Exceedingly Mundane

I fix breakfast food for supper regularly at our house. Both Tim and I love breakfast food, of all kinds. He grew up having a large, homemade breakfast every morning. His mom got up before they got on the bus and fixed the works for him – homemade biscuits, eggs, bacon or sausage, grits, etc. Tim would *love* to have that every morning, but I’m just not a morning girl. So I asked him years ago if he’d compromise, and have that kind of food once or twice a week, for supper. He did, and we have breakfast food often.

I go through stages on making pancakes and waffles, in addition to the other typical breakfast fare. I’m in a waffle stage right now. However, my waffle maker is going on 14 years old, and I am thinking it might be time for a new one. If you have a waffle iron that you use and like, would you let me know the brand, and how long you’ve had it? I don’t really care if it’s round versus square, a belgian one or not, I just want one that works well, preferably easy to clean, and hopefully can store upright (when you fold it up, it has a base that will allow it to be stored vertically instead of horizontally). Mine is an Oster brand, and I’m not even sure they make them anymore. It works ok, but it is not browning as well as it used to. Plus, the no-stick is long gone. I spray the iron each time with cooking spray before pouring on the batter. Or else, I have a mess on my hands!

Oh, and since I’ve been on a roll lately, let’s do a poll too:

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You gotta love this time of year! It can sometimes be about flowers and chocolate. 😀

Tim surprised me on Thursday, and said he wanted to take me out for an early Valentine’s dinner at Biaggi’s, which is one of our favorite places. We don’t go out for Valentines Day any more. We did when we were dating and the first few years we were married. Then, one year on Valentines Day, we waited two hours for a table, then had mediocre food and service at a place that normally has wonderful food and excellent service. That did it for us – we decided we’d just as soon stay at home and grill a steak and not feel compelled to go out for a nice dinner on that day, just because someone else says we should. We certainly go out to eat plenty of other times during the year.

It was a nice surprise though, and we had a good dinner. Then, we went to Fresh Market afterwards, another place I love. I told Tim, if we were rich, I’d shop in there every week! But, it’s nice to save it for splurges or special things. I love food and love to shop for food, so that place is heaven for me.

Here’s a few pictures, always more fun than my long boring posts!

Red tulips for me, and a box of truffles Tim bought me at Fresh Market:

And the tulips up close:

You can’t tell what’s in here, but this is our leftovers from Biaggi’s. That’s either today’s lunch or tonight’s supper! Tim had shrimp and crab cannelloni and I had penne sardi. Both delicious!

We picked up some gourmet brownies from the bakery in Fresh Market which will be our Valentines dessert (we’re grilling out ribeyes and will have salad, sweet potatoes and grilled asparagus for dinner):

Lastly, we got a new happy to fill our crystal candy dish in the den… at Christmas, we got soft peppermint sticks from Fresh Market, then after that, we got some organic truffles. Now, we got a big thing of chocolate covered peanuts, one of their “Items of the Month” up front:

Can you tell that I’ve been craving chocolate lately?!

Anyway, we’ve already had one Valentines celebration here, with dinner out and all these goodies. We’ll have another Saturday night. How about you? Do you have plans for Valentines Day? Eating in or out or something special with your spouse and/or kids? Hope you have a wonderful weekend, whatever you do 😀

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

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Another long, rambling, assorted post 🙂

Our new great-nephew that was born yesterday now has a name – Max Colton. We got an email with a photo of the new family and they looked tired, but very happy. This makes our sixth great niece or nephew. We have another one on the “other side” of my family who we haven’t met – Henry was born in April but we have yet to see him. He and his big brother and sister are coming on Thanksgiving though, so we’ll get to meet him next week!

I did my weekly grocery shopping yesterday. I’m so happy to be finding two of my favorite seasonal things at the store right now – the Coffeemate flavored creamers (got Gingerbread this week) and the Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash. I can drink my body weight in that stuff, I love it. And I have to stock up, by the week of Christmas or the week after, it will be gone in our stores here.

I also went clothes shopping yesterday. I wish I were one of those kind of women who actually loved shopping for clothes, but I’m not. It’s a tedious chore for me. I do a lot better when I have someone go with me, but alas, no takers. I concentrated on sweaters and tops yesterday. I didn’t even try any pants, jeans or skirts on. This time of year, I mostly wear pants to church (rebel that I am), since I’m so cold. I think it probably looks odd to wear my three pair of black pants over and over, but hey, that’s what I am doing. I did buy some new sweaters and tops though. I tried on a dozen or more pairs of flats and boots and came away empty handed. I’ll have to go again and look for those.

