Spaghetti Sunday Healing

Simply a picture post today...

I made spaghetti for lunch/dinner today and it was AMAZING!!!

I think it's the best that I've ever made 🙂

These days I'm celebrating the little things...they are healing 💕 

Happy Sunday 

Delicious Bacony Rice

This is my first food post for a while. I used to post photos of my culinary creations a lot, but I must admit, I don't cook as much from scratch as I used to. I'm trying to get back to it as much as I can. I just don't have the time like I used to. But I'm trying :)

Anyway, as we take a trip down blogging memory lane, let's stop here and gaze at the photo above. All I have to say first is BACON! Mmmmmm!!! I love bacon. It's probably my favorite food...I think. Lol.

Let me stop veering off the topic at hand. Okay, this photo above was taken on Sunday right before I dived in like I had no good sense ;-)

This is something that I came up with in trying to use the foods that I had on hand. Let me tell you, it was DELICIOUS! I'm no great cook, but I cook well enough that I won't starve or anything. Here's the thing, I'm not really good at cooking from recipes for some reason. When I cook from recipes my food turns out weird. Lol. So I guess that I'm a non-recipe type cook. Works for me :)

This rice dish has bacon, onions, peas and various spices that I just kind of threw in here and there. The strength of this dish is the slight sweetness of the peas contrasting beautifully with the saltiness of the bacon. The onions and spices give it that zing. Yum! I thought about this bacony rice for hours after we finished eating. In fact, I'm salivating thinking about it now. Lol.

Next time I'm gonna have to make a bigger batch so I'll have some leftovers now that I know what I'm making. I hope I can remember everything I put into it :)

Wing It Spicy Pasta

Like many cooks, I have a tendency to wing it and not really measure the ingredients when I'm cooking. I just let my instincts take over and I create dishes according to my taste buds. I've thought about sharing my recipes like this before, but I hesitated because I wasn't able to give precise measurements. However, I realized that it's okay if I don't have precise measurements because part of cooking is creativity and what's more creative than making up a dish as you go along  ;-)

So here's my recipe:

Ingredients (to your own taste):
•roughly a tablespoon of Cajun seasoning
•roughly a tablespoon of oregano
•2 vegetable stock cubes
•roughly a half teaspoon of flat leaf parsley
•roughly a teaspoon of smoked paprika
•a splash of Worcestershire sauce
•a splash of balsamic vinegar
•1 large onion (chopped)
•about 8 medium sized mushrooms (chopped)
•roughly 4 ounces of water
•teaspoon of olive oil
•half teaspoon of butter
•spaghetti (amount depending upon how many you're serving)
Cooking time: about 25 minutes
Prep time: Just enough time to chop your mushrooms and onions

 Add your olive oil and butter to your frying pan, letting the butter melt down. Next add your chopped onions and let them cook down until they're close to being translucent and then add your chopped mushrooms. Let the onions and mushrooms mingle together for a bit.

Then crumble up your vegetable stock cubes and add them both to your onion and mushroom mixture. Stir it all together. Next add your water, because this helps to bring  a little moisture to things and it helps with incorporating the dry stock cubes into the mixture.

At this point you can add all of your other ingredients to the pan except for the spaghetti. Stir all of the ingredients together well, making sure that everything is incorporated into the mixture.

Depending on your preference you can boil the spaghetti before, during, or after you make the spicy mixture. I usually start it halfway through preparing the mixture so that the noodles don't become too mushy. But I leave this to your individual preference.

I really love making this dish and it's very tasty! I hope that you'll try my Wing It Spicy Pasta! :-)

This recipe post was previously published on my other blog Labyrinthus XXI .

Cookie Recipe

Hello :) I wanted to share the chocolate chip cookie recipe from an earlier post. I promised in the comments that I'd post the recipe here. It's certainly not my very own recipe, but it's one that I've made quite a bit back in my teen years. It's a classic recipe from back home and so I'm sure that many of you already know this recipe well, but for those of you who are from elsewhere and may not be familiar with it, here it is. As I noted within the recipe, I had to substitute the main ingredient in the recipe since I'm not able to get the chocolate morsels here readily. However, the cookies turned out great and I look forward to making some more some time in the near future :-)

One more thing, I've also included a conversion tool here to make the measurements easy to calculate for everyone if needed. Click here for the site. So without further delay, here it is :-) I hope you enjoy giving them a try and if you do try to make them, please drop by and let me know how they turned out!


