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Experimenting

I did some experimenting in the kitchen over the weekend. My first experiment was homemade cream cheese wontons. I made pork wontons last weekend, so I wanted to expand my wontons experience a bit. Plus what’s not to love about fried dough and cheese? While I was busy experimenting with the wontons, the hubby whipped up some amazing chicken fried rice to accompany the wontons. It was a great division of the housework.

The wonton recipe was quite simple: cream cheese, wonton wrappers, scallions, garlic powder, green onions and some sugar. I found the wrappers from Target were a bit thinner than those HelloFresh had provided. Consequently, they leaked when being fried. Next time, I’ll use two wrappers instead of one. Also, I’ll fold them into little rectangles as those wontons didn’t leak at all.

Saturday I went back to experimenting in the kitchen. This time I decided to try a new lime cheesecake recipe. I find baking cheesecake infinitely easier in Florida due to the humidity. By contrast, the moisture can complicate a bread recipe. Honestly, it’s hard to bake a dry cheesecake here. This recipe was pretty straightforward except for the mousse topping. It wasn’t that the mousse topping was difficult, but I haven’t baked with gelatin a lot.

Baking the cheesecake went well and it was super tasty. The recipe was pretty easy to follow. It’s a recipe I’ll make again. However, next time I bake it, I’ll cut back the amount of gelatin. The mousse tasted great, but the texture was too stiff for my taste. Next time I’ll cut it down by 1/2 tbsp and see how it goes. It’s not like the cheesecake tasted bad, so none of us will mind testing all of my cheesecake experiments. I’ll put up the recipes for both the wontons and cheesecake tomorrow.

Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?

My favorite book as a child was Super Fudge by Judy Blume. I’m just here patiently waiting for them to make it into a movie. My other favorite was C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

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Dog Food

Last night, while the hubby was grilling up some of his famous potatoes and steaks, I made dog food for the puppies. I bought a duck breast at Wild Fork a few months ago and defrosted yesterday. Obviously, it’s not something I’ll do all the time, but thought it might be a nice change of pace for the boys.

For their meal, I peeled 3 carrots, cooked 3 cups of rice, bought 1 large duck breast, and hard-boiled seven eggs. Note, I did not use all the eggs for their food. Veterinarians recommend that dogs have no more than one egg per day. To cook the duck, I lined a baking sheet with aluminum foil after preheating the oven to 350 degrees. I placed the peeled carrots on the baking sheet with the duck breast in the middle. The meat and carrots roasted for 20 minutes. Once the duck breast reached an internal temperature of 165, I cut it up into cubes and cut up the carrots.

Once the duck and carrots were cut up, I added them to the cooked rice and mixed them well. Naturally, I poured any of the juices from the duck into the mixture. The last step was to cut up the eggs and add them to the mixture. Ideally, I’d use more vegetables, but I only had carrots on hand. Next time, I’ll use sweet potatoes and peas in addition to the carrots. The recipe is below.

Homemade Dog Food

Ingredients:

  • 2 Duck breast/chicken breast/chicken livers
  • 4 carrots
  • 3 cups of rice
  • 1 egg for each dog per day
  • 1 sweet potato
  • 1 package of frozen peas

Instructions

  • Cook rice according to package instructions
  • Prepare a baking sheet with foil and preheat oven to 350 degrees
  • Wash produce
  • Peel and cut carrots in half and place on the prepared baking sheet
  • Cut sweet potato into cubes and place on prepared baking sheet
  • Place duck breasts or desired protein in the middle of the baking sheet
  • Roast the duck and vegetables for 20 minutes or until the internal temperature of the duck is 165.
  • While the duck is roasting, cook up the peas according to package instructions and prepare the hard-boiled eggs
  • Once the duck and vegetables have cooled, slice the meat into chunks and the carrots into smaller pieces.
  • Combine all ingredients in one large bowl and serve

I have two large (80-90 lbs) male dogs and split the recipe between the two of them. Going forward, I’ll probably use chicken as it’s much cheaper, but the duck is a nice treat. You could also substitute lamb or beef cuts as well.