I am starting to get a little panicked about Christmas. Thanksgiving is so late this year, and then Tim’s birthday is two days after Thanksgiving, so I won’t have a chance to start until after then. But, we are having our Christmas with my in-laws the weekend before Christmas, so that only leaves me a couple of weeks to get things and get them wrapped. I’m getting zero ideas from people (HINT HINT), and I really need some help and suggestions. HINT HINT.

I’m enjoying the heck out of my new iPhone. It’s so nice to be able to take it with me places and still be in touch. Tim and I both have downloaded a ton of free apps for the thing and it’s so easy and so fun. I have only downloaded one pay app – the shopping app that I have used for years on my Palm Pilot (SplashShopper). It’s not as user friendly as it was on the Palm, but at least I have all of my info. If you have an iPhone (or I guess a Blackberry, not sure they work the same where applications are concerned), which applications do you have and which ones do you really like?

Finally, Beau is the constant joy in my life. Tim and I talk about it all the time. The dog has such personality and so much energy. And he’s very vocal. He’s gotten to where he growls and barks a lot to communicate with us, in different ways. It’s very cute! And I’m also happy to say that this dip in cool weather has perked up his appetite! When we got him, he was skin and bones and it’s been my mission ever since to put some weight on him. Some days, he won’t eat much at all. Lately, he’s eating really well and that makes me happy. I took some photos of him in the past few days that I wanted to share:

1. Can you see him?

2. Maybe a close up will help – I had to part the shrub and zoom in, he was wedged inside this big shrub we have, hunting for lizards:

3. Beau takes every step that Tim takes, he loves and adores him. I’m constantly singing the Aerosmith song “I don’t want to miss a thing”, because he doesn’t want to miss anything Tim does, says or anywhere he goes. He rarely feels that way about me, but this morning, he was quite interested in the laundry. I did two loads and I bet I have 8 pictures of him doing this:

That’s my Beau baby!

Obviously I couldn’t think of a good title. I’ve used “Odds and Ends”, “Catching Up” and “This and That” so much that I probably have double digit posts under each of blog post names 🙂 But that’s what this is, a various and assorted post.

It’s cold here this morning and was pretty chilly all weekend. I feel the need to go buy warm sweaters and sweatshirts! We’ve done really good though, and have not turned on our heat yet. It’s cold at night, but we sleep under a big quilt, and we’ve just been sucking it up in the AM until the house warms up in the middle part of the day.

We went to see Quantum of Solace over the weekend. I had read a review that probably pre-disposed me to it before we went. The review said this was more “Bourne than Bond”, and I have to agree, although I love all three of the Bourne movies. But this one had a fair amount of hand-held camera work in parts of it and that bothers me sometimes. It was a good movie though, typical Bond, high-action, and we did enjoy it.

We’ve also rented a couple of new movies lately from Netflix. We really liked “Get Smart” quite a bit, didn’t enjoy “What Happens in Vegas” all that much, and Tim watched the newest version of “The Incredible Hulk.”. We also just finished Season 5 of The Gilmore Girls, and will start Season 6 soon.

We got a new window, courtesy of Tim and his brother Terry, a couple of weeks ago:

I spent a gift card I got for my birthday (thanks Mark and Amanda!) at Target, and got a small rice cooker to try out. I fixed some Chinese food over the weekend, and white rice, and it was good. I’m going to look for some new stir fry recipes to try. If you have one, let me know! Also, I think I may try to make some red beans and rice this winter and use it for that also. Here’s my little cooker with rice:

I’ve read several books lately, and have been entering them over at GoodReads. If you’re not hooked up with me there, and want to know more about what I’ve read, just leave me a comment and let me know. I’m currently reading the first book I chose for the Winter Holiday Reading Challenge, “Until Morning is Nigh” by Leisha Kelly. This book is part of a series I’m reading and that I’m really enjoying 🙂

And I hate to end on a sad note, but today is not the most joyous of days for me. Today would have been my mom’s birthday, so I’m a bit sad today. It’s always hard this time of year, through the holidays, and around Mother’s Day. I wonder if there will ever come a time when I don’t miss her…

Well. I hope you’re all having a good day! 🙂

I’m really enjoying the new features that I have with the upgraded blog software that Tim installed for me. One thing I downloaded to try was a polling system. Not new to most bloggers, but new to me in this format. I thought I’d try one out and see how it goes. Please play along and let me know if you have any trouble with it!

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