quick bites~

on the weekends my husband and I are always busy working outside, I never feel like cooking after heavy landscaping and gardening for full eight hour plus days... I buy easy foods for my husband, I had a package of chicken caprese meat balls and French bread in a can. I stretched the bread long, cut it half, then cut the two haves in half and skewered the meat balls and bread and baked according to the bread directions. we both loved it, perfect for dunking in soup, marinara sauce, drizzled with balsamic or accompanied with a salad. the flavors and choices are endless, but the very best news of all is it is quick and easy to make when exhausted!

 

 

 

cherry almond braid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

cherry almond braid

bake 375 for 25' until golden

 

can of crescent rolls

roll flat on cookie sheet covered with silpat or parchement

 

mix to taste

whipped cream cheese

powder sugar

almond extract

 

place down middle lengthwise on crescent sheet

 

cover with

canned cherry pie filling

 

cut a dozen strips on the sides of filling and braid over cherry mixture and bake

cool for ten'

 

drizzle with

powder sugar mixed with almond extract

 

sprinkle with almonds

Memories...

recently I was at our old house cleaning out the kitchen cupboards, I came across my old recipe file...

now a days I think index cards are ancient history, but when I started cooking 50 years ago we took recipes from word of mouth or magazines. on every birthday my grandmother made us all an 8 layer rainbow cake, that filling recipe came from her, made even in her youth, my sister is 80 years old, you can just imagine how old that recipe is.

the con casa recipe was my mothers favorite cocktail party recipe, I hate to say it but I love it too, haven't made it in 40 years, but loved seeing it again. the spinach dip came from my working days in my late teens at the long gone I Magnins, I thought it was exotic then with knorrs vegetable soup.

today there is no need to write anything down, with google at your fingertips you can find an infinity of ideas on any topic under the moon and stars. I tossed 100s of cards away and just held on to this handful for the memories. one of the recipes I did keep was recent, well if you think thirty years old is recent, compared to the rest...

our old house had lots of fresh citrus, I was always hunting for lemon recipes, this was my standard go to dessert recipe for a decade. our new house has lots of small citrus planted, but its colder here and Meyers are very slow to grow... after I found my recipe cards I knew I wanted to honor my new trees with an old standard I haven't made in 15 years...

lemon pudding

bake at 350 for one hour in water bath

3 eggs separated

2 T butter

3/4 sugar

1/3 cup lemon juice

1 cup buttermilk

1/4 c flour

whip egg whites and add 1/4 sugar

mix all other ingredients separately and fold into egg whites.

Pour into souffle dish or individual ramekins. 

serve with fresh fruit whole or purred with sugar to taste

after I took these pics I went to file my recipe away on my computer, I found I had saved it from early, my kitty is now a hefty 13 year old boy~

 just as delish now as then!

garden updates, into the new year~

been working faithfully all year to get our new garden in shape. the pyracantha berries have been feeding the birds all winter, when I was a kid they used to eat them and get so drunk they would crash into our windows, so far we are still intact...

the last hold out with fall color, they are the first to bloom in winter

penstemon is still blooming in the border

surprisingly I have had reblooming iris for months...

I don't think I am ever without red hot poker flowers year round

the citrus is ripe and ready

rosemary has been blooming for months

the acacia is budding fast

we have been working hard in the rose garden, every time we get a new path done in pavers I prune the roses to 1', I just have 60 roses left to prune, which means two more circle paths until the rose garden is done!

the garden has 6 pathways radiating our from the center to the borders, just two more rings and we will be done!

I have been pruning, shredding and mulching 100s of roses for weeks, any weeds you see are the last of the pathways we still need to lay...

tucked up in the tiles the woodpeckers have been storing acorns all fall

as the rose garden pulls itself together we purchased 1200 pounds of steel to make scads of arbors and tuteurs, thank heavens my husband enjoys welding!

just dead headed the canna, its been blooming nonstop since summer, even with temps in the low 20s, and our fountains frozen solid, the geraniums have been pumping out color...

put up a large 10' trellis to support an evergreen clematis behind the bear bench. it is surrounded with tulips and grape hyacinth, now I can look forward to a beautiful wall of flowers and fragrance wafting around me on a warm spring day.

if anyone can tell me what these are would love to know, been here 2 years and all they do is get bigger, no flower spikes. I wanted my husband to dig them out, just noticed today they have a woody base, yippee we can chainsaw them out this weekend! being in our courtyard I want to replace with red roses.

this is our next project stockpile, a kitchen garden by spring! it will be 1000 square feet of raised beds off the kitchen area.

we brought my plant racks up for the old house, this will be the future site of the greenhouse and cutting garden beds.

so many ideas, so little time...

may