Living in Long Beach

Since Halloween is right around the corner, I thought I'd share more of the owls that I have collected  since my last owl post . Let's start with the most recent owl acquisition ~  this really cute owl sketch that I bought at a little art shop in Bar Harbour, ME . No matter which of my front doors you chose to enter, there will be owls waiting for you... And then once you come inside, you can enjoy the fire and see all "whoo" is on the mantle...how may owls can you find? And then if you go to the kitchen or dining room, guess what? More owls!! I think I even forgot to capture a few...like the bag clip from my nephews that actually hoots... And then of course, there are personal owl accouterments... So that's all the owls for now. But there will more be later! I have owl latch hook, cross stitch, embroidery, needle point, long stitch, weaving, pillows, etc all yet to be completed... And lest you think I've gone owl crazy (which I ...

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...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

This picture from my 365 Project sums it all up: So, as I was saying in my last post before I got all caught up with Neely, Ann, and Jennifer (the dolls!!), this year Thanksgiving was celebrated at my little place in Long Beach. We ended up having 14 people, although one didn’t eat at the table with us because he is only 4 month old! I borrowed a table and many chairs from two different neighbors. One neighbor emptied out most of her refrigerator and freezer for me to use for the week. I also used a different neighbor’s oven for several dishes when we figured out that the turkey was sitting in an oven that had been turned off an hour earlier! Nothing like a little Thanksgiving turkey drama. I made several copies of the dinner menu for guests to peruse before dinner. My mother got many compliments from Tinu’s cousins about her cheese ball. We’ve all been making her recipe for years. It’s a family favorite. She also got raves for a new recipe that she created – Blue Cheese Slaw. ...

Or in other words…boy, am I pooped! (This was going to be one post about three "parties" but I got so carried away with the first one that I am going to spare you all by creating separate posts. You can thank me later...) Since this is my last year in my unit at Stoneybrook, it was decided that we would have Thanksgiving here. Wait, first let me back up. For those of you who don’t know, I love, love, love anything Jacqueline Susann and anything Valley of the Dolls (but NOT Beyond Valley of the Dolls!!) What does this have to do with Thanksgiving? Well, I have been talking about having a Valley of the Dolls party for like for-ev-er. So, I enticed my sister to come earlier than everyone else if I finally had this party. Due to my dwindling funds, I kept the party very small, plus a few of my friends had other plans that couldn’t change. The only props I bought were some “silver” trays from the dollar store to throw all my “pills” onto (actually candy.) I made several props ...