Defying Gravity

It's been a morning of cooking for me so far.  I'm taking a break to get off my feet for a little bit before I get back to work.  Here's my Bailey's Chocolate Chip Cheesecake defying gravity as it bakes in the oven.

The kids are coming up tomorrow to help celebrate Mother's Day and Mike's birthday.  Mike requested this cheesecake for his dessert.  It's made with a full cup of Bailey's Irish Cream...of course, I don't use actual Bailey's.  That would be sacrilegious.  I use a less-expensive kind.  I've made this cheesecake at least two dozen times over the years, and I've never seen it over flow its pan to quite this degree.  I must have whipped it up higher this time than in the past.  It was a nail-biter watching it bake, let me tell you.

It's safely out of the oven now, and looking a little less--shall we say--poofy.  

It still requires a whipped cream topping flavored with espresso powder.  Yum.  If you love cheesecake, this is a good one.  I baked it up for a Baking on Friday segment once.  You can find the recipe right here.

Also, I made up my Tart Green Beans with Bacon for tomorrow's dinner.  I cooked those up for you recently.  You can find my recipe for those right here.  They are also a family favorite, and I think its a rare occasion that we don't have them when the family gets together.  Also on tomorrow's menu:  Artichoke Dip with Fontina, garlic mashed potatoes, a spinach salad made with apples and bacon, and prime rib.  All of that will have to wait until tomorrow, however.

For the rest of today I'm packing up all the stuff in my hutch because on Monday they're going to come in and refinish my wood floor in the kitchen.  I have a lot of treasures...nothing particularly valuable.  It consists of stuff I've either inherited, received as gifts, or picked up while traveling.

That's an Amish doll on the middle shelf on the right.  I picked her up while we were traveling on Cape Cod. Also on the top shelf, you can see pictures of my two boys receiving their high school diplomas.  Some of you with sharp eyes and knowledge of Roseville pottery might recognize that piece in the upper right hand corner.  That piece belonged to my grandmother.  Also, in the lower right hand corner are the little wooden shoes I picked up in Amsterdam.  I think it was a requirement.

On the other side of my hutch it looks just about the same.  There are a lot of little things the kids made for me and other various little gifts people have given me.  Sue likes to call this my "stuff".  Stuff consists of little things that don't take up a lot of space in a suitcase.  Sue and I are fond of gifting one another with "stuff" whenever either of us travels.  On the middle shelf to the right is a bone china teacup my mother gave me as an engagement gift when Mike and I got engaged.  She collected them, and I suppose she thought I might do the same.  I wouldn't say I collect them since the ones I have are mostly inherited, but I did get one from the Empress Hotel in Victoria, B.C., when Mike and I had high tea there.  You can see it on the middle shelf to the right.  Behind it is an antique tea kettle that also belonged to my grandmother.

Also in the bottom right corner is an authentic Japanese tea service that my dad brought back from Okinawa after World War II.  So none of this stuff is particularly valuable, but it is priceless to me.  So when I finish here, I'm going to go pack it away carefully so that the hutch and sideboard can be moved out of the room.

Late on in the week, we are having new carpeting laid in the living room and dining room.  I'll be able to unpack the stuff from the hutch by then, and turn around and pack up all this crystal and glass wear.  Again, most of it is inherited, although that little bud vase you can see on the second shelf kind of in the middle on the left side is one I brought back from The Czech Republic.

It's a good time to be doing this since the glass shelves in both units are terribly dusty.  Even if we weren't doing the floors, I would need to be taking all this stuff out to clean them.  I'm not a clean freak, you understand.  But I think the last time I cleaned off those shelves was about five years ago.  Keep in mind that we live on a dirt road.  There is a lot of dust.

So I didn't do any sewing yesterday.  After I wrote my blog post, I laid down on the couch and went to sleep.  I was tired after our long walk.  And I won't do any sewing today either since I'm spending all my free time on the computer writing blog posts and helping Smitty edit the pictures he took this morning.  And...it's unlikely I'll get to do any sewing tomorrow either.  Monday while they're here doing the floors, I'll have plenty of time.

Nevertheless, I received some fabric in the mail.  I found this fat quarter bundle on the Jinny Beyer website, and I fell in love with these colors.  Usually, her stuff is a little too dark for my taste, but I thought these were lovely.

They have a sort of crumpled paper appearance.  I think I'll be able to use these in lots of different ways.

So, if you don't hear from me tomorrow, you'll know I'm cooking and packing things up.  I hope you all have a delightful Mother's Day with family close by.