This & That

Garden Linguine

With my husband chasing turkeys there really wasn't a whole lot of active cooking going on this week. While Eric was here, I grabbed out stuff I had in the freezer. You just have to love freezer meals. No stress food for company that's family instead of "company." A couple of these pictures are from the time my daughter was home with us last week.

We used up the last of the Easter ham in Fried Rice. I should probably get the recipe up here for that.

We also had waffles that we used as vehicles for the Food Nanny's Coconut Syrup. Good stuff. I leave out the actual stringy coconut when I make this. I don't care to floss my teeth while I eat, and the coconut milk gives the syrup enough coconut flavor for me. 

This particular recipe, I have made for several years. It's just a very spring-y recipe that uses a lot of spring vegetables, most notably asparagus which we love. The vegetables don't have to be the specific ones listed in the recipe necessarily. I switch things out all the time depending on what we have and no, the mushrooms never, ever make an appearance. I will, however, substitute a handful of frozen peas for the snow peas, use regular sweet onions for the green onions, add some broccoli or sliced green beans...you get the idea. I found this recipe in my Creme de Colorado cookbook. At one time, I collected Jr. League cookbooks from cities/states that we visited. I quit that mostly because I found that the recipes were often a little too foo-foo to be Mom Food. I kept a couple, though, because they had several recipes in them we liked.  Yes, there's the snowman tablecloth, but if you notice in the Fried Rice picture I have switched it out for something a little more in keeping with the season. You may also notice that both the Fried Rice and this dish were cooked in a cast iron skillet. I have become a big fan over the past couple of years. Yes, it's a bit more maintenance, but honestly I'm just really liking it, and the fact that it will probably last until I can't lift it to cook anymore.

Garden Linguine

2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup chopped green onions
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 pound mushrooms, sliced
1 medium zucchini, sliced
2 medium carrots, cut into julienne strips
1 cup snow pea pods, sliced in half diagonally
1 pound asparagus, trimmed and sliced
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons minced fresh basil, or 1 teaspoon dried basil
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
9 ounces linguine, cooked al dente and drained
1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

In large skillet heat olive oil and butter. Stir in green onions, garlic, mushrooms, zucchini, carrots, snow peas, and asparagus, and simmer until tender.

Stir in broth, cream, basil, parsley, salt and pepper. Simmer for another 3-4 minutes.

In a heated serving dish, toss linguine with vegetable mixture and parmesan. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 main dish servings or 6-8 side dish servings

Around Here This Week

So around here this week....

We had more typical spring weather...some rain, a little sunshine and lots and lots of wind. Welcome to Idaho. We have some new bulbs blooming which is always wonderful, but a lot of the others are starting to fade.

This is a close up of the hosta leaves. I just think it's so interesting how those dinner plate-sized leaves are rolled up in those spears and just gradually unroll themselves as they grow.

The back fountain is hooked up and running.

During some of the brief sunshine we had, I ran into this character thinking he was going to sun himself on the driveway. Not with both Ollie and Samson curious about what he thought he was up to. I'm not a big fan of snakes.

Just checking....yep, they're still there.

This was dress rehearsal for the concert where I played the "Phantom of the Opera" medley. The concert happened last weekend. No pictures...I thought the director might frown on my whipping out my camera mid-song.

I got to play in Primary last Sunday which is just about my most favorite thing of all time to do at church.

You may recall that my husband has been in the mid-west chasing turkeys. He was so efficient that he got to take a day to chase these 2 little turkeys. This is the obligatory nanny-boo picture to me.

Despite the nanny-booing going on, this arrived early in the week. 

Look at these tiny, little flowers that were in the arrangement...I think they might be minuscule orchids. Seriously, they're no bigger than my thumbnail.

The flowers made a timely arrival right in the middle of this project. I reasoned that with no one home to interrupt me, I might as well dive into the much-procrastinated job of cleaning out my closet. I knew it would take hours, and it did. I also knew that I would be really happy when I finished, and I was, but it was a slog.

And look! I had a guest for a few days. My Eric came out to meet with some hospital types for a few days. The first thing he did when we got home from the airport was ask me if there was anything he could fix. I had hoped he would have time to work on the inoperable small fountain outside my craft room window.

He was able to do a few adjustments and got it going, which makes me so happy. The sound of water just soothes me, which is why I like the fountains, the sound of the river at the cabin, and rain absolutely any time. 

