Notes from Abigail
What a great surprise to come home and find my order of Girl Scout cookies were waiting on my porch. The girls and their mom must have spent all afternoon driving around town and delivering their cookie orders.
My favorite is the Samoas – they have chocolate and caramel and coconut. I try to only eat two each day, but they are very tempting. If I didn’t have any willpower I could easily eat the entire box in one night!
Oh this is on my last nerve. I allowed my twenty one year old nephew come and stay with me, because he lost the house he was sharing with friends. He sleeps all day and stays up all night and doesn’t even offer to help with anything.
I cannot ever imagine staying with someone and not offering to help clean up when they are helping me by giving me a place to stay and food to eat. I am ready to just boot him out, but he is my nephew and I feel bad for him. Grrrr
This time of year is very special to me and my family. We have a lot of fun with the tree and decorations on the tree and the house. This year we plan on staying home to celebrate the holiday.
I will miss seeing my family and friends but with the way the economy is we just think it would be better to stay at home this year, we will still have a lot of fun and maybe next year we can do some traveling next year.
This weekend is supposed to be very chilly. After receiving buckets of snow and rain all in the same day we are now going to freeze and so is the fallen precipitation. Nothing goes better on cold day than a piping bowl of chili.
I was surfing the Internet for a new recipe for chili because I do not think that I want to use my old standby. I came across multiple recipes for chicken chili. I have never had chicken chili but it sounds delicious! Many of these recipes call for corn in it which makes it even more hearty and yummy. Currently, I am undecided on whether I am going to use water, chicken broth or cream of chicken soup as a base. I really think water will be too bland and cream of chicken soup too creamy therefore I guess my only option will be the chicken broth.
The best part of both recipes is that the whole thing goes into my crock pot. I love my crock pot. Have to throw all the ingredients in and leave it for the day!
This year was pretty much a disaster as far as my back yard. Usually I would be reaping the rewards of a small backyard garden and giving extra produce to friends, neighbors, family and co workers. Between the weather being crazy and my lack of interest and energy this year, it just didn’t work out.
I did manage to get a few tomato plants that are producing although usually there are plenty of red ones on the vine by now. But they are taking their time in ripening. It is actually a bit better for me because I can only use and give so many tomatoes in the first week of August.
This year’s month August is being call Autumn in August, even some of the bushes and trees are totally confused at to what time of the year it is. There has been several mornings that I have gone outside, the wind is blowing and it’s overcast, that I have witnessed a good amount of leaves on the ground as well a a bunch of leaves being tossed around in the cool breeze.
I think I will back off on some of the food items in the garden next year. A nice break from this yearly chore. I would love to start planting some nicer plants and buses around the yard.
I have all winter to learn what I need to know and do for caring for orchids and all the other beautiful and colorful flowers that I am looking forward to tend to next spring and summer. I can’t wait to start getting all the seeds and flower catalogs that I always find in my mailbox right before the up and coming spring plantings.
In the mean time I’ll be looking around online to do a bit of research which will make all the decisions as an educated consumer.
Eliminating and staying away from desserts and sweets can be a challenging task for many individuals. For some reason the human body for most has a natural response to crave sugar. The strength of craving depends on the individual. Some people have a need to eat something sweet after every meal. One option for a sweet treat is candy.
There is a variety of choices when it comes to candy. Everything from chocolate to sweet to sour. There literally is something for everyone. They say “variety is the spice of life” however, in this case I think perhaps our country has too many varieties.
Having all of these options makes obtaining the fill for a person’s craving too easy in my opinion. The United States has an obesity problem. Eating candy and sweets does not help shed the pounds. Desserts and candy are pure empty calories that leave an individual craving more, creating a vicious circle.
We are going for our monthly girls night out. I think we will hit the Blues bar this month. I have to see what the consensus is with everyone else first though. I do vaguely remember on our last night out, we had said Blues Bar this time, so we shall see.
My mother is going to keep the kids over night, so I do not have to worry about them. I can crash at a friends if I choose and not even go home till morning. That is a good thing, since one of my friends lives in town and I can park at her place, then take a cab to the bar. No drinking and driving for us.
One of my absolute favorite kinds of cheese is provolone cheese. I think that this cheese goes really great with almost any sandwich. Personally, I prefer to use it the most in my sandwiches. Provolone has a nice mild flavor that mixes quite well with turkey and roast beef.
Another kind of cheese that I use a lot in Italian dishes is ricotta cheese. The dish that I use ricotta the most in is lasagna. I have tried multiple types of lasagna recipes and I think that recipe that ricotta works the best in is crock pot lasagna. The cheese melts really well in the crock pot especially because it is able sit for hours and melt amongst the rest of the ingredients.
Amongst all of the delicious cheeses to choose from I usually try to pick low fat cheese. Cheese although, good for you is also very high in fat. In moderation cheese is good for you. However, many of us have a hard time because cheese is nearly found in all dishes we eat.
Has anyone tried that new Stride gum? I bought a pack of it a few days ago. The package says it is a mystery flavor. I was curious so I had to try it for myself.
After I tried the first piece I was pleasantly surprised. It tasted pretty good. It is a fruity flavor verses a minty one. I will have to try another piece before I reach a conclusion on what fruit it might be representing.
Tonight I tried one of the store brand television dinners. It was absolutely terrible! Originally, the only reason it was purchased was because I grabbed it out of the frozen section by accident. The box I meant to grab and the box I did grabbed looked a lot alike. Usually, I would have caught my error as I was checking out but this time they slipped right by me.
I was thoroughly disappointed and will never make that mistake again! The worst part of the dinners was the meat in the meal. It was definitely not genuine meat and was very fatty and chewy. In other words gross! The name brand dinners may not be real meat but at least they taste like it and have the consistency of genuine meat. Next time I will look more carefully at what I grab because it was a terrible experience!