Good Morning

  We have had such a beautiful October month so far. Monday we were almost 90 degrees F. Wow and the leaves are beginning to fall now. We will start cooling back down rest of this week.

  I did get the last of this year's grass cutting done-what a relief that is. The guys have gotten the water projects fixed-sadly we got ripped off with the lift-wires were burned off or broken. Of course when Larry contacted the seller no reply. Larry is working on figuring it out. Since the lift goes up ad down it is a complicated motor-and expensive if he could fine one.

  Larry starts back on physical therapy this week-hoping that helps him get stronger. He still has one leg that will just go out on him with no notice..

 My slow stitched first bag is getting closer to having the stitching finished. In another day or two  I will be sewing the other panel to it and completing the first bag. Enjoying this project, and I think it will go faster going forward.

and----- today is a big one for me-I turn 75 today-haven't wrapped my head around this yet-smiles.

   I did bake up a cheesecake last night to celebrate both of our October birthdays. This time I swirled in blueberry preserves-it baked up pretty.. I always seem to end up with a big crack on top of my cheesecakes.

  Enjoy the last of these autumn days

Happy Friday and Pancakes & Cheesecake

   Happy Friday and Weekend,

Yep still too hot and humid here, and reading posts from friends on the east coast still raining places there and too cool-and my friend Iris in Germany is too cold where she lives-so I am guessing many of us are not happy with Mother Nature. haha

 I will have to say I am very ready for Fall and cooler temps this year, so we can get back to outdoor projects and feel better.  I am really concerned about the very high electric bill that will be posting soon-scary 

  I asked Larry what he wanted for breakfast yesterday and he says pancakes please. So after making his I made a gluten free batch for me. Photos are the gluten free version.

 

Maple syrup from Pennsylvania-I buy a gallon and break it down into quarts direct from their farm

In the background in above photo you can see some of the cheesecake ingredients.  I have learned the cake bakes up better if all the ingredients are brought to room temperature first-takes a couple hours-cream cheese, sour cream, and eggs I do use a keto powdered sweetener instead of sugar for the sweetener. This time I made a walnut crust-grind up the walnuts, add a little flour-used gf flour-and butter and a little sweetener I used Splenda instead of sugar. Bake first til just done.

 

Ingredients ready to  mix for the crust below

We had cheesecake for breakfast this morning-good eats. forgot to take a photo of our plates.

 For some reason I woke up wide awake at 3:30 am this morning, and couldn't get back to sleep-will be needing a nap this afternoon 😀

Enjoy your weekend

T Stands for Tuesday & Lots of Photos (Long Post)

  Hi Everyone,
      Here in the States we are winding down our 3 day weekend with Memorial Day. Of course with Missouri being mostly open many and I mean many drove to the lakes.
    We were originally forecast to have a wash out with lots of rain and t storms but where I am we were mostly missed.
   So the two of us had "entertainment" looking out over the lake since late Thursday. There was also allot of fireworks going off too every night. I could hear them loud and clear but couldn't see most of them.
   I even saw on facebook where one of the bars on the lake made the national news-big signs saying to self distance but of course no one was doing that.

    Tuesday is upon us already where we share a drink related photo in our post, and link up with friends at Bleubeard and Elizabeth. (link in my sidebar)

    Saturday mid day was probably the busiest on the lake with boats everywhere. and I just don't understand these ocean boats being on the Lake of the Ozarks, so many this long weekend. I was making our dinner at the time and didn't grab my camera to video all the craziness.  I did get a couple videos that shows about a 1/4 of the number of boats that were here on Saturday.

  Lots of these ocean boats-all sizes here on a lake-Larry says people showing off their wealth and toys.

Lots and lots of these personal water craft "toys"   We call them motorcycles on water

This first video shows all sorts of boats, all different sizes. Towards the end of the video you will also see a very long and large boat that is used to shuttle people back and forth to the bars that are on the lake
   I also was showing with all the activity the water was splashing up over the rocks, and so much debris has drifted in around our dock.

   I made us a New York Cheesecake for the weekend-using Lakanto powdered sweetener. I also made a thin crust with gluten free graham crackers and almond meal, butter, Lakanto sweetener  This was my best bake ever sooo creamy and delicious
     If anyone would like the link to the recipe-go here  I did not bake this in a water bath per recipe, and I did add the crust. I baked at 300 degrees f for about 90 minutes. The other changes were two packages of full fat cream cheese and one package of the 1/3 less fat cream cheese, lower fat sour cream, and I used Lakanto brand sweetener instead of Swerve-both brands are really good I just prefer Lakanto now.
    If you are looking for healthy recipes-no sugar etc this site is really awesome and makes more sense to me then some of the other keto recipes I have seen.

