Munchie Monday: Lasagna for Two

Dear One hates leftovers.  For some crazy reason. I LOVE them...no need to cook again for a few days (or clean up the kitchen), but that is not his view.  So I decided to make Lasagna for Two.

6 lasagna noodles, cooked in boiling water

1 cup cottage cheese

1 egg, beaten

1 Tablespoon dried parsley

1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese

1 1/2 cups Paul Newman's Sockarooni Spaghetti sauce

1 cup mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease a 9 by 5 glass bread tin.  

In a bowl mix the cottage cheese, parsley, and egg well.

Place two noodles in the bottom the dish.  You will need to cut them to fit.  Save the cuttings.  Put 1/4 of the pasta sauce, the cheese mixture, and the mozzarella over the top, spread evenly as you can.  Put two more noodles down and repeat.  Repeat one more time.  The top with the last bit of noodle cuttings and other ingredients.

Cook in the oven until piping hot, at least 30 minutes.  Ours could have cooked a little longer.

May I say, I do not know WHO the TWO were who were going to eat all of this.  We have each had two huge servings and there is another very large serving left.  It tasted pretty good, though!

Food Friday: What a Feeling!

After the last few days of apartment clean up, Transfers last night, and busy day to come, walking into the kitchen this morning was a real shot in the arm.  Clean! Well, sort of.  Empty counters!  No ants. Shiny sink!  So nice.

Most of you have this feeling every day and will probably say, "What's the big deal, you dodo?!"   Well,  it is a new experience for me, for the most part.  The only glitch is that now I don't want to cook anything. Or mess it up in any way.  Cheerios for breakfast, that is for sure!  We have a few leftovers in the refrigerator for the next few meals, but by the weekend Dear One is going to be champing at the bit to have "fresh food".  Rats.

Have a great day!

PS There was no attaboy from the inspectors. I wonder if they are going to fake us out by coming today...!

Vegetation Near Us

Today I went for a walk...actually on a hunt for the baby ducklings that Sister J told me about.  Did not find them but still had a nice walk. I love the trees around here.

This one has the best trunk shape!

Here is another one.  I just cannot get enough of the colorful flowers on trees.

Both of these are within sight of our office building.  Nice.

Inspectors. Yikes!

On Saturday we came home from visiting with the young missionaries.  There was an envelope taped to our front door.  (Well, only door actually since we don't have a back door...unless you count the sliding door to the "porch".  That is not a door we can exit the apartment from, though.  Unless we have no thought for life or limb....)

In this envelope was a notice that bank inspectors  and the apartment complex staff were going to come inspect our apartment today.  Yikes!  So on Saturday we did a bunch of extra picking up/cleaning up, but there are "pockets" of cleaning still needing to be done.

This is just one of them:

After

Before

Now to get to the kitchen!  And the dining room!  And the knitting chair!  And the......you get the picture.  And only one hour to get it done, so I will stop writing.

Do you think I can "do it"?  And better yet, do it, and keep it done?!  That is what I would like to do,  change the inner vessel so this never comes up again.

No, you are right:  not likely, but hope does spring eternal...!

Here is the kitchen/dining room as we left it:

Not great, but oh so much better than it was yesterday....

Wedding Gift Wrapping, Finally!

Knitting is such a satisfying hobby.  Paper-crafting is a close second. I already showed the coasters I made for the wedding of friends.  Finally I finished the packaging.  Now I just need to get a good mailing address and ship the package off.

The box is the same hinged box I have made before, but I used a 12 by 12 piece of double-sided card stock.  The belly band is some embossed card stock.  It really is way prettier than it looks in the picture.

Munchie Monday: Quick and Easy Cornbread/Muffins

This week is Transfer Week.  This means Departing Dinner.  Sister J and I will be helping President and Sister B prepare the dinner. President B will put many racks of ribs in his new Traeger grill which we will warm up. We will bake potatoes, make coleslaw, prepare an ice cream "bar" with bananas, strawberries, nuts, and hot fudge sauce.  We will also make cornbread and cornbread muffins.  Sister J made some muffins with her recipe to take to Church for a Linger Longer.  She shared some with us, along with some fabulous honey butter. Yummy!  Really yummy.

My plan was to make one of the cornbread recipes that has creamed corn in it.  On the strength of that plan, without looking up recipes, I purchased three inexpensive cans of creamed corn.  I was speaking with Daughter M shortly thereafter.  She told me she had the BEST RECIPE EVER for cornbread!  Nice thought.  I am not much of a cornbread fan.  Usually it is dry, crumbly, and flavorless, so I was not holding out much hope. 

