Wet Snowy Morning

Remember this spirea I just showed you two days ago?
Look at the poor thing this morning after a heavy load of rain/snow was dumped upon it last night.


Some good-sized branches met their unexpected demise.


These shrubs need to be pruned, but you would know it from this picture.


Here they are two days ago

I am waiting to prune them until after Thanksgiving so I can use the branches for Christmas decorating.

It's a good day to make Butternut Squash Soup. I just roasted 2 butternut squash and am planning to turn some of it into soup this afternoon. I don't believe I have ever made squash soup.

When I told DH what I was making, he said, "Don't make a lot of it."

I think he has already decided that he won't like it. We shall see.

A hunk of squash, red pepper and cloves

a pair of scissors, a metal skewer and one toothpick (nearly hidden under the red pepper)

So what do you think I am going to do with this odd assortment of items?

Skewer up the squash and pepper, flavored with the cloves,and grill it for a little snack and then pick my teeth clean with the toothpick?

No, that would be way to predictable.

Got any other ideas?

Give up?

OK, I will show you...............







I bet you never would have guessed this, would you?
LOL.
Isn't he just adorable?
He would be perfect for a Thanksgiving table if you had planned to serve that squash. If not it would be a waste to buy so many squash just for the turkey heads.

I saw this idea someplace a while ago. I can't remember where, but I kept it tucked away in my brain. Yesterday at work the cook was cutting up squash & red pepper and I asked her if I could have these little pieces.

I disclosed my little baggie of company property to The Boss before I left, who raised an eyebrow in question.

"Times are tough at Zoey's house," I said. "You know what you pay me. This is all we can afford for dinner."

He just gives an incredulous shake of his head and walks back into his office. LOL. I love to work in such a fun place.

Poor Man's Lobster

If you enjoy lobster, but your budget does not, you might like what I had for dinner tonight.

It's just boiled cod, my version of poor man's lobster.

Cut the cod in chunks and toss it in some salted boiling water with a shake or two of Old Bay Seasoning. Boil for about 3 minutes or until it's cooked through (it will depend on how big you cut the chunks). That's it. Simple and delicious. You dip it in melted butter. Add some broccoli and a tossed salad to round out the meal. YUM YUM! If dinner isn't a meal without some starch, throw in a Baked Potato and warm roll. I prefer to save those calories in case I'm in the mood to snack later.


Every year I intend to get a pumpkin and carve it out for a vase because I love that look on the autumn table. Most years I never get around to doing it. The one year I did the pumpkin rotted quite quickly. It was hardly worth the effort.

Well today I found a fake pumpkin already cut out to be a vase.

It was the first time I had ever seen one AND it was 80% off!
So here is my $2.59 bargain. I put the flowers in it that are still left from last weekend. I also picked up those sparkley gourds for 80% off.

I do love a good bargain!

More Fall Scenery

The big old maple tree that looked so pretty all dressed in her autumn finery is now naked and showing her poor health. On the left is a huge branch that broke off a few years ago and it's wedged between other branches and won't fall. Kids have climbed up and stuck those smaller branches in the front. This tree is not even on my property, so I can do nothing but admire it.

It is the tree I wanted to see so badly I paid to have 4 large pines removed to open the view.
We call it our "Eleven hundred dollar" view and still think it was worth every penny.

My poor burning bush was ravaged by deer the winter before last. It took a full year before it died. I had to remove 3/4 of the bush this spring. I probably should have removed the entire bush because it looks a bit strange, but I just couldn't bring myself to do so. I think it will grow back as there are a few small shoots on the back side. I was surprised, given the invasive operation it underwent this spring, that it produced berries this year.

Dried Allium Revisited

Sissy asked me what I had done with my black dried allium.

Well, I jumped right on that comment for a new post. You all know how I LOVE to post. :)

So I grabbed the digital and went to the family room and took a picture of this little arrangement of dried allium and branches in my animal-print purse container. It is just a quickie arrangement I made, but I like it well enough to leave it there for now.

See how the black balls match the black lampshade?

Look how these books match the vase! These are two of the books I got from the library on Tuesday, so it was pure coincidence. Really. You don't think I would pick out books to match my vase do you? That would be just SICK.

What I am really planning to do with the allium is make an arrangement for that big bold black polka dot fabric I bought last week. Can't you just see those big balls in black, white and red with that fabric? Ooooooooo, I get chills just imagining it. :) I may even repaint some of the allium to match the polka dots. Did I actually admit that? Maybe I am a little sick. :)

When I do that table, you can be sure I will post a picture.