This is our favorite jam now, comes from France not overly sweet, always thick with fruits I love it

 Off in the distance is a pirate ship-used for tourists. This little bird flew in while I was taking a photo If you enlarge the photo you  may see it in the distance.

A better look

Another ocean boat

Another painting with Valerie's photo. I wanted to do this again, and I will be painting from this image again, as this time I was learning how to use the colored pencils wet. You can see the black kinda got away from me. I do like it though

A drink reference-I found a box of the Strongbow hard cider that I had picked up over a year ago.Perfect for the weekend. I prefer this brand over Angry Orchard hard cider as it is allot lighter and less filling.  I also like that these cans are smaller in size too.

  More flowers blooming, my mints and lavender looking good after all the rains last week, and my tomato plants I grew from seed need to get planted soon.

The lavender had a set back from staying in the pot too long but looking good now-the center really died back on me. I am not going to harvest any of the blooms this time, to give the plant a boost

I am thinking of digging up some grass below and in front of where the lavender and mints are to plant some of these tomatoes One is Burpee big girl, and the other is a large heirloom tomato also for slicing.

 
This afternoon I poured this over ice-I really like it no fake sweeteners in it just Ozark spring water that's been carbonated with a splash of natural flavorings

Happy T everyone

T Stands for Tuesday & A Busy Week-Long With Lots of Photos

  I am posting for our T gathering with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth where we share a post and a drink related photo.
  I am posting a bit early and will visit those of you that post on Monday (USA time)  as I have a dentist checkup Tuesday morning. and I broke a tooth or a crown back in December that needs to get checked out too-so I will be later in the day on Tuesday to visit the rest of you.

  My friend and I did have a good day in Springfield, Mo last week Wednesday. We made our appointment with our accountant an hour later than we usually do as I drove an hour to my friends home-near our woods house, and then another hour to Springfield. It was a cold, windy light snowy day.
   Of course we did some craft shopping and we always go out to lunch. It was her turn to choose a restaurant. I liked the idea of the restaurant when she described it to me-but I was not impressed.  I learned afterwards that this was an all you can eat.
     It was set up to grab a small bowl and fill it up with meats, veggies, noodles etc and then take it to this big circle grill that a couple people cooked up for you.
   I have to look for gluten free, so I didn't trust any of the numerous sauces and oils-so I stuck with sesame oil and lime juice-figured that was safe. The meat all looked strange to me-thin sliced and I guess it was all frozen but looked dehydrated-I chose the two fish that they offered and one piece of sausage. They did have zucchini noodles so that was good for me. They offered rice for an extra cost. The hot tea was cold-I was not impressed for $15.00-did not leave a tip I don't eat dessert out-usually not gluten free-and they had no desserts-thought that was strange too.

     This was mine-I should have piled on more veggies-I was hungry again after an hour of shopping

Note: all photos will enlarge just click on them

This was my friends food-the egg rolls were not gluten free, and she added allot of meat to her dish

I was disappointed that the water was lukewarm for hot tea-as it was very cold that day-I should have sent it back
  This is my drink share for this week.

I had a couple of things on my craft list but did not find what I wanted-but I did pick up a couple stamps and two colors of ink pads I did not have

I have been wanting a Paris stamp, Hobby Lobby had several to choose from-I liked this one the best, and other one was too sweet not to come home with me. I needed some brushes, and I fell in love with this little frog on a leaf-a USA product line I found

I don't know what I will do with this piece-but I have a collection of ocean beads etc as I always wanted to make me a mermaid wool purse or at least an ocean theme with embroidery-I may just turn the purse into a lake theme instead
 I need to get busy with some of my projects that have been sitting for a bit.

  I did make another journal page. I had stamped the Paris stamp on to handmade paper from Mia in two different colors-and decided to make another page with the one I did not use.  This is similiar to my previous journal page-so am not going to submit to TIOT or AJJ this week.

The butterfly buttons were also from Mia-I am using up things from her goody box she sent me last year
   I used a green pencil to highlight these papers and the background flowers are from a Brecks catalogue

This is recycled from a Valentine card I received, the fabric flower from Mia, and small scraps left over from the handmade paper-I used a green pencil for a bit of color

This is my last little piece left from the handmade paper from Mia

Saturday I decided to make us pizzas.
    This is a big project since I now make the wheat crust for Larry and the gluten free crust for me instead of just making one gluten free.
    I realized after I started that I had only one jar of the classico pizza sauce and I needed two-so I looked up recipes for homemade pizza sauce-and wow so easy, and it turned out very good and thick. Here is the recipe I used, after it was cooked I added the jar of sauce I had and stirred it all together.
   Don't remember if I shared this before but I have found a really good gluten free crust recipe that is the best I have come across so far.
   We are eating very little carbs now and no breads so this was very very filling for us. we ate it again on Sunday, and I froze the rest for two more meals.

