Friday Fun and A Giveaway

It’s Friday… It’s Friday… Yea Yea…. Yea Yea!!!

Are you starting every Friday singing our little song?

No? Well, then… NO CROUTONS FOR YOU EITHER!!!

OK, look, I know I’m not one of these big bloggers who make a ton of money through advertising or write books and articles for big name magazines. No, I don’t have hundreds of readers every day. (not yet anyway) 😉

BUT, that doesn’t mean that I can’t give something away to my readers too. Right?

And, here it is….

A set of Pampered Chef measuring spoons.

There is a reason I picked the measuring spoons.

I can be heavy handed on things like putting detergent in the washer or dish washer, or when adding an ingredient to something I’m cooking. If I don’t measure then I’m sure to use too much of whatever it is that I’m using.

Using measuring spoons and cups has saved me quite a bit both in money and in disasters of recipes.

If you don’t believe me, then take that teaspoon you use to put the sugar in your coffee or tea in the morning and scoop out with it what you normally do, then pour it into the teaspoon measuring spoon. I’ll bet it fills it and runs over the sides.

HA! See, I told you.

A friend of mine said she was sure to save money in dog food because when she measured out a cup of food compared to what she had been scooping, it was closer to 2 cups of food for her dog, twice a day. Now, that’s a huge savings!

Anyway… To win, all you have to do is leave a comment about something you got from one of my blogs this week.

That doesn’t mean a comment about my bad grammar or misspelled words. Um, ’cause this isn’t a big name magazine 🙂

I’ll have the Zman randomly pick a number and that will be the winner!

Then you can tell all your friends about this great blog, and like it on facebook so I’ll get 100 likes and then maybe some day when I have 1000’s of readers I can get them all to sing…

It’s Friday… It’s Friday… Yea Yea… Yea Yea !!!!!

Then, we’ll work on world peace….

I hope you have a Fun Friday and a lovely weekend!

Y’all take care!

Lori

P.S. I have to exclude family from the giveaway (which is a shame, because I might not have a winner at all because of that) And, I have to limit the giveaway to US and Canada winners only. ZMan will do the drawing on March 30th.

It’s About Time To Talk DIRT

I LOVE to cook. I love the entire process, the shopping, the chopping, the mixing, the cooking, the smelling, and the eating.

That’s why when I couldn’t cook a decent meal not too long ago in the early stages of stopping smoking, I’m not gonna lie, it really SUCKED! Not only was I not having fun, but everything I made tasted awful and ended up in the trash.

Well, fast forward a few weeks and I’m doing ok now. Disclaimer here… I’m not a trained chef, as a matter of fact I’ve only been trained in the school of my Mother, Food Network and Cooking Channel.

My Mother (I Love You!) taught me how to preserve food. As a child I remember many of the meals being from food we had “put up” from my Father’s (I Love You!) garden. (Working the garden back then, well that’s another post for another day, but what wonderful memories they are. I always thought my Father could plant a rock and get a tomato. I also was about 14 years old before I figured out my name wasn’t weed the beans!)

The ZMan is an excellent gardener too…

As you can see these are pictures of last years garden.

We have already started some of our seeds, just waiting for them to start popping up.

We “put up” a lot of the food from the gardens too, but there is no better taste than fresh from ZMan’s garden to my table.

Me and the ZMan have a very special date night when the potatoes are ready to dig.

The ZMan digs me some new potatoes from the garden and I make salt potatoes and grill steaks. We eat our dinner outside by the pool and when we take that first bite of our garden potatoes that are dripping with butter infused olive oil…. it’s… it’s just…. it’s just Mmmmmmmmm!!!! YUM!!!!

Hands down that is the best bite of food I have all year. It’s my favorite.

My mouth is watering right now.

We plant two decent size gardens with the usuals such as potatoes, several varieties of tomatoes, green beans, bell and jalapeno peppers, lettuce, cabbage, brussel sprouts, yellow and green squash, watermelon, and a decent variety of herbs.

It’s supposed to be about 70 this Saturday, so I plan to play in the dirt a bit and get the herb beds and big planter pots ready for planting.

I can’t wait!!! It’s been a long hard winter and we are ready for Spring!!!

Hhhmmm, by the way… What DIRT did you think I was gonna talk about??? Ah Ha Ha, shame on you 🙂

We would love to know what your garden plans are. If you have any gardening questions for the ZMan, I might be able to get him to answer your questions in a post.

Y’all take care!

P.S. salt potatoes are just whole potatoes boiled in very salty water. The water should remind you of the ocean, that’s how salty it should be. (kosher salt, please)

Lori

Wednesday Waste

Since starting this blog a few weeks ago, I’ve become even more aware of what we have vs. what we need.

I check the fridge more often to make sure there aren’t expiration dates running out, or that I have veggies going bad in the bottom drawer.

It’s like I’m in a constant inventory mode at home making sure that we have what we need, and if we can use something else “in place” of what we don’t have.

I find myself thinking more about how I can reuse something instead of throwing it in the garbage.

No, I’m not turning into a hoarder, I’m just becoming more aware, and realizing that we really do have a lot of stuff.

For example. This week the rim of our cookie jar (you know, the one that holds the granola) got chipped. So, instead of throwing the jar out, I’m trying to think of a way I can fit some type of gasket around the top of the jar to protect our fingers from possible cuts and prevent the lid from further breaking the lip of the jar (being glass on glass).

I’ll come up with something. I don’t want to throw the jar away, that would be a waste.

And, since we are talking about waste, I’m proud to say that the only thing that got tossed this week was a bag of homemade croutons. But, they got tossed out into the yard to feed the birds, so I don’t feel bad about that at all. And, the birds have really enjoyed them with all the ice and snow we’ve had.

You might be wondering why we had croutons to toss out. Well, in our stopping smoking adventures you might recall that I mentioned in an earlier post that the ZMan and I have pulled through some testy times with short fuses and “even dodged the threat of croutons being thrown at each other” Remember?

We have noticed that our sense of taste (and smell) have really changed and from that the ZMan has decided that he doesn’t like croutons on his salads anymore.

NO CROUTONS FOR YOU ZMAN!!!!!

Yet, I still love wine… go figure. 🙂 🙂

OK, now back to Wednesday Waste…

This might look like waste…

But it’s not. I keep a gallon bag in the freezer and when I’m chopping celery, carrots or onions I throw the end pieces in the bag to use for stock. I also put chicken bones and trimmings in the bag, so when I need to make stock I just dump the bag into a pot and add water (salt and pepper corns) and cook it down.

I’ll admit that I used to buy chicken stock all the time. But not anymore. Why would I pay almost $3 for a box of stock when I can buy a whole chicken for about $4 and get all the meat for a meal or two and then make stock with the bones. I also don’t use a perfectly good onion, celery or carrot to make stock when the end pieces work beautifully. That’s just my 2¢ (that I’m saving).

How about you? Have you checked your fridge and pantry lately to see if you need to use something before it goes bad on you?

Y’all take care!

Lori

Weekend Fun

The Z Man and I had a fun this weekend enjoying the St.Patrick’s Day events down town. I should’ve taken pictures of us in our St.Patrick’s Day t-shirts.

After that we went to one of our favorite spots. Montano’s for these…