daily yarns 'n more

i'm on a mission

To clean out my cupboards.

My cupboards are full, my freezers are full, full of food that needs to be eaten...SO....I am not going grocery shopping until I can see the bottom of the freezers and my cupboard shelves are bare.  I told Jim the other day that we could live for close to a month on just what we have in the house.  I will have to buy some things like milk, cheese, fruits, vegetables, toiletries etc.  But, I'm making meals with what I find in my cupboards.  We eat a lot of dried beans and rice and we've cut out white flour and sugar from our diet as much as possible.  It's been fun seeing what I can come up with.

I've been using my crock pot lately, it's so nice, I put it going in the morning and don't think about dinner until it's time to eat, last night was pepper steak over rice.

Hope I didn't make you too hungry.

days...

Spent baking...

taking walks with my camera...

cooking tasty dinners...

watching the sun go down...

How do you spend your days?

our last weekend on the island

It's coming to and end, our time here down on Galveston Island.  We had such a wonderful time being with family and being in the warm climate.  Erin was the only one who was able to head here for a few days, so on Saturday we headed down to The Strand, where we window shopped, ate lunch and just walked around enjoying the day.

Since this was our last weekend here and probably the only time to see all the family together before we head back home, we headed into Houston to our son and dil's home where our son made a wonderful BBQ smoked brisket on his smoker grill.

Here's all of our Texas family, the three girls and our son and dil and their 2 girls.  Jim and I both were taking this photo, so they were all looking at him :)

It's not easy saying good-bye, but it's not really good-bye because we plan to come back down here again.

the pioneer woman's pico de gallo

I love watching The Pioneer Woman on the Food Network, and one of the dishes she made was     Pico de Gallo.  So, I just had to make it.

YUM!!!

So, last night we sat back with our feet up, ate some pico de gallo, and watched the Hockey All-Star Skills Competition.

Go SuperKaner (Patrick Kane) and Hossa!  Being a Chicago Blackhawk fan, I had to say that.

i'm not going to call it a resolution

I don't do resolutions, for one thing I myself personally can't keep them.  I'm not really sure if it's because I can't or won't.  But, this year I told myself, will be different.  We do eat pretty healthy...BUT...and that's a big but, there can be lots of room for improvement.  This was our dinner last night along with a salad.  I found this recipe in a Biggest Loser Cook Book.  A blue cheese burger, which was healthy and boy was it yummy.

How about you, do you do New Years resolutions and what are they?

Inquiring minds want to know.

a long lost recipe

I was going through my recipes a few months back and came upon a recipe I got from a friend many years ago, I'd say at least 20.  Anyway, I've been craving these cookies since I came upon the recipe, so when I went to go look for it again I couldn't find it.  I put a message out on facebook to my dear friend who I got it from and she came through.  I haven't made these yummy things in years and I made a couple of adjustments.  One purposely and one accidentally.  I purposely cut back on the sugar and accidentally used white sugar instead of brown sugar.  But you know what?  They still turned out great, I had to bake them just a minute longer than stated in the recipe.  I will make these again and next time I'll follow the recipe correctly.

Ginger Thins

3/4 c. Butter

1 c. Brown Sugar

1 beaten Egg

1/4 c. Molasses

1 1/2 c. Flour

1/4 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Cloves

1/2 tsp Cinnamon

1/2 tsp Ginger

 

Cream butter, sugar, egg and molasses.  Add dry ingredients and stir until smooth.  Put dots of 1/8 teaspoon of dough about an inch apart on a greased cookie sheet and bake 5-6 minutes at 325°

Cool on a rack, cookies snap off if you twist the cookie sheet slightly.

Note: These should have the diameter of a quarter when baked, or else they will be tough.

Note: If you use a non-stick cookie sheet (or a well-used one) you won't need to grease the cookie sheet.

A word of caution when making these, use an 1/8 measuring spoon for the dough the size will be perfect, and by making so little cookies it does take awhile to make these...but they're worth it.

there's nothing like the aroma of banana bread in the air

I didn't make this yummy looking bread, my wonderful husband did.  He makes banana bread often and with his fresh ground whole wheat flour.  It tastes as good as it looks :)

I was going to surprise Jim with fingerless gloves for working down in the catacombs as he calls his office.  With the wood stove going all the time and his office being in the basement the heat doesn't get down there and it gets pretty cold.  I've got one done now I need to work on the other.  I wanted them to fit and I just figured I wasn't going to be able to do that without trying them on him as I was making them.

The days are flying by and it's only 10 days now till Christmas....Yikes!  Are you all ready?

trying to embrace the cold

And, I'm doing that with soup.  I think we've had soup the past couple of days.  Well, at least when the snow came and that's okay, because we like soup.  I made some tomato soup yesterday and grilled cheese for dinner.  I kind-of-sort-of followed this recipe.  But, instead of canned tomatoes, I used my homemade canned tomato sauce and eliminated the tomato soup and cayenne pepper.  I also didn't have any shallots so I just used a yellow onion, which worked just fine.

I've been working on another quilting project that started way back in 2009.  This one I'm really excited about.  I think I got the quilting bug from this and I can't wait to show you.  I've learned so much since then.

You all stay warm if the weather in your area is turning colder and you're getting snow.  Our snow probably will be gone by the weekend with the temps heading up to the 50° mark.  That's okay, it'll be back before we know it.

rip, rip, yum, yum

I have to tell you I ripped this hat out at least 3 times.  I was ready to ball it up and toss it across the room after ripping it out one too many times.  I'm not talking about the cabled band, that was a piece of cake.  It was trying to get the body of the hat onto the cabled band that gave me so much trouble.  But, I stayed with it and love the results.  The band is cuffed up and walking the other day I was so glad that it was.  It gave me extra warmth and the wind didn't hit my ears at all.

The yum yum part, is the pumpkin pie that I made.  I just love this time of year...pumpkin pie and peppermint ice cream...tho not necessarily together.

Headed to town this afternoon and the snow there is almost all melted.  Getting out of our driveway wasn't so easy tho.

Winter has arrived.

sour cream pancakes

I never thought that pancakes and sour cream could go together...but they can and they do.  I found this wonderful, awesome, scrumptious recipe in the Pioneer Woman's Cookbook.

They cooked up very differently from regular pancakes, but oh my goodness are they ever good.

I hope you don't leave here hungry :)