What is one word that describes you?

Kind. I love people, animals, and life and want to make the world a better place. Fortunately, I think little acts of kindness go a long way in brightening the world. Consequently, every day I try to be kind to those around me (some days go better than others,)

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So Short

I wish the weekend wasn’t so short. You blink and it’s Monday. This weekend was especially quick for me since I worked half the day Saturday. The second half of the day I spent baking bread. I started my baking frenzy with two sourdough loaves. While those loaves proved, I started the sourdough chocolate star bread dough. Fortunately, I had my timing down pat, so both loaves of bread turned out great and not under or over-proved.

Sunday I set out to bake two loaves of French bread and then bake a deep-dish pizza for dinner. I’ve made the French bread loaves several times now, so it goes pretty smoothly. I was a bit worried about the pizza dough, but that was easier than I thought. While both turned out well, I’d make some alterations to the pizza recipe. Honestly, we liked the taste of the crust and sauce. When it came out of the oven, however, it looked like it had a trifling amount of filling instead of being full of cheesy goodness. Next time, I’m going to double the cheese and double the sauce. Now it’s Monday and contrary to my weekend it’s not so short.

Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.

The most ambitious DIY project I’ve ever taken on is probably starting my sourdough baking obsession. I don’t do any DIY around the house as my husband is the absolute expert there. Starting sourdough, even as an experienced baker, was a bit intimidating. With practice, it’s becoming easier. Nonetheless, the sourdough starter can be an absolute heartbreaker. To make it more manageable I’ve started keeping it in the refrigerator during the week. This way I don’t have to feed it daily anymore.

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Upgraded

After twenty years of faithful service, I upgraded my KitchenAid Mixer. It has served me well over the past two decades, but it’s time to move on to something bigger and stronger. We bake a lot and in larger batches, so it became obvious the classic-sized mixer wasn’t big enough to handle our regular baking anymore. After all, I bake several loaves of bread a weekend. Moreover, when we bake cookies, we usually make a double batch.

Consequently, I upgraded to Kitchenaid’s 7-quart stand mixer. The bowl is huge! Especially when compared to the bowl of its predecessor. It also has a stronger engine and more speed. One thing that will take some getting used to is that this is a lift stand mixer and not a tilt-head model like our old one. It will take some getting used to after twenty-plus years of using a tilt-stand mixer. I will say that a stand mixer is a must-have for any kitchen. It allows you to attack your baking with maximum efficiency. We use our mixer several times a week. It will make your baking and cooking life so much easier. I love my mixer!

As for our old mixer, we’re refurbishing it so it can go to a good home. KitchenAid mixers may be expensive, but we’re going to squeeze every last dollar out of each of ours. I’m excited about being able to pass it down. Some of my favorite baking tools my Grandma or mother passed down to me. The beautiful thing about baking and cooking is that it keeps us connected to our past and loved ones that are no longer with us. I will return in a few weeks with a review of the new mixer.

Have you ever unintentionally broken the law?

I broke the law at my most recent hair appointment where I may or may not have fallen asleep under the hair dryer. Unbeknownst to me, the simple act of falling asleep in that chair is illegal in Florida. This is one of the foremost issues Florida’s government wants to solve. Never mind the spiraling costs of homeowners and auto insurance.

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Sunrise

The hubby and I started our day with a trip to the beach to see the sunrise. While the weather didn’t cooperate fully, it was beautiful to watch the sky and water change as the sun came up. We got there just before 6:30 and were taken aback by the number of people already there. Consequently, the surf was unusually high for South Florida, so the surfers were there to take advantage of the nice waves.

It’s always nice to taken in the salty air of the beach. My sinuses always feel better after spending time near the water. Hopefully, next time the weather will cooperate, so we can see the sunrise fully. Nonetheless, it was the perfect way to start our day. Afterwards, we just chilled on the couch with the puppies.

