatively quick now. When I was baking with the assistance of three pre-schoolers, it was a serious time commitment. Even then, it was always worth it because it tastes amazing and it never failed to amaze the kiddos. Now that they are all in their forties it is a bit harder to amaze them, but I still think it is magical.
Batter in the greased panSauce on top, cake on the bottom.Ta da! Cake on top, sauce on the bottom!
It is time to get going, so that is it for today. Take care and have a great day!
Our temperature isn’t rising yet, but at least the sun is shining this morning. It looks quite picturesque, sunshine sparking on the ice and snow. Fortunately, I can enjoy the sight from the warmth and comfort of my livingroom.
We are still focusing on warm comfort food to see us through this cold spell. Last night’s main dish was one that I acquired the recipe for back in the late ’70s. My ex and I were living in small town Saskatchewan – Mankota, to be precise. There was the bank where my ex worked, a post office, a hospital, and the Mankota Co-op food store. The local entertainment consisted of getting together for pot luck suppers. The company was okay and the food was usually pretty decent, as people tended to bring their best, tried and true dishes. Carol, the bank manager’s wife, brought smoked beans. It was always a hit and she was happy to share the recipe. Over the years it has become a family favourite, and the recipe has been shared repeatedly.
Browning the ground beef, onion, and red pepperSupper is served! Smoked beans, garlic toast, and a generous side salad.
Smoked Beans
Brown one pound ground beef – drain well
Add one chopped medium onion and one chopped red pepper. Cook until onions are translucent
Add one teaspoon freshly ground pepper
Add five slices of chopped cooked bacon
Remove from heat
Add two fourteen ounce cans of brown beans
Add one nineteen ounce can of kidney or mixed beans (I used Blue Label Six Bean Medley)
Add 1/2 cup light brown sugar
Add one tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
Add 3/4 tablespoon liquid smoke
Stir well
Cover and cook in oven for 45 minutes at 325 degree
Note #1 – If you are not ready to serve supper in 45 minutes, turn the temperature down to 250 degrees and stir every half hour. As long as it is kept covered, it will be fine.
Note #2 – If you are feeding anyone who is allergic to seafood – skip the Worcester sauce or at least insure that your brand does not contain anchovies!! Many restaurants use it in a number of nonsea food dishes like baked beans and Caesar salad dressing.
That’s it for today! Take care and have a great day!
Yesterday, I was spending time checking out random posts on WordPress. I do this on a regular basis and generally enjoy my time spent doing it.
Yesterday, I was particularly touched by one of the posts that I came across. https://blursy.co.uk/2022/01/07/are-you-spiritual. (You have to scroll down a bit to get to the post itself.) It is amazing how often I am touched by a post written by someone who is, in so many ways, living a life totally different than mine. This post was written by a young Polish woman working and living in England with her nine year old son. I am a not so young French/Canadian woman, retired, children grown, grandchildren growing up way too fast, living with my husband and my dog. Yet, we are both on a journey of spiritual and emotional healing and for a few minutes yesterday we crossed paths. How cool is that?
One thing in this post that intrigued me was regarding the use of memory work to bring about healing and growth. I do not spend a lot of time looking back, but memories fascinate me. Why is it that if you block bad memories, you lose good memories with them? Why do some innocuous memories stick with you all of the time while memories of major events in your life can be lost forever? Why do smells or sounds or sights jog memories that have been lost for years? How important are memories for mental and emotional health? So many questions, so few answers.
Anyway, this blogger ‘Blursy’, said that it helps her to write out her memories – even memories that seem to be innocent or silly. Somehow she finds this to be very cathartic. I thought about it for a while and decided to try it myself. I settled on a particularly simple memory from my early childhood. A moment in time that I have never forgotten. I ended up writing an entire page in a notebook. What I wrote was not that earth shaking but for whatever reason it shook me. I cried for an hour. It was the strangest experience but it felt really good. I look forward to giving it another go.
Last night, supper was a simple meal of leftover pork roast served up as pork fried rice. With it we had gyoza and small spring rolls.