Original NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Chocolate Chip Cookies

Prep: 15 minutes
Baking time: 9 minutes
Cooling time: 15 minutes


Ingredients
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.)NESTLE TOLL HOUSE Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels (I can’t get these here, so I substituted another brand of chocolate chips)

• 1 cup chopped nuts

Directions
PREHEAT oven to 375° F.

COMBINE flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.

BAKE for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

FOR HIGH ALTITUDE BAKING (5,200 feet): Increase flour to 2 1/2 cups. Add 2 teaspoons water with flour and reduce both granulated sugar and brown sugar to 2/3 cup each. Bake drop cookies for 8 to 10 minutes and pan cookie for 17 to 19 minutes.

**If you'd like to see the link to the website where I got this recipe, click here.

Holiday Baking

Well the Thanksgiving weekend has come and gone and it was a good one around the Yellow House. I had the chance to go on Skype on Thanksgiving with my niece and sisters as I mentioned in a previous post. And it was a whole lot of fun! It was just like I was sitting in the room with them. Then on Friday, Brit Boy and I had our Thanksgiving dinner. We had a great day together!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I decided to make a different version of sweet potato pie this year and you know what...they turned out great. I made mini sweet potato pies. I got the original recipe off of the Food Network website and had to make a substitution for the crust. Here’s a link to the recipe from their site. I’m not very good at making crusts yet and I ran out of time, so I found a substitute. I found this product called brandy snap baskets that were pre-made and used them for my shell. You can see them in the photo below. They are kind of crispy and a bit chewy, but they were the perfect accompaniment to the pies. My version tastes better than it looks in the photo...trust me ;-)




So the filling of the brandy snap baskets is a sweet potato soufflé that I made separately and then placed it into the baskets. Then I made the whipped topping with cream cheese, cinnamon, and confectioners sugar/powdered sugar. I didn’t have a pastry bag so I just kind of dropped a bit of the cream on each one. It turned out fine and it was still good :-)

I was intrigued when I saw them made on the cooking show that I watched. So when I tasted them, I was not disappointed at all. I’ll definitely be making them again.

This was my latest cooking adventure and it was fun...now on to the next thing.

P.S. – Brit Boy recently completed his first review. Please go by his blog if you have a moment and check it out! Thanks...

Messed Up Bread

I had a pretty good weekend. I’ve been wrestling with a cold, but today I feel somewhat better. And I’m relieved. I hope that things continue to improve...
Anyway, I decided to forget about my cold and make some chaos in the kitchen this weekend. And that’s what I’d call it, especially when I saw the finished product. LOL. Brace yourselves for this....here it is!



I know you may be wondering...what the heck is that!!?? Well it is supposed to be bread. It’s called 21st Century bread and it’s supposed to be sort of unformed and rustic looking. But it turned out looking really tore up! LOL. However, I tasted a chunk today and it doesn’t taste that bad after sitting overnight. I’m gonna have to tweak my technique though, so that next time my bread is more edible like the one on the cooking show ;-) I saw the recipe on a television show here, but when I went to the website to get the recipe, they didn’t have it listed. So I googled it and found it listed on a blog. I’m going to have to check the measurements again because something went wrong.

It’s bread that has cheese and chives in it. In the original recipe, the cook had ham in it too, but I didn’t have any ham. I think that if I get the recipe to work out right, it will be very tasty. It looked delicious when it was presented on the show.

The reason that I’m posting my not so successful attempt is to be truthful and to out my own cooking... the mess ups make me laugh! As I’ve mentioned here before, I want to share the good, the bad, and the ugly of my cooking on this blog. So here it is...ain’t it pretty?!! LOL. Better luck next time.

Love of the Bird Variety

This is one of those random posts, but I like to write these now and then. Last time I said that I’d share with you one of my favorite things. So here goes. It’s one of those simple pleasures things and I just love it. Okay, here it is…



I LOVE my bird cup!!! You know how sometimes you have a favorite cup or mug and you drink out of it as much as you can? Well this is mine! :-) My bird cup is a fairly new addition to my life around the Yellow House.