Originally, I had a lunch date with my friend Terri, but had to cancel since Goalielocks had been sick. Fortunately, he does not have Covid. Unfortunately, he does have the flu. Thankfully, we caught it super early and he hasn’t been around the rest of us since Wednesday. Last time he had the flu, we caught it late and had all been exposed. Thank God this time he’s on Tamiflu and is self sufficient. Like last time, he had the flu vaccine, which should lessen the severity of his illness.

This afternoon I channeled my inner baker, thank you Great British Bake-off, and made a Swiss cake roll. It was relatively easy to make, but there are a couple of adjustments I’ll make for the next time. First, the pan has to be 11X17. Secondly, when I roll it with the tea towel, I’ll not wrap it up in the tea towel. This should allow for a tighter wrap.

While I was waiting for the cake roll to cool, I made some pickled vegetables. I’ve developed a taste for pickled vegetables. Naturally, this works well since it’s minimal calories, yet satiating. This time I used cauliflower, orange pepper, carrots, onions, garlic and dill. I made a quick pickle recipe, so I didn’t have to boil the jars or anything. Once I’ve tried them, I’lll share the recipe here (only if it turns out good.)

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Organizing

I spent the last two days organizing. I spent my days going through all of our kitchen cupboards and pantries to maximize our storage. The kitchen has been looking a bit cluttered and we have mugs, plastic cups and water bottles coming out our ass. Honestly, we have way too much stuff in here. This weekend I l culled through our kitchenware and will be donating at least half of it. Some of it isn’t in a good enough condition to be donated, so we’ll be throwing it out.

It feels good to get rid of the extra crap we don’t need. Moreover, I find mind kitchen more peaceful now that it’s better organized. We have two big boxes of stuff to donate, which is awesome. I also had three bags of garbage from the endeavor. Thankfully, I’m almost done. The last piece of the puzzle will be to match all the tops to the travel mugs and water bottles.

Yesterday I baked some Pulla and mixed up cookie dough for more the mint cookies and my favorite Finnish cookie. Today I baked fresh bread to go along with the beef stew I made for dinner. The family loved the stew and the bread. In fact, they ate the bread and there’s only a little bit of stew left. Obviously, my boys eat a lot, so I made a double batch so the Hubby, Goalielocks’ girlfriend and I could actually have some.

While the bread rose, I got my run in. I ran two miles and walked a mile. Today’s run went really well. It’s so much easier for me to run later in the morning or afternoon. Honestly, I feel like I’m dying when I run before work. Obviously, I feel great afterwards, but it’s tough. Before I started dinner, I did a nice yin practice on the Practyce app. I’m loving the Practyce app and the variety of yoga practices it provides.

Tomorrow, I’ll finish organizing the kitchen before switching focus to our room. Again we just have way more stuff than we need. We really need to go through everything and get rid of some stuff. Hopefully, this will generate a few more boxes of goodies to donate to Goodwill. Moreover, I hope we actually get around to dropping the donations off this weekend.

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Loss

Loss seems to be the overwhelming theme of 2020 and 2021. Life naturally brings us life as we age and the people we love age with us. It sucks but it’s reality. The past eighteen months, however, has presented us with loss on a scale we’re not accustomed to. Just this week, we have lost two hockey dads to COVID. Men that were far too young to leave this earth.

It’s, of course, a lot easier for us as adults to process these losses. Which is to say it’s not easy, but we’re better equipped than our kids to handle and process the grief. For our kids, it’s not just the loss of their friend’s parent they’re trying to process, but the possibility that they could lose their parents to Covid. To a kid of any age, this is terrifying.

The sense of loss, the fear of loss remains omni present even as we’re eighteen months into this thing. Honestly, it’s exhausting. Nonetheless, you have to live your life and move forward. The boys being back in school is an important step in moving forward. Moreover, hockey has been an integral part of keeping them socially engaged and active. During this difficult time, exercise be it hockey, running or lifting weights is an easy way to help cope during this period.

In other news, it’s only Tuesday. Truly, it feels like it should be Saturday already. This week is dragging. Fortunately, I had a much better day at work today. Thank God. They say laughter is the best medicine and I wholeheartedly agree, so I’ll leave you with this.

