Easy soup for cold-weather days!

With the frigid temperatures coming back yesterday (along with some snow), I decided to concoct a homemade soup with things I had on hand here.  It turned out very tasty and I'll be making it again, I'm sure.  It is, basically, a chicken corn chowder and it made about 2 quarts...enough for yummy leftovers! 

I used:  1 cup of cooked chicken (cut up), 2 cups of chicken broth (used low-fat but any kind will work), 2 cans (14 ounces each) of creamed corn.  Optional:  small amount of cooked potato (cut up) OR a tiny bit of some small pieces of pasta (or you can decide not to use either of those).  Put all of that in a saucepan and simmer on low for awhile, stirring often. I added some pepper for seasoning, but you can add any seasoning that appeals to you.  It really did hit the spot on a cold day!

A movie and sliders!

Yesterday I took Jessi to see Gnomeo and Juiliet. It was very cute and the Elton John music was a lot of fun. Afterwards, she wanted to help make dinner and wanted to make cheeseburger sliders. She is a pretty fussy eater but I knew she had eaten them at Friendly's. So...I agreed. She helped prepare them and we had a nice dinner courtesy of our little cook. (Don't worry, I did the stove!) She also helped make brownies for dessert.

She made the burger patties and I cooked them......she broke the cheese slices up into perfect quarters for me to put on the burgers near the end of their cook time and she cut up the hot dog rolls to make them be "slider" buns (since we couldn't find any slider buns in the store).
Here is the proud little cook putting the platter of sliders on the table. She also wanted to use napkin rings when she set the table. I love it when she is interested in these kinds of things. (She also loves to dust knick knacks and furniture and clean windows and ASKS to do it!!!)Today we will do a craft project of some sort and tomorrow we will go swimming at an indoor pool nearby. It's been a fun weekend so far.

Thank you.....

A very sincere thank you to all who have expressed continuing concern about my granddaughter, Jessi, and her recent surgery to remove several moles. When the biopsy reports come back, I will let you know the results...hopefully, the results are good. She had some oozing from one of the surgical sites over the weekend but that seems to have stopped now, so maybe the rest of her recovery will go smoothly.
Not much going on in the quilting front this past weekend. On Saturday, we did our annual "Can't believe we do this" trek with two good friends to the Nationwide NASCAR Race. Since it is held in Dover, within an hour of where we live, we decided to try this after we moved to this area and we discovered we had a fun day. Lots of families attend the Saturday race and nobody gets rowdy....just everyone having a good time cheering for their favorite. The photo above is my hubby and our two friends eating dinner near the car after the race was over. This allows the traffic to clear and then we have an easy ride home.

We got to meet and talk to a young, up-and-coming driver named Trevor Bayne, who seemed really nice and drove very well in the race that day. If you follow the sport, remember that name as I'm quite sure he will become a top driver someday. This is a picture I took of him as he was talking to my friend, Linda....Right now, he looks about 14 years old to me BUT he is actually all of 19. Really old, huh???

Oh...I do have a picture of the Brown Bag Fabric I got from Mona in Texas. (I don't think she has a blog.) Very nice batiks ...she had a surplus from a class she took. I am cutting them into strips with my GO cutter and going to attempt to make a sweatshirt jacket. I will show it to you as it progresses...as long as it is turning out nicely. LOL
And...I leave you with this photo. How is THIS for a fall treat??? (Don't worry...I didn't eat the whole thing....hubby and I cut it in half and then into wedges and shared it...it was a HUGE apple, which you really can't tell in this photo...a nearby restaurant makes them with all kinds of toppings but we chose plain caramel....and it was YUMMY!)

From YUCKY to YUMMY......

