I’m going into work up for all day meetings this week. Had to look up my office number again. I’ve been working from home for much too long.
Category: Life
Faces in open places.
The weather this winter has been a roller coaster of sunny-and-70s then sleet-and-20s-and-30s. About three or four turns so far and one more on the way tomorrow. It was a beautiful day today, so I threw open the windows and took a walk through the greenbelt.
Along the way I came across this rock and saw a face in it (sort of). If i squint a bit i think i can make out Jay Leno…
Oh YEAH!
So sweet. I’ve been rooting for this team for 37 years. This season made it all worth it. Congratulations Seattle!!!!!
Mmmmussels.
Super Bowl Eve dinner.
1 lb mussels, 2 cloves sliced garlic, 1 diced shallot, 1/4 c chopped parsley, several stalks of thyme, pinch of salt, dozen or so pieces of saffron, tbsp butter, 2 cups white wine.
Toss all but mussels in skillet, bring to low boil for 5 mins. Add cleaned mussels. Cover and cook for 10 mins til mussels are open. Shake pan a few times. Add a couple pieces of toast and yum!
Getting ready for Mercury.
According to Sky and Telescope, Mercury is at its highest tonight, and reportedly the best view of it, all year. So, after sunset, I toodled over to my favorite nearby west-facing vantage point and caught this shot of it to the top left of the crescent moon.
For those of you that are inclined to look towards the stars for influence on our day-to-day lives, be warned that Mercury will enter retrograde from Feb 6 to Feb 28. Get ready for some weird happenings and funky vibes. More background here. And you may want to bookmark this link for future reference.
And, let me wish everyone a happy Chinese new year. 2014 is supposed to be the year of the horse. But let me just add….. GO HAWKS!!!!!
There’s nothing better than homemade pasta.
Tonight Monte made pasta. I “helped” by hovering over the stove while he was making a light white wine sage cream sauce repeating how hungry I was.
Homemade pasta is nothing short of amazingly delicious. We have pasta roller and pasta cutter attachments for our KitchenAid mixer that make the prep pretty easy.
He used Mario Batali’s recipe for basic pasta dough. You can find a version of the recipe here. He made a smaller batch (3 eggs and 2.5c flour) and kneaded it for 10 mins, letting it rest for 30 mins before rolling & cutting. Here’s the finished product. We cut it fettuccine size. Yummmmmmmm
Laps lapse.
Last year I started swimming laps at my gym. I’d never been a swimmer-for-exercise before that. But I really enjoyed it. Several months ago, because of the drastic change in my fingernails, I stopped. The chemicals in the pool had turned my otherwise strong, long healthy nails into splitting, cracking stubby messes. I’ve tried OPI nail strengtheners of all kinds. I started taking biotin. I’ve increased calcium. I put oil on them before and after. Nothing helps. I finally gave in and decided I would rather get the exercise than have my nice nails back. Oh well. If anyone has other suggestions on how to protect my nails, I’d love to hear them.
So… I’m back to swimming again for about a month now. Lets see how long I can keep it up.
Another weather indicator.
We’re in the midst of another blast of cold weather, sleet and ice. You can listen to weather report to get the latest. Or, you can look at googlemap’s traffic view. Yuk!
Risotto to the rescue.
Today called for a quick decision re: dinner. Tonight’s verdict: Risotto con fungi e prosciutto. Yum. (and a dash of truffle oil!)
Sunday funday.
Sandwiched between the snowpocolypse of last week and another cold front due in tomorrow night was a beautiful day with temps in the 70s and winds blowing in the 20s. We headed to the lake and Lori and Dave joined us. We sailed up and down the lake for about 4 hours and enjoyed being out in it.
Good crew!
Snow day.
This is how much snow and ice it takes to shut down Austin. No snow day for me, sadly. I can make it down the hall to my office just fine.
Pinochle at the pub.
We headed down to our nearby pub after work to grab dinner while playing a few rounds of cards with Tom and Doray. This hand was typical of most of mine all night. “I pass.”
Applebuttery goodness.
I have had a hankering for apple butter lately. My HEB has a poor selection. The only one they stock was full of multi-syllable chemical ingredients, and high fructose corn syrup. I couldn’t bring myself to put it in my cart. When I was a kid, apple butter was one of the many delicious things my mom would make and I would help her with the cooking and canning. So, i decided to make my own apple butter.
There were many different recipes online. I wasn’t looking to go the whole canning route, as I just wanted to make a small batch. Some recipes started with apple sauce. But I wanted to go as close to the good old fashioned way as possible. I found a recipe that sounded minimalistic and simple. I halved the original recipe, and it yielded 2 pint jars (i recycled some Bonne Maman 13 oz jam jars) of applebutter, which have a fridge life of about 2 weeks. Or could be frozen up to a month.
I’ll start with a picture of the result, to get your mouth watering, and follow with the recipe:
You’ll need a crock-pot and an immersion blender. Here’s the before:
You may want to use a variety of apples. I used mostly gala, which are on the sweet side, and mixed in a few red delicious which are less sweet. I also have one of these awesome contraptions, which makes peeling/coring/slicing the apples a breeze:
Crock-pot Applebutter (yields 2 pints)
3 1/4 lbs apples, peeled, cored & sliced
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 T ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 T vanilla extract
Place apple slices in crock pot. In medium bowl, mix sugars, and spices. Sprinkle dry mix over the apples and stir gently to coat apples and combine.
Cook on low, covered, for 12 hours.
Stir in vanilla extract and puree with immersion blender until smooth. For thicker applebutter, can cook on low another hour with lid ajar.
Cool and place in jars. Store in refrigerator for up to 2 weeks, or freeze for up to 2 months.
Sunday sky.
I cannot resist taking another sunset photo from a very nice Sunday.
Sheila365 