Precious Piggies!

I was looking thru some pictures of Dutch and ran across his sweet little feet.  He spent the night with us recently and we were laughing at how cute his feet are......little hobbit feet! 

Being a grandmother~

Veggie Cobb Salad

I recently posted a cobb salad with bacon and fried chicken tenders and mentioned a veggie cobb and this is it.  Asparagus, cherry tomatoes, hard boiled egg and avocado.  You could also use some thawed frozen corn.  This was on a bed of green leaf lettuce and spinach served with blue cheese dressing.

I steamed the asparagus until crisp tender and then cut into chunks.

Carrot Snack Cake

With this little bit of cold weather, I decided to make a big pot of vegetable beef soup today and since one of our son's loves carrot cake I made this carrot snack cake.  I like carrot cake but it wouldn't be something I would order if I had other choices.  This little cake is fast and easy to make if you are wanting some carrot cake and you don't want to do the big layer cake.  The cake is very moist and tasty.  It has orange juice and orange zest but a 1/2 cup of crushed pineapple would be good in it.

4 eggs
1 cup olive oil
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon orange zest
1/2 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 1/2 cups shredded carrots
1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9x13 baking dish.
In a large bowl whisk together eggs, oil, brow sugar, orange juice, orange zest and vanilla until well combined.  Whisk in flours, baking powder, cinnamon, soda, salt, and nutmeg until combined.  Stir in carrots and walnuts.  Pour into prepared pan.

Bake 35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool in pan on a wire rack.  Spread with cream cheese frosting and sprinkle with orange zest if desired.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1-8 ounce cream cheese room
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon orange zest (optional)


Beat with electric mixer cream cheese and butter until mixed well and in vanilla and beat again.  Then add in powdered sugar one cup at a time until well combined. Stir in one teaspoon of orange zest.

( I didn't have whole wheat flour so I used 2 cups of regular flour and it turned out great.)

Wonderful Children!

 

 

Old friends from out of town are stopping by tonight for dinner and leaving in the morning on their way to the Gulf.  Our house is a mess.  I've been taking one room at a time and trying to deep clean.  I've decided there are other things I would rather be doing.  LOL  I kind of panicked when they called thinking about the shape our house is in.  I decided I would just hit the high places, mainly get the 2 inches of dust off of everything and call it good.  I keep telling myself, they are coming to see us not examine our home.....right?  They are the type of people who are coming to see us, so I resolved to not worry about it. 

 

Then I got a call from one of our sweet daughters who said she was coming down to help me clean.  I normally would protest but I conceded this time.  :)  She brought me these beautiful tulips as well.  The house is ready to go and all I have to do today is have dinner ready this evening.  I will be relaxed and ready for a wonderful visit with wonderful friends.

 

I'm so thankful for children who are wonderful human beings!

 

Peaceful Sunday

Joy is the dance of the heart set to the music of peace~

Honey and Star Dutch Fast A Sleep

I love rocking me and little Dutch to sleep!  I need a nap too after chasing him around the house.  :)

Cobb Salad

Wow, was this delicious!
We had this for dinner a couple of nights ago and it really hit the spot.  I made a wonderful chive and blue cheese salad dressing to go with it.  For quite some time now, I've been making our salad dressings and they are so good a lot better than the bottled stuff.  For this dressing, you just put everything in the blender and blend.  It's really good!

I used green leaf lettuce and a half a head of ice berg lettuce.  But you could use whatever greens you like.  I used 1 1/2 hard boiled eggs per plate, diced, 3 strips of bacon diced, 1/2 avocado diced (you could use a whole avocado depending on the size, 5 dark cherry tomatoes cut in half and bite size pieces of chicken breast, fried.  I put salt, pepper and garlic powder on the chicken and tossed in flour and fried it.  Then drizzled it with the chive and blue cheese dressing.

I was thinking if you wanted to make it all veggies, you could use diced red pepper, about 3 stalks of asparagus steamed and diced, and 1/2 cup of frozen corn, unthawed in place of the chicken and bacon.

Pile your greens on a plate and then arrange your veggies and meat into sections on top of the greens.

Chive and Blue Cheese Dressing

1 cup mayo
1 cup sour cream
1 cup buttermilk
1 6 ounce container of blue cheese crumbles
1/2 cup chopped fresh chives
2 teaspoons worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon tarragon vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Put everything in the blender and blend!

Wireless Wake Up Call

I think this is very important information and wanted to pass it along.      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0NEaPTu9oI

Chocolate Almond Pastry

This was dessert tonight.  My daughter saw this and told me about it. Anything with chocolate and pastry has my attention.  It takes maybe 10 minutes to assemble this and cooks for 25 minutes.  This is fast, easy and tasty.  I used a Hersey's chocolate almond bar.  But next time I'm going to use a dark chocolate bar without almonds.  This was good but I think a good quality dark chocolate would really be better. 

I'm posting the you tube video and it will show you exactly how to make it.  One sheet makes four servings.  This would be great with coffee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGXMEBaYsS4