Food, Glorious Food

Good morning, my friends. How's everybody doing? We're doing a little better at this end. My wrist is improving slowly. A big thank you to everyone who sent well wishes. I didn't respond to everyone since I was serious about giving my wrist a rest, but your comments were very much appreciated. I'll probably continue to take a few more days off from quilting, but I was able to do some sewing yesterday. Of course, slow-stitching was never in question. I had lots of time for that over the weekend. But if I couldn't do other kinds of sewing, baking topped of my list of ways to fill time.

Mike and I have developed a habit of having a little pre-breakfast snack in the morning. We're always up early, and then we both have our little routines before breakfast. Having a couple of bites of something sweet with our morning coffee helps tide us over until we're ready for the real breakfast. I made these little Candy Apple Mini Muffins several months back. They were so yummy, I've wanted to make them again. They're made with grated Granny Smith apple and Red Hots cinnamon candies.

Also, I found some frozen tart cherries in our garage freezer left over from last summer's harvest. It seemed like a good idea to use them, and so I went in search of something I could do with tart cherries. I found this recipe for Tart Cherry Crumb Pie on the America's Test Kitchens website. I needed two pounds of cherries, and I only had one pound. So, I turned this into a pie for two.

We had it for our dessert Saturday evening with some vanilla ice cream on the side, and let me just tell you, that was one tasty dessert. The crumb topping was especially nice. I imagine this could be done with canned tart cherry pie filling too. Mine was made from scratch with the frozen cherries, and that was a sweet way to use them up.

You'll probably need a subscription to open that recipe link I gave you. As always, if you really want the recipe, just email me, and I'll be happy to send it to you.

Now here's a dish I've been making for a very long time. We stayed at a hotel in Seattle many years ago. Our room came with a free buffet breakfast, and they had the most delicious fried potatoes. It was an easy dish to copy, and I've been making them this way ever since. Recently, I've had occasion to describe them on Facebook a couple of times. Since I made them for dinner, I figured I'd share them with you guys too. 

There are no wrong amounts here. It's just chunked up some red potatoes (my favorite), with two colors of sliced bell pepper (about one whole pepper), a little chopped onion (just for the flavor), plenty of garlic salt and seasoned pepper. Then they're fried in half butter, half olive oil (about two tablespoons of each) until they're fork tender. They keep well in the refrigerator, and they're good for dinner or for breakfast.

Back when we were die-hard tent campers, I made them in a dish I called "Sunshine Skillet." You can add some bulk sausage and some scrambled eggs, and it makes an easy one-dish meal that will feed a crowd.

Oh, but I wasn't finished trying new recipes. We had the fried potatoes with these Honey-Glazed Pork Chops with Peach Salsa. Peaches are in season right now, and this was a tasty way to put them to work. There's a little bit of jalapeno in the salsa, but the seeds were removed, and so there was very little heat. The pork chops were grilled and brushed with a combination of honey, garlic, and crushed red pepper, then topped with the fresh peach salsa. There's enough left for another meal.

So that was Saturday night’s dinner. On Sunday, I made dinner early in the day, starting with this Cucumber Pasta Salad. This was really good. We liked it a lot.

For the main course, we had this Asian Salmon Wrap. I had some leftover daikon radish I wanted to use, and I had this recipe on my “untested” list. I used sun-dried tomato tortillas for mine. They’re first spread with a little cooked rice, then some canned salmon, and then a vegetable mixture made up from cucumber, green onion, and daikon radish, then drizzled with an Asian dressing. It was easy and good, and there’s still enough for another meal. This is the picture from the recipe.

Okay, so food wasn't the only thing I've been focused on. Despite not being able to do any quilting, I was able to do plenty of slow-stitching. I have most of the latest Girls' Getaway block stitched now.

The most densely-stitched portions are finished. I just have a little to do on the right side and the top.

So, I've moved my hoop to the right, and I'll start there this morning. With this close to being finished, I'll need to select something new from my list of "short" embroidery projects.

We had quite a rainstorm blow through Saturday evening. We got more than a half inch of rain out of it, and so everything is nicely wet down. Sadie was enjoying the return of the sunshine from her catio on Sunday morning.

Remember the pouch I made from a repurposed table runner recently? Well, Mike asked me to make a modification to it. This will make more sense if I use some pictures to explain it. Below is a picture of the back end of our truck camper. He's rigged up a pole he can attach to the ladder at the back of the camper. It gets the Starlink "antenna" as high up as possible without being disturbed by the wind. This is the way we'll use it most often. (It works like this on our fifth wheel too.) If, for some reason, we can't get a clear view of the sky with it positioned this way (think of trees growing over the top), then we can take the antenna off the pole and use a stand to place it somewhere else, probably on the ground.

And so he asked me if I could add a pocket on the outside that could hold that stand. Here's what we're talking about.

It's about 8-1/2 inches by 6 inches.

Happily, I still had the fabrics left over from when I made the table runner.

I made a little two-sided pouch with some batting in between. I didn't want those pointy corners wearing a hole in the fabric.

And then I gave it a matching binding.

And then, I added a velcro closure so that it would stay closed when it's stored.

And then I sewed it to the larger pouch. Nifty! 

So, that kept me busy most of yesterday afternoon.

This morning, we need to make a trip into town. Mike is taking his truck in to have some work done on it…work he doesn’t want to do himself. We need to pick up a couple of forgotten items at the grocery store, and we’ll get our beloved Egg McMuffin while we’re out. Getting Egg McMuffin twice in the same week...well, it probably goes without saying that we're living large here at the Three Cats Ranch. Probably I’ll continue to lay low where quilting is concerned, but I think I can start sewing together one of the quilt tops. One way or another, sewing will happen.

Okay, we're heading out early, and so I must go. I've missed you guys. I hope everyone had a good weekend.