No Flour Cookies, No Rain & This & That

    Good morning Sunday,

       Were you able to see the awesome moon last night?

    Here from the big windows looking out at the lake-the moon was to the far right amongst the tree limbs-but I was able to view it-wonderful. They say we will be able to see it again tonight It was very red.

   I have not made us cookies in a long time-probably since last Christmas time.  On Pinterest I ran into an oatmeal-peanut butter-chocolate chip no flour recipe I mixed up the dough late Saturday and baked them before our 2 pm meal today. I liked the ingredients, natural peanut butter, maple syrup, rolled oats, chocolate chips, a couple eggs and baking powder, vanilla extract.

   In my pantry years ago-at least 15 years ago or so I was into making my own extracts-They turned out sooo good too. I still have two bottles that I haven't used much of since I made those. These are just excellent now from the years of aging. I will start using these up instead of buying vanilla extract. I also found a bottle of lemon extract I had made during that time as well

   I have made something similar to this recipe in the past but this was a much better recipe-flavor and texture. It made 2 and 1/2 dozen cookies-will freeze half of them.

 Here is a link to the recipe

   I think the peanut butter makes them a little shiny. Good texture and I love the maple syrup in these too. Once a year now I buy a gallon of maple syrup from a farm on the east coast-sooo delicious and worth every penny. It is getting pretty pricy now though. Larry likes homemade pancakes with maple syrup for Sunday mornings.

   The weather people said cooler today with rain this morning. We heard lots of very loud thunder and lightening for about 15 minutes around 7 am and then just a couple seconds of sprinkling rain-and then it all just left-sigh so we missed the rain again.

  It is at that point now not worth the water to water my plants any more-but I do water them just enough since they are mostly perennials

On another "this & that"  I am getting too many kindle books this month-I started getting newsletters from Book Bub and also Amazon for Kindle-with too good a deals-or free to pass up-so I need to start deleting those emails before looking at them haha. I have lots of different reading material now to choose from, many new to me authors as well..

  One last "this & that"  How often do you change out your wooden cutting board?  We retired and moved down to Missouri around 25 years ago-and that is when I bought a new wooden cutting board. I had been thinking about changing this one out for a couple of weeks now. I saw an article probably on Instagram about needing to change out wooden boards every couple of years. That article said even though you wash and sanitize with bleach you can't get all the bacteria out of wooden boards.  I am thinking Wow yes I do need to change this out.  

   So I went with bamboo cutting boards-I bought a three pack that was on sale on Amazon so went with that. Didn't make sure about the sizes so the biggest one is smaller than I would have liked the best-but it is working. I read they should be oiled with food grade mineral oil so will need to check into that, and to replace when the bamboo has deep cuts in the board. Sounded easier and  sanitizes better than regular wood--any of you have bamboo kitchen cutting boards??

This is the one I chose  I like them but they are smaller than I thought they would be --largest one is 15 x 10 inches  My other board was twice that size. These will work out ok

Sharing a photo I found online. This is Bagnell Dam on Lake in the Ozarks-that makes the electricity for our area more info here

   Happy new week!

Fish Tacos & Missing Petunia Flowers

   Yesterday I got my second Wild Alaskan seafood box.  I was excited about this one as I chose a box where I could choose what I wanted.  I chose different fish new to me this time along with the halibut, cod and pollock. So this has been a fish adventure for me-smiles

  This is the photo of the label inside the box of what I chose. I had plenty of salmon in the freezer still. The new to me fish are the lincod, sablefish, and rock fish.  The quick cuts are chunks which I really liked for making chowders or tacos.I chose a variety of different fish cuts

 and surprise when the company sent me an email that my fish box had arrived, they also sent me a link to recipes for the fish I just purchased-That was very thoughtful of them. This company is very hands on.

  Yesterday I asked Larry what he felt like eating-I said too bad you don't care for fish and he says I like fish tacos.  Wow ok haha.   and he told me he likes cod-so am happy about that. I told him so far none of these ocean fish are oily at all just firm white meat.

  So I looked for ideas for a recipe-and just made it really simple-forgot to take a photo-but I found this one online. Recipe here from Epicurious for Wild Alaska Pollock-perfect

  I did cut the chunks smaller-so half this size shown above, sprinkled adobo spice on them. Sauted onion and sweet pepper strips til tender-set aside-cooked the fish in a bit of olive oil til done-added the sauted veggies, and a little bit of diced tomatoes and green chilis (since I am not supposed to have much in acid foods)

  I also always make refried beans from scratch and use different canned beans each time-added a bit of the diced tomatoes and green chilis to that as well.  Larry didn't want shredded cabbage so I chopped up leaf lettuce.

 These were delicious and will make them again-have not had a fish taco before.

Larry doesn't want to eat anything pork any more-he reads different things online since he can't get outdoors (too hot as well) and finding there are lots of worms and eggs in most pork. So he has informed me no pork-- So I am down to beef or chicken as meat choices and now a little fish too-

  I think I discovered why our air is a bit polluted here-the fires at the Grand Canyon in Arizona I thought we were a bit far away from Canada-so I think this is the source. We are back to hot and humid again.  The last time we had a summer like this-September was also very hot and humid.

  Oh and I could not believe this-the other day I looked over at my beautiful petunias in the big copper pot-what?? no flowers-not one. I am blaming it on the deer-we do have wildlife here as we are surrounded by woods-and we have seen the deer forage here-I think they come in the night or very early mornings. My neighbor loses her hostas every year to the deer. 

   Oh well they probably enjoyed them haha

  Stay cool in this heat

Today's Sunrise

  I am enjoying some awesome sunrises this week Here is today's-Wow My camera is not the greatest for capturing these-the sun was totally red this morning

  I did get to the grocery store yesterday morning early-the produce was horrible guessing do to the very hot weather this summer. I did buy a few things including some nice fresh strawberries-I will be baking us up my Grandma's recipe for Yellow angel food cakes-which whips up both the whites and  yolks seperately. Haven't made that in a long time.  They were also very limited in their frozen veggies too.

  For curiosity I looked online to see if there were fresh veggie or fruit boxes that ship-Yes there were lots of them including Melissa's organics but very expensive for the amount of food.  

  We are back to the high heat with humidity again for the next two weeks-nice thing so far this week cool in the mornings-So hoping this week to try cutting grass-ugh

 Happy Wednesday!

Good Morning Monday

  I am drinking a cup of coffee (decaf) and watching the sun rise this morning-so peaceful As you can see this tree is now dead and needs to be cut down-most estimates are a thousand dollars-craziness-still looking for a better price.

      

       

        This looks like the last cool day for awhile-I didn't get anything accomplished outdoors over the weekend-sigh.  Once the dew is off may try to cut some grass

   Enjoy your new week

A Glorious Day

   Just a gorgeous morning for the first day of August. Cool a little hazy-just lovely

A glorious sunrise this morning

and I found the crow photos-still on the camera-it was  very bright when I took these photos indoors through the glass window

Enjoy your day