We decided to go to a movie while he was here and this is what we ended up with. It's a very typical Jurassic Park-ish prehistoric monster movie, which meant that Eric loved it. I spent some of the movie with my hands over my eyes. He also hooked up my TV so it will run with Amazon Prime and we can rent and watch movies that way. He's kind of a handy kid to have around.

Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week, Edward had his piano recital. I'm loving the bow tie.

Here is Baby David just looking as cute as he can be. My daughter-in-law Face-Timed me to show him to me in a little jumper sling that attaches to the door jamb. Totally cute. James thought so too, as he tried to twirl him around in the jumper.

Isaac got to see a big tractor outside the grocery store, which made his day.

And here we are with "Isaac asleep in the shopping cart"....take 2.

And by all accounts, Levi enjoyed his birthday breakfast donut.

 

Grins, Anyone?

This boy certainly has something to grin about. He's 1 year old today!

Taking a look back through his first year....

.....he's just grown like a little weed. I can't believe how fast this year has gone by.

He has the cutest little smile.

And his Gramma Honey is excited that he'll be moving closer this summer. Happy birthday to Levi! Love you, Sweetie!

The Manly-Man Version

So, while my daughter and I were doing girly things over the weekend, you might wonder what my husband did to keep himself busy.

Well, nothing screams spring like permethrin-sprayed, turkey hunting camo suspended between two trees over the back patio, right?

Then there were some dead things on the move. My husband and Evan had fetched home their newly-stuffed caribou from last fall. Trouble was, they had to do some rearranging in the den to make room for them to hang. Since Evan doesn't have a dedicated dead things hanging spot yet, we have to find a place for 2 critters instead of just one. It was pretty frustrating for my husband because things weren't quite working out the way he wanted. What he wanted was to put it in the living room on the same wall with the 3 gargantuan elk that are already in there. This quickly became a line in the sand issue with me because, while he guilted me into giving in on the elk lo those many years ago, I'm not turning my living room into a wildlife refuge. He has a den and he has a cabin. If things don't fit in those two places, he needs to quit stuffing every dang animal. #huntergatherermarriageissues  In the end, he decided he needs to do some reinforcing on the wall he wants to hang his on.

So this is what I'm left with as he is chasing turkeys in the mid-west. 2 very large caribou lying on my living room floor with a dining room chair barricade around them so small children will have to really work to get at them. 

Evan stuck around after having worked with his dad to try to solve the caribou debacle. Between the two of them, they decided to till up the rest of the garden ground to get it ready for multi-family planting.

He's also trying an experiment with potatoes. We're going to try growing them in buckets to give the place where we've planted them the last two years a rest. He and I have seen some online tutorials about this and it will be interesting to see how things turn out. 

You can see he had plenty of good supervision. So there's the manly-man vs. the girly. I'm not sure which of us had more fun.

The Girly Weekend

During the weekend my daughter was home we managed to accomplish quite a bit.

She's working on a little home improvement project and since one of her BFF's was home as well, they were really brave and ventured into the Home Depot place and got some boards cut for what will end up being a little side table. I'm waiting for finished project pictures as we speak, but she seems encouraged by how things are working out.

We did the very girly thing and got our toes done. Her color turned out a little better than mine did. Mine looks like I stuck bubble gum on my toes. She also made a trip out to the falls with some friends so she could see how high the water is.

She had requested that we do some cooking together. She wanted to make a couple of her favorite things to freeze, so she could have a few meals put away for when school starts up again. Here she's working on some Coconut Curry Chicken. The kitchen was smelling pretty good at this point.

While she was doing that, I was providing encouraging supervision and making some zucchini bread. This is another of her favorites and since the recipe makes 2 loaves, she took one home with her.

The next day it was Breakfast Burrito-o-rama. I think we have something like 18 when we were finished with the project. She also made a batch of her favorite chocolate chip cookies, so I'd say we accomplished what we set out to do, but the opportunities we get to do things like this are few and far between.

That Special Picture

You remember last week when I said I wanted to take a special picture with the flowering almond?

Every year when this starts to bloom I think about this specific Easter Sunday, when I took this picture of my daughter in front of it. Lots of things run through my mind when I see it....how much she's grown up and how fast that happened, how I loved that Easter dress I made her, how just maybe I've learned a couple of things about taking pictures and I'm usually no longer guilty of making my kids squint into the sun. 

