We received an awesome Breadman Ultimate breadmaker for a wedding gift way back when. And I used it for several years but stopped for some reason. I was probably traveling a lot at the time.
A couple weeks ago I was cleaning out the pantry, and rediscovered it. I have since stocked up on wheat flour, gluten and other ingredients and am back in the bread making groove. The 1.5 lb loaves are perfect for the two of us for several days.
The light whole wheat bread loaf is delicious.
This one’s hot out of the machine:
And this is a link to 100+ page PDF for the bread machine with many recipes.
Sunday was the 5 year blogoversary for sheila365! I meant to draft a post ahead of time, and post it bright and early on March 8th. But I just looked at the calendar and time has snuck by on me once again.
That’s ok. In these 5 years sheila365 has evolved, and I think I have a bit, too. My blog started as a post-a-day 365 project during the first year or two, which had me snapping photos during the day to make sure I had something that I judged “share-worthy;” and now it has become more of a leisurely, post-every-week-or-so project, which I have to say has been much easier, though less artistic in terms of trying to capture beautiful photos, but rather just moments from my day that struck me as special or interesting in one way or another.
So happy blogoversary to me! 🙂 I thought I’d go back through my posts from year 5 and pick a photo from one post from each month that especially makes me smile. I have to say it was very hard to pick just one picutre from each month.
March 2014: Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. A visit to the walled El Morro. Beautiful Caribbean views.
April 2014: British Virgin Islands sailing trip – this was taken while snorkeling off Cooper Island.
Turtle dude surfacing – 2
May 2014 – A trip home to Seattle. One of several last year. It is a beautiful, special place for me.
June 2014 – Back in Austin for fun on the lake with some of my crazy sailor friends.
July 2014 – An amazing trip to Panama City Beach to celebrate a very special anniversary with a very special family.
August 2014 – A roadtrip to the Texas Gulf Coast. One of my favorite places to relax.
September 2014 – A lovely anniversary trip through the Texas Wine Country.
October 2014 – A fun girls’ trip to Washington, D.C. Lots of laughs, lots of wine, and lots of walking. 🙂
The residential streets are lined with historic townhouses.
November 2014 – An oh so special birthday.
December 2014 – Family visiting means showing off Austin and the Hill Country. Never gets old.
January 2015 – Hiking as many trails as I can before I had to go back to work after taking a few months off.
Today winter seems to have relaxed its grip. Temps were in the 50s for most of the day. Monte and I headed outside and trimmed, pruned, tilled and sowed. A great day.
I’ve dug out my crock pot recently and have been making recipes from way back when. Tonight I made Beef Burgandy. And Monte made homemade noodles to go with. Oh my. Delicious!
Beef burgundy ala crockpot:
– 2-lb beef round steak, cut in 3/4″ cubes
– 1/4 c flour
– 1/2 tsp salt
– 3 Tbsp butter
– 2 c red wine, Bordeaux or burgandy
– 1 c beef broth
– 1 c chopped onion
– 6 oz white mushrooms, rinsed dried & quartered
– 2 bay leaves
– 2 cloves garlic, minced
– 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
Coat beef with flour and salt mixture. Melt butter in skillet. Add beef and brown on all sides. Transfer browned meat to crock pot. Deglaze hot skillet with a little bit of wine and put those tasty bits in the crockpot, too. Combine all other ingredients in crock pot and stir.
Cover. Cook on high for 2 hours, then reduce to low for another 2 -3 hours, until meat is tender.
Before serving, remove 1 c of liquid, heat over medium on stove; bring to a low boil. Wisk in 1 Tbsp cornstarch dissolved in 2 Tbsp cold water, until thickened. Pour back into crockpot and stir.
March marks the beginning of one of the best times of the year! Sunny, spring days are right around the corner. Although today we are still toughing out the chilly, misty weather. Cabin fever is setting in. Today we headed down to Zilker Park to see the 86th annual Austin Kite Festival. Not your typical turnout, and only the slightest hint of wind – but it was still nice to take in, and all the kids there were having a blast.
The downtown skyline was shrouded in low clouds.
Afterwards we headed to the Texas State History Museum – free admission on the first Sunday of the month. And tomorrow is Texas Independence Day, so it was fitting we popped in.