Now I've Seen Everything

HOSE CLOTHES™

Designer Chic for Your Garden Hose

Hose Clothes™ is a unique way to give ugly garden hoses a brand new life. They can even become a vital part of your outdoor décor!

You can get one in these three animal prints


Now I ask you, who, in their proper frame of mind, would pull 50 feet of hose through a little fabric snuggie?

If you are so inclined, you can buy it here: http://www.moplants.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?sreen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=HC

Beautiful Mild Day Today

As soon as I got home from work I went outside with my camera. It's amazing how much I never noticed before I got my digital camera.

Take this spirea bush. I knew it had lovely white spring flowers, but I never realized how nice the fall display was. Until just today I never even noticed that creeping phlox had such a high percentage of fall die-off and turned this orangey color.

Sandy over at Gardenpath posted a picture a few days ago that made me think of the three milk pod plants I'd seen growing on the old railroad tracks behind my house. I took a little stroll down the tracks to see if they were worth photographing.
As you can see they certainly were!

I picked a good armload of nearly dead or dead, but interesting, foliage.
And used it in this heart-shaped garage wall arrangement .
The milk pod right in the front is the one in the photo above. I pulled out all of the seeds and scattered them near where I cut them down. Hopefully, there will be many more next year.

I Almost Did Not Vote Yesterday

It seemed like it would be an intrusion in my heavily scheduled day.

Then I thought of this woman

Susan Brownell Anthony

Who campaigned for nearly 45 years for the female right to vote. For 45 long years this woman fought relentlessly, only to die in 1906, over a decade before the nineteenth amendment was passed.

And I thought driving the extra ½ mile to the voting booth and spending about five minutes coloring in the ovals would be an imposition.

SHAME ON ME!

Paula's Christmas Issue

I picked this magazine up last week.
Does anyone else have it?
I have not really found anything too interesting in it. I haven't looked closely at the recipes. Hopefully I find something to justify the $7.99 price.

There are a few pictures of Paula's new home all decked out for the holiday. I do like the decorating in her new place.

I am not too energetic tonight. I just got home. I had my nail appointment after work. That means I have to take it easy for the next couple of hours. I can't quilt because it will ruin the nails, I can't do any sort of cleaning (oh, darn!), etc. So I'm just sitting at the 'puter and gently typing.

I wanted to go outside and find some dead stuff to make a big autumn arrangement, but by the time I got home (5ish) it was already getting dark and I had to worry about the nails, so that was out.

I guess I will go find something for dinner, read a few blogs and then watch the election results. I also got 5 new books at the library so I can probably get lost in one of them for a few hours.

What is Cream of Tartar?

Have you ever really wondered?

I am watching Barefoot Contessa and Ina is putting cream of tartar in her egg whites. She just said, "It is like a vinegar that helps stabilize the meringue."

I suddenly had the urge to investigate, so I googled it.
I found this:

Cream of tartar is obtained when tartaric acid is half neutralized with potassium hydroxide, transforming it into a salt.

Oh, silly me, of course, I knew that. Yeah, right.
It's been a long time since I've had a chemistry class.

Grapes are the only significant natural source of tartaric acid, and cream of tartar is a obtained from sediment produced in the process of making wine.

Ah, that I understand. It's the gunk on the bottom of the wine barrel. Who woulda thunk it?

Cream of tartar is best known in our kitchens for helping stabilize and give more volume to beaten egg whites. Hence, Ina making her meringue.

If you are beating eggs whites and don't have cream of tartar, you can substitute white vinegar (in the same ratio as cream of tartar, generally 1/8 teaspoon per egg white). Ah, that's why Ina said it was like a vinegar.

So I learned something today. Maybe some of you did, too.

New Tablescape

I went to Walmart yesterday and found this fabric for $1/yard. I bought four yards.

I did not realize that I had such a perfect match with this combination of dishes. I love the mustard, evergreen and rust colors.


See these gold glasses? They were a wedding gift in 1974.
It's amazing how well they have held up.
Unfortunately that groom did not fare nearly as well and had to be replaced years ago. :)




I also bought 4 yards of each of these bold fabrics.
I can't wait to do a table with the black one and my black dishes. I will have to do it for a birthday as it just screams "birthday" to me.

Pumpkin Cake Roll

After making my pumpkin bread yesterday, I had some leftover pumpkin to use up. I decided to make a pumpkin roll . I used the Libby recipe, which you can find here.

These rolled cakes are extremely intimidating to many people. I know they were to me until I made my first one.

At the start of the recipe it says, "sprinkle towel with powdered sugar." That's about the point where novices say, "Huh??? Towel? What towel?" and move on to a different recipe.