  I baked both on pizza stones

      The wheat crust

The gluten free crust

The pizza sauce, and the back skillet is italian sausage

I had read about this new yeast from red star and wanted to try it. I took a chance and used one for my gluten free crust too-although this has rye in it. (I had read that some people that have celiac can tolerate sourdough based with gluten)
  There was a hint of sourdough flavor which was nice in the pizzas-but I would not be too impressed for breads
   I have not seen this in the stores here yet, I found it online awhile back

  So after looking at these food photos-here is dessert 😀

I figure myself as an accomplished baker but I have not baked up many cheesecakes. Our friend that comes down for a visit that lives in Wisconsin makes amazing cheesecakes-it is her speciality so I just don't bake them.
  Recently though I have been baking up keto cheesecakes-the only difference is using keto sugars instead of sugar, and changing up the crusts-I like nut crusts or almond flour crusts.
  I had the ingredients, my author friend Peggy gave me a link to her go to keto recipes so I thought I would bake up this chocolate cheesecake.  I recommend this site for good low carb, and some gluten free recipes.
   This was quite a project-allot of steps to it and I have really not worked much with chocolate.  To keep it short I misread her sugar free chocolate as being Bakers squares of unsweetened chocolate-so in the end my batter seized up-got very thick. I was suppose to have used keto chocolate-chocolate sweetened with keto sugars.
   I decided to just bake it and see what happens. I had thought of adding more cream to it but decided not to do that. I contacted my friend, she suggested to bake the cheesecake at a lower temperature than the recipe-225 degrees f. She said if over baked this would turn out very very dry.
   It baked up nice-it was late in the day and needed to really chill,  so I waited til Monday morning to cut us small slices for breakfast to see if it was worth making the chocolate glaze that goes on top.
   This actually came out creamy but thick, and not sweet at all. I am now used to eating the 80% bars of chocolate so I like the flavor. This was lacking the sweetness that was supposed to be in the chocolate.
    Larry says it was pretty good too but needed the glaze and he says you know though that Marie's are better-yep they are lol

Out of the frig Monday morning

The sun was shining in on the counter when I cut this

The chocolate glaze added. I added extra keto sugar to the glaze to up the sweetness

  If you stuck with me til the end-thanks for reading

Have to share a couple lake photos from the lake Sunday morning early

There was a huge number of Canada geese swimming by-by the time I grabbed the camera they were behind the neighbor's dock

and this photo of the snow goose was taken looking out the window in Larry's  extra room
  We are beginning to think that perhaps this goose can not fly for some reason. He/she has been eating allot and walks with no limp-but he/she is in the same area as yesterday (Sunday)
   Update-the snow goose off flew off around noon-she just wanted to hang out I guess lol

Happy T everyone!!
   and if you did not see my previous post-please read-excellent sensible things to do to protect yourself from the virus

Second on the 2nd-a Bit Early-Butterflies on Lavender & Cheesecake Made

  I saw that Valerie posted early, so I decided to as well-Sunday is super bowl day and I will be rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs. Very fun as I haven't watched a super bowl game now in several years.

   Also on February 2nd is Groundhog day where we will see if the groundhog brings us more winter or not.

  Second on the 2nd is hosted by our Bleubeard and Elizabeth and we share a previously posted blog post-you are most welcome to join us.

  I found lovely photos in May 2012 of beautiful butterflies on my lavender plants. I am hoping to attract butterflies here at our lake house too.
  Click here to see the full post those daisy like flowers are wild chamomile-I dried the flower tops for teas, and I also dry the lavender flowers with stems as well.



back in 2014 I mentioned Ground Hog Day and the super bowl here  In that post I was the only one in the house watching the game as Hubs does not watch sports-so he is the football widower in our house haha and it is still the same just me rooting for my team. 
     I am thinking of having another shrimp boil though on Sunday.

  I made a keto cheesecake this morning-I am happy with the results. for the sugar I used Lakanto baking sugar, for the crust I made nut crust with cashews-hubs favorite nuts, and for the topping I used a can of no sugar pie filling.

   We are going to spoiled with warm temperatures on Sunday and Monday-around 64 degrees f  Then it drops back down to the 30s and 20s f again.

Enjoy your weekend everyone!!