Exceedingly Mundane

I blogged a couple of days ago about the Wheat Thins Veggie Chips that I had found and we were liking. Here’s another new find:

I have been buying the Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches for the last couple of summers, and I really like them, but Tim didn’t. Which, YEAH, meant more for me! But last week when I was grocery shopping, I didn’t see them, but found these ice cream cones instead. Now, Tim loves ice cream cones. Doesn’t like ice cream sandwiches. Go figure. 🙂

Anyway, they had these vanilla with caramel ones and I bought a box. We tried them the other night and they’re good. I got online at the Skinny Cow website and found that they also have Chocolate Fudge ice cream cones. I would like these more, but Tim is more of a vanilla and caramel guy. Anyway, these are good, give them a try!

I’ve read recently in my sister’s blog (here and here) about some good sounding snacks and splurges, and also at Dawn’s blog (about her Craisins Trail Mix). Food – now that’s something I think about all the time, so I guess I should blog more about it! 🙂

So, here’s my contribution, I’ve been buying these the last few weeks – in my effort to keep healthy snacks in the house and not things I would rather have like Oreos, full fat ice cream, etc. I think they’re pretty good! They also remind me of a snack I used to love as a kid. Does anyone remember, well, maybe they still make them, those Chicken-in-a-Biskit crackers? I used to love those things. These are good too!

We went out to eat tonight, to one of our favorite places – Cock of the Walk, out on the Reservoir. We don’t splurge very often and go here, as it’s not healthy (all fried foods). But, man, it’s good!

They basically serve one thing – fried catfish. They actually have fried chicken on the menu, I think, but we’ve never gotten it. We just order fish, for two. You get a skillet of cornbread (flipped tableside by your waiter), fried catfish, french fries, hush puppies, coleslaw and pickled onions. We sometimes get the fried dill pickles as a side, but we didn’t tonight.

Click on the extended entry for a few pictures, courtesy of my Razr phone…
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I have another new project, in addition to the herbs from seeds project that I blogged about yesterday. I am learning to make sourdough bread from a starter, from scratch. Gail blogged about her bread here – which is the same bread. Gail was very kind and brought me some of her sourdough starter, so I could try to learn to make this same kind of bread.

Now, I’ve been making bread for years, probably since the late 90’s, but I have never made bread totally from scratch. I have had a bread machine since 1999 and have always used the dough cycle in my machine to do the mixing, kneading and first rise of the bread. I have made tons of kinds of bread “from scratch” using the dough cycle of the machine, then taking it out, kneading again, shaping, letting rise the final time and baking. I always considered that “homemade” bread, but this is a horse of a different sort.

Gail brought me the starter last Thursday, which we fed for the first time with a concoction of sugar, potato flakes and water. Here’s what the bread starter looks like after you feed it – it gets sort of a crusty, bubbly layer on top:

I threw out some of this starter on Thursday night, put the bowl back in the refrigerator, and pulled it out on Sunday afternoon to feed it again.

To read the rest of this saga, and see pictures of the before, during and after process, click more (including a great picture of what Tim did to MY BREAD) :)…
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Saturday, I made a loaf of banana bread and a new recipe for chicken pot pie. I was going to blog about it, but ended up trying something new. I posted about it in our Cooking forum on Hambones.org, and I’ve tried to open up that section of the site to all users, registered or not, so they can see the info there. This is the area on our main website where I post my weekly menus, and also write about cooking and food in general.

The post on this particular subject, the banana bread and pot pie is here. Please let me know if you get any kind of error on trying to read it, if you are so inclined.

Here’s the banana bread:

I’m going out on a limb here and trying something new – growing things from seeds. I got a little kitchen herbs starter kit at Walmart last week. Just a little inexpensive one, so I’m not expecting a whole lot from it, but I thought it would be fun to try. I want to grow more herbs, more useful things that I can cook with. I got two plants (thyme and oregano) last year, but by the time I got them going good, we left on vacation for Washington DC and they died while we were gone. I will probably end up going to the nursery in a month or so and buying some herb plants, but in the mean time – I’m going to give this starter seed kit a try.