That being said, I was wrong!  Completely.  These were so good that I ate two of them immediately.  Rats!  This is the recipe she gave me.  Just look at the ingredients and you will grasp how tasty they are.

Quick and Easy Cornbread/ Cornmeal Muffins

1 cup cornmeal
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/3 cups sugar
2 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup melted butter
2 Tablespoons honey
4 eggs, beaten
2 1/2 cups whole milk.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease a 9 by 13 pan.  In a large bowl mix the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Pour in the vegetable oil, melted butter, honey, beaten eggs, and milk and stir gently just until all the flour/cornmeal has been dampened.  Pour the batter into the greased pan and bake for 45 minutes.  M says you want to see some cracks and light browning.  Remove from oven and let cool.

What I did:  I cut the recipe exactly in half and use my silicon muffin cups--well not exactly muffin cups but little round cake cups.  (The difference is that the cups I have had straight side, not sloping sided like muffin tins have.) This half-batch made twelve fat cakes.

This is the muffins that are bottom-side up, just as I removed them from the the silicon pans.  I set the timer for 15 minutes to let the muffins cool before trying to remove them from the pans.  I have not had good luck in the past when I failed to let the food cool for 15 minutes before trying to extract them.

You can see that the sides are straight and the bottoms are nicely browned.  The tops were not as brown but still okay.  Will you believe me when I say there are no remaining muffins in our house less than 24 hours later?!  In our defense,  I did pass along nearly half of them to our other senior missionaries.  It makes me happy to think they will enjoy them.

Food Friday: Quick and Easy Best Hot Oatmeal Ever

Sometimes when you are researching something you need to know, other things catch your eye that you should really stop everything and review.  This is such a case.

This really is Quick and Easy!  And so good for you.  And it even tastes good.  This morning I was looking at ways to improve health through food.  Diet-food-health-they should go together, right?  So that is what I was researching.  Yet again trying to make changes for the better. I saw many testimonials by medical scientists indicating that if we just added oatmeal to our diets every day so many health improvements would take place.  Okay. I believe it.  And there, just below all those other presentations was an advertisement for the best oatmeal ever.  Maybe yes, maybe no, but it was worth trying.

This is the trick that makes this so good:  find a 2-cup storage container that has a lid. Add all the ingredients to it.  Put on the cover and shake then set aside until you want to use it...at home, in the office, on the job, in an airplane--any place you can get boiling water.


The mixture:

1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
a handful of dried fruit like raisins, cranberries, whatever you like
1 Tablespoon ground flax meal or chia seeds
1 Tablespoon or less  brown sugar
1-2 Tablespoons chopped nuts or seeds (more if you are not using the flax or chia)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Put on the cover and shake well.

Boil water.  Fifteen to twenty minutes before you want to eat the oatmeal pour the hot water over it.  I put about 1 cup onto the oatmeal, covered tightly, then, holding the cover on with both hands, gave it a shake or two then set on the table with a spoon so we could eat it when we were ready.

This was our first bowl.  It was good.  We did not pour on any milk and it was still lovely.

Works like a charm!  So good.  And if a bowl of oatmeal can repair a fatty liver, diabetes, bad sleep, what have you, then it is an easy pill to swallow.

Vegetation Near Us: Don't Know What It Is

There are many different kinds of trees and bushes here in Oregon than back home in Vermont.  I do not know what this one is but it does look vaguely familiar...perhaps my mother-in-law had one in her yard...?

This bush or tree is in the median between parking lots near our office building. I have enjoyed watching it go from dead-looking to buds then blossoms then full bloom, and now the last of the blossoms and the first of the leaves.  So enjoyable to watch.

Temperate Rain Forest

After visiting the Tulip Farm Festival we headed south and east (I think) to Silverton and the Silver Falls State Park.  This is the site of a temperate rainforest.  That is a term we all need to look up in the dictionary, I think!  Elder J has spoken of it several times.

We arrived there, paid our fee to park and then headed for the South Falls.  Fortunately I had my new Bi-Mart walking sticks so I walked confidently on the trail towards the falls.  At the top there was a very nice stone wall that we could look over.  Yikes!  Bad idea.  Vertigo just about got me...so I stepped back out of view of the cascade.

