Writing Fast

Today I'm getting a badly needed monthly pedicure, although I haven't had my "monthly" since last November. If we keep galavanting around the countryside, I might have to start calling it my "quarterly" pedicure...or even my "semi-annual" pedicure. And honestly, at my age, it's getting hard to bend down far enough to take care of my own toes. I wonder if there's some kind of senior hardship discount I can get for being too old to trim my own toenails. Dream on. 

Okay, so I'm writing fast...and there's no time to ponder such things. Let's get down to business, shall we? It was a cooking day, although my menu items took way less time than expected. First, I made dessert. Priorities, people. For dessert last night we had this traditional Irish Apple Cake. I wanted to turn this into a dessert for two. I made just half the recipe, and then baked it in a 6-inch springform pan.

The recipe also includes instructions to make a traditional custard that is served over the top. You can skip the custard, though, and use whipped cream. And that's what I did. Redi-Whip to the rescue. We had it while we watched TV last night, and it was very tasty. I'd say the cake was a little dry, and I've wondered if using a different apple from a Granny Smith, say, a Gala, might have made for a more moist cake. Either way, we liked it.

Also, I made this Irish Brown Bread. It's a simple bread, made with whole-wheat flour. The blog post where I've linked goes into some detail about the flour used. The recipe calls for "whole meal flour." I had whole-wheat on hand, so that's what I used. It also contains both old-fashioned oats and steel cut oats, and it's made with buttermilk. It is sweetened with just 2 tablespoons of honey, and so it's a pretty wholesome bread.

We had it with our Irish Potato Soup for dinner, and it was very tasty. For sure, I'll make this again sometime. As breads go, this couldn't have been easier to make.

But dinner was several hours away. I spent the rest of the afternoon top-stitching the New Mexico Kitchen block. (Mixing my cuisines, I was.)

I still need to hand embroider the Pinto Beans label and add borders. Oh yes, and let's not forget the dreaded fringe on the tablecloth. I'm hoping to have time to finish it off today. That took me late into the afternoon, right up to time to start dinner. That was fine. After all that, I was tired of sewing.

Dinner was Irish Potato Soup. I'd made this recipe before, and it's a good one. Although I was happy with this recipe, I went searching to see if there was another we might like better. In my travels, I found that some recipes tossed in a handful of frozen peas at the end, presumably to add green color. Mine came out tinged green, even without the peas.

Our grocery store was out of leeks when we did our shopping. I decided to substitute a bunch of green onions for each leek...three bunches, in other words. I figure they're pretty much the same thing, but green onions are skinnier. It worked out fine, and I wouldn't have known the difference if I hadn't made it myself. It was topped with cheese, bacon, and more green onions. With our Irish Brown Bread, we were feeling our Irish oats. And we had cake ahead. It was a fun dinner for good old St. Patrick's day, even without resorting to green beer. (Whose idea was that, anyway?)

Okay, so continuing yesterday's camera saga, I heard back from Nikon, and they sent me a form to fill out and pack in with my camera. I'll be taking it to the post office today and sending it off to someplace in California. Hopefully, it can be fixed for less than the price of a new camera. I'm going to make a Goodwill run too. I have some things to donate. I went on a rampage a while back getting rid of things that hadn't seen the light of day in decades. I got through the top floor of the house, and kind of ran out of gas there. Now, I'm happy keeping a box handy for Goodwill donations. When it fills up, I take them to the drop-off site. It's a piecemeal way of getting rid of stuff, but better than not getting rid of anything at all. I'm still working on the kids about taking some of the silverware and china off my hands. (They'll get it eventually, anyway.)

My fast writing time has run out. Time to hit the showers and get on my way. I hope you have a good Friday.