Here’s what the kit looks like, a cheap one from Walmart:

I opened it up on Saturday and planted it… click on the extended entry to see some pictures of my latest project 🙄

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I’ve been in a bit of a rut in the cooking department the last month or so. I’ve still been cooking most every night, but I haven’t been in the mood to try out anything new. Thankfully, I have at least 150 recipes that I have made in the past that are in my “tried and true” files, so don’t think we’re eating the same thing week in and week out. I have made recipes from my “already made it before files” that I might not have made in a year, or might have only made once or twice.

Still, I like to try new recipes. I just haven’t been motivated. Until yesterday. I finally tried a new one, for “Cornmeal-Crusted Tilapia with Salsa” from the recent issue of Everyday Food that I blogged about here. This recipe was incredibly easy. It took all of maybe 5 minutes, 10 tops. So don’t let the long name fool you, it was easy, but still good. I am trying for us to eat more fish, but Tim is not that hyped about it. He grew up eating fried catfish, so the switch to baked and grilled fish (other types, not catfish) has been a bit difficult for him. This tilapia was pan-fried, so he was a little happier.

You can find the recipe here on Hambones.org. All recipes can be viewed by anyone, whether they are registered at the site or not. 🙂 I’ll also post it in the extended section, if anyone wants to check it out there. Just click the -more- button below…

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It’s still sort of cold here this morning, so I finally relented and fixed myself a small cappuccino. I have been trying to be good, and only have coffee on the days that Tim is here (weekends and the days he works from home). I think that part of my weight gain is coming from the coffee (with all the cream and sugar/Splenda I have to add to it), so I’m trying to cut back. It was like 28º when we woke up this morning and I still haven’t completely warmed up, so I was trying to be good. But, I finally relented and I’m sitting here finishing up my cappuccino. 🙁

We had a really good weekend, or at least I did. 🙂 I think it drives Tim a bit nuts to stay around the house, but that’s my favorite kind of weekend, especially when it’s cold or rainy. I got a lot of reading done, finished one book and started another, and we watched TV and some movies, and those are always my favorite kind of weekends. Even played a little Sudoku together, which is fun for me. We ate in all weekend, so I did a lot of cooking too. Yes, I know, you all think we eat out all weekend, every weekend, but not always. I cooked every meal and we ate in the entire time. Tim hit a lot of golf balls, both inside and out. He worked with his golf video inside a bunch, then took it outside when he got cabin fever. I bet he hit golf balls for at least 3 hours yesterday afternoon. 🙄

I better get to work on my to-do list, it’s a mile long today. I put off a lot of stuff I could have done over the weekend, so I could spend time with Tim or read. I have a lot of catching up to do today!

I had some bananas that were ripe and needed to be used up. I normally throw them in the freezer, to use for another time, but I was in a baking mood yesterday and wanted to try something new. So, I poked around through the numerous recipes that I have collected (but never tried), and made a new one. They’re called Caribbean Bars and the recipe is now on Hambones (click here).

Here’s the batter, in my new batter bowl that I love and adore 😀

And here’s the finished product, waiting to go to work with Tim (after we had each tasted one, of course!):

Tim pronounced them a keeper, so I guess I can put them in my “tried and true” files 🙂

If you haven’t had a Sweetheart Brownie Blast at Sonic yet, be sure to get one before they’re gone. 🙂 Sonic is really great about offering seasonal or monthly items, new things to try, and this is one of their best, IMHO.

I have a long-standing love affair with Sonic’s February offerings. They used to have a “Sweetheart Shake” in February, and I would always get at least one from my darling husband, as a surprise or happy, in February. He was really good about it, and would always get me one every year, for the first few years we were married. I looked forward to it every February (every day, wondering if today was the day he would bring me one home as a surprise…nothing like a little anticipation :mrgreen:) Then, for some unknown reason, Sonic stopped making them. We probably had a 2 or 3 or maybe 4 year drought where they didn’t have a Sweetheart anything. Then, last year (or maybe the previous year), they started offering this “Sweetheart Brownie Blast”. WELL. You can’t go wrong in my book by combining soft serve ice cream, cherries, brownies and whipped cream. They’re delicious.