After the others had had their fill there we started down down down the trail to take pictures of the whole falls, and the brave people hiked on down and behind the falls.  I was not in that crowd.  I hate to be a chicken but the thought of falling and having to bring in a crane to get me back to the top was so repellant that I went back up to the top after taking a few pictures and waited for the crew to return.  In the meantime I was mistaken for a volunteer and asked about a large group of Russian and Slavic  tourists.  I am a volunteer, but not for the forest service.  Plus I had seen no Russian-speaking people as far as I knew.

South Falls from somewhere down the trail...

This picture is an example of what the trees and bushes look like in a temperate rainforest.  It is really so eerie looking.  Sister J. says if we had gone on the five-mile hike where we would have seen seven waterfalls, we would have found the foliage really truly amazing, and almost scary.  If I get into condition perhaps later on we can try it again.

Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm Festival

On Saturday three of us senior missionary couples piled into the mission van and headed south for the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm's festival.  It was a pleasant ride.  The tulips were stunning!  Completely!  I took so many pictures of the tulips that there was very little battery left on my phone to take pictures at our second stop of the day!

Just one view of the 40-acre field, and not even a good view.

Elder C and Elder J at the wooden shoes.  You couldn't have gotten me into them on a bet!  I would surely have fallen over...

It is too bad I am not a good photographer.  The flowers were magnificent.

We saw these in tubs as we barely entered the fields.  Someone said to me that there were more further on....

These deep colored tulips were so gorgeous.

If I was a little kid, I would have loved a ride in the wooden shoe train!

There were many transportation options available!

Munchie Monday: Chili Lime Popcorn Cauliflower. Yes! Cauliflower Popcorn!

Our daughter sent this recipe to me some time ago.  I have made it three times now, and really like it.  This is not popcorn that you need to sit down and eat three bowls of with butter and salt to be satisfied.  This popcorn is something that you can put on your desk in a covered storage container and when you are beginning to think about food, and trying to hold off eating some bad-for-you food, you can open the container and pop a couple little pieces of tasty, really flavorful goodness into your mouth. I let it sit there for a while to enjoy the burst of deliciousness on my tongue, then eventually chew it up.  The desire for bad-for-you food leaves me and I continue on with work.  You might want to try it.

You will need: 

a dehydrator
a big head of cauliflower
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon chili powder (or more if you like that)
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1 large bowl
1 good knife
a spoon

On a cutting board, cut up the cauliflower either into small-sized florets or into 1/4-inch slices.  Put into the large bowl.  Drizzle the olive oil over it and stir with a spoon until all the pieces are coated.  Squeeze the lime over the bowl ( I have a yellow lime/lemon squeezer that I love to use for this.  I squeeze the first side then the second side of each half and get plenty of lime juice.) then stir with the spoon until that is all over the cauliflower.  Next put into a small bowl the chili powder and salt and mix well.  Sprinkle over the cauliflower then stir well until all pieces are nicely coated.

Place on two or more racks in your dehydrator and set the temperature for 135 degrees F. and let dehydrate for 6-8 hours.  Take out and enjoy a few pieces.  Put the rest in a tightly covered container.  I cannot tell you how long this lasts because we have consumed it all.  This is the royal "we" here, though Dear One has been known to eat a bit.  Other people at a function found it went down very easily!

This is the leftover little bits of cauliflower that I suspected would dry up so small that they might fall through the spaces in the dehydrator sheets.  All right, if you must know, I was dying to have a taste.  I decided to call this bit "chili lime cauliflower salad" and ate it for breakfast along side of my oatmeal.   I ate them with a spoon.  So good.

One note:  as with all kitchen/cooking work, your hands should be freshly washed before you start, and washed many times while cooking.  In every instance where I stated up above to use a spoon to stir, well...I don't do that. I use clean hands. I feel like they do a better job and you have a better feel for the situation with the food.

Food Friday: Quick and Easy Blender Waffles

Dear One loves enjoys waffles every time I make them. It seemed like time to make them again.  There were some ingredients that needed to be used up so this is what I did:

Quick and Easy Blender Waffles

1 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1.75 cups buttermilk
3 eggs

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix well.  Add the eggs, buttermilk, and oil to the blender jar and blend until smooth.  Add the flour mixture and blend until well-combined.  Cook in your waffle iron that you have sprayed with cooking spray.  Cook for 3 minutes (in our waffle iron).

Things I did differently from Sally's Baking Addiction recipe:  1.  Used the blender; 1. used the whole wheat flour; 3. decreased the sugar; 4. used vegetable oil instead of melted butter plus decreased the amount; 5.  put the last of the heavy cream we had into the bottom of the 2-cup measure then filled to 1.75 mark with shaken buttermilk.  (I have learned that you ALWAYS need to shake the buttermilk before measuring.)



