Soup and Fabric

Hello my Friends! How is everyone today. I hope you are all doing good. Today Little Man had a half day so after i picked him  we made lunch together, then drew some pictures. I worked out…it’s my second day and my muscles are yelling at me. Then Little Man and i looked for a game on the computer that we can both play and meet in, so a virtual world. We decided on Wizard 101. It’s actually a lot of fun. You make a character and right at the start you have your first battle, before you can even register for wizard school! Something mysterious and evil is happening in wizard city and you have to get to the bottom of what is going on. There are a lot of different missions and characters for you to help. I must admit i have gotten hooked. Of course Little Man loves it.

Yesterday i told you i started a new sewing project. It’s a small one and I haven’t gotten far but i will show you the fabric i am using.

My grandma sent me this fabric scrap last year sometime. I found it when i was looking for fabric to throw together to make a quilt with. Anyway, i just had the sudden urge to do something with it.

I grabbed this fabric scrap for my back.

And i cut some squares out of both of those and some batting.

My original plan was some coasters. Not because i need any but i thought they would make cute ones. But once i had sewn them, they were too small for my liking to be coasters. Sorry in advance this pics were taken at night.

So i decided i am going to sew them together to make a box like these, that my grandma made me a long time ago and that i put my tea in.

I did not bind mine like she did, i did not have the right fabric to make my own bias tape or any in a color that would suit and well that was too much work for me. I have three squares sewn together, after sewing on the fourth i realized it was upside down in relation to the others, so i had to rip it off. Then i set it down and haven’t picked it back up. Not because i don’t want to but i have come to realize that a big part of my hand issues is the pinching action i am doing when handing sewing or holding knitting needles. So i thought it best to take a break and then things to just busy. I hope to work on it some more but i am not going to push myself. It will only make things worse. I think it will be really cute and can’t wait to finish it!

Now on to the Cream of Broccoli Soup I made yesterday. It is from my book The Drop 10 Diet Cookbook. I got it last year when i was starting to get tired of the same old healthy meals and needed some new ideas. It has some pretty good recipes in it and i am finally getting around to testing some of them. This is my second one this week. The other one was Peanut Chicken Finger and those were pretty good as well but because you aren’t frying them like most chicken tenders are, so the breading made it a bit dry, you needed something to dip your chicken in. Anyway on to the soup.

I am going to tell you up front i made a huge mistake right at the beginning with the edamame, i didn’t take them out of their shells. I don’t know why, i just got it stuck in my head that i didn’t need to. And this is my first time using them. So right before pureeing i was digging in my soup to get all the beans out of their pods. I missed a couple but it could have been much worse.

I gathered up all my ingredients. Did my chopping and dicing.

Put the olive oil, broccoli, onions and curry powder in the pot.

Oh my the smell of the curry powder was wonderful!! Then i added the potatoes, edamame(with shell, silly me) and broth.

Let it simmer, with a lid on, until the potatoes were done. Added the broccoli and Half and Half.

Let that simmer for about 10 minutes or until the broccoli is done. I would let it cool a bit before pureeing if you are using an immersion blender and then if you are me, you dig furiously around with a spoon and your fingers to find all the edamame and the shells that happened to come apart while cooking so you can save your soup. Then puree and pour into a bowl.

And Enjoy. I was quite worried about how this soup was going to taste. I hate cream of broccoli soup in a can or soup mix or bag, basically store-bought in any form.  It’s just too thick for me and i don’t care for the taste. This soup was delicious, i think the curry spice really added something special to the taste and i could have eaten the whole pot.

So, friends grab yourself a bowl of soup, curl up with a good book and take a moment for yourself.  Especially tomorrow, or possibly today when you read this, because its National Readathon Day. Little Man and I will be grabbing some couch time for sure and doing some reading. Together and on our own. Hopefully i can make some more of a dent in my Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest. I am about 1/3 of the way through. I went to the library today and i always say i am not checking anything out, i have plenty at home to read and…I ALWAYS WALK OUT WITH A BOOK!! Even if it’s just a cooking or craft book or something for Little Man, i can not walk out of there with nothing. I think they have some sort of mind control going on in those places 😉 I got two today, yep they get me every time.