How she's become such a fun grown up and how much I love having her around when she can manage it. I love the "then and now" comparison and thinking about the positives and negatives that come along with both sides. She's grown up, the flowering almond has grown up, and yet every spring when it blooms I think about my girl...when she was just 5...in her Easter dress.

Rolo Cookies

Lest you think that every cooking adventure I embark upon is successful, let me just show you what happened in my oven the other day.

Yes, those are exploded potatoes, and some of their guts recently decorated the inside of my oven. I was making this recipe for breakfast burritos and followed the recipe to the letter. I know better than to bake potatoes naked in the oven without poking them first, but was so focused on following the recipe exactly, that I didn't poke them....against my better judgment. Lesson learned. The burritos themselves are really delicious and I was able to salvage enough potato to make them work, but if you decide to make them, the cautionary tale here is to poke the darn potatoes.

Now, this next recipe is one of those decadent, deadly recipes you save for special occasions like holidays, or PMS-must-eat-all-the-chocolate days. Don't laugh, while I may not have them any more, I do remember what they were like. My memory's not that far gone yet. Uber-chocolate flavor on these and the caramel center is the nice surprise. I found the recipe here and you should make them....today....because it's National Talk Like Shakespeare Day and that's close enough to a holiday for me.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:"

I guess you could compare these cookies to a summer's day, but the caramel in the middle would probably melt if you left it out in the sun.

Rolo Cookies

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup cocoa

1 cup butter, at room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup light brown sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Bag of Rolo candies, unwrapped

Sugar (for rolling the cookie dough balls in)

Preheat oven to 375°. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside. (I highly recommend this step. Any leakage of the caramel through the cookie dough makes it stick to the pan like crazy. Do it....really.)

In a medium bowl, sift flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa. Set aside. With a mixer, cream butter and sugars together until smooth. Add in eggs, one at a time. Next, add in vanilla extract. Mix until blended.

Slowly add flour mixture to sugar mixture and blend well. Take a spoonful of chocolate cookie dough and wrap around one unwrapped Rolo candy. Make sure Rolo is completely covered with cookie dough. Roll dough ball in sugar and place on prepared baking sheet. (You might notice I didn't do this step. It's OK. They taste just fine without the extra layer of sugar.) Continue until you run out of cookie dough. (I didn't come out even with the dough and the Rolos. I had some dough left over and just rolled it into balls without the candy center and baked them with the others. Worked just fine and really, I'm not going to waste chocolate cookie dough, right?)

Bake cookies for 7-10 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit on cookie sheet for 3-5 minutes. Move to a cooling rack and cool completely.

Around Here This Week

So around here this week.....

....the weather has been changeable, as is typical for the season here. The horses all gathered under the very minimal protection of some aspen trees during a rain storm that moved through here this week.

Easter got picked up and pretty much put away.

In the garden, Evan and I planted the onion starts. #candyonions2017 We just barely finished off last year's crop, which means I will have to actually buy onions at the store for the next while.

This is my eldest hard at work. You can see the garlic he planted last fall growing behind him. Soon I won't have to buy garlic at the store.

I have been on weed patrol in the flower beds. One of the things that doesn't make me happy about spring is yard maintenance.

Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week, I got these pictures from Eric of the kids out in their yard. Gwen was digging. They aren't planting their usual garden this year because they will be moving out here in a couple months. Picture me very excited about this. My daughter-in-law really likes to garden, so when we planted the #candyonions2017, we put in an extra pack so they could have some. I imagine with Marc's family in Pocatello rather than Iowa, they will be sharing in the garden as well. We are pondering tilling the whole area and planting it like a communal family thing so everyone here will be supplied. When the kids left home, my husband and I were only using a third of the garden space at a time. I don't think that will work until everyone who's here in town gets a place where they can have their own gardens. It may be big gardens for a bit.

Caroline's shirt matched the petals falling from a blooming tree.

And Emmett decided he needed to push the lawnmower (motor off) around. I imagine Eric will turn that job over to him as soon as he's old enough, but by then he probably won't be as excited to do it.

A few pictures of James before he left to go to his other Gramma's house. He was "helping" my husband fill the watering trough for the horses. Maybe it won't surprise you that by the end of this project, he was wet and muddy....as in he tripped and went hydroplaning on his belly in the mud.

He can also climb fences really fast. At this point I had to put down the camera to make sure he didn't go over the fence.