Gotta love this.....I posted yesterday about my yucky dark (85% cocoa) chocolate and how I was about to throw it in the trash. A friend (no blog) had emailed me a couple of recipe links, but I didn't have all the ingredients. Then....Terry from Terry's Treasures blog mentioned a brownie recipe. I got it from her and made it......a set of photos is below. My chocolate turned from yucky to yummy very quickly!!! Mary from the Needled Mom blog has another good recipe I'll try at some point in the future. THANKS for all who rescued my chocolate from going in the trash....and....sorry, Gene, but it doesn't get sent in the mail to you and Linda B is out of luck, too!!! LOL

We woke up to a snowfall that was pretty and not very problematic.......a nice day to bake....so I was happy to have that yucky chocolate and Terry's recipe at my disposal. This is how it looked out my kitchen window as I was preparing the brownies for baking.
Here is that yucky, bitter chocolate ready for the microwaveAnd now it's all melted with butter.....it's looking better already, don't you think?Ahhhhh...now we have added other good things like sugar and vanilla and nuts....and I added raisins as we love raisins.......ready for the oven now!Out of the oven now and nearly ready for a taste test (even though it's early in the morning!)I decided to top off my brownie with a tiny bit (and you can see it IS a tiny bit) of egg nog flavored ice cream. I cannot begin to tell you how YUMMY the chocolate had become now!!!And......I tried to be good by only letting a few of the brownies be eaten now....and the rest were put (two in a bag) into the freezer for eating at a "sensible" rate over the next several weeks!

YUCKY!!!!!

Okay.....first of all, you need to understand this: I am a "chocoholic". I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like...until YESTERDAY!!! I saw a story on the news recently about extra-dark chocolate (85% cocoa) being GOOD for you and suggesting you eat a piece of that instead of other chocolate as it has less sugar in it and can actually help with things like blood pressure or cholesterol and stuff like that. So....out I went and got a GOOD bar of that kind of chocolate (pictured here). I broke off a small piece and ate it and....YUCK....it is horrible!!! It is so incredibly bitter. I think they lied when they said it has little sugar in it as I'd bet this has NO sugar in it. I can't even force myself to eat another bite of it. I need your help. Do any of you know of a way I might use this in a recipe in such a way that it will be edible to me?? I don't want any fancy-dancy, high-faluting, difficult-to-make recipe...just something that would taste good. If you know of anything (or have a friend who does), please let me know. Otherwise, the rest of this bar is going in the trash!!! (Gosh....never did I think I'd throw chocolate in the trash!!! LOL)

The grandkids on Thanksgiving.......

Here are a few photos of the grandkids on Thanksgiving day. They will be heading home today....and then I have to get my sewing room set back up and do my medical typing and get serious about Christmas decorations inside the house!

Looking through the oven door (it's a cool-touch door) at the turkey cooking...and the dog is helping them watch it!The turkey is done........almost time to eat!

Summertime kitchen fun......

Even though our weather makes us feel like summer isn't here yet, I am trying to get in the summertime mood. One of the things I love about summer is watermelon. (I even made a quilted watermelon wall-hanging that has been shown here a couple of times.) Today I discovered a cute website with all things watermelon.....fun ideas about watermelon as well as lots of interesting and fun facts about watermelon. This photo shows one of the many cute watermelon carvings on the website.......all with directions. I believe they call it Flowering Garden. SOMEDAY I'm going to try one of these for a party! It will remind me of the fabulous melon carvings I've seen on cruise ships....such fun! Click HERE for the website. Oh...one more thing........go have a look at yesterday's blog post for my friend, Kaye. She made a great t-shirt quilt for her grandson who just graduated high school and a photo is on her blog. (The photo was taken before the binding was done, but you can still see what a nice job she did as well as a nice photo of her with her grandson.) Here is where you click to get to that post on her blog.

Did you ever do this???

Over at Pat Sloan's Yahoo group, she got us talking about donuts the other day....all kinds.....Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kremes, store-made, and even ones made with refrigerator biscuits. (This boy seems to be having fun doing just that.....found his photo online.) I also found a website that has many fun recipes for using those refrigerator biscuits.....including the donuts, of course. If you want to check it out, click here.