Good morning, my friends. The day didn't go quite as planned yesterday. I had half a mind to drive into town to mail the baby quilt off to the farmers. Also, I needed a couple of jalapeno peppers so I could make another batch of tomato jam. So, when Mike told me he was driving into town, I decided to ride along. That meant the kitties couldn't be set free on the day until we returned home. When the door finally opened onto their world, Smitty was clearly put out at the delay in his morning's activities.
The kitties enjoy the warm weather, but they do not like being out in the sunshine while wearing their gray and black coats. And, as everyone knows, kitties never remove their coats voluntarily. Instead, they turn into tiger butter within just a few minutes.
So, I was all set to bake a zucchini coffee cake until my friend Debi sent me a recipe for
Caramel Frosted Zucchini Pecan Bars. Oh my gosh! That looked so good, I changed my mind in an instant. When it came out of the oven, it looked like this:
The recipe suggested icing it while it was still warm. It's a thick icing that sets up fast. When I had it spread over the top, it looked like this.
We each had a piece with our afternoon cup of espresso, and mmm, mmm, mmm. This was really good. You can't even taste the zucchini.
This is really more of a cake than it is a "bar," and so it could be for snacking or for dessert. The recipe suggested lining the pan with parchment. Probably, I wouldn't do that again. Usually, I reserve parchment for something I'm going to take out of the pan for serving. In this case, I'm just cutting the pieces while in the baking dish, and the parchment is shredding in the bottom of the dish and making kind of a sticky mess.
So it was after lunch time by then. It was our hottest day so far this year, and record-setting for the city of Portland. This was our high temperature for the day. It was warmer in the valley.
We're expecting another hot day today, but then we're promised some cooler weather. We've been running the A/C for two days straight, including at night. When I woke up this morning, before sunrise, it was already 78°F. I'm happy for the A/C, but it sure makes it uncomfortable in my basement sewing room. It's like a meat locker in there.
For yesterday's sewing, I avoided the sewing room and worked on my slow stitching from the comfort of the living room. I finished what was in my hoop...
leaving just a little bit left to stitch in the upper left hand corner. And now, the stitching is finished on this "Fall Harvest" piece. I still need to make the little quilt to hang on the clothesline. I'm hoping I can get that finished today.
There was still time left in the day. I'm working on my list of WIPs now, and so I'll soon be wanting to make two more blocks for the Shop Hop 3.0 quilt. I pulled two of the shops I'd traced last week...I picked the two with the shortest names...and decided to work on those.
The stitching on one was finished and the second one nearly finished when it was time to quit for the day.
I'll finish the second one this morning, and then I'll get to work on the next two blocks for The Story of my Day.
Also today, I'm going to make another batch of tomato jam. That goes fairly quickly. After that, I'll be pretty well finished with this year's canning until I get the tomato tonnage from our farmers. I'll use that for pasta sauce. Any tomatoes coming out of the greenhouse from here on will be canned as plain old tomatoes.
Hopefully, I'll be able to get back to the sewing room today. I'll have to bundle up to stay warm enough, which seems just crazy. I want to finish up the mini quilt for my embroidery piece, and there's a Tiny House awaiting my attention. I'll give that an hour of my time, and then I'll get back to my lady for When Quilter's Gather. It's an ambitious to-do list. I doubt I can finish everything.
Mike has a routine doctor's visit today, and so breakfast is next. He needs his breakfast early so he can get out the door. As I mentioned earlier, I was up before sunrise this morning. While he's gone, I have a feeling I might take a morning nap. It sounds pretty good right now.
9 comments:
Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton
That's one problem with a/c - it makes the lower level of the house decidedly meat-locker-ish. I used to cover the registers in the basement with heavy cardboard and duct tape to try to level out the temperature a bit. Seemed to help.
Those zucchini bars look delish, although I think I'd cut the icing part of it in half to cut down on the sweetness factor.
The bars/cake really looks and sounds delicious. Our long-haired black and white tuxedo cat never laid in the sun very long either. That dark fur just soaks up the warmth.
Tiger butter - haha! That is hot for you. We have had a couple of cooler days - fall teasers, but it is climbing into the 90s by the end of the week. That cake looks so good!
Love today's quote. Cake looks good, but I think I'd subsitute sour cream frosting or maybe even skip the frosting. Light rain and 71 degrees here in western NY.
Pat
I converted your F to my C and.... Oh my goodness!!! I am wilted at 21C and you're 38C.....I shouted that bit. 38C!!
No wonder you're in the basement....
That cake looks delicious.....
This is the first time I've heard of zucchini bars. I think they look a little more baked in the original photo.
We turned our air conditioner on in May, it's not been off since. We have a dark house, so other than my sewing room which gets the afternoon sun we can leave the thermostat at 78 and the house is mostly comfortable. I've enjoyed seeing all the different recipes you've come up with to use the zucchini. The Carmel Frosted Zucchini Pecan bars is my favorite so far. Hope it starts to cool off soon, so the kitties can back to their outside wanderings.
The Zucchini bars look really tasty and I love all the zucchini recipes you've been trying. We are now having hot weather but not as high temperatures as you.
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