Posts Tagged ‘homemade’
Easter Brunch
Yesterday’s Easter brunch deserves additional press. Did I mention Cyndie made EVERYTHING with one exception of purchased meats? That is why I was smelling tempting aromas for several days. Read the list below, presented in no specific order, and try to imagine fitting a little taste of each offering on your plate or in your stomach during one brief brunch event:
- Caramel Rolls
- Cinnamon Buns
- Puppy Tails (baked cinnamon twists)
- Pear Almond Crescents w/ apricot glaze and almond drizzle
- 4-Cheese Scalloped Potatoes
- Tulip Deviled Eggs
- Caramelized Pecan Spring Mix Salad
- Three Pea Salad
- Roasted Heirloom Rainbow Carrots w/ orange marmalade and maple syrup
- Fruit Salad w/ [Patty’s] honey-lime dressing
- Egg Bake w/ roasted red peppers, spinach, asparagus, caramelized onions, mushrooms, orange & yellow peppers, and lots of cheese
- Holy Kolachy sandwich buns (Gramma Betty Buns)
- HoneyBaked Ham and Turkey* (purchased)
- Raisin Sauce
- Coconut Bunny Butt Cupcakes
- Dark Chocolate Cherry Almond Bark
- 4 kinds of Truffles: Grand Marnier, Cognac, Vanilla, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
- Mint Meringue Cookies
- Lemon Curd Meringue nests
- Butter Cream Cookies
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Honorable mention goes to Elysa for her contribution of an “Imposter Dessert” that looked like Deviled Eggs but was in fact a sweet treat of sweet milk gelatin filled with cream cheese frosting.
Like mother, like daughter, Cyndie had taken a crack at her own twist on deviled eggs. Neither of them knew what the other was up to. Cyndie decided to prepare her eggs like some she saw in an image online.
It was the last thing she did before heading to bed Saturday night. I asked her how they turned out and she hesitatingly offered “a solid medium.”
They tasted great! Although, I understand her opinion. It’s similar to the way fast food burgers look in commercials compared to what you actually receive in the wrapper. Cyndie is healthy enough to laugh along with me when her outcomes might not meet what she intended after seeing images in recipes. Her tulips look like they may have been dropped during shipment from the florist.
I ate leftovers for dinner last night while watching March Madness basketball.
I got up from my spot on the couch and went downstairs to make the sandwich. When I returned, a certain canine had taken my place.
I didn’t have the heart to kick him out so I sat on the side.
Do you think I can get Cyndie to take a day off from cooking or baking something new today?
Me either.
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More Chews
This picture provides a great view of how Asher adores the custom homemade chew toys Cyndie has been creating for him:
After completing a craft project of her own, Cyndie wrapped leftover fabric scraps around chew toys Asher hasn’t been showing much fascination with for a while to give them new life. Adding a few morsels of smelly treats piques his interest and motivation to rip into the tantalizing new toys.
Even though they don’t last long, it’s fun to see his playful destruction occupy his mind with something creative when nothing else seems to be satisfying him for a moment.
I’m looking for all the distractions I can find to occupy him while deer hunters are out and about in our surrounding properties. Asher does not like being confined to quarters!
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Easy Patient
It was almost “just another Thursday” except for the fact Cyndie was only one day away from surgery on her ankle. Her extensive experience with the routine of recovering from surgeries makes her a pretty easy patient to watch over. She has been in good spirits throughout the whole process, surviving the first night with only minimally interrupted sleep from pain.
You may think she is doing so well because of the care I’ve been providing, but I can’t take credit. It’s the healed ankle bones that are all the difference. More specifically, it’s that she doesn’t have pain from the shattered bones and she is not forced to avoid putting any weight on her right foot.
Cyndie’s brother, Steve stopped by for a visit and provided good energy. He and Asher got along really well, especially when Steve accepted Asher’s challenges to wrestle by dishing out plenty of roughhouse competition.