Tim came home with one for me yesterday…

This was, of course, the same time he came home with some new happies (for himself). He went out and purchased the two items I was planning on buying him for Valentines Day. I keep telling him, trying to get it through his thick skull, that he needs to stop buying himself presents 1-2 weeks before “known holidays” such as his birthday, Christmas, Valentines, and our anniversary. He never remembers. He went and bought himself a big bag of golf balls, and these yesterday:

Well, maybe I need to get him proper golf clothes (which of course, I can’t pick out, since he’d have to try them on). He seems to like playing golf in his vinyl pants:

Sigh. I’m out of ideas on what to get him for Valentines Day. John Grisham has no new book published this year in Jan/Feb, which is what I’ve gotten Tim for the last 7 or 8 years, maybe more. He’s so obsessed about golf, that I was going to get him golf stuff, but now he’s gone out and bought himself what I was planning on getting him. Anyone got any other ideas? Let me know, please, if you have any light bulb moments. 😀

I picked up the January/February copy of Everyday Food (put out by Martha Stewart’s conglomerate) a couple of weeks ago and have finally gone through it completely. This was my first time to ever buy this magazine, and only the second time I had ever noticed it on the newsstand. It’s a small magazine; it sort of reminds me of a Reader’s Digest in size and shape. This issue is a “special light issue”, which is why I picked it up. It has several recipes that sound good to me. Of course, me being me, I find tons of recipes that I want to make, from all kinds of sources. I find them in cookbooks, magazines, the newspaper, online at cooking sites, etc. So I have an obscene amount of recipes “collected” that I might never actually get around to making.

Anyhoo, I will be glad to post any of the ones from this magazine. Here’s the ones that I have marked, that I’m interested in… so if you want to see the recipe, just let me know and I’ll type it up.

{Editorial Note – Gail, I know you will probably want all of these, since you like “collecting” recipes as much as I do. Try to restrain yourself, hehehe :D}

The ones I have marked are:

Turkey Burgers
Quick Vegetable Soup
Chili Roasted Sweet Potato Wedges (only a couple of ingredients, not really a recipe)
Spicy Black Beans
Cornmeal Crusted Tilapia

There are others, I can list those if anyone is interested in recipes from this magazine. Just post a comment and let me know. 🙂

I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of cooking since the holidays ended. I normally like to try new recipes, but so far this year, I’ve been cooking old standby’s and not trying anything new. Last night, I made a really quick and easy enchilada pie, which is a new recipe for me. It’s not low-fat, but it was fairly easy and we both liked it. It made enough for us for dinner last night, and leftovers for lunch today, so that is always nice.

Recipe included on the extended section… just click “read more” if you’re interested!

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For the last several years, I’ve been making sticky buns at Christmas. It’s a very easy recipe, but I “save” it for the holidays and usually only make it at Christmas. In years past, when we are always gone Christmas Eve Day and Christmas Day, I make it a day or so early, whenever we are going to open our presents to each other and be home. This year was the first year ever that I have made them on Christmas Eve night and we’ve had them on Christmas morning. Daddy was here with us this year, and I think he enjoyed them too.

Tim pronounced that he could eat these 365 days a year. He said he loved them better than anything. I asked if that meant better than a ribeye or prime rib and he hesitated, but in keeping with the spirit of the moment, he said “yes, better than a steak”. 😀 We’ll see about that!

You can find the recipe here on Hambones.

Here’s what they look like before:

And after coming out of the oven the next morning:

A double whammy is when your sister is here from Chicago and wants to eat out twice in one day.

Ouch. My pants are tight now. 😳

It was all really really good, don’t get me wrong. But eating out one good, over-sized meal a day should be my limit. Definitely. Keifers for lunch (hummus and gyros) and The Haute Pig for supper (ribs, slaw, fries for me, baked beans for Tim & Suzie) and Texas Toast. Yum-O

I tried a new recipe tonight for some healthy muffins… they just came out of the oven, wanna see? 🙂

I hope they taste ok… Tim is not fond of the healthier ones. And these are pretty healthy, or at least the recipe looked healthy. They have half white/half wheat flour, oatmeal, wheat germ, etc in them. If they come out ok and I want to make them again, next time I will try substituting Splenda for baking for the 1/2 cup of sugar. Off to smear some fattening (low-fat!) butter on one and try it.

*UPDATE* Had one hot out of the oven with a pat of brummel & brown butter in the middle and it was sooo good! Forgot to say that these are banana-blueberry muffins. I don’t know how they will taste in the morning, but hot out of the oven, they were delicious! I guess I can always pop them in the microwave and then fill the middle with butter! 😆