Here’s a list of our day’s activities:

*I’m reading Far From the Madding Crowdby Thomas Hardy. At first I wasn’t sure about the book, but now I like it. Albeit some of the plot twists have left me aghast.

*I ran a mile and a half. It in many ways sucked. Especially since it’s my first run post leg day in over two months. Leg day yesterday killed me!

*We’re tracking the Tropics here in Florida. The tropics are heating up again with three areas of concern. Fortunately, all the tropical weather is moving away from us! Unfortunately, the heat has really cranked up due to the Saharan dust cloud overhead.

*Since Goalielocks is home sick, I drove to pick up my coffee this morning. Fortunately, Goalielocks’ Covid test came back negative! Thank God!

* Every day I watch the live Safaris on YouTube, I’m inspired. I never thought I’d be one for a safari, but the views and the animals are incredible. It’s now on my bucket list. Today was a banner day. I always love watching the young elephants or lions playing. They’re so cute!

*For dinner, I made home made meatballs and spaghetti. Tonight we tried Michael’s from Brooklyn’s tomato basil sauce. It was super yummy. As a family, we’re trying all the top jarred spaghetti sauce. The Mayor and I love spaghetti, so I thought it would be a fun activity for us.

*The word of the day and it is kakorrhaphiophobia, which means and abnormal fear of failure. I think a lot of have a fear of failure, but for most it’s not a paralyzing fear.

*I took my puppies including sweet Anakin for a. I put on his harness every morning. Otherwise, I have difficulty controlling him on the leash. He’s incredible strong and can pull me off balance.

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Almost Over

The weekend is almost over and so is our summer. Tomorrow marks the official start of the Mayor’s hockey season, so there will be no more down time. At least no down time until next March. In preparation for the craziness, my Sunday was quite lazy. I’m still dealing with the cold, so I spent the day literally doing nothing. Truly, it was as amazing as it sounds.

Actually to be fully transparent, I did make some carrot ginger soup. Since my cold started, eating meals has been a challenged. However, small bowl of soup have been going down okay. I bought some Rao’s minestrone, which is super yummy. But I was craving some carrot ginger soup, so I decided to make my own. It’s a super easy and vegan (if you want it to be) recipe with just a few ingredients. I’ll share the recipe here later.

I have been ordering from Butcher Box for awhile now. Their prices are good and the convenience is undeniable. This month I opted for the big box with some nice add-ons. The box was supposed to arrive Friday, but it arrived today in terrible condition. The box was destroyed and all of the meat had defrosted and smelled terribly. Talk about a buzz kill. Now we’ll have to wait for the replacement box to get here. So aggravating!

While the weekend is almost over, I still love Sundays the best. Sunday, of course, is the day we talk to Jake every week. Thank god for technology and the ability to FaceTime our loved ones. He looked and sounded great, which always puts this mama’s mind at ease. I’m so proud of my boy! Unfortunately, he’s still in a rental car as the body shop is still waiting for parts. Hopefully, he’ll get his car back this week.

Here’s a list of our day’s activities:

*I’m reading Far From the Madding Crowdby Thomas Hardy last night. This is quite the departure from the world of Queen Asa.

*I’m still under the weather. Consequently, I took another rest day today.  Unfortunately, there will be no rollicking or running until I’m better.

*We’re tracking the Tropics here in Florida. Tropical Storm Fred Tropical is back and sliding away from us. Now we’ll focus on TS Grace, which looks to be following south of Fred’s path.

*The hubby picked up Dunkin’ this morning, which was awesome sauce.

*For dinner, the Hubby and the Mayor chicken, black beans and rice. This week I’m strictly limiting my carb intake as part of the 5:2 Plan, so it was mostly chicken for me.

*My favorite surprise on the underwater cams, I watch during work, is seeing an octopus. Today I watched the safari cam, which never disappoints.

*Today’s word of the day is damp, which is exactly how our weather has been this weekend.

