Meal of the Week? Meal of the Moment? Really Good Food!

One thing about being home for a bit is that I get to cook -- yeah, I'm one of those who think "get to" rather than "have to". Fortunately, Dan is an enthusiastic eater (who sometimes even does clean-up duty), so I can improvise away.

Today was a bacon-y kind of day. We started out by having bacon, scrambled eggs and pumpkin pancakes that I made from a Trader Joe's mix.


The first batch, the one I served to Dan, turned out perfect, but the pan got too hot in between and mine got a little browner than I normally like them.


But they tasted so good and smelled so cinnamon-y that I ate every bite!

So on to dinner: I buy boneless skinless chicken breasts at Costco and roast up a batch every so often. I usually have leftovers stashed in the fridge because I roast four at a time and we only eat about 1/2 of one each the day I roast them. They're great to have for snacks and impromptu meals.


I had 4 oz raw bacon left from this morning, so I chopped that up, cubed 2 leftover chicken breasts and opened a can of artichoke hearts and cut each heart in quarters. Browned the bacon first, then drained off about half of the drippings and sauteed the chicken cubes in the pan with the bacon. Next I added a 15 oz jar of Classico Creamy Alfredo sauce and tossed in the artichoke hearts when everything else was nice and warm.





Served over Dreamfield's spaghetti (that's a high protein, low GI-index pasta brand) and with a green salad made of romaine, arugula, cucumber, green onions and yummy Girard's Light Champagne dressing -- Yum! A lot of company has said that my salads are awesome and I owe it all to this dressing. It is the best one I've ever tried!

Because my house is the home of the Continuous Kitchen (in other words, I make leftovers, then make new things from those leftovers and get more leftovers from the new things), I have about 3 cups left of the alfredo/chicken/bacon/artichoke heart mixture. I was hoping to have more so I could grab a piecrust and make chicken pot pie....does anybody have any ideas of what I could add to bring the volume up enough to make that pie? It would be awesome for lunch tomorrow!

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Location:Palmdale CA

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Quiet night last night -- went to bed around 10. I never go to New Year's Eve parties because I can't stay up that late! Didn't even wake up at midnight to the sound of shots being fired into the air in celebration -- do people do that where you live? This is the first year that I can remember not being startled awake at midnight; maybe the people who were shooting moved....

Quilt update: After being away from the machine for a couple of weeks with a sprained ankle (again! same one!), I put all the blocks together and added the first border, which is pieced.


So now my quilt top is at the same point as Dawna's -- it's 72" square with this first border. I'm going to add a 2" finished red border and then a 6" snow/reindeer print border. If you enlarge the photo and look at the top center, you will see the fabrics I'm using -- or I could stop being so lazy and go upstairs and take a pic!


Here they are....so after adding these two borders the quilt will be 88" square. I think it would be a good quilt to go on top of the regular quilt on the bed in the guest room during the winter months. Even though we're in southern California, we live in the high desert. Gets very cold at night; it was 34 last night and 28 earlier in the week.

After I get these borders on, I'm going to take a break from this quilt and work on a quilt given to me half a million years ago by my friend Millie Kaiser in Columbia MO. She owns Appletree Quilting in Columbia, an absolutely beautiful shop! If you haven't been there and happen to be in the St. Louis area, it's only about a 2 hour drive to Columbia and well worth the detour.

Today I'm settling in with my coffee (of course, I'll switch to wine after noon!) to watch the college football games. The Rose Bowl, of course, but this morning there are a couple of games well worth watching; think I'll go for Michigan State vs. Baylor....

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Location:Palmdale CA

Craftsy Holiday Sale!

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On the Sixth Day of Piecing....

On the sixth day of piecing, I was so glad to see:


64 finished blocks! Now I'm just waiting for Dawna to do a fly by (she's on her way to go out shopping) to make sure the colors are balanced well and then I can sew them together and get them off the bedroom floor. I trust her color sense so much more than I trust mine!

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Location:Palmdale CA

On the Fifth Day of Piecing

On the fifth day of piecing, this is what I see:


Only one block done before I got sucked into the process of daily living. Hopefully, today will be more productive on the sewing front!

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And Another Day....

That's 32, halfway there -- I need a total of 64 blocks before starting the pieced border....

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Palmdale CA

Christmas Star Quilt (continued)

And yesterday, I got this far:


Destiny went home this morning, so hauled the machine back upstairs to keep sewing along on this project. I've got pretty good momentum going now!

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Location:Palmdale CA

A Couple of Days Later

Working on the star quilt.....


At the end of the first day of sewing, I had all of the star points cut and the initial units made. I did a couple of the units just to make sure that everything was going to fit. And I had one half square triangle left over. The next day I found another one on the floor so I guess I didn't count those too well -- better too many than too few!


Destiny and I sewed all day yesterday; she worked on her Turning Twenty quilt -- king size for her bed! The thing's huge! -- and I worked on this. Got the center block done and one of the others. Guess I'll just move out from here until I run out of design wall! I'm running into a bit of a problem because I don't have enough red fabric, so I'm bringing in another red, the one that's in the border around the center star. It reads quite a bit lighter, though, so I'm not sure that's what I want. Maybe a trip to Bolts in the Bathtub today?

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Location:Palmdale CA

Sometimes We're Just Ready for Something New

My friend Dawna Harrison and her sister Fay Harrison-Bergier own Bolts in the Bathtub, our local quilt store and BERNINA dealer. Among other cool things they do at the shop, Dawna hosts a bi-monthly Strip Club meeting where she teaches techniques using patterns from Cozy Quilt Designs.

This the quilt that Dawna featured in September; I bought the pattern and then borrowed the quilt so that I could figure out color placement. Dawna always changes up the patterns a LOT, so relying totally on the pattern wouldn't have worked for me.

The pattern is called "Star of the Show" and these are the fabrics I'm planning to use.

These are the fabrics I'm planning to use for the star points and background -- I'm going to start cutting them out and see how far I get. Dawna says I need 84 of them.....

Last Chance

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