Food Wednesdays

 Welcome to Food Wednesdays.

      Everyone is Welcome to join and link up with your Food Wednesdays Post. 

   No rules, as this is all about sharing Food, anything you wish to share about Food.

This week I am sharing a rice and shrimp dish I made last week. It was really delicious and we both really liked it. 

   I had a bag of shrimp in the freezer that needed to get used, and was thinking of a rice dish as a side.

    I do not serve rice too often any more do to the high carbs, but I do keep a high protein rice on hand which has been sprouted first and then dried.  I grabbed a stick of spicy pork chorizo, sweet peppers and onions.  Sauteed the veggies first in olive oil-drained and set aside. In same cast iron pan fried up the chorizo, added the veggies back in, and added in the cooked rice.  Covered it with a cast iron lid and turned the heat down very low.  Started water to boil the shrimp. I realized I was out of the shrimp spices so I just added in a good amount of hot red pepper flakes to the water. Boil the shrimp til they are curled, remove and slowly add more-to keep the water at a boil.

and for a dip for the shrimp my husband combined horseradish and these two sauces from Australia. If you love flavorful hot sauces these are the best, no additives only fruits and spices. I wanted to try their BBQ which they use as a condiment instead of the way we usually use BBQ sauce baked over ribs etc. I needed to buy that from their site. The hot sauce is their low heat and they have two more that increase in heat.

Now it's your turn to share a Food post. Please link up with your Food Wednesdays url and not your blog's url thank you.

T Stands for Tuesday Watercolor Practice & Gardening Projects

 Hi everyone, it's been a very cool and rainy past week. I was "getting in the groove" working outdoors in the yard and then the weather put a halt to that. The grass is really starting to grow too despite the cold temps.

   The last Tuesday of March is upon us already, I am ready for April and hopefully a warm up again soon. Welcome to the T group, if you would like to join in the link up- it is in my sidebar with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth.  I would like to thank our hostess for this weekly event, if it were not for T not sure how I would find visitors to my blog here on Blogger-which seems more difficult these days.

  Saturday my two forsythia starts came in the mail. Packaged very well and good looking plants. I found the shop on Etsy and the reviews were all very good, I was very happy with the plants, and they came in Saturday instead of Monday so that was better for the plants. Sunday morning I placed them in a bucket of cold water for several hours-per instructions. These are to spread 10 feet and get up to 8 feet tall, so thinking in a few years they will cover up a bunch of grass

   I always loved the pretty yellow flowers in the spring and I have not had one of these bushes since moving down from Illinois. I recently got a post from my favorite herbalist-Jan The Nerdy Farm Wife on things to make with the flowers.  I did not know that the flowers were edible too. Below photo taken from her site

  My two plants are in the ground  There is not as much full sun on this side of the house that I had thought. There is also areas with solid rock not too far down, so the second plant couldn't go where I wanted it to. Can't see real well but these plants were 2 feet tall with branches, and even a few little yellow flowers

I had this material that keeps weeds out, it will do until I can pick up some nice bark mulch

  I hadn't accomplished much at all last week. Having allot of trouble with my eyes, they just ache and are too dry I think. I did purchase a heat pad of sorts for the eyes which seems to help a little bit. Thinking the allergies could be an issue as well-I needed to stop taking those allergy pills about a month or so ago-bad timing I know-because I believe they were causing the painful leg cramps, and making my body too dry.

   Saturday I used up the last of my water bottles and the bags of soil for starting seeds to plant lots more of the ground cover creeping thyme. I need to save up more bottles for sure. As you can see I added allot more "greenhouses" The yarrow has sprouted so far.

   Of the plants I bought  last year-I was sad that only one of the lavender plants out of 6 survived. I had ordered 3 they did not make it so they sent me replacements and only one survived. Only two of the bee balm plants survived but they do look good and have spread already. Not sure yet if the echinacea plants survived or not as nothing coming up so far. I do have a couple different ones planted as seed in the bottles.  Really hoping I have success with these perennial seeds I am starting I researched them all on how to start from seed-and these all needed a cold treatment first for several months. I would not have known that.

 

    I am going to work on practicing with watercolors at least once a week. I had picked up a couple of books that Kate shared last year.  

   I was using the idea of using India ink and my dip pen for highlights.

  The stems on the right I thought needed more-well this happened when I didn't think about the ink being reactivated with watercolors-so lesson learned  

    Making us our meal on Sunday, I remembered I had an eraser from way back in the 60's (1960) that I thought I might go over it lightly and see what happens, and add a little more watercolor-well now it's a bit better  I think  

   Those of you that paint, do you start over or do you try to fix a mistake?