Here’s the back story on my fave cup. So, Brit Boy and I were out Christmas shopping a few months back. And as we were searching for gifts, I spotted this cup. Actually Brit Boy spotted a cup he liked first, but it isn’t a bird cup. Anyway, when he got his, I saw mine and I was sold! It's kind of weird looking and that's why I liked it and I'm easily amused ;-)

I’ll tell you, I don’t know if it’s purely psychological, but EVERYTHING tastes better in this cup. LOL. I drink green tea, white tea, chai latte, coffee, hot chocolate…everything under the sun in this cup. It gets a varied workout. But here’s what I love…it’s a good size to have soup in too. One note though, this photo makes it look huge...it's not. LOL. This is just an extreme close-up. Anyway, it’s my standard go-to favorite these days. I may be a bit obsessed with this cup, but who cares. Gotta have some pleasures in this life, right? ;-)

My next post will be a foodie post. I’ve been in the kitchen again. As I mentioned before, I’m not a great cook, but I love giving it a try from time to time and I promised to share the hills and valleys in my culinary adventures. Well, yesterday I had a bit of a high point, so I’m gonna share that. But don’t worry, I’ll still share my kitchen wrecks too….LOL. That’s really funny stuff sometimes.

Have a great weekend!

Memories Through Cornbread

It’s been a while since I did a cooking post, so it just seemed like a good idea for today’s post, since I need to get back into the blogging hot tub. I don’t love to cook, but I like it pretty well and hey, we've all gotta eat don’t we? For those times when I don’t want to cook, a frozen dinner is my best friend ;-)

There are times when I like cooking and times when I loathe it. It’s all about balance ;-) In those times of enjoyment, the thing that pulls me in is the chance to be creative, so that aspect is right up my alley.

I truly enjoy watching cooking shows, especially Barefoot Contessa. Her food inspires me to want to cook EVERYTHING and do it well. Her variety of dishes that she cooks always inspires me to try something new and I’ve learned lots of cooking techniques from her, so I love me some Contessa :-) And as a fellow Georgia girl, I love to watch Paula Deen when I’m back home visiting. I can see the Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network over here, but they don’t show Paula Deen here. So that’s where the website comes in handy. Anyway, that’s enough of my TV favorites for today. Pardon my detour ;-)

So this past weekend I cooked cornbread muffins…well actually cheese cornbread muffins. I had a taste for some. I’m not a really big fan of cornbread or any bread really, but sometimes I get the taste for it. It usually coincides with me thinking about home or back to the times when my parents were still alive. When I was growing up, my mom made cornbread everyday and I used to love to watch her make it. The memories that I have of watching her make cornbread stick firmly in my mind. I don’t know why. I guess it’s the everyday normal things that you may take for granted at the time, but when you look back, those are the things that are burned into your memory forever. As time goes by I realize that memories are TRULY the beautiful things in life :-) The simplest, beautiful things…

Over the Christmas holidays, I received a package from my sisters and I had mentioned to them when we were Skyping once that I couldn’t get cornmeal very readily where I live. So I’d asked them to send me a small bag if they could. Well, in the Christmas package there was the cornmeal…just like my mom used to use :-) The sight of the bag instantly filled me with nostalgia. Here it is:



Yeah, I took a picture of the bag of cornmeal…it’s an expat thing. LOL. Anyway, I made some cheese cornbread muffins and they turned out pretty good. My mom was strictly old school though…she just made straight cornbread and hers was great, but I love to play around with a recipe from time to time.



I’ve been nibbling on these muffins all week and yesterday I crumbled some up in a bowl of soup…mmmmmm. Now that was good! Next time I may try putting some other flavor in there to see how it turns out. See, it’s that creativity thing again ;-)

I realized the other day how much I used to love posting about my culinary creations in the earlier days of this blog and I realized that I don’t do that much anymore. Well that will definitely be a returning feature here. I’m no chef or even a really great cook, but I just love mixing stuff up and seeing what happens. And also I love photographing things…and that includes food, so I hope you’ll come back and see what I cook next :-)

