Rantings & Ravings

We celebrated National PB&J Day with PB sandwiches on wheat toast, with homemade strawberry jam (thanks Peggy!).

(No Fooling)

Isolation Pantry recipe: We’ve always enjoyed Alton Brown’s cooking shows, so we tried his spruced up saltine cracker recipe. Crunchy, with a nice bit of zip - happy hour snacks at their finest!

Find the recipe here:
https://youtu.be/VI11XNr3jHo

Alton has several other Pantry Raid videos on YouTube - They’re entertaining and tasty too. Check them out!

Settling into the couch and tucking into some snacks for Sunday night TV viewing.

Amaryllis In Bloom

Christmas Cactus Blooming in Spring (It is still cold?)

Celebrating National Artichoke Heart Day!

10 min HP. 10 min NR.

2 Pizzas (Margherita & Pepperoni) from Slice & Pint

Frozen Food…..

Canned Food….

Produce…

Sauté chicken in IP. Add all other ingredients (except cream),
HP 5min, QR.
Add cream and stir.

Recipe Here

Today is Johnny Appleseed Day! This national holiday was created to celebrate Johnny Appleseed for introducing apple trees to the United States.

Laura left me Pink Lady & Envy apple slices on her way to her Needles and Knots meeting.

Ya know, a special bottle of wine needs a special occasion? I decided a forecast of rain qualified as special. Made an Instant Pot batch of beef stew and opened up my Castle Creek Merlot (a gift) and used a little to de-glaze after sautéing the beef. The nice thing about de-glazing with wine is then the bottle is already open when it’s dinner time. Yum!

Cook meat HP, 25min, QR.
Add veggies and cook HP 10min, QR.

Always the Saturday before Super Bowl Sunday.
This year was Armenian stitching and was fun! Very woven as you go, so it was a bit of a puzzle to make it work. Food was great, catered from an Armenian restaurant - apparently “Western Armenian” - very Mediterranean - stuffed grape leaves, marinated chicken and beef, baba ganoush, tabbouleh, etc.. very tasty. All in all a fun day!

Laura made an awesome snack plate for the game.

#1 LSU 42 #3 Clemson 25

New adventure….. Avoided the holiday storm by leaving early and staying in Bakersfield… Found Temblor Brewery… Tried 15 beers (3 Flights)

Pork Banh Mi Sandwich & Santa Carota Farms grass fed, carrot-finished beef Burger

https://temblorbrewing.com/

We will all miss you.

Here are some of the Handmade Holiday Pins that Stevie gave to Laura over all the years (He bought them from a lady at work and handed them out to ladies he liked)

Single Scoop 2 topping Rocky Road Sundae!?
Bigger than my head!?

In bloom at Thursday Lunch

Justin invited us to this event at Happa Restaurant in Gardena.
Lots of very nice people and a Beatles Ukulele Strum along followed with an Open Mic session.

Sharing a table with very nice people…..

They provided the Sheet Music…..

Justin & Enoch rock the Open Mic with “Wagon Wheel”…..

Justin Solos the Open Mic

We were the lucky recipients of home grown fresh figs from a friend. In addition to enjoying them fresh, we also tried out a fig jam recipe. It was really easy and quick, and the jam is very tasty. It goes great with cheese and crackers. Here’s the recipe:
https://www.melaniecooks.com/fig-jam

Thanks Phuong for sharing!

We were lucky enough to get a rare viewing of the James Webb Space Telescope at Northrop in the high bay.
(This is a stock photo, no cameras were allowed)