For a practice session I am happy with the flowers especially.

  My drink share is a cup of herbal tea I have shared in the past. I do like this company's teas

Sunrise over the weekend

Happy T

One More Page for Valerie's Spring

 Good morning everyone,

    Sunshine this morning but still quite chilly. We have had rain all week so far.

   I decided I wanted to get out my watercolors and try painting something. To get better I am going to need to practice every week I am thinking since I am Not an artist in this venue.

   I grabbed a mixed media notebook and tried to paint some flowers. We have been seeing the Canada Geese pairing off this week, as well as the birds so decided to grab my stamp. I also grabbed a butterfly stamp and letter stamps Will be sharing for Valerie's Spring theme over on Art Journal Journey

This  morning's sunrise

  

Food Wednesdays

   Welcome to Food Wednesdays

You are most welcome to share your Food post with us

  No rules, except to be kind to one another and to share anything you would like to about Food-photos, restaurants, recipes, tutorials, cookbooks-this is all about the Food.

   Last week for St Patrick's day I did make a corned beef with cabbage and a few small potatoes dinner.  We enjoy reuben sandwiches so I bought all the fixins.

    Rye bread, gluten free bread for me, sauerkraut, thousand island dressing, swiss cheese, corned beef sliced thin, ghee to butter both sides, and cast iron pans

I found a jar of this artisan sauerkraut that was really delicious in my pantry-something I had bought several years ago at Aldi store-that is one store I really miss since moving to the lake.

Gluten free sandwich

 

                          I was really happy with this gluten free whole grain bread

Spread thousand island dressing on both sides of the bread, add the swiss cheese and the sauerkraut on both sides, and then add a couple layers of corned beef slices to one side and top with the other piece. I used ghee to butter both sides of the bread for grilling. Could also use butter, or I have used a spray olive oil that works well too

Grill-I cook mostly with cast iron pans-so I grabbed this one-and then set a small skillet on top to weight it down. The heat was medium  I timed it around 3 minutes, then turned it for the grill marks another 3 minutes and repeat with the other side. cut in half and serve-Yum.

  I did this gluten free sandwich after my husband's sandwich and forgot to turn the temperature down a bit on the cast iron-not burnt though

   Sorry I forgot to take a photo adding the meat slices, and also a photo of the cast iron skillet on top of the sandwich while grilling. 

The rye sandwich

and since many of us are into our first week of Spring-here is Springtime soup made with wild greens from James Townsend and Sons

and here is the recipe for portable soup he mentions in above video

Now it is your turn to share your Food Wednesdays with us. Link up with your blog post url for Food Wednesdays and not your blog's url. This way others can visit later on and the link will take them right to the food post. Thank you

T Stands for Tuesday-Spring Has Arrived

   T Stands for Tuesday is upon us where we share a drink related photo and link up over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth with friends.

  Spring has arrived here in the Ozarks-Missouri. Warm days and then cooler, rainy days and then warm ups again. Feels good and Sunday was the official beginning of Spring with temps in the 70's f and then back down again.

  Not ready for the grass to grow tall just yet but it is starting to grow already with all the rains we have had. I will begin killing it off and replace it with ground covers and perennial flowers. Will be easier maintenance for us and my hope is to bring in lots of butterflies, birds, some bees. The other goal was not needing to pay for a lawn cutting service as that price will be higher this year 

  As we warm up we are seeing more boats on the lake. Along with fishing boats we started seeing recreation boats out and about last weekend. This has been a rough winter so non permanent residents are getting out to their lake homes.

  We are also seeing more geese, diving ducks, loons, and even sea gulls and pelicans. Last week when I was working outdoors I got to view a very cool event.       Out over the lake in front of our home the eagle couple was teaching last year's juvenile how to hunt for fish. My husband's office has a window facing the lake where his desk is and often times sees one of the eagles hunting for fish from the lake-this was the first time I got to see that-very exciting. So grateful I got to watch this eagle family. Very special.

    Last week I did get 20 bottles of perennial flowers and herbs planted can view here how I put these together. I call them mini greenhouses. The next day I dug up an area of grass and planted 30 roots of bloodroot, goldenseal, and wild geranium-can view here  along with a pre sunrise video over the lake if you missed that post.

  For my drink share this week I found a photo I took probably a month ago now that I don't think I have shared yet. This wine is from a local winery-Stover, Missouri. This was a good tasting wine-not sweet and it had an interesting finish. This wine tasted much better warm then chilled. You can also see a glass of ice tea in the back. The top of the wine glass shows a reflection from the label-thought that was cool

      I have mentioned it before but I have really enjoyed my slow mail friends, especially over this past winter-surprises in my mailbox. I just really love hand written letters.