Until next time…

Easter Meatloaf

Brit Boy and I had a nice Easter. We relaxed around home and enjoyed the mild weather later in the day. We had breakfast and then turned on the TV to watch Pope Benedict XVI deliver his “Urbi et Orbi” message at St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. I did some research and found out that this phrase is Latin for “to the city and the world”. How fitting. (smile) It was a nice way to start the day. I’m not Catholic and neither is Brit Boy, but I always like watching this message…it’s like no matter who you are, if you care to listen, it’s accessible. I always feel connected to the world when I watch this,since all those people from around the world are there. I think it would be a great experience to go there one day and experience it live and soak up the atmosphere. We shall see. (smile) After watching the Pope’s message, we started to work on dinner for later. As I mentioned the other day, I said I was going to share a meatloaf story. Brit Boy and I decided to have meatloaf for Easter lunch/dinner instead of a ham or lamb which is kind of customary. I made an extra nice meatloaf so it held its own for a holiday meal. Sometimes when we’re watching television and someone mentions having meatloaf, Brit Boy will mention that he’s never tasted it. He says he remembers watching a lot of American shows when he was growing up and they would often be having meatloaf, so he was intrigued. So I decided that I’d make meatloaf and give him his first taste. When I decided to make a meatloaf I instantly thought of one of my favorite movies of all time, “A Christmas Story”. Some of you may remember it. The lead character is Ralphie and he has a little brother named Randy who hates to eat dinner and plays with his food a lot. So one night, they are having meatloaf for dinner and Randy won’t eat and he says, “Meat-losse, meatloaf, double beatloaf, I hate meatloaf!!!” Check out this clip. I love that movie and being the cuckoo that I am sometimes, I will say stuff like this out of the blue and Brit Boy will laugh. What can I say, we find a lot of stuff funny around here. (smile) So the meatloaf turned out really good and we had mashed potatoes with a bit of cream cheese and garlic mixed in and some broccoli on the side. It was really tasty. For dessert we had blackberry pie. This is my favorite kind of pie. It turned out okay. I’m gonna have to play around with the recipe a bit to get it just right though. We ate it anyway and it rounded things off nicely. So it was a happy Easter around here and we still have Easter eggs to eat…oh joy! (smile)

Plums and Parties

It’s a cloudy day here, but a nice calm morning. I love Saturday mornings. You have the whole day and then Sunday ahead of you. What could be better (smile)

I’m trying to eat more fruit nowadays, so I’ve been in the kitchen trying to decide what to have. I’m still undecided. The lay of the land is like this…we have plums, bananas, and grapefruit.




Hmm,this photo is making my mind up for me...maybe I’ll have a plum. And I’m thinking of putting some bananas into my muffins that I’m going to make later. I usually make those blueberry oatmeal muffins, but I thought it might be tasty to substitute the bananas for the blueberries this time. Brit Boy is okay with it either way…he just likes to eat them (smile).

Anyway, we’re just hanging out today around home and then we’re venturing out this evening to a surprise party. It’s for Brit Boy’s former sister-in-law. I don’t know her very well, but I guess I will after the party (smile). So it’s party night at the yellow house! Have a great weekend!

Christmas Countdown Continues

Our countdown to Christmas continues… We ended up not going to Salisbury Cathedral for the carol service this year. We had planned on going, but in the past few days we have been having plumbing problems and we were waiting around for the plumber to let us know when he was coming. It was kind of up in the air. Also, Brit Boy was finishing up his studying, and that was most important for him to finish, so it was a nice weekend around home.

Our shower has been working and then not working. We get scalded one moment and then we freeze the next and it is just all messed up. Sometimes it decides to be merely a trickle, so it's time they finally authorized a repair. We have had a leak also. It’s been really fun ;-) Thankfully the plumber is going to pay us a visit today. Woo Hoo!!!!! That’s our Christmas present for sure :-)

Since we couldn’t venture too far away, we ended up just chilling out around home. Periodically, Brit Boy took breaks from his studying and we watched Christmas movies or watched music videos on television while we danced around. We enjoyed those study breaks! We love to do our freestyle dancing and then we dance together all elegant…it’s funny. Then I do my Beyonce dance :-)

Later in the afternoon on Monday, Brit Boy finished his final paper and turned it in. And as a bonus, we got our call from the plumber soon after so the day turned out good in the end. We were free to head out. We went into town to pick up some ingredients for my baking and for our Christmas Eve nibbles. We fully expected the crowd that met us, but it was wild in there!!!! :-) We bought my baking ingredients, and some cheese and dips and veggies for our Christmas Eve hanging out. Then I saw them and I was in love ……







These cute little journals/notebooks are my new favorite thing. Usually I always take a detour to the stationery aisles wherever I am. I love pens and journals and notebooks…gotta do the writing thing :-) But I haven’t hit pay dirt like this in a long time. These lovely little books are made of recycled materials, so that’s very good. I just love that the outside and inside are very organic-looking with a bit of flower power on the outside :-) The lady at the checkout was oohing and ahhing over them too, so I wasn’t alone in my love. The best part is that they were on sale. I got two of these mid-size books for £1.75!!!! So a deal on top of everything . Yay!!!! Okay, enough of this notebook swooning! :)

When we got home, I figured that I should go ahead and do the baking so I wouldn’t be rushed. But mostly though, we were just greedy and ready to eat. LOL. I decided to bake us a batch of red velvet cupcakes like I did back in the spring, but with these I sprinkled them a bit to add a festive flair.





