Today I'm trying something new! I have been having a lot of trouble typing in my thoughts on blogger. Words  into thin air. So I am going to type all the words into my word processing program then transfer to a new blog post.

I am finding that the words still jump around, disappear and evade the cusor. For some reason it seems more manageable in the word processor.

The other day I was happily typing away when a whole paragraph flew into the ether, never to be seen again! The pictures stayed so, in theory, I could go back and re-write it. However, that would entail finding the train of thought I had been riding!  That engine left the track at the same time the paragraph took off!  I'll give it a try, anyway. In the meantime this little missive will get posted.

Dud of a dinner

For Christmas last year I received the cookbook "Nigella Express". This lovely book is full of easy recipes using ingredients I mostly have on hand.  We had gotten some large shrimp for dinner and I decided to make "Red Shrimp". It has red curry powder, chili paste, onions, garlic, papaya, coconut milk, broth, sweet potatoes, butternut squash (we are still eating our abundant crop from last year!), lime juice, and a few other things.  It called for being served over noodles. I found some (very old) rice stick noodles and cooked them up. They are kind of like spagettini so I didn't cook them too long for fear of ending up with mush.

Well, the noodles weren't at all mushy - they were more like long strings of rubber!  And the shrimp dish was VERY SPICY! The shrimp were good but everything else was almost inedible!

Well. Last night was the first time in 22 years that the Big Guy didn't eat all his dinner! And he's the guy who eats raw firecracker peppers! In fact, he threw half his dinner away! He was worried about insulting me but rather, by throwing his away, he gave me permission to throw mine away this a.m. when I got them out to make for breakfast!

As I always do, I made notes in the cookbook - leave out the chili oil/paste. Use mild curry. Forget the lime juice in the sauce.  Buon apetito!

Tea Pops

The Thingy

The Big Guy and I love ice cream. Who doesn't? But the lactose bothers us both, if we buy a half gallon in the store we buy two because I don't like the kind he likes, and then we eat it all in three days.

So the other night we took Roxy in her service dog jacket and went to BR for ice cream so there would not be any in the house to chow down on. It was $10! For five scoops of ice cream! That is one for Roxy and two for the adults. Geeze - two ice cream visits and we could have gone out for dinner! I definitely needed an alternative.

Blueberries in resevoir

Last time I was at K-Mart I had mindlessly thrown a popsicle maker thingy in my basket. It came home and has been sitting on the counter for a couple of weeks. Well, my ice cream dilemma and the popsicle thingy met head on and tea pops came into being. I filled the body of the thingy with blueberries and topped it off with decaf green tea. Last night we tried them. Delicious!

The calorie count was almost nil. None for the tea and maybe 30 for less than a quarter cup of blueberries. Maybe next time I will do sliced bananas and almond milk with a dash of vanilla. Yum!

Thoughts while driving

This is the test block for Birthday Bloom 12. It looks long and skinny because it IS! Plan on putting it in my next orphan block quilt.

As many of you may know I drive a lot. Always have and will until I suffer the loss of my driving privileges in twenty years or so.  I also quilt.  In the past year I joined a block of the month class at Quilter's Quarters in Stockton. The quilt we worked on was called "Birthday Blooms". It is a pretty quilt with, as the name implies, a flower for each of the 12 months of the year.  I had so much trouble with these patterns that my quilting confidence plummeted! Successive months became more and more difficult. I missed the last class but did get the block to put together. Early in the class I figured out that if I made a bloom out of my fabric before using the fabric included in the block for the quilt I could work out the kinks without destroying the actual quilt block. Let me tell you, it was really painful! And it got worse as the year of months went on.  I spent much of last week working on the test for the last block and bemoaning my inability to quilt with Debbie Chase, owner of Quilter's Quarters (who has always been most encouraging) and anyone else who would offer me cheese with my whine! While driving one day I listened to a Radio Lab segment on PBS . Don't know where I was going as all the miles kind of mush together in my brain. But the point is that the program was about hearing voices in ones head. I realized that I was listening to all my childhood voices which said I wasn't as smart as I should have been. I decided to reprogram my voices and so started thinking about all the wonderful quilts I have made and the people who love them and think I am a fantastic quilter. Then I thought about all the classes I have taken and the techniques I know. I sat down in front of my super little Feather Weight, picked up the directions and really looked at them. Low and behold! The directions for cutting were in color order, not top to bottom of the block order as I assumed. The last block is going together very well and I even have fabric left over! I love to quilt again and look forward to the new year of Block of the Month (which are paper pieced - my favorite technique!)
On another note, anyone know how to get rid  of the the 'send feedback' box on this screen? Perhaps I should send my feedback?!

This is about half done and is going together very well! Yea, me!