    End of last week I received a letter from Iris in Germany.  I love the card she created-with stitching and Henry too. The envelope was filled with pretty stamps

back of the card

and a letter written on fun papers Many of us are using different sorts of papers for our letters.

Slow mail just really brightens up my day.  and speaking of bright. A very bright sun Saturday morning We will be seeing lots of diamonds on the water now through summer

  I did make reuben sandwiches for us with the left over corned beef-they turned out soooo delicious. I will share how I made them on Food Wednesdays.

  I have some sewing projects I want to get to, thinking when it's raining or too hot this summer to be outdoors will be a good time. I just bought this pattern by FolkWear which is a basics jacket pattern, looks loose and roomy

  Happy T Everyone and enjoy the beginnings of Spring

  

  

Just a Quick Post of My Day

   This morning we had a gorgeous-pre sunrise, so I took a video

We were 75 degrees f again today once it warmed up.  I did start early though, and dug up grass in the area I wanted to plant the roots. It went well, late in the day when the sun was not hot, I decided to plant the roots (30 of them) since tomorrow brings rains and cooler temps. Quite pleased but I can feel the soreness tonight.  Hot shower and a mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows was perfect. 😀

 It worked out that I had dug up the right amount of area too. Where the grass begins in the photo in front that is near the second rock project I worked on last year.   These plants need to be in the shade, and there are no leaves on the trees yet, so I may need to figure out how to  cover them when the sun gets hot again on Sunday  I put a little of the soil seed starting mix on top of them so I would know where they are planted til they get established. That pipe is for drainage that Larry has not put in place yet.

I was a little disappointed as some of the roots were very small and some large. I had planted them in the seed starting soil when I got them in yesterday and ended up losing two of the goldenseal-I  may tell the seller and see if he will send me replacements.

   Happy Friday and weekend   Tomorrow I will be making us reuben sandwiches with the corned beef left overs a favorite that we don't eat often.

and the sunrise from this morning-all the red was gone

Seeds in Bottles & Views on the Lake

   Good afternoon, Larry went to check on things at the woods home with a friend today, and I needed to start planting my wildflower seeds in the bottles.

   I had a huge bag of bottles I had saved and had them all prepared to use so that saved time-but I started around 8:30 am this morning and was finishing up with the last two bottles just when Larry got back home around 3:30 in the afternoon so it took longer than I figured.  

  I love this method of growing seeds because you end up with mini greenhouses and the stems are usually thick and very healthy too. I learned about this from our blog friend Carol years ago (she doesn't post much anymore but she lives in Missouri too) 

  Note: I had just emptied a bag of seed starting soil into this tub when I took this photo so it still needs to be wetted down well.

These bottles have holes punched all over them including the bottom, and then you cut around the bottom but leave the area near the handle in tack-when finished planting seal up with duct tape and leave outdoors in a sunny spot, these don't usually need much watering either, as in the mornings the condensation drops back into the soil and plants

I ended up with 20 bottles today  I have a few more seeds to plant this way, but these I really needed to get started so they will be ready to plant in May

close ups I think you can read these if you enlarge the photos

My bag of shade wildflower seeds, and the medicinal plant roots arrived today too, I am going to place the roots in that tub I was using with the seed potting soil til I get the ground ready for them. These were mailed in plastic bags and need to get out of those.

Early morning today a very very bright rising sun-so we had diamonds on the water

and visitors

Couldn't believe it-we made it up to 75 degrees today with full sunshine. I finally could change out my sweatshirt for a t shirt-exciting haha 

and last night a surprise

Happy Mid week Everyone

Food Wednesdays

 Welcome Everyone To Food Wednesdays.

    Anyone is welcome to link up with us, just write up anything about Food to share and refer back to this post. 

    No rules Just be Kind to one another. Any topic about food you would like to share is most welcome-recipes, cookbooks, restaurants etc

This week since Spring is finally approaching and fresh fish will be more available I went over to James Townsend and Son (17th and 18th century cooking) to see what tutorials he had on fish.

  I found a French 1650 recipe that he shared, and looks like the whole fish will be very moist and tasty with this method

I found this St Patrick's Day dish which would taste good with the fish

Now it is your turn to link up and share-please link up with your actual blog post url and not your blog's url

Thoughts

    I find it very sad that one can not voice an opinion anymore, with out being brutally attacked and then shunned here on social media-especially on this social media platform. 

   This happened to me last year, and now just recently to an online friend as well. I am an elder now and don't ever remember not being able to sit down and discuss issues with others where both sides listen to the other.  Our blogs are our personal space where we share with others-if what is written does not suit you-then move on.

