So...whats for dinner?

Eric, your family pic is beautiful.....thank you!

Also loving the warm Christmas theme photos... lovely trees, Susan and Monica.

Very busy week here. DS1 and crew arrived last Friday staying thru Monday. Actually pulled off a party for 25 to celebrate DS1's recent board certification....final hurdle of a long process to become an upper extremity orthopod. Hosting a gathering with the grand-babies here was quite the challenge.....but it happened. 

I thought I raised two very active boys....they were slugs in comparison to these little grand whirlygigs! For some reason, limit setting is not in the parenting repetoire of DDIL's parents who care for the kids while they work. WOW! So things were pretty wild here. A wonderful characteristic of these children is that they eat adult food....so they enjoyed things like seafood linguini, hummus and veggies, vegetable quiche, and even kale soup, as much as we all did! We first celebrated DGS's third birthday, then early Christmas, then more Christmas exchanges when DS2 returned from his mancation and stopped in....all before Christmas! So I was in post- Christmas mode by Christmas Eve. 

Enjoyed a lovely Christmas Eve dinner hosted by our next door neighbors...a young family, and a few of their friends. She roasted a huge prime rib roast (served with horseradish sauce). Thanks for your help, Susan! I brought a few cheese plates for appetizers (they were fun to create), and made a spinach arugula salad and cookie tray for dessert. She made beet salad (delicious!), potatoes I forget the name of, and haricot verts with almonds. Dessert was the cookie tray and a wonderful gingerbread/blueberry trifle. It was all great! We had a town Santa visit for the kids (memory lane for DH and me), and had a whole group yankee swap, which was great fun!

Christmas Day we spent with other close friends. That hostess, who is a great cook, always has a wonderful buffet for 18 or so people. Guests brought lots of appetizers, then she made salmon with a citrus sauce, tuscan chicken breasts, lemon asparagus, something called Minnesota River Rice (I think), with pecans and grapes, my spinach arugula salad with blue cheese, pecans, mushrooms and cranberries.......and a sinfully delicious chocolate cake for dessert.

DS2 was with us for both of these events, and he seemed to enjoy himself as much as we did. Tho he did spend time texting with the new girlfriend who is in Chicago. We finally did our last Christmas gift exchanges once home from that dinner.Then DS2 gathered his loot, and headed home. The night was still young, so, as is our ritual, we headed to our other next door neighbors' who had even more food....wonderful middle eastern selections. It was a busy, fun holiday week for us!

Suffice it to say, I headed to the gym yesterday for a couple hours after spending a lot of organizing time in our house. I still can't find many of the things that were unearthed by the grands......

Today we are taking our friend from Paris out to lunch. He loves Rosa Mexicana for some reason, so that's where we will go. 

Hope you haven't fallen asleep trying to get through this!

Wow Lacey! What a busy couple of days. I wIsh I lived in your neighborhood. You have some awesome culinary outings!

Dh and I were so overfed that Christmas night we had a chef's salad with strips of leftover tenderloin. Yesterday we took my dad out to lunch for Chinese so for dinner we had breakfast.  Today we're heading to my BIL and SIL's for a few days so I won't be doing cooking, but she will. I'm looking forward to someone feeding me for a change. We have a deal, when they're with us she doesn't have to do any cooking and vice versa. She is a good and adventurous cook, so it will be fun. I know that mushroom crepes are on the menu somewhere.

Carole, I think there must be a national scale virus that bumps that weight indicator up 5 lbs....mine did the same!! ;/ LOL 

Nance, how nice that you get to be the one to be fed while visiting your sister.....and how great that she is a good/interesting cook!

Just home from Rosa Mexicana, where I had some of their tasty guacomole, a mahi mahi with citrus, and all the mexican accompaniments. I think dinner should be optional at this point. It was really freezing and windy down in Seaport, so I am sitting with my coat on getting warmed up. Contempating a long walk.....but maybe too cold.

Tomorrow we have a brunch to attend at the Seaport Hotel given by one of my former colleagues to celebrate the wedding of her daughter who got married in California recently. More food......better get that virused scale fixed!

laurie, is it you i have to blame my runny nose on? Ugh. I am sitting here Sucking on zinc and vitamin C drops. I have the hosting of the Round Robin entrée tomorrow. I have to do it. I have had to cancel 3 times in past years due to a pacemaker and two other unexpected surgeries. I am going to DO this one!

I seem to have hit "the wall" or whatever it is that runners do

Was so tired today and worked 12 hours.

And still have New Years and my birthday on the29th

I think that I will lay low

I was to meet my daughter in Vancouver ,BC in late Feb or early March as she travels for her job too but I need a passport!

Who wouldn't have known that but me?

Maybe she can come here.

Time for zzzzzzs

Orange juice and cheese and split pea soup for dinner.

Happy weekend to all.  May sleep for 12 hours or so or much more I am so tired that my eyes feel full of salt and I have a headache

Telephone tower or whatever it is has been out on the island for a day so no phone service and patchy internet. finally got this through so will sign off

Those of you who will be snoozing with me, sweet dreams.

Sounds like everyone had a wonderful Christmas with all kinds of special meals!  It's a little quiet around here now with all of the festivities over.

I had that awful sore throat and cold between Thanksgiving and Christmas and although I dosed with loads of vit C and other antioxidants, it hung on longer than usual.  Finally ditched it!

Looking forward to the New Year!  Wishing everyone a healthy and happy one!

Eric, Maybe, you know how notorious computer viruses are and none of us want one of those. 

Happy birthday bedo! Hope you have gotten your beauty sleep.

Moon.....one box! I'm impressed with that, we had probably four before DS2 and crew arrived. Now the challenge is finding things that the grands transported to new resting places, as well as purging from those four boxes rather than just putting stuff back! Glad your gathering went well, and that you got help. I know what you mean about this cold damp weather being brutal on the joints!

