Gnome update

For the few of you who have been to my house, this isn't news...but my friendly little garden gnome is now joined by some colorful mushrooms...

And here's Fluffy's view...

Also, my mother recently put up a post about my place and there's a picture of my deck in the post. You can see her awesome blog (which was just featured in a magazine!) here...Recollections of a Vagabonde

Peach-Almond Crisp

I am sooooo behind in blog posts. I have quite a few to write up and promise to write some more soon…
I went to the Memphis Farmer’s Market today and went a little crazy buying vegetables. The weird thing is that there was hardly any selection of fruit. I did get a lot of yummy peaches – the white kind.
I decided to make a recipe in one of the cookbooks I had in college that my parents brought back to me on my last visit…Light Desserts. These cook books are all from the late 80’s. There are good light recipe ideas but it is amazing how much more selection of low-cal food there now is to use that there wasn’t then. Oddly enough, while my parents were here we visited Burke’s Books and saw one of the exact issues they brought me. And it was selling for $10!
So here is my altered version of Oxmoor House’s 1989 Light Desserts “Peach-Almond Crisp” on page 113:
Peach-Almond Crisp
Ingredients

• 3 medium-size ripe peaches, peeled and sliced (about 3/4 lbs)
• 1/4C of Splenda granulated
• 1 1/2t wheat flour
• pinch of nutmeg
• drop of almond extract
• vegetable cooking spray
• 1/4C oatmeal, regular oats uncooked
• 1 1/2T brown sugar
• 1T white flour
• pinch of salt
• pinch of cinnamon
• 1/2T Brummel & Brown yogurt spread
• 2T toasted almonds, chopped

Instructions

Combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl; toss gently. Place peach mixture in a 1/2 to 1 quart baking dish that has been coated with cooking spray.

Combine oats and next 4 ingredients, stirring well. Cut in margarine (Brummel & Brown) with a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add almonds. Sprinkle mixture evenly over peach mixture. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden and bubbly.

I don’t have a pastry blender but I know Karen does so I am sad that I can’t just walk down the hall and borrow it. Sigh. I just used forks and a blender with pastry attachments. It seemed to work okay.

Somehow I misread the directions and baked at 350 instead of 375 so the top wasn’t as crispy as it should be. I ate two of the three servings (with ice cream!) but when I reheat the final serving, I will heat it in the oven at a higher temperature. Did I mention that I burned the first batch of toasted almonds? This happens to me EVERY time I toast almonds. EVERY. TIME.

For any of you who actually want to make this, here are the stats:
Serving Size: 3 servings
Amount Per Serving:

• Calories: 147.8
• Total Fat: 4.0 g
• Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
• Sodium: 17.5 mg
• Total Carbs: 28.5 g
• Dietary Fiber: 3.6 g
• Protein: 3.3 g

Living in Memphis

The last few months have been a flurry of activity and travel and temporary living. Since I left California in mid-January, I have been in ten states (OH, KY, TN, FL, GA, NC, SC, AL, AR, & MS) and next week I add another one – MO. I have lived in a corporate apartment and then an extended stay hotel. I have stayed on a cruise ship and many, many hotels – mostly either Holiday Inns or Hiltons, with a few alofts thrown in too.
But this week, I am moving into my home in Memphis. I don’t want to change the title of my blog because in my heart, I am still “living in Long Beach” as I really miss all my wonderful friends out there. My friend Karen is visiting to help me with the arduous task of moving and unpacking. She is here for a week and I am pretty sure it will not all be done before she is gone but she sure is helping out a LOT. We plan to take tons of pictures and I’ll post about the whole ordeal, I mean, experience soon.
But here’s a picture of the house to tide you over for now…

Wait…did you look really closely? Did you see my new little friend under the tree on the corner???

My 365 Project - January 2012

Whew! What a crazy month it has been. Sorry that I haven't posted but did I mention that it has been C R A Z Y ?!?!!  Unfortunately, I missed one day of my 365 Project and didn't take a picture. However, this was the day that the cats and I moved from the west coast from the east coast. So to me, it is fitting that this day is blank. Now this day really stands out on the calendar that is my daily life in pictures. I'll always remember THE DAY.

I am hoping to get into a semi-routine shortly and start blogging again to catch everyone up with my life. And I have another cookbook challenge entry to post about that Karen picked. I'll give you a hint...it is gelatinous...

My 365 Project–December 2011

Here are my pictures for December. I still haven’t missed a day but some of the pictures aren’t great. I definitely need a new camera. If you have no idea what my 365 project is, then you can read about it here in my original post.

Naples Lights

My cousin Scott (aka Ford) came down to Long Beach to spend Christmas with me. As soon as it got dark, we made the trek to Naples (it’s about a mile from me) to see all the holiday lights by the canals. As usual, some of the homes went all out with a crazy amount of lights. Many homes had several decorated trees.
I forgot my tripod and just took very quick pictures as we walked by the homes. However, there are a few that turned out okay so I thought I’d share them with you…

  


Although this one was very pretty, it reminds me of a display window for a shop.