This was Easter Sunday just after church. Alison wanted a picture with the temple in the background.

This is what happened next. James managed to get most of his body through the bars. Fortunately, he stopped when his head was a tight fit. 

Alison sent me these pictures after she left town. She usually cuts James' hair, but this week took him out somewhere to get it done. I'm not sure how they got him to sit so still while it happened...

...but he sure looks like a big boy.

From my daughter-in-law, Rachelle. She sent this one saying, "Isaac is so proud of the outfit he picked out today." I think the smile says it all. :)

A little later in the day I got this picture of Isaac asleep in the shopping cart.

Levi looks a little puzzled by the whole thing.

And I got this one from my daughter. This was after she got her hair trimmed this week. If you've followed my blog for any length of time, you'll know that every time she gets her hair cut, there is hair drama. I get a phone call and she's on the other end of the line crying and distraught because it's "SO SHORT!!!!" or "SO UGLY!!!!!" This has happened from the time she was very young. Every. Single. Time. In fact, as she was driving to the salon, she sent me a text saying, "I'm at the salon. Brace yourself." And I did, but for the first time in my memory, she was OK with the hair cut. She says she thinks she's finally been able to talk herself into the fact that her hair will grow, and it does need a trim every once in a while, and it looks like she's finally found someone she can trust with that process. She is home with me this weekend while she is on semester break from school. We are going to do some girl stuff and she's specially requested that we do a little cooking for her freezer. On the menu are breakfast burritos and some Coconut Curry Chicken. I love having her home...there will probably be pictures.

Working & Playing

A combination of both this week.

With the slightly warmer temperatures, my walking buddy and I have started our daily therapy sessions walks around the neighborhood again. We have been friends for over 25 years now and understand each other well. She knows I would walk in the rain or snow, and I know that if it's below 45° she will come bundled up like we live in the Arctic. At that temperature I'm usually walking in a long sleeved t-shirt. She also doesn't have hot flashes, and I think that's terribly unfair.

Lots of laundry with regular clothes and company gone, and Easter over. While I classify laundry as a gerbil job....think gerbil running on one of those wheels that goes around and around and around...never ending and never getting anywhere...it's not a job I struggle with. I am a fan of clean laundry and how good it smells. I also iron, which probably makes me a dinosaur on so many levels.

When I was at the farm-y store picking up the peony rings, they had little strawberry starts...10 in a bag of sawdust. Total impulse purchase here, but I'm thinking I'll put them in one of the flower beds and see what happens. I bought 3 bags and only have one planted so far. I'm hoping to get more in this weekend.

A switch out for the little wool banner. Hook, line and sinker for seasonal stuff, especially when I have time to make it. It makes me happy to do stuff like this, and it makes me happy to have it reappear year after year.

I felt like doing some sewing this week. I was really good and pulled out the pattern for one of the sadly-neglected house quilt blocks.

This little section turned into a tree by the house. 

And the finished product. 9 more blocks to go, which means I'm not quite halfway done.

And last week's Project Life app pages.

Current so far this year. That also makes me happy.

Walking the Yard

This time of year is just so beautiful in its own way. Yes, I know summer's coming...that specter hangs over me constantly, and yes the weeds are already starting, but you just have to take a breath and enjoy the big, beautiful world in spring. It's like stepping out into a box of the brightest paints you can find. I can always whine about the heat later on.

The flowering almond is starting to bloom. I'm hoping to get a really special picture here in a day or two.

The hyacinths in the backyard. The front yard ones are already starting to fade, but my back yard faces north, so the season lasts just a little longer there.

The unusual varieties of daffodils are out in force.

I enjoy the selection of different kinds to see.

They make me smile and I look for them every spring.

Why am I including a picture of some questionably attractive gas tanks? Well, there's a story here. Several years ago, Bryce dug out my iris bed. It needed to be moved to a different place in the yard and the plants needed to be divided. He threw some on the ground under the gas tanks for whatever reason...

...and the next year they popped up there. I decided to leave them. I mean, if they can find a spot under some gnarly-looking gas tanks, then who am I to say they can't just bloom and grow.

I picked up some rings for the peonies that are coming up. I'm hoping this will help them not just flop over under the weight of the blooms.

The hostas have started up. 

And the tulips are taking over where the daffodils leave off.

The bleeding hearts are also blooming, but it looks like I need to get some iron in there in short order. I guess that means another trip to the farm supply store.