Cold Weather = Soup

Yesterday it was over 70 degrees outside. It was toasty warm. I wore a tank top. Today, at 3:30 in the afternoon, it was 32 degrees. I went out to run some errands and practically froze to death. (I wore a sweatshirt; in retrospect I should probably have also worn a jacket.) The overnight low tonight is 27. Texas weather is weird.

(While I was out running errands, I dropped a story in the mail, which gets me up to twelve submissions out at market. This is the most subs I’ve ever had out at the same time, so I’m …

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Cranberry-Orange Bread

Cranberry-Orange Bread

I snagged a recipe for cranberry-orange bread from tinaconnolly,* and decided to attempt it this morning, so that I can bring some to brunch tomorrow. I’d have made it tomorrow except that (1) I won’t have time tomorrow, and (2) this gives me time to come up with something else if for some reason the cranberry bread doesn’t come out.

So far, I have determined that it *smells* like delicious bread, and it *looks* like delicious bread. I am now waiting for it …

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Cranberry-Orange Cheesecake

Cranberry-Orange Cheesecake

I’ve managed to snag an invitation to have another Thanksgiving dinner with Maureen and her family, and she said I could bring a dessert*, so I decided I’d make cranberry-orange cheesecake**. It has a gingersnap-graham-cracker crust, and swirls of cranberry sauce flavored with orange zest. The swirls came out quite pretty. Sadly, the cheesecake cracked rather extensively. I consulted with tinaconnolly, who had made cheesecake before, and she assured me that cheesecakes crack all the time, and that it should still taste …

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Squash! Now in soup form!

Squash Soup

I roasted up some of the squash from yesterday’s photo session and made squash soup. There is a reason most squash soup recipes call for butternut squash. Winter squashes are all hard to hack up into manageable sized bits, but at least a butternut squash has a fair amount of edible flesh inside. Dumpling squashes, while cute and pretty, have a much higher work-to-flesh ratio. There’s hardly any squash in there at all once you get the seeds out! (The dumpling squash does taste …

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Food and Flowers

stale sourdough bread + leftover maple pecan butter + eggs, milk, and orange zest =

Orange-Maple-Pecan French Toast
Orange Maple Pecan French Toast

So this week is already off to a better start than last week :) After appointments with two docs and an occupational therapist last week, and a weekend of rest, my wrists are starting to do a little bit better. Thanks to everyone (here and elsewhere) who sent me sympathies! Peter got me some roses last week to cheer …

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Procrastinating with a Healthy Breakfast

I have a lot of revisions I want to get done today, so obviously the first order of business for the morning was eating a healthy breakfast. Oatmeal is very healthy. So I made some. The texture of instant oatmeal doesn’t do it for me, so I made a nice pot of steel cut oats (which I have raved about before). Steel cut oats take about half an hour to cook, and while they were going, I wondered what I could do to improve upon this lovely and healthy breakfast.

Well, I like oatmeal, but I like apple pie …

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Apple Upside-Down Cake

As promised, here is a post about apple upside-down cake:

Apple Upside-Down Cake

It all began several days ago, when I made banana bread. I thought to myself, “What would make this banana bread better?” The answer, of course, was maple pecan butter. Flavored butters are very easy to make. For this one, I pan toasted some lightly salted chopped pecans. Then I mixed the pecans with a couple tablespoons of maple syrup and most of a stick of butter. As I suspected, it was …

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Leftovers

Open-Faced Steak Sandwich

I had half a steak left over from last night’s dinner. A bit of rummaging through the fridge turned up some spreadable swiss cheese, pesto, roasted red peppers, and an English muffin. So for brunch* this morning I had an open-faced steak sandwich.

* It’s brunch because it’s too early in the day to call it lunch, and I skipped breakfast.

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