What to do when you don’t know what’s for dinner. Grab something out of the freezer and add a side.
Lightly breaded perch, and polenta with mushroom gravy, peas, and Parmesan cheese. I also keep an all purpose breading in a ziplock bag in the freezer. Usually 3/4 flour, 1/4 cornmeal, salt, garlic & onion powder, and a little dill. The spices may vary.
The breading is suitable for fish or chicken. Keeping it in the freezer let’s you reuse it a few times.
The heat finally broke and we were out of bread and sweets, so it was time to bake this afternoon.
The bread is one quarter whole wheat flour and three quarters white flour. The cookies are lemon almond.
I could have scheduled a curbside pickup order for the bread, etc. but it seemed easier to just bake some. Definitely tastier.
I enjoy baking. I find it to be therapeutic. You take some simple ingredients, combine them, and end up with something that makes everyone happy!
Homemade pizza is always a hit.
I make my own dough which provides enough for two pizzas. I make one and save the other half of the dough in the refrigerator for another day. That way, you get fresh pizza two times. Or you can make both at once and have leftovers. I just use the dough recipe in my bread maker cookbook.
This pizza has garlic & herb spaghetti sauce. The toppings are black olives, diced red pepper, mushrooms, freshly grated Asiago cheese, and white cheddar. Baked at 400 degrees for 17 minutes.
I was out of red sauce when I made the second pizza so made it mushroom and spinach Alfredo. I used a half can of cream of mushroom soup for the sauce and gave it a sprinkle of Old Bay Seasoning to spice it up. It was delicious.
I find that you can make pizza with just about anything you have on hand. If you don’t have anything to use for sauce, some olive oil and freshly minced or sliced garlic work just fine. Give it a try!
This was a busy day. This morning I baked bread since we were nearly out. Then I made an oatmeal cake with chocolate frosting.
The afternoon was devoted to planting many of the flowers we purchased yesterday on our trip out into public for the first time in over two months. I planted the usual six hanging baskets for our porch.
From there I planted some urns and pots for the patio garden.
Dahlias and mounding vinca
Dahlia and Petunia
I bought a new dianthus to add to one of the flowerbeds. We already have some, but they have been coming back for many years and I thought we could use some new stock. This one is a nice, bright pink.
I didn’t plant these bleeding hearts. They are a perennial that was here long before I bought this property. The blooms are peaking right now, so I wanted to share them with you.
Gardening season has begun in earnest. We will plant the rest of the vegetable garden this week. Our radishes and turnips are up already in less than a week!
This is the time of year for all things garden related.
Yesterday, I de-thistled our asparagus bed. Once the spears are up, you can’t rototill the bed. And it was full of thistles. So, I dug them up with my hand trowel so they won’t go to seed and infest the rest of the garden. They aren’t very difficult as weeding goes, but there were a lot of them. Resulting in a blister on my palm, even whilst wearing gardening gloves. Oh well. I harvested a batch of asparagus this afternoon that we ate with dinner.
Today hubby ran the rototiller in the rest of the vegetable garden in preparation for spring planting. Our seeds finally arrived in the mail today! There was a backlog at all the seed suppliers. Everyone is wanting to plant a garden while they are home avoiding the coronavirus. We put in our first row for the year, containing turnips, icicle radishes, and a variety mix of beets. We will plant more vegetables over the next few days.
I also harvested some of our rhubarb today. It wasn’t enough for a pie, so I added some blueberries from the freezer and made a blueberry-rhubarb custard pie. I always use a butter pie crust. No Crisco for this girl. Blueberries were what I had available so I altered a recipe I found for rhubarb custard pie. It turned out just fine. In fact, it as downright tasty. I look at baking as an art form, so I always feel free to make whatever adjustments suit my fancy.
I have been doing lots of baking and cooking recently. That seems to be the new trend since people are home so much of the time. I enjoy it. Baking is a fine art.
This morning I baked orange chocolate chip scones and orange blueberry scones. Fresh scones are so tender that they melt in your mouth. Mmmmm!
I baked bread yesterday since we were completely out. This batch is with half whole wheat and half white flour.
For supper I used the fresh bread for fried egg and cheese sandwiches along with polenta topped with sautéed spinach and garlic. This was accomplished by asparagus directly from the garden. It made a fine repast.
This morning I made a nutritious breakfast that I really enjoyed. Quick cooking steel cut oats with raisins, chocolate chips, and pumpkin seeds. I put some unsweetened vanilla almond milk on top. Very tasty.
This is substantial enough to keep my blood sugar from crashing before lunch and it gives me energy to get some work done in the morning. If only the oats came with a side of motivation, I would be all set.
Today was one of those days where I got a lot of necessary things done. Those things that you don’t like to do, but it feels good to have them done.
Our township provides a dumpster that is at the township garage for one weekend each year for spring cleanup. Anyone in the township can use it to dispose of large items, until it is full. And you need to get there quick, before it gets full. Today was the start of that weekend. I hauled two loads up to the dumpster for disposal, consisting of an old, musty Christmas tree, a couple pieces of decomposing wicker furniture, and various odds and ends.
This afternoon, I spent a few hours doing various forms of paperwork for our dog rescue group. I worked on some financial paperwork, some filing, and some educational material. Not fun, but things that are necessary.
And since I was on a roll doing dog stuff, I decided to give three of our dogs their annual DHLPPP-type shots that were in the refrigerator. Followed by cleaning litter boxes and picking up poop outside. I clean up our dog yard every time the dogs go outside now, because we have two who apparently consider themselves to be connoisseurs of poop. Even so, I sometimes run around with the scoop yelling “drop it” while chasing the offender. It’s a fine line between following the defecating dog around closely enough to get there before one of the other dogs grabs the result, but not so closely as to interrupt the dog doing his business. Such is my life.
As a reward for a productive day, I made Indonesian stir fried noodles for supper. Noodles, vegetables, and fish. Yum!
Just a day in my life.
Our main course for dinner this evening was freshly homemade noodles with mushrooms and meatballs. (To make my portion vegetarian, I left out the meatballs and added a fried egg.) I added a side of broccoli to round out the meal.
Homemade noodles are surprisingly easy and always delicious. Just some flour, salt, oil, egg, and water, and you’re all set. You could even add the broccoli to the noodles and have a one dish meal!
This was my first attempt at making homemade cinnamon rolls. The recipe is for single rise yeast rolls. It was relatively easy to make them although it did dirty a lot of dishes.
Final product
I will definitely be making these again! I have never had cinnamon rolls that I made myself, fresh from the oven and made from scratch before. The roll was soft, and the brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter filling was sugary, crispy goodness on the bottom.
I so enjoy baking. This recipe was on Pinterest. It is my go to place for finding new recipes.
Sanctuary Acres 