beaches closed, helicopters hovering, police and fire out in force, hours and hours of coverage. . . Somehow, we survived the predicted one foot tsunami. Intact infrastructure. No loss of lives. We are alive! Seriously???!!!
Around this time of theyear I start feeling a little longing for warm weather, long lazy daysand good times. I find myself lingering in front of a small wall cabinet in the hallway outside the living room. It's my "Cabo cabinet". Here is a small peak:
This brief peak brings me back to those warm lazy days in Cabo. Brings me back to special memories with special people. Good times, great food, really great tequila, and hoping that sometime soon, I get a "do over"!
For many years, I settled for this. I am the only coffee drinker in the house. This is simple, fast and easy to make for one. Then, I became coffee challenged. Or snobbish. It just wasn't good enough. Thus, began my quest. Taking cooking classes a few years ago at Williams Sonoma, I found this:
I had begun to relish the flavor of latte. This, was supposed to deliver it! And, it kinda did. Kinda, you ask? It was time consuming, about 8-10 mins for a 6 oz. cup. Sorry, that's a long time for me. And it needed maintenance. I had to fill the the coffee and the milk chambers, then screw the contraption together. Then, plug and wait. Then, it all had to be cleaned and dried. For one 6 oz. cup. And, it wasn't HOT. I like my coffee HOT and I like a mug, about 10 oz of coffee. My search continued.
Was this the Holy Grail? It was easy, fast and relatively easy to clean. I could use pods or my own coffee! What more could I ask, you ask? More coffee. And HOT coffee. I had to microwave the cup before I drank it. And I would need 2 cups to satisfy. There has got to be a better way. It is just a cup of Joe, just for me. And then,
Mr. Coffee was on sale at Target! A four cupper, fast, easy, HOT, and oh so PERFECT! What took me so Long! Who'd thought! And now? I'm not the only coffee drinker anymore! All four of us are drinking coffee. Shoulda gotten the 10 cupper!
We decided to take the twins to the Elephant Bar to celebrate their 89th birthday! There were, I think, 23 or 24 of us! It was cold and raining outside, but that didn't stop the party! We had 3 servers trying to keep everything straight.
Dan played musical chairs to say hello to everyone at the loooong table! Hey, Eileen was doing it too!
John and Carter cozy up with Mom. Wow, she looks great! Dan, you moved again!
Setting up the cakes for the big birthday song, "Cameras Ready?"
We celebrated Valentine's Day Sunday night because I was working on Monday, the 14th. We started with a very nice Chardonnay, well not this one. We tried this one, but it was too fruity, so we opened another. That one was very nice!
We're so happy with our kitchen that, and I know it sounds so ordinary, we decided that we wanted to cook! We don't get to cook together often enough in our new kitchen, so we thought it would be fun to do for Valentine's Day. First, we defrosted the chicken. Those boned thighs will be sauteed. That's the garlic press ready for action next to it.
Next, the mushrooms were sliced. Oh, they look so good. I love sauteed mushrooms slathered all over my chicken. Terry likes to have a Guinness while he cooks.
The fresh asparagus was washed and trimmed. They will be steamed and thrown together with fresh chopped tomatoes and Parmesan.
I threw together a dish of scalloped potatoes. I like them with caramelized onions layered in a garlic and butter rubbed dish with Swiss cheese and Parmesan.
Terry caramelized the onions to perfection!
And I put a lot of love into baking a Red Velvet cake. Unfortunately, it didn't share much love back with us. Let's just say, "it looked scrumptious"!
I wandered in to Pottery Barn looking for faucets, which they no longer have (tells you how long it's been since I've shopped here) and stumbled upon these chairs on clearance. Each $230 chair were marked down to $57!! Wow, and I love them!
OK, so after a day at work, a stop at the grocery store, after a few hours of working on the Stang, this is what he loves to do!
He was working on a new recipe of Beef Bourguignon. You know, that recipe that calls for almost a bottle of red wine. Think Julia Child. All the recipe books come out and he compares and contrasts and comes up with his own recipe. My favorite activity is sitting at the penninsula with my glass of wine and discussing food and kids and the days events while watching the creation develop! The smells, ooh so good!
My first gift of the New Year was that we were overstaffed at work and so they offered me the night off! So, I have some time to finally post Christmas Day at our house.
Dinner was spread out over 4 tables, the dining room and then the coffee table in the living room, and we set up 2 additional tables there, too. More wine at table 3!
We had our annual gift exchange, complete with three allowed "rip offs" for each gift! We swapped mostly gift cards from Target and Starbucks! Some gifts were disguised. One had a banana to weigh it down, another had rocks in the box!