Frying up the rice with a bit of olive oil and butterChopping vegetables for the rice. I love these ‘disposable’ containers that we get mushrooms in. I do not dispose of them!Homemade gyoza sauce. I use 2 tblsp of soya sauce, 2 tbsp of rice wine , 1tsp sesame oil. I add one of, or a combination of, finely grated fresh ginger, sesame seeds, finely chopped green onions, chilli pepper flakes.Supper is served!
That is it for today. Take care and have a great day!
We are still in the deep freeze but there is supposed to be relief coming soon. In the meantime, we are doing what we can to keep warm. For Dan, that has meant shovelling snow and plugging in the car to insure he would make it to work today. For me it meant finishing my jigsaw puzzle yesterday. One down, one to go .
Done deal!
With this bone chilling weather that we have been blessed with, we decided this would be a good week for a big pot of homemade beef soup.
Homemade beef soup can be as simple as adding dried soup vegetables, noodles, and leftover cooked beef to store bought broth. It can be as basic as adding fresh vegetables, freshly cooked meat, and barley to store bought broth. This week we went all out and made everything from scratch – including the broth. 😉
Dan made the broth on Wednesday. We had a couple of huge beef bones from Fellinger’s Meat Market which went into our stock pot with water, an assortment of unchopped vegetables (onions, celery, carrots, and a couple of dried hot peppers), a little salt and pepper, and one bay leaf. I don’t know if anyone has ever used a bay leaf for anything other than homemade soup – for which one bay leaf seems to be a critical ingredient. Once the pot was filled, the contents were brought to a boil and every speck of foam was scraped off of the top. The temperature was turned down and the broth was left to simmer for the better part of the day. Finally, Dan removed the bones and vegetables and we strained the broth through a sieve lined with cheesecloth before it went out to our unheated garage for the night. Dan went out and brought it back in yesterday morning. Amazingly, it had not frozen solid, so I was able to remove the fat that had risen and solidified at the top of the broth. We poured half of the finished broth into containers and stored them in the freezer for future use.
Simmering the broth…
The broth we kept for our soup was poured into our Dutch oven and brought to a boil, I added about a cup of barley. While that simmered away, Dan chopped a variety of fresh vegetables (onions, carrots, celery, parsnips, and cabbage) to add to the pot. Pretty much any vegetable works but we were a bit low on variety yesterday. We made up for it with quantity.
Cooking the vegetables…
While the vegetables cooked, I grilled a small sirloin steak for Dan to cube before adding to the pot.
Return to a boil, and simmer for another half hour…
And.. Supper is served…
Tips:
To make beef or chicken broth get beef bones or stewing hens from a local farmer or a good butcher shop.
To re-serve add a few different vegetables (turnips, tomatoes, mushrooms, daikon…) Add some orzo or miniature alphabet or star pasta… Whatever! It is all good and it creates an all new soup.
That is it for today. Take care and have a great day!
Our weather isn’t getting any better today. It is 32 below celsius and holding. Dan was out shoveling the foot of snow that we got over the last couple of days. I feel for him but every day is a day closer to spring! 🌷
Yesterday, we did some more after Christmas cleanup and took turns letting Kat in and out. She keeps thinking she wants to go outside but changes her mind as soon as she gets there.
Winter sucks!
We ended up losing track of time while we were chasing down stray pine needles so our supper last night was a quick pizza that we whipped up together – with the help of the Pillsbury doughboy who provided the prepared pizza dough.
Dan chopped the ham, red onions, mushrooms and olives. I strong-armed the crust out of the container, spread it out on the pan, brushed it with a light coating of sauce, and assembled the toppings that Dan had chopped, while adding a generous layer of pre-sliced pepperoni.
Which was followed by a thick layer of shredded cheese.
A few minutes of baking, followed by a couple of minutes under the broiler and tada! Supper is served.
That is it for today! Hardly the most ambitious culinary experience, but it is already the sixth day of my Canadian meal plan and we have managed to avoid TV dinners and takeout so far. 👍
Seclusion 101 with AnneMarie 