Lovely flowers from my sweetie. Thx to Jamie for the cute button! And, monte, if you’re reading this, your present is under the pile of laundry on the chair. 🙂
Today is National Pizza Day!!! We did our part – sharing a delicious Tuscan Truffle and a bottle of red at Brick Oven (the best in our book). Heaven on a Monday.
We headed to the lake Saturday for a sail and to anchor out overnight with Camelot. It was a gorgeous day! Winds 10-15. High in the low 70s.
After a lovely sail past Starnes Island and back, Camelot radioed that their engine would not start. Roh roh. Change of plans. We sailed back to the marina ahead of them. The winds were much lighter now and straight out of the cove, which made it possible for Camelot to sail slowly up to a side tie on the end of the far dock – where they could then just loose the sheets. We met them at the end of the dock to push them off and grab their dock lines. Exciting, but well planned and executed. Camelot will remain there to get worked on next week.
We ended up just spending the night in the slip. But a very lovely night it was.
Today we had our broadband upgraded. We used to have download speeds around 2 Mbps and upload speeds of about 1/4 of that. Which we perceived to be getting progressively slower. Today my phone logged these speeds:
Not too shabby. I used ookla’s free speedtest app on my iphone to measure.
To see how much faster I can now upload a photo to my blog, I picked this one from my Paris trip.
Wow. That upload was very zippy! This is a shot along the Seine. The Left Bank is, well, on the left. Île de la Cité is to the right. The bridge in the foreground is Petit Pont, and Pont San Michel beyond it. It was such a lovely fall day. See, I’ve almost forgotten about yesterday’s Super Bowl loss……
I was clicking through photos I’ve taken over the last few months. I found a couple from a visit to the Texas State Capitol in December, when we had visitors from out of town. It’s a beautiful building – inside and out. If you get an opportunity to visit, you can take a free guided tour, or this self-guided tour might be more your thing.
As a noun, capital refers to (1) a city that serves as a center of government, (2) wealth in the form of money or property, and (3) a capital letter. As an adjective, it means (1) principal, (2) involving financial assets, and (3) deserving of the death penalty. There are other definitions of capital, but these are the most commonly used ones.
Capitol has two very specific definitions (outside ancient Rome): (1) a U.S. state legislature building, and (2) the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. State capitols are located in the capital cities of U.S. states, and the Capitol is located in the capital city of the U.S. If you’re not talking about any of these capitol buildings, then the word you want is probably capital.
The Capitol building located in Washington, D.C. is spelled with a capital C, but state capitol buildings ordinarily don’t have the capital C (which is not to say that some writers don’t capitalize them anyway).
And now, a few of the shots I took. The nouth entrance:
One of many familiar images of Austin is of the Pennybacker Bridge at Loop 360, overlooking a stretch of beautiful Lake Austin. The 360 Loop drive and its Hill Country views are one of my favorite parts of Austin. I crossed off one of my must-do’s by hiking up the cliff overlooking the bridge to take in the view for myself. In the panorama above, you can just see the downtown skyline peeking over the hill on the left of the image. I’m not afraid of heights, but I have to say my heart skipped a beat or two as I stood on the rock on the edge of the cliff.
For reference (from google streetview):
I think I like this shot better. It’s taken from a vantage point slightly farther west, down the trail along the top of the cliff.
Just another gorgeous day in my little corner of paradise.
I know that my friends in the Northeast have been hit by a snowstorm today. But what a BEAUTIFUL day here in Austin! The Butler hike and bike trail around Town Lake (oops, i mean Ladybird Lake) is always a nice destination, with loops of varying distances depending on which bridges you choose. Last year the boardwalk on the southeast side of the lake was completed. I set out today to walk the Mopac / I35 loop. The Butler Hike and Bike Trail maps say that loop is 6.9 miles, but I must have dilly-dallied, because I logged a bit more.
It was a simply lovely day. I leave you with a few pics from my lap:
Start/finish at Zilker.A view from the new Boardwalk.Congress Avenue bridge.Looking south towards the Zach Theater from the Pfluger bridge.A rower making way.A peek inside one of the boathouses on the north side of the lake.
I would love to be able to come down here every day.
Sheila365 