With this batter I made two large waffles.  Since I did not want to put leftovers into the freezer to deteriorate because I forgot they were there and because they never taste as good leftover, at least mine don't seem to, I put the rest of the batter into a storage container in the refrigerator.  We will be seeing waffles again VERY soon!

These last two pieces (half of a large waffle) went down rather easily.  I was a bit depraved and instead of serving them with butter and Vermont maple syrup,  I spread a little honey-roasted peanut butter between them (honey-nut peanut butter I ground fresh when I was at Winco early yesterday morning.  I was so quiet that Dear One did not notice I was gone until I came back home and to bed at 6 AM and woke him up!  I love 24-hour grocery stores!  When you cannot sleep, you might as well do something other than just lie there gritting your teeth every moment you are not sleeping...so I go to the store.  Nice.)

Vegetation Near Us--growing on trees

It amazes me how the trees here have so much "growing stuff" on them.  And they seem to be flourishing!  It is especially surprising since one of our nice apple trees at home got some mossy growth on it that killed the tree in a very short time.  So sad.  Here the trees seem to love it.

This is a piece of one of the types of growth that is on the trees outside our building at 1400 NE Compton.  I was out walking and found it lying on the ground on the sidewalk.  The tree above is furred with it.

Healthy, Weathy, and Wise: Not So Much Today

Over the weekend of General Conference in Salt Lake City there were words which touched my heart and put me back on the right path.  I decided I really would try the "small and simple means" to bring about something "marvelous".  But I told you that last week.

One of those things was to avoid fast food establishments for the week, and hopefully much longer.  Well, I did do that for a week.  Unless you count the cafe at Costco, which, for the first time ever, had no one champing at the bit for food in front of me. I knew Dear One was at home, hungry, so I stopped in.  But don't you think I was kidding myself.  I really was stopping for a Polish dog and sauerkraut.  Which was pretty good.  It would have been better with a real serving of the kraut, but still, it was good.

So I continued on with my small and simple things...like walking to the end of the hall after going to the "baño" before going back to the office. I think I mentioned that, too.

Having said that, today something happened that deflected me.  We received a poster from a fast food joint with many many coupons.  It was a place I have found food for Dear One which he enjoyed.  I am easy.  If someone else cooks it, and especially if they also clean up after the cooking, then I like anyway.  Except Water Melon . And her cousins.  So as we were driving home from the office I asked Dear One if he wanted a bean and cheese burrito.  He asked where I would find it so I named the restaurant.  He did not say no, which I always take to mean yes!  Is that bad thinking?

When we did arrive home he had some leftover pizza after vacuuming the floor with one of the vacuum cleaners he and Elder W. have been reconditioning for missionary apartments.  Our vacuum cleaner needs attention so he thought he would bring the least good of those reconditioned ones home and take our in for help.  So, the floor clean, pizza on his plate, I asked if he still wanted the burrito.  He waggled his hand.  I asked if he wanted anything at Winco.  That surprised him because he thought I was going elsewhere.

Well...off I went to Winco for milk, cauliflower, broccoli (did you know you can eat more than 100 cups of broccoli a day and still have no toxic side effects?!  And such good things can happen to your body.  SUCH good things.  If you don't eat broccoli, maybe you should start.  If you don't like it steamed, eat it sautéed.  If you don't like it that way, eat it raw.  If you don't like it raw and plain, stick it into some dip.  Even with fat and other stuff accompanying it, it is so good for you that it is still a plus even with the negatives.  Truly.

So, when I was just by Winco I remembered I had a trunk full of returnable bottles so I went into recycling center  to return the bottles and get the deposits back.  Eighteen bottles later the machine bit the dust.  Since it was pleasant outside and the button to call a helper was right there, I pressed the call button.  Shortly a young man in a red shirt tore by the open doors and told me he would be right there.  Almost immediately the door on the wall behind me opened and there he was.  We chatted about the machines not working for a bit then he counted up our bottles and gave me the slip to get the deposits back.  It was almost enough to pay for the milk, cauliflower, broccoli, and fake deli meat I got for Dear One.  Well, I suppose you could call it vegetable deli meat to be more precise.  Either way, he liked it on rye bread last week.  Bonus!!

Then off to the fast food stand.  He had mentioned the free drink with the epic burrito so I ordered an epic carne asada burrito, Coke with no ice, a spicy jack quesadilla, and the free half-pound bean and cheese burrito.  The last two were for Dear One.

