The Food and Nothing but the Food

Mike and I restarted the Cooking Light Diet this week. We never really went off, but it's much harder to be faithful when we're traveling. This week's shopping trip left me no wiggle room, and so we're sticking to the menus as they come up. This morning, I tried this new dish. This is called Bacon-Powered Sweet Potato Veggie Skillet. I served it up with a fried egg over the top. It was supposed to have some feta cheese sprinkled over, but I forgot all about that...as is my way.

Have you ever noticed how good things from an iron skillet taste? It was a bit of a to-do for the morning, when my eyes aren't yet opened, but it would be good for dinner too. I'm not one for buying precut veggies, but that would have made the job easier. Also, if you want to try this, I'd suggest cutting up the veggies the night before. That would have made it pretty quick to throw together.

Before getting the breakfast skillet going though, I stirred my sourdough starter. The night before I fed it another 5-1/4 tablespoons of whole wheat flour and 3 tablespoons of purified water (meaning, water with no chlorine added). The volume doubled over night. Then I stirred it down this morning. An hour later, it was doubled in volume again.

This will be ready for baking in the next day or two. Now I'm getting geared up for some bread. I've always made the artisan-style round loaves, but I'm going to try doing this next one in a loaf pan and see what I get.

Sewing yesterday was all about food too. I'm working on the first block for the New Mexico Kitchen quilt. It started with making the background. Six of the 12 blocks in this quilt will have a curve-pieced background like this one. I surprised myself by sewing that curved seam so it would actually lay flat. Miracles do happen.

I'm using fabrics from my stash. This is the "Guacamole" block. The first task was to get the letters placed and fused. There is a template provided to help with this.

Then I fused the rest of the ingredients.

I was working on top-stitching and adding in details when it was time to quit for the day.

There is just a little more to do on this to finish it off. I'll have to try my hand at making the hand-made fringe for the bottom of the "tablecloth." If I can get that finished, I'll move on to another new project. I'll say more about that when I get it started.

It rained pretty much all day yesterday, and today's weather promises more of the same. Looks like the yard clean-up is going to wait a little longer. Sad.