   I get frustrated and saddened when this continues to occur. Visiting different blogs, I see some that comment all super nice and friendly on some blogs and then I see them brutally attack in comments someone else-No one should be hurt this way--makes me think would these people do this in person? I am thinking in many cases not. 

  So what do you do to protect yourself from this? If you stand up to these "bullies" they will continue most likely, if you leave your social media or turn off all comments "they" win.

  I know there has always been bullies in the world but this has become worse in recent years.

  Many of us seniors including me have very little contact with people other than our social media sites.  The only people I interact with is when I go food shopping or get packages delivered.  So I have always valued my contacts on social media. I have expanded that with my slow mail friends now.

  Just thoughts I wanted to share, since I have a friend hurting right now.

Be Kind to one another-why is this so difficult?

T Stands for Tuesday & This & That

  Happy T Everyone. This link up is held over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog. All are welcome just share a drink related photo in your blog-link in my sidebar.

   A very up and down weather week for sure. Very cold, 3 inches of snow, wind, and now a serious warm up begins here at the Lake in the Ozarks in Missouri.

  I am writing this post on early Sunday morning-first day of the time change-ugh I really wish they would all choose a time for the entire year-and not have these fall and spring time changes. I am writing this post a little earlier than usual just because. haha  

   We hired a company to clean all of our heating vents. My allergies have been worse since we moved here to this lake home. The previous owner of this home had several cats and she was not clean, we noticed that right away. One of the rooms we had to tear up the carpet and replace with new, and I am thinking the vents must be filled with cat hair and dander. I have never had this done before so don't know what to expect, they come on Tuesday.

  Those of us that enjoy a bit or allot of gardening I am sure are anxious to get outdoors and start working up the soil.  I probably did this a bit early as I don't have the ground ready yet-but I have 30 roots coming in this week to plant. They are medicinal-bloodroot-which I use for dye, goldenseal, and wild geranium these are found in woodsy areas as they love the shade-I have a perfect spot for them. I will also be starting my perennial wildflower, and herb seeds this week too. I have all the bottle greenhouses cut and read to go. I wanted to start this much earlier but the evening temperatures were below freezing most nights.

Here are photos I found online for the roots.

  wild geranium

goldenseal-I had this in the woods at our home there

bloodroot-this is a medicinal plant that our friend Lilburn used allot, this was in our woods too If I am going to use ground covers in areas instead of grass I want the plants to have a purpose-these will all spread too and they will be pretty.

   I have decided to stop my Cast Iron Saturdays weekly posts for now. My last one is full of St Patrick's Day recipes including vegan. Perhaps next fall and winter I may post again.  I have enjoyed searching for and sharing recipes using cast iron-but after a year there is still very low interest. When I post I do it because I enjoy it too, but these posts take allot of time to search out and with low interest I don't need to continue. I want to thank all of my regulars that have visited these cast iron recipe posts, which has made this event more fun for me to share with all of you.

  I have recently started Food Wednesdays, which is a link up to share Food with friends. I have set up no rules except to be kind to one another and the topic can be anything food related. I am hoping more will join us. I have really enjoyed this event allot so far, and have already learned new things. Many thanks to all of you that have joined in so far and have shared this link up foods event

 When I was cold last week-we had gotten down to 9 degrees f one evening, I fancied up my French Pressed decaf. coffee with my homemade Kahlua and whipped cream-perfect for a cold morning

We are really enjoying this visitor (red headed woodpecker) who especially loves it when I put out the bird mix with nuts and dried fruit. We discovered there are two of them most likely a pair that is stashing some of this food in the trees

    A book I am reading now-if you enjoy the Outlander and the Men in Kilts shows on Starz this is a very fun read, these two personalities come through in the writing and I have learned allot about Scotland. 

     These two had also written the book Men in Kilts and presented it to Starz for a possible show, which did turn into a series. I have that book too and was glad I read it before the show as it was much better.  They just filmed the second Men in Kilts which comes out sometime this year. 

    I have a red wine in the handmade porcelain cup along with a couple of my dipped apricots and dried strawberries.

This is a close up of the card you see in the background in above photo. I have soooo enjoyed my slow mail friends very much over the last year. My handful of friends have gotten me through this rough winter with surprises in my mailbox. I just received this hand painted postcard from Deb. I love it!!  thank you thank you

Will close with one of our morning bright sunrises. This changed just a bit by the time I found my camera. Just before this view-there was a total reflection of the round sun on the lake-had not seen that before-you can still see a little of that.

Happy T and new week everyone