When I got to the window I was astounded at the cost.  I had totally misunderstood the coupon system.  Only one coupon allowed so since the bean and cheese burrito was only a dollar and he had evinced interest in the free soda I just bought the bean and cheese burrito.  When I asked about the higher-than-expected cost, the girl read through my order. She mentioned my chicken quesadilla.  I did not order a chicken quesadilla and told her so.  I looked behind me and saw cars backed up around the corner so I decided not to make stink, just took the food, paid the fee, and headed out.  I did note that the free drink: Coke, rattled quite a bit.  Ice.  I hate to pay for ice.  The soda pop in the machines almost always is plenty cold enough so we don't need to have the cup filled with ice and a little bit of soda.  That may seem cheap but, well, that is it.

So...the fast food trip turned out to be a really bad idea since I had to eat the CHICKEN burrito.  It was a misunderstanding, ordering that but the reason was the order board said, "Cheddar quesadilla" and "Spicy Jack Quesadilla".  Nowhere at all did it mention meat at all.  You see my problem.

Well, I must say both the burrito I did eat and the quesadilla that I also ate, were really quite delicious.  So the healthy, wealthy, and wise this week definitely wasn't.  What a bust.  Back on the wagon as of now.   I think I will have a nice tall nightcap of crystal clear water, no ice..

Mission: Office Construction

Several weeks ago the real estate manager for the property where the Mission Office resides came in to visit with us.  He said that they had some money "left over" in some fund or other and they were thinking of painting our walls or installing new carpet.  Neither one of these things actually needs to be done so we office missionaries asked if instead of these jobs they could put in a sink for us.  They seemed to like the idea.

Since that time we have had many many visits from different people, contractors, sub-contractors, sub-managers, etc.  It looks like they really are going to do it!

Last Thursday we came to work and there, behind my desk, was a difference in the wall!

The workmen had opened up the wall to get access to the back of the cupboard where they are going to install a new cupboard with sink set into it.

It was said that they were going to bore down into the concrete floor under the cabinet to reach the water lines and electric lines.  We are really souped  up about this change.  A sink!  Yay!  Plus they will put in six feet worth of cabinets above the sink, too!  That will be so nice.

Munchie Monday

For a long time I have searched for a recipe that was vegan, sort of cheese-y, and tastes good.  Finally I have found it.  There  is a website called lifeisnoyoke.com which has a cashew queso recipe on it.  They really suggest that we all try it. I am glad I did!

You need:
1 cup almond milk
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 cup RAW almonds
1/2 cup RAW cashews
1 large red bell pepper, deveined and de-seeded
1.5 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder—I used dried chopped onions
A pinch of crushed red pepper

Put the wet ingredients into your high speed blender.  Add the rest of the ingredients on top.  Start the blender on low speed then move up to high speed.  Let it blend for 6 minutes.

When you stop blending, the queso is hot and ready to eat.  You can use it as a sauce.  You can use it on macaroni and cheese.  You can use it for a dip.


Things I have done with it:  eaten it out of the blender jar!  Then there was using it for dipping a variety of vegetables and vegetable crackers and tortilla chips.  Most recently I added it to some fairly much dried-out macaroni and cheese.  Dear One served himself a second serving!!  You could have knocked me over with a feather.  Of course, he did not know what he was eating, which was good.  I think.

Food Friday: Homemade Almond Milk and Residue

A recipe I wanted to make called for almond milk.  We did not have any.  We did have almonds.  And water, fortunately! So I made some.

To make it I put 1 cup of almonds in the high speed blender then poured in 3 cups of water.  I used distilled water since I had just gotten some.  After about 3 minutes of blending I shut off the machine and poured the milk through a nut milk bag to remove the very fine pulp.

This is the almond milk pulp that I put in the dehydrator to possibly make into almond flour.  Well, why not try to use everything instead of just throwing it down the garbage disposal, which, by the way, is a marvelously useful piece of kitchen equipment if you do not have a compost pile available.

After a few hours in the dehydrator we had some almond flour!  That makes me happy.  Well, and that is on top of the tasty almond milk which tastes nothing like the almond milk I have purchased at the store.

Not a lot of flour, but still, nice to have it.

Vegetation Near Us

Every since we arrived here last August I have been snapping pictures of the different plants and animals near us.  My intent was to share some of the different plants that are here in the Pacific Northwest, many of which I had not seen before.  That does not mean they are not growing on the east coast of this great country but I had not seen them before.  Now I will share one.