So I thought I would just photograph some of the steps in hopes that it will help someone who has been afraid to try making a pumpkin cake roll.
The recipe says to line your jelly roll pan with waxed paper. I used parchment paper, but either way, make sure to have the paper overhang the edges like this:

The reason? So you can use the extra paper as handles to pick up the cake later.

You will need a clean dish towel. Here's a tip:

Lay a large baking sheet under the towel. This will help when you need to turn the hot cake onto it When it says to sprinkle the towel with powdered sugar, don't skimp. You need it well covered so the cake won't stick..


Make sure you spread the batter as evenly as possible. An offset spatula works nicely for this.

If you don't have an offset spatula, just use a butter knife. You may want to ask Santa to stick one of those little spatulas in your stocking. That's how I got mine. :)

After your cake is cooked (by the way I had to cook about 5 minutes longer that the 15 minutes the recipe stated), you need to immediately turn it out onto the powdered sugar towel. This is where it helps if you have put the towel on top of a baking sheet. If you did, then you can pick the towel-covered sheet up to meet the hot cake. So much easier than trying to flop it out and have it remain in one piece. Take it from one who has broken a few cakes before I started using the extra pan.


Remove the paper. Beautiful! No breaks.


Now the part that scares everyone. Start rolling it up from the short end. Yes, do this when it is HOT. You do not let it cool at all. Why? Because if it cools, it will break when you roll it.

You roll it right up, towel and all. Use both hands and exert equal pressure. Mine was not quite equal. You can see that the slice turned out a little oblong not round. Not a big deal, but I would prefer it more round.

Phew! You will feel so good when you get to this part. It's all rolled up and now has to cool for about an hour.

You will make the filling while it cools. Once cool, you will unroll it, spread the cream cheese filling and roll it back up WITHOUT THE TOWEL. It will be easy to roll back up because you set the shape by rolling it up hot. Don't be too alarmed if you have a few cracks. Just roll it back up anyway and serve it already sliced rather than in the full roll (you won't see the cracks once you turn the slice on its side).

I stopped taking pics at this point because it's the exact same procedure and I knew Blogger would only let me post so many pictures. You roll it up just like when it was hot, except you now have cream cheese filling and no towel.

The towel will be a big sticky mess, so make sure to rinse it out well before you toss it in the laundry.

I will be very pleased if these directions helped someone to try a pumpkin roll this holiday season!

It's one of those desserts that looks much more difficult to make than it really is. No need to tell everyone that...just smile pretty and accept all the compliments.

Spaghetti & Meatball Soup with Hot Dog Bun Garlic Toast

After I made my original recipe spaghetti & meatball soup (using my frozen boiled meatballs), I wanted some garlic bread to go with it. Of course, I had used the nice frozen box of French bread garlic toast last week. All I could find in the house were these leftover hot dog buns.


I can work with these. I like a good challenge.

I melted a couple tablespoons of butter right on the baking sheet (no need to dirty any other pans to melt the butter, you need to butter the pan anyway so do it all in one step). I split the buns and rubbed each in the melted butter. I had no fresh garlic cloves, so I pulled a jar of garlic from the refrigerator and sprinkled each bun with some. Then I sprinkled Parmesan cheese on each. I put them in the oven for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. I then added mozzarella cheese and stuck them back in for 5 minutes.

Voila! Cheesy Garlic Hot Dog Buns!

They were very good, too.

Watch Out Sandra Lee

'Cause Zoey's Movin' in!

Here are my Semi Homemade sugar cookies.

The night after Halloween, DH and I were shopping at Kmart and he mentioned some frosting he saw that was marked down to 99 cents.

"I hate canned frosting," I say without even looking at it.

"It's orange Halloween frosting," he's trying to beef up the value of his find.

Hmmmm, my curiosity is peeked and I go take a look. I already know I am going to need orange frosting for my pumpkin cookies. This is already made, it's already orange, it has free little Halloween sprinkles attached to the top and it's half price.

I'm no fool. I take two cans.

When it came time to use it, I decided to perk it up a notch and stirred in 1 tsp of orange extract and some meringue powder to make sure it hardens on the cookie.


If I may say so myself, this is darn good cookie frosting! The orange extract gave it a nice punch of citrus flavor. Naturally, I am taking full credit since I added the extract.

I could have your job, Sandra Lee.

Of course, there are a few differences... you're a decade younger, much more photogenic and have some perky artificial cleavage.... other than that though, I'd be pretty qualified.

234

Sure looks like a lot more when they are out of their containers, doesn't it?

