Have not been posting lately because we are getting ready to host something like 55 people, at our home!, which is not a huge place, this coming Saturday for a blowout birthday party for Sweetie. I've been planning and cleaning and ordering things and figuring out the menu and the seating, etc. plus actually making some of the food to be served...so there will be food posts soon. Our daughter is making a special cake for him...and I baked the layers yesterday and put them in the freezer until she gets here. She is a cake artist, so it's bound to be beautiful. I'm also creating a scrapbook fo ..read more

I really enjoy having friends over for tea. I have a wooden tray, complete with a paper doily, that I keep at the ready on top of the microwave. It holds my favorite teapot, two saucers and teacups, cream and sugar, and a small plate from cookies. I often use my violet patterned tea cups and saucers. Sometimes I include a violet patterned teapot and matching creamer and sugar bowl, and a violet patterned cookie plate, for a full violet tea...just for fun. Yesterday a friend, who is a hard working teacher with a long commute, and I were finally able to find a time to do tea together here. We ..read more

  Had a lovely time in Redmond with the family last weekend. One of the fun things that I try to do each time with my high-school aged grandson is to bake something. This time it was a pie baked in a cast iron skillet, in this case Apple Caramel pie. He peeled the apples and made the caramel. I cored and cut the apples into slices, mixed them with corn starch and microwaved them, lined the skillet with a ready made pie dough round, mixed in some caramel and loaded up the pie filling, then topped it with another pie dough round, sealed it, cut slits, did a cream wash and sanding sugar on ..read more

A recent breakfast that Sweetie and I shared.  ..read more

 Sometimes I don't have a recipe for you, just some info on what's current in my world. This post is one of them, so snow day for you if that is of no interest to you. Sweetie and I just finished a project and it turned out really well. He and I sometimes have differing visions when we do these projects, but this time he had me pick the vanity for the downstairs bath and pick the top and basin and the spout, handles and drain. He got to pick the kind of plumbing stuff he wanted to use, what he wanted to do with the old vanity, how he wanted to get the heavy (about 250 pounds!) new vanit ..read more

I don't know about you, but I love to find new recipes that I can almost taste just reading them. That happened when I saw this one for a lovely began stew that's based on winter squash, onions, bell peppers, tomatoes and peanut butter. Although I'm not a big fan of cumin (so I used far less than the recipe calls for) I knew that it was a necessary component of the big flavors that this dish brings to the bowl. This Washington Post recipe by food writer Joy Manning as given to us by Washington Post writer G Daniela Galarza is a tribute to President Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer who was our ..read more

 Happy Lunar New Year! It's the Year of the Snake, symbol of resilience and wisdom, so I wish you both. I recently joined a book club and we had a feast today, almost all dishes with a Lunar New Year theme.  I brought a round loaf of yam and garlic bread that looks like a full moon and tastes devine. It is a soft bread, moist and golden from the yams, with a subtle garlic flavor. We had it warm, with butter for those who wanted it, and there was only a little bit left at the end of lunch. If you use oil instead of butter to grease the pan the bread is baked in, it's a vegan brea ..read more

 Back in November of 2014 I blogged about a local cheese producer who makes Portuguese cheese. The cows that give the milk for the cheese are right there at the site of the cheese store, so as local as you can get. A bonus is that it's fairly close to home for me. The sad news is that the Dad of the family is having health issues, so they will close the cheese business at the end of this month!  Here is the address in case you can stop by in the next couple of days and buys some really delicious cheese. The less aged cheese is great for melty cheese and the more aged cheese is a bi ..read more

I'm so glad that I planted a Myer lemon shrub years ago. For a few years it lived in a large pot and did OK, but once I found a place for it in a warm spot near the barn it thrived. This year it probably has produced 60 or 70 lemons, many of them pretty large. Last year there were only a few, so next year might not be as productive...we'll see. Looking back at posts from January over the years I see that this month is the one where I use lemons the most. One of my favorite treats that use fresh lemons is lemon curd, the soft and creamy sort of lemon jam that is perfect on a scone or English ..read more

 I have a dear friend who is a vegan. We recently had coffee and we were talking about baking. She said that she had tried a couple of recipes for lemon poppy seed cake but that they turned out like bread, not cake. I told her that I would see if I could find a good recipe for her that was truly cake. I found a number of recipes that might work but settled on one in the Great British Baking Show Perfect Cakes book. It used yogurt, eggs and olive oil. I knew that I could buy plant based yogurt and I got a beautiful bottle of lemon olive oil for Christmas, plus I've used an egg replacemen ..read more