In the afternoon, Cyndie occupied herself in the recliner by making a “snuffle mat” for Asher. My sister, Judy provided inspiration with photos of mats that she makes. The project fit well with the homemade dog chews Cyndie had just sewn for our pup.
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Asher took to it like a natural, individually sniffing out and chomping each little morsel Cyndie had scattered. It occupied him for about a minute or two.
I allowed him some off-leash time around the outside of the house while I moved all the deck furniture to storage behind the house for the winter. He was a good sport and stayed close but went nuts doing Zoomies to burn pent-up energy.
I think he senses something weird with Cyndie’s behavior and is rising to respect her space while looking toward other avenues to get his needs met. At the same time, I think he really misses the “old” version of his momma.
It won’t be long before she is back to her old ways.
Last year, I was more concerned with how soon she could return to tossing around hay bales. This year, I’m looking toward how soon she can get back to entertaining Asher when he gets overly whiny.
I really wish I could convince him to simply “use [his] words!” whenever I can’t figure out what he wants.
He is not what I’d call an easy patient.
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Small Banquet
Once again, the phrase “dined like royalty” comes to my mind to describe the homemade feast Cyndie served yesterday for a visit from our son, his wife, and their friends. Beyond her classic culinary artwork of two varieties of scones, Cyndie tried her hand at making hummus out of peas and baking naan bread for the first time.
The main dish of curry chicken and roasted vegetables was followed by her version of a turtle cake from a copied recipe of St. Paul’s Cafe Latte.
As often happens, there was so much delicious food consumed, there was little room for dessert. That’s no problem for Cyndie. She had “to go” containers available so slices of the chocolate caramel decadence were sent home to be enjoyed later.
We were blessed with an afternoon of warm sunshine that felt even nicer than the actual temperature, especially compared to our recent extended spell of rainy, snowy days.
The horses had been brushed earlier in the morning but were perfectly covered in mud by the time we all showed up to visit after a stroll in the labyrinth. While Mix showed interest in checking out the new guests, the other three paid little notice, choosing instead to linger in the altered state of almost sleeping, but not really.
The day was a wonderful celebration of sharing the wonders of Wintervale while we are mired in the muddy conditions of early spring.
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Power Treat
With thanks to my sister, Judy, I have discovered a new homemade energy treat that offers a sweetness, but is not particularly high in sugar. One reason it is a low sugar snack for me is, my ability to be satisfied with a single serving.
I can get a batch to last more than a month, barely eating one per day.
What makes them so satisfying? I think it is the brilliant balance of ingredients, including crunchy peanut butter, honey, oatmeal, and as of last night, a few of my own enhancements.
With Cyndie’s guidance in the kitchen while making dinner, I concocted a souped-up version of the recipe Judy originally shared with us. Per Judy’s suggestion, we replaced raisins with craisins. Beyond that, I added some millet, chopped coconut, chopped almonds, chia seeds (because Cyndie found some in the cupboard), protein powder, and chopped pumpkin seeds. Finally, as much as I love crunchy peanut butter, I reduced the quantity and finished the amount with the addition of almond butter.
If there is a “super crunch” version of almond butter, I haven’t discovered it yet. I would dearly love to try that.
Cyndie did the honors of buttering her palms and forming the bite-sized balls for me. I’m not that interested in getting my hands covered with ingredients. She shaped these a tiny bit bigger than a previous batch she made from the original recipe. Even when small, my method of enjoying them involves nibbling to get many more bites than one per serving.
At this size, we calculate a single ball is about 3-4 grams of sugar. The average cookie often comes in around 7 grams.
I’m still aiming to stay below 50 grams per day in my average 2000 calorie/day diet. By trying to stay close to 10 grams per meal, I have almost 20 grams of space available each day to keep from being a total party-pooper when treats are served.
Having a choice available with only 4 grams of sugar gives me a quick and easy option and helps me land well below my goal on days when these are the only treat I end up eating.
Of course, this would never have satisfied my old palette, when my sugar addiction was allowed to direct my choices, uncontrolled. Having weaned myself off the high sugar diet, I am now able to get sweet satisfaction from much lower amounts.