Look at this old Donald Duck one I found

It is not yet 6 a.m. & I have already counted and posted about cookie cutters.
Hmmmmmm........not even going to attempt to analyze that one.
I am off instead to bake some cookies.

Update: While my dough is chilling, I was putting all the cutters back and look what I found
Giddy the Garden Gnome!

What's on the Fridge Meme?

I just came from Sue's site where she posted a picture of her nice big black refrigerator with her interesting stuff attached to it. She says hers is plain, but she has some pics of grandkids, a menu, some magnets, etc. She invited anyone wanting to participate in the meme to consider themselves tagged, so I did.

As you can see there is nothing attached to my fridge. There never has been. Ever since I've had a refrigerator it's been bare, both on the top and on the front.

So I am wondering what that says about me? It seems that everybody else has stuff on theirs. Even my mother has magnetic stuff on hers.

I bet I have some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder and some high-priced shrink would just love to get me in his big leather chair to help me overcome my fear of refrigerator magnets.

Does anyone else out there have a bare fridge?

Starbuck's Pumpkin Bread Clone

or so Todd Wilbur says.
I've never had Starbuck's pumpkin bread, so you can't prove it by me.

This week Top Secret Recipes has this as the free recipe. You can go there and copy it for the next few days. After a week it's no longer free.

I made this after work today just because I was in the baking mood and I had all the ingredients on hand. I like the nice orange color of the raw batter.

I did wonder if these pans were too full.

As it turned out, they were not too full at all. The recipe says to bake for 70 minutes at 350. After 55 minutes, the tops looked pretty dark and I thought I had overcooked them. When I tested the loaf with a metal skewer, it was not done on the inside. I did, in fact, have to cook for the full 70 minutes.


The recipe says to cook until the top is dark brown and that's exactly what you must do. Each recipe makes just one loaf. I made the recipe twice.

I thought it was very odd that this recipe had no spices--no cinnamon, no nutmeg, no pumpkin pie spice--nada.

The bread is moist with a nice firm texture. It is not sweet at all. Just a simple quick bread to enjoy as an afternoon snack or with your morning coffee.

It is to die for?

No.

But I did eat 2 slices spread with butter while it was still warm.

I will freeze the rest individually wrapped so I can grab and go. (Grab one on the way out the door to work)

Just as I posted this, DH came home from grocery shopping. Look what he brought for me.
Dianne, you asked me if he was a house husband. The answer is no, but he would love to be. When he read your question, he said, "I could only dream."

Do you think maybe he's working on becoming one by buttering me up with these flowers? LOL

I am thinking of buying a new car

What do you think of this model? Doesn't it just cry out, "Zoey"? I am pretty sure I have a pair of shoes that look identical. LOL

The Ladies of Garrison Gardens

I spent quite a few hours last weekend reading this book.

The Ladies of Garrison Gardens is the second in a series of light southern mystery reads by Louise Schaffer.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even though I was disappointed with the ending. It was too evident that the ending left an opening for the next book in the series.

True to my suspicion, the author's web site states that her third novel was just accepted by the publisher and will be out in the fall of 2007. I wish it was not so far away. By that time I will have forgotten all about this series!


In the meantime, I need to go back to the library and get novel #1, called The Three Miss Margarets. Evidently the three Miss Margarets have a secret which is revealed in book #1. I need to find out what that secret was.

If anyone else has read this book, do you know what happened to Grady, Peggy Garrison's son? He was mentioned once and then nothing. He must have died, otherwise he would have inherited the estate. I probably should have read the other novel first. On second thought, don't tell me what happened to him. It may spoil my reading of the first novel.

It may interest some of you that the author, Louise Shaffer, played Rae Woodard on "Ryan's Hope" from 1977 to 1984. Since I was never home during weekdays, I had never heard of Miss Shaffer.



I also got one of Celestine Sibley's books. My library did not have any of her books so I ordered one through the Interlibrary loan program. This book came to me all the way from Alabama and it only took 4 days.

Are you all familiar with the Interlibrary loan program?

Basically if you want a book that your library does not have, they will get it from another library for you. At my library there is no cost. I love to use it because I feel like my tax dollars are directly benefiting me (for a change).

So far I have only skimmed through The Celestine Sibley Sampler, which is a collection of her finest works. I am finding it enjoyable and looking forward to the weekend when I can lie under my quilt-in-progress and read for a few hours.

Interesting that most of you are thinking around the 100 mark for the cookie cutters. I was thinking more in the 200 range, but that's just a guess. I really have never counted them, but I will this weekend.