 This one had lots of fake snow in their display.

I guess that’s the closest thing to snow that 

Long Beach will ever see!!

 

This one had several disco balls and disco Christmas music  playing and a bubble machine. Steve Rubell would be so proud.

Of course, there were lots of animals. Pictured above are some polar bears (that remind me of the coca cola bears), a Christmas frog that I snapped mainly for my Mother, two white swans, and the last house had penguins, three flying pigs with halos and Snoopy. There were lots of reindeer. This one below was one of my favorites.

 The new trend in fake trees this year appears to be vintage-looking trees with frosted tips to look like snow. I think some of them are cashmere. I liked these because they were at least a little different, instead of being really full like all the ones I‘ve seen around, they were slim.

Many nutcrackers in this window  display.

I really love all the beachy Santas. I doubt that I’ll see many (if any) of these next year.













Here’s one of the big winners.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed my pictures of the holiday lights in Naples!!

Classic Cookbook Challenge–December

I love collecting and reading old cookbooks. So last month I created a challenge for myself to make one recipe a month for a year from old cookbooks. You can read my original post here. I also said that if anyone wanted to send me an old cookbook, then they could chose the recipe for me to make.
Well, a few days after that post I received a cookbook in the mail from my aunt.

Here she is with me and my cousin (her son) on a vacation we took to Savannah, GA in the 70’s.

The book she sent is the ABC of Gourmet Cooking that she got as a present from a close family friend back in 1963. The book is copyrighted in 1956. She selected the Quiche Lorraine recipe for me to make. She says she has made it (and many variations of it) many, many times throughout the years.



(Click on picture to bigify it.)
I was very pleased that she picked a recipe with few ingredients and that looked relatively easy. Plus, I have never made a quiche before!



But before I get to the quiche, I’d like to share the preface with you. I thought it was very encouraging so if you’d like to read it too, click on the picture to see it larger.

I pretty much followed the ingredients exactly with a few exceptions to lighten it up just a tad. I used 2% milk instead of whole and for the Swiss cheese, I used low-fat Swiss cheese for about a third of it (the rest was the whole fat version). I did use my pink piggy microwave bacon cooker, which they didn’t have back then.

Ready for the oven!

 Cooking in the oven…

Out of the oven!

The timer dings. I put a toothpick in the center of the quiche and it comes out clean. I start to cut a slice and liquid oozes out of the top.  It is not done at all. So back in the oven it goes – for another 20 minutes!
When I take it out again, it has totally risen, like a soufflé. I wish I had thought to take a picture because it dropped to half it height within seconds. This time it was ready!!

See how the sides have risen? Oh, you noticed that some of the crust was missing? That was me “checking” that the crust was finished. Hee, hee!

Earlier in the morning, I went to the Alamitos Bay Farmer’s Market and got some really fresh, yummy grape tomatoes. I sliced them in half and covered with Newman’s Own Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing (one of my favorites!) But you won’t see that in the final picture because Karen and I got too hungry waiting for the quiche to finish. The tomatoes became an appetizer as opposed to a side dish!

My 365 picture of all the tomatoes…

I will definitely make this quiche again. It was relatively easy and very, very yummy. And it made a lot!

My last Stoneybrook Book Club Meeting

So, the cat’s out of the bag. For those of you who didn’t already know, I am moving. To where? Well, that is TBD!! But I am moving out of my condo in January.
Our book for the month was picked by Lora, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. The thing that we all seemed to like best about it was that it was a quick read! But overall, I did like this book and would recommend it, especially if you are in a book club as it gave us a lot to talk about. But then again, we are all talkers.
Since it was to be my last book club and some of my neighbors did not know about my move, I decided to make them a little “Celine” gift. If you remember this post here, I had created a design for us to label my door and all my “French” food. I decided to revisit that design and make a Stoneybrook Book Club book mark!



First I cut the design in half, then printed them on business cards. (This took two tries due to borders.) Then I glued the cards together…punched a hole in them…and tied a piece of yarn through the hole.
Lastly, to jazz it up and make it even more Celine-like, I added a handmade pompom from the same yarn and threaded it through the hole as well.

I think everyone really liked them. And now when they are reading their next book club selection, they can think of me when they mark their page.
Also, I made a cake for Kate’s birthday. She had told me previously that her favorite is German chocolate so I made a four-layer one. (It was all made from scratch- no canned frosting for this gal!) YUMMY!!


Kate has a nursing degree so she did not blow out the candles but instead extinguished each flame with her fingers. We all thought she was odd until she explained that by blowing out the candles, one is essentially blowing their germs all over the cake. Ugh! I had never thought of that before but will from now on whenever someone blows out candles.

Pat, Patti, Karen, Lora, Kate, and Leslie: I will miss our little book club.