*I took my puppies including sweet Anakin for a walk. Today he didn’t pull my arm off or anything like that. I put on his harness

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Homemade Chicken Broth for Dogs

Homemade Chicken Broth for Dogs is the perfect healthy treat for man’s best friend. I started making this when our dog Maya got ill in June. The hope was that it would help stimulate her appetite and increase her calorie intake.

Homemade Chicken Broth for Dogs
1 chicken carcass and bones (A store-bought rotisserie chicken works really well.)
4-5 carrots
Enough water to cover the chicken and bones

Maya enjoying the homemade chicken broth

Steps:
1: Add chicken bones and carrots to the pot and cover with water.
2: Bring broth to a boil
3: Simmer on low for at least 1 hour. I prefer to simmer the broth for at least 4-5 hours
4: Allow the broth to cool before preparing to store it. I’ve been storing the broth in a pitcher, so it’s easy to pour into her bowl.

I don’t add onions to the broth as they’re not good for dogs. If I was making it for the family, I’d add both onions and celery to the pot.

On that note, I have to go finish the incomplete batch of broth I started earlier today. Then I’ll pack up the latest batch of fresh chicken broth!

Here are the tools I used to make the broth:

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Week 12

After fifteen weeks, I’ve finally made it to week 12 (aka the final week) of BBG. Ordinarily, this 12 week program takes 12 weeks to complete. However, I ran into three separate weeks where my allergies and/or a cold settled into my chest. Consequently, I took those weeks off when I was sick to ensure my asthma get aggravated and reappear during this Covid-19 season. Sadly, I learned my lesson several years ago when I spent four months ill with bronchitis. This timeline probably would have been shortened if I had relaxed when I first got sick. Nonetheless, I’m no longer a BBG novice!

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Since quarantine has started, my Monday workout routine has shifted a bit. Now I got to yoga with Monica in the morning and then complete my BBG workout in the early afternoon. Thanks to the Mayor, Anakin made a quick impromptu visit to class.  Fortunately, the yoga leaves my legs stretched and ready to go for the workout. This is important because the Monday leg workout is super intense. Today’s workout was no exception! Indeed the evil burpees with a push-up and tuck jump we’re back. Those things are the worst! However, they went far better this week as opposed to two weeks ago. Needless to say, my legs will be sore tomorrow.

After a quick lunch, the Mayor and I took the three dogs for a walk. Okay, truth be told it was more like they walked us. Anakin is still learning to walk on a leash, so he pulls a lot. While he may be little, he is mighty. Consequently, I ended up walking him and the Mayor took the girls less than half way through. Naturally, it was at this point that Anakin decided he wanted to run. He’d run with a big smile on his face and then stop to turn around and look at his sisters. Then he’d do it again. I wanted to use the gentle leader collar or whatever thingamajig is called. So I guess the upside is I got a little bit of a run in with my jog. Fortunately, the weather was absolutely perfect so we definitely enjoyed our time outside.

 

Of course it wouldn’t be Monday if my day didn’t include virtual school woes. While Goalielocks got up for his dad and started to get to work, he was back in bed by the time I got up a half an hour later. So frustrating! Unfortunately, I spent more time than I wanted to arguing about whether he was sleeping or not. Of course adding to the frustration was the fact he didn’t do the dishes before going to bed last night or this morning! I need to remind myself that this will all be over at the end of the month.

 

Tonight I cooked my latest Blue Apron meal and it was Mexican spiced beef and rice. Again the recipe was easy to follow and the ingredients were high quality. Additionally, this recipe took less than thirty minutes to cook, which is awesome. For the first time in years, Goalielocks liked the tacos! I was so surprised! He ate his meat and rice on a tortilla, while I ate mine as a rice bowl. Naturally the best part of the dinner is the left over guacamole sauce since I’m the only one that eats it.  I hope your Monday wasn’t too manic!

Here’s a list of our day’s activities:

*Reading Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

*Gentle Vinyasa Class with Monica from Yoga Mundo 

*Watched Impractical Jokers

*Morning and afternoon meditation

*Week 12 BBG day 1 leg day!

*Obedience training Anakin courtesy of myself and the Mayor. 

*Took Anakin, Maya and Athena on a walk. 

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