Pantry Revisited

I was thinking today how sometimes our lives take twists and turns when we least expect it!  I started blogging eight years ago when my mother passed away.  At the time I was working full-time, taking violin lessons, going to yoga twice a week, enjoying five cooking groups, and spending weekends at the lake where we worked and cleaned all the time!   I truly do not know how I managed all that!  Now I am completely retired and it seems I have filled my days once again with commitments.   Mostly fun stuff.  It is good to stay busy.   But I have been thankful for my food blogging and for the wonderful friends i have made because of it! Gaye  chose this dish for our Ellie group.   It is really good.  Comes from her weeknight wonders cookbook which I love.   It is chicken, oranges, garlic, soy, vinegar, red pepper flakes, snow peas.   I did cheat a bit and used sugar snap peas because i had them.  We agreed this was a hit ...

We love brussels sprouts at my house!  So anytime the opportunity presents itself to cook brussels sprouts, I do!   These are very flavorful.   They are roasted in the oven with garlic and lemon juice and Parmesan cheese added at the end of roasting time, then vincotto drizzled on top.   Delicious! Never disappointed in Donna Hay recipes.    Gaye  thank you for choosing this!  Loved it! Wwdh

This week was my choice and I chose these mini pumpkin cakes   I thought with fall in the air it would be something to go with the season!   The recipe said you could cook them in little jars or ramekins.  As you can see I went with the ramekins.  Honestly these were so easy to put together and only took 45 seconds in the microwave to cook!  You cannot get any easier than that.  I sampled one of them and it is delicious!   Later tonight I will serve them to my husband with a dollop of vanilla ice cream on top.  But I could just eat it right out of the bowl!   The ingredients were eggs and brown sugar, flour, milk, spices, oil and canned pumpkin.   These are so easy to whip up I am sure they will be on my rotation for this season!   The recipe comes from Ellie Kreigers Off the Shelf  book.   Great book and I would suggest you purchase one! Check out our website to see how the others like these little cakes!...

I am running a little behind this week on my blog.   Today our group made chocolate banana and coconut muffins.  I left out the coconut because the three flavors just did not appeal to me!   The jury is still out as to whether banana and chocolate muffins go together.  I have not tasted these yet as I'm saving them for breakfast tomorrow.   These called for cocoa but I just used chocolate chips instead since i was out of cocoa! So the big home issue this week is tile for my foyer.   I ripped up the white tile over a month ago.  I had a thought that I would put the hardwoods all the way to the front door.  Well long story short I could not get hardwoods to match and was scared it would look too pieced together so I'm going back to tile.  I have three different ones I'm trying to choose between.   One of them is a light beige  so it will be almost like what I ripped up in the first place!   Do you find yourself wi...

This is a simple vanilla cake that came from Donna Hays recipe book called Off the Shelf .   It was my choice for the group this week.   When I chose this I was imagining all sorts of ways to serve it.  Maybe a yummy chocolate ganache on top, or some fresh berries and whipped cream.  The cake has a ton of butter in it, but no other liquids which surprised me a bit.  At first ai thought it looked like concrete when I removed it from the oven.  But once I cut into it, it was pretty moist.  I cooked it ten minutes less than the redipe called for.   The ingredients are three eggs, vanilla, butter, flour, sugar and baking powder.  Pretty simple.   Chandler said it would be good in a bowl with milk on it! Check out our website and see if any of the others made it.    wwdh.wordpress.com