It is a great reward to have arrived at a healthy pattern of eating and find out it no longer feels like a place of deprivation. It is perfectly pleasurable and sustainable, as long as I acknowledge and remain vigilant about paying appropriate attention to my history of addiction to the sweet reward my brain celebrates every time I give my body sugar.
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We’re Nesting
The due date is upon us. Baby chicks are scheduled to ship today and we are preparing for delivery at Wintervale Ranch. Cyndie even bought a stuffed chicken with real feathers that she hoped to use in training Delilah about the soon-to-be-expanding clan we want her to accept as one of our pack. Didn’t really work because she isn’t the least bit interested in it.
We decided to use one of our existing troughs as the brooder, hoping to devise a mount for the heat lamp that will avoid the melting of whatever non-metal material it is.
Over the weekend, I fabricated a mesh cover for it from a roll left over from one of my attempts to protect the trees in the paddock. At first, I thought it was a hassle that it wanted to roll back up and not stay flat, but once I got the dowels attached, that turned out to be a feature, not a bug.
It tends to “grab” the lip of the tub for a nice firm fit.
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I was wrestling with bending the branches I wanted for the radius at each end when I remembered the cuts in the tree stump that Cyndie had photographed, which I recently featured in a post. I made a little slice part way through the branches which facilitated the bend just enough.
You never know from where inspiration might eventually arrive.
We are going to take a shot at raising them in the barn. I’m trying to figure out where I will end up putting a bed out there for Cyndie, since I expect she won’t be able to leave them untended out there for any length of time.
I sure hope these birds will have big appetites for bugs.
If all goes well, I have a feeling we are going to need a bigger coop.
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Sweet Work
This time of year, I don’t think a day goes by without something extra sweet going on in our kitchen. While I continue to monitor and moderate the total amount of daily sugar I consume, I have not gotten to the extreme of completely avoiding treats. In a way, that means I face a greater need for self-control to manage my goal.
It would probably be easier to just completely refuse any of the sweet things that Cyndie prepares, but I’m not sure. On an annual basis, it’s not that much of an issue for me, but in the weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas, it does require greater effort on my part.
Last night I sat at the counter with Cyndie, cutting and wrapping the last of the caramels she made. I think we did it at a good time, because I was stuffed from having just finished eating dinner.
I didn’t eat a single one.
I mean, an entire single one. There was one that came out a little too wide, and needed to be trimmed.
I suppose that fraction of a caramel added a few grams of sugar to my daily total. I probably worked that off in the calories I burned working so diligently on cutting and wrapping.
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Precious Present
Our fence contractor called the other day and during our conversation he asked if we liked dill pickles. Of course we do! But do we like them a lot? That’s a hard thing for me to measure. How much is a lot? Next time he stopped by, he unveiled a gift of a gallon jar filled to the brim with fresh homemade dill pickles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a jar of pickles that big. It looked like A LOT!
After Cyndie and I unsealed the jar, we quickly decided that it probably wouldn’t be enough pickles to last us very long. There is something about them being homemade, produced locally, by someone we know, presented to us as a gift, that enhances the essence of a food beyond anything a commercial product could ever achieve.
I think there is a feature related to the fact that there are so many pickles, we are subconsciously moved to grab two every time the jar is opened… because there are plenty! We happily oblige the urge.
By the way, the fence around the front field was completed yesterday. That’s a milestone I was wondering if we would ever see. We’ll take a breath and then start plotting our next phase. We are contemplating whether we have it in us to take on doing some of the next fence work ourselves. The main disadvantage I see in such a plan is that we’d lose the opportunity to be the beneficiaries of some pretty spectacular homemade foods.
Tom and Sue Sherry of Best Built Fence Company have been very, very generous about sharing produce and custom concoctions from their personal kitchen. It is a wonderful gesture, and has produced some very precious presents for us over the past 10 months.
We are hoping that we have made a connection with them that will last well beyond our initial client/contractor relationship. Looks like we are off to a good start, as we have been invited to their “booya” at the end of this month.
Relative Something 