Guess who we had dinner with Monday night? Okay, I guess the “Beantown” reference might’ve given it away.
Rick and Sabrina are in town for a few days for Rick’s job so we were able to catch up with them over a barbecue dinner.
What a nice change from the normal pace of the week: I skipped my PHX class at the Y to eat hushpuppies and catch up with friends.
I hope to start the SPD party posts tomorrow.
It’s 9:45 on Sunday night. The McHusband and I are finishing a show and then we’re going to bed. Our St. Patrick’s Day party was a blast and we both felt fine today, but it was a late night after a long day of party prep.
I’ll get the party pics up this week. First, I need a good night’s sleep uninterrupted by the Captain and/or shamrocks dancing in my head.
I hope your week’s off to a good start!
Well, I guess I didn’t do too bad with the posting this week. I couldn’t drop the ball on the last day so I’m giving you a dinner idea if you live somewhere that’s not going to have perfect-for-grilling weather this weekend.
Instead of minding some meat, let your crockpot do the heavy lifting.
The McHusband and I thoroughly enjoyed these pork chops. The flavor was awesome and they were so tender, literally just falling apart.
I served the meat over some orzo and next to peas. It doesn’t look like a lot of food, but it was was a filling meal.
The McHusband ate this for a day or two as leftovers and he said it was quite tasty then as well.
If you’re looking for something yummy that SEEMS like you worked really hard on it, this is your meal.
Hope everyone has a great weekend! I have today off (from the office; I’ll be working twice at hard at home) for party prep, which will continue through at least 4:00 on Saturday, then our St. Patrick’s Day party that night, then Sunday’ll be party recovery. I can’t wait! And of course you know I’ll be blogging about all the sordid details.
This is what the last week of winter – yes, WINTER! – looks like in our area.
You won’t hear me complaining about mid-seventies or higher and sunny just so long as it isn’t also humid. I’m looking forward to a lunch hour spent outside in the sun, taking advantage of free refills on diet Coke at Subway while I read my book and stockpile some vitamin D.
Actually, I think they like to call it Wine and Design. I went there a couple Fridays ago to celebrate my neighbor’s birthday.
I’d heard of this concept, but hadn’t an opportunity to try it. I’m so glad Carrie and Alicia invited me to join them. I was really excited to try it and I was right to be – it was a lot of fun and I got to bring my “masterpiece” home to hang on one of my walls.
If you’re like me, you don’t know what to expect out of something like this. Here’s a look at the studio.
All of the paintings on the walls are options for the parties. Here’s one for the McMom.
You can even paint your pet!
Here are the two versions of the painting we did that night. Not two versions painted by us – they were done by a studio artist.
All our canvases already had the outline of the tree on them.
We started out by painting the sky in the background.
There’s Tawnya and me, hard at work. And that’s the birthday girl, Carrie, in front of me.
As you can see, I chose to go with the blue sky while Tawnya went the purple route.
Next, we filled in the tree and added branches.
Then it was time for grass, leaves, and embellishments.
Tawnya was trying to figure out if she had room for just one more “headstone” in her grass.
Group photo!
I hung my painting between the two windows in the front bedroom.
I even signed it a la David Bromstad.
If you get a chance to try your hand at creating your own art at a place like this, I highly recommend it. Our cost was $35 per person and it was money very well spent. I had a great time AND I got a useful souvenir out of the deal.
I’m trying to find a go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe. There are still a few out there that get rave reviews, like the one from the NY Times or this one from Cook’s Illustrated. I like the latter because it uses melted butter so I don’t have to worry about planning ahead to have my butter softened. I actually used this recipe to make a cookie in bar form and it was quite tasty, but since they were bars and not cookies, I can’t accurately judge the recipe.
Anyway, those two recipes are still on my list. I decided to try this cookie with malted milk and Hershey’s Syrup a couple weekends ago. I had high hopes for it and the flavor lived up to my expectations but the texture, the shape, the look just weren’t right.
See? They turned out flat.
However, they retained their chewiness so all was not lost.
I used a mix of semi-sweet and milk chocolate chips, which I have to say was an inspired move on my part. I may make all my chocolate chip cookies this way from now on.
The recipe I used was based on one from Taste of Home. The original recipe used shortening instead of butter so I’m going to try these cookies again with butter-flavored Crisco and see how that works.
Any volunteers for guinea pig duty? It doesn’t pay much, but I think you’ll be happy with the benefits package.
I think I probably need to apologize in advance for a blog-light week. Here it is, 10:30 Sunday night and I’m two sentences into my five posts for the week.
Of course, there’s the Y after work each night. Then I have to make some treats tomorrow night for an HOA meeting on Tuesday; Wednesday’s my late night (because spinning isn’t until 6:30) and also the evening my fingers are tied up moving popcorn into my mouth. I’ll do some grocery shopping on Thursday on my way home from the Y so I’m ready to be in party-prep mode as soon as I get up Friday morning.
But enough about the future, let’s talk about the past. I had a good weekend, how was yours?
I chilled at home Friday night. Saturday was a workout then shopping with my friend and neighbor, Tawnya. Her husband told her she needed to shop for new clothes so I went along to help her spend her money. The McHusband had a boys’ night downtown on Saturday:dinner at Draft then drinks at Hibernian.
Sunday was my day to get my chores done, go to spinning, and make dinner. Guess what I made for the first time? Biscuits from scratch! And they were pretty good. I mean, they were healthy biscuits made with Greek yogurt so they weren’t the best biscuits I’d ever eaten, but neither the McHusband nor I were complaining.
Five paragraphs and no picture? I can’t have that. Not that this photo has anything to do with anything, but I might as well help you start your week on the right foot with a couple cute faces.
I will try really hard to have a worthwhile post each day. But if I don’t quite reach that goal, I hope you’ll forgive me.
Have a fantastic fun-day Monday!