Little Man and I are making cookies tomorrow so I will share those with you next time along with the books i checked out.

Friends, have a wonderful day, do some reading and eat some soup!

Two Dinners

Hello Friends! How are you all? How was your week? Mine was pretty good. Work has been busy and I have been busy taking Little Man to Boy Scout activities this week.

My self change has gone great this week! Today is the first day that I splurged a bit with a couple of pieces of Halloween candy as a bit of a Good Job reward. I am already feeling the benefits of going back to my healthy ways of eating.

Joanna, it is so true about going back to working out and how much just even a little bit of time away can change you and make you weaker! I am so glad that you will also be trying to improve yourself. I will cheer you on for sure, and I know together we can totally do this!!  Thank you for the well wishes for my wrist, I hope as well that I can move past this. I usually use circular needles but it seems like the big needles are hurting me. I thought about changing the style of my knitting so I am using my hands differently, but I tried that a couple of years ago and I was so clumsy. I use my hands a lot at work too, and then I come home wand want to spend my evenings knitting so that probably doesn’t help ;).

Today I am sharing another dinner with you. A new recipe I tried this week. Actually two but the other is from another blog I read so I will just share the link. The pictures are the best but I hope they give you a pretty good idea of how it all looks.

Yesterday I made chicken drumsticks with sweet potato coins. The sweet potatoes were so good, we all could have eaten a plate full of them.

The Recipe is from The Can’t Cookbook. I found it at 5 below for 5 dollars and it had some recipes in it that I thought made the book worth buying even though its supposed to be for newer cooks. It shows you how to cut onions and garlic and tips like that. It has great pictures in it so it really is a great beginner book. This was my third and fourth recipe from the book and we haven’t been disappointed.

So you marinate the drumstick overnight for best flavor. She had four sauce options. I chose the barbeque and the lemon and sage.

Barbeque

Lemon and Sage

I put them on a baking sheet.

and popped them on the oven at 425F for about 35 minutes.

They go in together with the sweet potatoes that cook at the same temp and cook time. For those you take 3 medium size sweet potatoes and cut them into 1 1/2 inch slices and put them on a baking sheet and drizzle some olive oil over them.

Then you are going to make a mixture of brown sugar, salt, cumin and black pepper.

Pour that over the potatoes and give a good mix.

Pop those in the oven with the drumsticks and when they are done they should look like this:

And here it is plated up.

Like I said earlier the potatoes were delicious!!! Best I have ever made and we kept munching on the extras. This was the first time I made drumsticks and they came out really good too. Little Man and Hubby really liked them and everyone agreed the Lemon and Sage one was delicious. My husband especially liked them, he said he could really taste the sage.  I am always hesitant to try new recipes because my husband can be very picky and unsure about new recipes. But this was a success!! Which of course makes me super happy.

Dinner tonight was Italian Wedding Soup from Jcasa.  I have been making it for over a year now and it is a well-loved dish in this house. It was perfect tonight in our super cold weather.

I normally use smaller noodles but I forgot to get some so I used the smallest I had on hand. It’s very easy to make. I don’t use as many bread crumbs and cheese as she uses for her meatballs. I eyeball about 1/4 to 1/2 cup. If you so try this recipe try what you think sounds best for you. The main reason I used so little is because when I first made this I was at the peak of my diet and that was just too much in my mind to put in my meatballs and they taste great so I have never tried using the full amount.

We don’t have any big plans for the weekend. Tonight is camp out night for Little Man and I. We are going to watch the movie Eragon. Then we are sleeping in a fort in the living room. Tomorrow we are supposed to go for a nice walk at the marsh and then just relaxing around the house. Reading. Playing. I am hoping to start sewing on a project I want to make for my Oma for Christmas. Just playing it by ear, the weekends are usually not rushed or over planned, we do that enough all week. If we do manage to bundle up and head out for our walk, I will get some pictures of the marsh to share with you. So I hope you have a wonderful weekend!!