This is a picture I took yesterday in the industrial complex where we serve in the mission office.  I do not know what it is but I like the drippy pink flowers and the rich shiny leaves.  It is growing right up against the wall of a huge beautiful, but unoccupied, building that was once a museum of some sort which escapes my mind as I write.

Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise #1

If I remember correctly, that old statesman from Pennsylvania Benjamin Franklin once made a little saying:  Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.  Well so far I have done the former two but have not accomplished the last three, by any measure that the popular world would acknowledge.

Nearly every night I am in bed no later than 9 PM and many nights lots earlier.  Most mornings I am awake by 5 AM but usually much earlier...3 or 4 AM.  I am not feeling the health, wealth, or wisdom.  Having said that, we have a comfy dry roof over our heads, a bed to sleep in, a chair and a couch to rest on, plenty of good food available, clear water to drink, and money to pay our bills.  I guess by most measures that would be considered wealth, so we will take that off the table.

Healthy, on the other hand, is something I want to embrace.  It is a new month.  Prior to General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which took place in Salt Lake City, Utah on 31 March and 1 April (Easter weekend, the most glorious weekend of the year) I prayed about some questions that I had regarding health and the wisdom part.  The brother who offered the very first prayer asked Heavenly Father that "those who came to the Conference seeking answers to their questions would have them realized.)  I was so grateful for that prayer and was filled with hope that my questions would be answered.

In actuality, the two questions I had in my heart were not the ones that were answered at this Conference, but other questions that I had buried deep down in my heart because I had almost given up on finding answers, well, those question WERE answered.  I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who hears us, listens to us, and then responds at the time we need the answers.

So, what is this all about?  I have been trying to swim early in the mornings.  Lately I have been waking up and 2 and 3 o'clock which makes me worry that I will not be able to perform all my responsibilities at the office if I get up, work on Spanish, clean house, iron, or go swimming.  Over the last three months I have averaged one day a week, perhaps just a little more.  Not good.  Better than no days a week.

This weekend I realized that the pool in our complex, the one where a duck couple comes every afternoon to swim around and quack quietly to themselves, is available every day.  There is a nice big hot tub right beside the pool.  After General Conference it came to me that I can go there to swim in the pool and then warm up in the hot tub...the pool not being a heated pool.

On Friday the new bathing suit I ordered almost a month ago finally arrived.  That, along with the inspiration for Conference, got me off dead center and into that suit when we arrived home from the office.  Down the stairs I went, walking around on the sidewalk instead of the doggy grass, unlocked the gate, went into the pool enclosure, removed my long flannel shirt and glasses and walked over to the steps into the pool.

One step down into the pool.  I stood there for perhaps fifteen seconds.  Probably less.  The water was perhaps fifty degrees F.  I stepped back out onto terra firma and progressed over to the hot tub.  Because I was alone I was able to do many exercises which I did for at least ten minutes.  Not by any stretch could you call it swimming, but I did keep the body in motion without stopping for that time. Next time I will ask Dear One to be my time keeper and come out onto our porch to tell me the time.

It does not sound like much, and it is NOT much, but it makes my heart glad to have done a little bit of water work.  AND the cool thing is that the duck mom came to the pool...though she was unpleasantly surprised by the fushia-garbed creature in the hot tub, and she barely touched down on the surface of the pool before she took off again.

Hopefully I will have some better healthy news by the next time I write.

April Birthday Card

Splitcoast Stampers has some great card tutorials.  I tried this one.  It goes in the mail today.

 This is the front.

Start opening the card and this is what you get:

This is the card completely popped and without sentiments written in on the blank parts.  You could stamp it but I usually write my own sentiments.

It was really pretty quick and easy.  I did have to even up the edges after all was done as there was a little extra "white" showing on the outside.

It was a satisfying project.

Munchie Monday: Peeps "Cake"

Our mission president's wife likes Peeps.  I saw the picture of a Peeps cake in First magazine so I made one.

The "cake" is a giant chocolate chip cookie baked in a 12-inch pizza pan.  When cooled I covered it with green icing then many many Peeps with colored mini marshmallows edging them.  Kind of cute and it went over well at the potluck dinner all the full time senior missionaries had.

Another treat I made was brownies cut into 3-inch circles with marshmallows and melted butter with chow mein noodles in then made into Peeps Chicks nests.  Those were also enjoyed.

Fortunately I was able to leave all that stuff at the party!  No need for any more sugar for the next decade or so...!