HB Bedo! Hope your daughter can find her way to ALaska so you can be together next month.

Just finished having tea with one of my favorite work colleagues. I made meyer lemon muffins which were really tasty. Now I need to find someone to eat the last fourteen of them! 

Susan, have a wonderful trip to the Cape. Your friends are wise with their selection of house guests!

About to head out for a walk before the rains start. It is really cold (yesterday was almost like Spring in comparison), but I find that my outdoor walks are more rigorous (and interesting) than my treadmilling.

Thank you all for the Birthday Wishes!

I will "try" to take a picture of me in the rain today and put it on here to commemorate the day!

It's time to go to Tie Your Yarn into Big Knots Class.

Susan,avert your eyes....

Last night I threw everything in pot without a recipe. Cut up cabbage, potatoes, onion, garlic carrot, vegetable broth, and then... don't look Susan, I decided it needed more flavor, so I dumped in a big can of drained salmon and added salt and pepper. I ate two bowls and am saving the rest. I was hungry. I am beginning to understand the frontier woman mentality

Bedo - Belated happy birthday. I just love reading your posts. Any chance you are ever coming to Texas?

I think tonight is sub sandwiches on the loaf of frozen French bread I did not use for French toast. That should be easy. I have the homemade (kinda) ingred. for Italian dressing a la Good Seasons. I think a bit of olive oil and it should be good on them. Bought ham in the deli and have tons of cheese left from Christmas.

Grocery shopping today after church. Got my obligatory black eyed peas for New Years Day.

Monica - I know about the bags not coming back in. We cleaned out 3 black trash bags of Goodwill stuff out of DD's room and that is just a start.

Well, I talked DH out of car shopping. DD's Mazda 3 was OK but really too low for me to see out of well. Taking my Equinox in next week to get one of the glitches worked on (HeeHee dealer sent us a Christmas card with a coupon). I figure I can put some money in it and get some more miles. Sooner or later we will have to buy something new but maybe not for another year or 2. It is reliable; no prob. with that.

Soup sounds good too. Cold front blew through this am. Now 33 where it was 60 yesterday. Misty.

I discovered that I had King Arthur flour's newsletter sent to one of DH's email accounts. Had fun clearing them off, that is the ones he had not trashed already.

http://gastronomyblog.com/2012/01/20/meyer-lemon-m...

Minus, I just googled meyer lemon muffins and above is the blog that had the easiest recipe. There was another interesting looking one that included ricotta cheese, but last night I was not up for heading to the store for that or for whole milk to make that! Also, I used skim milk for the required cup of milk and they came out just fine.

Really tasty little muffins....Thanks Gastronomer....and enjoy, Minus!

We have been trying to use up (too) many of the foods in our freezer (just from our side by side, not a real stand alone freezer), so DH found a pork tenderloin, which he noticed had been in there since 2009!

 I really thought that it would start looking like cardboard while being thawed...and he would realize we shouldn't eat it......but not a all....and I got a kick out of DH taking ownership of this litte piece of meat offering to marinate it while I was busy in another part of the house. Go DH!! Then as the Pats finished their game, he stood in the pouring rain grilling it. I was still suspect.  But it turned out to be just fine....not even a bit of freezer burn! So we rounded out the meal with brussells sprouts and a romaine salad with a bit of blue cheese and vinagrette, and a really good baggette from a bakery on the Cape named Pain D'Avignon, (Hyannis, Susan)which I'd picked up in a local shop. Am eager to get it out of the house so I can go back to not eating bread with dinner...but boy it was tasty with a great texture.

So after all that, we now have a little bit of space in our freezer! I'll be interested to see if this tenderloin is the oldest item we froze......

Eric and Bedo  love the pictures.  It is nice to put a face to who we are talking with.

We are also all fooded out! DD and I went to the movies last evening and indulged in the popcorn  (the only reason for going to the movies) so later last night did a chef salad, still using up the leftover ham. Need to go through the refridge and calculate what is useful in there and try to pull into a meal.

I agree that the holidays are exhausting..... one more week with the daughter home, then I can get things back to normal and try to start a process of packing things to go to the Carolina home.

I will now head to the kitchen and create a soup, using everything I can find in that fridge.

Hello all - I have missed you and just spent some time catching up on the posts!  I have yet another friend who is newly diagnosed - 35, she is single, and TN - I hate this disease.  I have been accompanying her to appts. - mammo/US/MRI, biopsy, 2 surgical consults, an onc consult, and a bone scan and CT scan.  Add in the normal holiday stuff and son visit, and I feel like I am spinning my wheels - but I am finally making some progress getting caught up on things.  My friend's treatment plan is coming into place so that is good.  I also have to go up to Washington, D.C. for the day next week to have my vaccine trial blood work done.  In the middle of all this my DH and I have decided to try the Virgin Diet - not to become virgins again - that ship has definitely sailed, lol!  But to try to identify any food sensitivities - have any of you heard of it, or tried it?  It is an elimination diet, but it is pretty spartan, so this should be interesting.  I have been trying to eat all of the fresh stuff so we can start on 1/1/14.  I thought I would post my trees, a little late but that seems to be the theme this year for us - yes, trees - 4 of them!  The first one is outside on the lanai, and is a new one this year, all metallic and with palm trees, starfish, and turtles.  The second one is a military/Americana tree with ornaments from military bases, and White House ornaments, and is all red, white and blue.  The third one is the kid's tree with all of the ornaments they made as kids or received as package toppers from their grandparents, and the last one is the big tree in the living room.

auntie - thanks!  I had to laugh when DH suggested a new 4th tree for outside - he supports my tree obsession!