We stuffed our faces with a couple after they cooled off and I iced them :-) And then today, we have had one…they seem to get better, like most things after they get a chance to sit. So we are happy people right now with cake in the house :-)

Oh, an update on our shower problems. The plumbers arrived as I was writing this. They just left and they said that we need a new shower. They patched up the leak, so that’s good. I guess that after Christmas when they get the order in, we will get fixed up. So it’s very dodgy showers for a bit longer :-) It's all good though. No sense in sweating it. Hopefully Santa will bring us a new shower for after Christmas.

Anyway, we plan to enjoy a quiet Christmas Eve tomorrow with a few drinks, some finger foods, and cake…what could be better! :-) Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

A Movie Sunday

I just wanted to drop in and say hello. I've been taking it easy and enjoying the weekend. On Thursday, we had our Thanksgiving dinner and it turned out really great. I surprised myself...everything turned out really great, like someone else had cooked it. LOL. I will share a bit more about this later in the week. On Friday, even though it isn't called Black Friday over here, we did go out and finished all of our Christmas shopping. We missed most of the crowds since most people were not off work. Brit Boy took the day off. There were lots of sales going on, so we got some good deals on some modest gifts. A sign of the times, but it was really nice and simple...the way I like it :-)

Today, Brit Boy is downstairs watching his sports and I'm upstairs watching one of my favorite films.... "Tootsie". I love it because it is definitely of a certain time period and it once again takes me down nostalgia alley just like "last weekend". I guess it's a phase. The end of the year always gets me nostalgic. When I was growing up, one of my favorite things to do on Sunday was to watch movies...the more retro the better :)

Brit Boy and I have already had leftovers from Thanksgiving to eat for early dinner. So I'm free of cooking today. Woo Hoo! LOL. After I finish watching "Tootsie", I may watch a DVD or something. I really love Sundays. Have a great rest of the weekend! :)

Pizza Day

We have had a beautiful weekend. The sun has finally come to shine on us in these last days of September. :-) Yesterday, Brit Boy and I went into town to do some errands. There were a few stalls there that were reminiscent of the continental markets that they have sometimes, but it wasn’t a full blown market. There was a French food stall, a Dutch stall, and one with jewelry and handbags. We didn’t buy anything there, but it all looked great. We did our errands and then headed to the grocery to get a few things so that I could make a pizza later. I have been really wanting to give this a try, so we took a whirl around the grocery store. I already had bell pepper and onions, so I was searching for pepperoni, mushrooms, mozzarella cheese, and a pre-made crust (haven’t figured out the crust from scratch yet). We got everything along with what we thought were dough balls to make crust. So we headed home and later we chopped everything up, readying it for the pizza. Then I realized that we didn’t have dough balls for making dough, we had dough balls for toasting and dipping in sauce. Boneheads we were. (laugh) We were rushing a bit in the store and got the wrong thing. But in the end, they turned out good and were a nice addition. No sweat. :-) We were in an adventurous mood and we would not be deterred, so we headed back to the store and picked up some roll-out pastry that made a GREAT crust. On the ride back home, the sunset was so beautiful. So when I got inside, I snapped this photo of the view out our back door. Back in pizza mode, I layered everything on the pastry crust. I started with a thin layer of mozzarella and mature cheddar and then the sauce with some onion granules and a bit of pepper sprinkled over that. Then I finished it off with layers of the other ingredients and voila! Here is a photo after we had already devoured half of it. There’s a pattern here. I always seem to get the photo after we have been eating. (laugh) We usually just can’t wait. It turned out divine. Today is a gloriously sunny day and it feels like we are getting spring and summer a bit late. But I figure, it is just a beautiful bonus. Here’s a photo I snapped today. It sort of says it all, the beautiful sky is there, and the rosebush has shed and is going to sleep for a while. But it will be back before we know it. :-)