Catching up.

Well it's Easter. Happy Easter everyone!

Just sitting around after stuffing my self with ham and the fixings. Mmm.. It was good. We ate early this year because Chris had to work later. First coarse, candy. Then, the food. Than for dessert we had home made rum cake that I made. Gramme brought pink champagne so we tried that. Then for more dessert we ate more candy. Isn't that awful. Now we are all fat and full. Oh yeah, we also ate easter eggs that me and Veronica colored.

 I tried to recreate a  rum cake that I had gotten for Christmas. I was unsuccessful. The cake I did make, was quite good. I think the one I got for Christmas must have been aged a little. It was insanely good. Do you age cakes? I don't know. Anyway, I used a yellow cake mix and a box of pudding. I used a cup of rum. It was suppose to be dark Tortuga rum but I was unable to get some in Florida and didn't want to wait for mail order so I tried to improvise by using two diffrent types of rum. Tortuga rum is from the Caribbean and I used Jamaican (Myers dark) and Puerto Rican (Captain Morgan Private Stock).

  

No it wasn't a from scratch cake but... the recipe sounded really good. The cake tasted really rummy. Really rummy. After a couple of bites though it was a lot better tasting. The sauce I poured over the cake was delicious. I could have just ate the sauce but I guess that wouldn't have been right. I think the problem was that I didn't achieve an even distribution of the sauce in the cake.Some parts were really soaked with the rum sauce and some parts had none. I think this is a recipe I'll have to perfect a little more. Maybe I'll have to start from scratch.

I've started my garden that is in the front yard but first I had to get the weeds out of the bed. 

The garden and my grass out front is full of this stuff.

What is it? I was told it is called stinging nettle. But the pictures of stinging nettle on the internet look nothing like this plant. It's a ground cover. I would have to say its the most horrible evil plant I've ever came across. It literally feels like you've been stung by a bee when it gets you. Only thing is it keeps stinging for hours. There is no visible thorns on this plant. Weed killer doesn't seem to kill it. Not that I've tried a lot. I don't like the idea of poisoning my land. There's so many problems caused by people spraying chemicals on plants around here that we have fish die offs from it. I'll get rid of it some how.

So far in the front I've planted herbs (oregano, thyme, basil, dill, and lavender), strawberries, a daisy, tomatoes, bell peppers, viola's, and petunias. I got the viola's and petunias on the clearance rack at the hardware store and they are growing better than any thing else I planted. 

Chris planted some trees. The orange, and a fig tree. He also planted a gardenia bush. For some reason he is hesitating on the blue berries that I protected all winter long. I might have to plant them myself. I can't hardly stand the fact that there are no significant plants in our yard. Well there is the cypress tree we planted when we moved in but it's under water and still dead from winter. I don't know when they wake up hopefully soon.

We haven't really been doing a lot lately just trying to spend time with Erica before she is off to basic training. She will be leaving at the end of the month. Mom is planing a big fish boil (no fish. It has crab and shrimp)

  

I miss her already but I know it is what she has to do to make a better life for herself. Plus I think she will be a really good soldier. Look out Army here she comes.

My dog's hat.

This is my dog Reese's. We rescued him, a few blogs back you can read about him, and ever since he is the strangest dog ever. Right now he is on the back of the couch looking out the front window and barking at any thing that moves. He is a Chi weenie. That's part Chihuahua and part Dachshund.
I don't know if it's the way they are bred or what but our dog has small ears. When he sticks his head out the window in the car they flap back and the wind gets in his ears. It's tragic. He can't really enjoy it like a normal dog should.

Until Now!

Mom made him a hat! A flight hat! To stop those darn short ears from flopping back. To hold them down. Now I know those Hollywood pups get strange out fits and all but they aren't really that practical. Well, maybe those little rain coats. But this hat is important it serves a purpose. So don't give me a hard time about how dogs are animals and aren't supose to were cloths. Just check out how happy he is wearing it. 

"Thank You Gramme!" Love Reese's

Erica cooked and it was good!

The best cal-zone ever!

     Italian sausage was on sale at the grocery and Erica wanted to cook something with it. Fine by me. With Dad working  I am forced to cook now. Anytime I don't have to cook is a pleasure! She found a recipe on line but it didn't have ricotta cheese so... She found another recipe in a cook book but it was healthy. You know low fat. No sausage. Skim milk cheese. If your going to go for fattening you may as well go all out and get the best taste you can. That's what I think anyway. So like any great cook she decided to combine the two recipes and make what she wanted. After some instructions from Dad and some help from sis and me this is what she came up with.

First she took the casing off the sausage. About 5 links. Then fried it with some onions. Oh, before that, she wilted some spinach by steaming it in a 1/4 cup of water in the same pan. She removed the spinach to a strainer and set it aside. Then fried the sausage till it was crumbled and brown.

Mean while she mixed the ricotta cheese with an egg, a clove of fresh garlic, 1tbs of garlic powder,11/4tsp of salt, and 11/4 cup of mozzarella. Then she added that to the spinach. Then she added the sausage.

Meanwhile we had purchased two lumps of Italian bread dough from our bakery. We let them set out to rise a little then rolled them into rectangles. Unfortunately I have no experience rolling bread dough and they ended up being ovals. We stuffed half the dough leaving about a quarter of an inch around the edges. Then folded the dough in half and folded the bottom edge over the top and pinched tight with a fork.  

They looked like giant apple turnovers.

And when they were done it looked as though they were delicious creatures smiling at us. The first one got a little too done but they were both good. For the second one she turned the heat down to 400 degrees. And they took about 20 minutes to cook. We heated up some marinara and pigged out.

Then we laid around dieing because they were so good we really did eat more that we should have. Erica can really cook!

The Mt. Dora Art Festival.

We had a great time at the Art Festival. There were over 300,000 people there. We went early on Sunday and avoided most of them. There were over 285 artist entered into the festival. There was $21,000 in awards. Categories included: Clay Artists, Fine Crafts, Glass and Metal, Jewelry, Mixed Media, Painting, Photography, Sculpture, and Watercolor.
Besides getting to see all this great art there was all kinds of live entertainment to enjoy as well. We really

We arrives around 11:00 am. After church let out that place really got packed. We were lucky to get a parking space right on the street only about two blocks away.

The main idea is to walk up and down and see as much art as you can stand with out being trampled to death. Every once in a while ducking into a booth that has something you really like. I think the rest of this blog will be the art as it speaks for itself. Also some of it I wrote across because one of the artist who would not let me take any pictures explained to me "I don't know what your going to do with that picture and you could reproduce my art." So don't do that. Just appreciate!

This harp player and flutist were really good. We stopped and listened for a little while.

This guy had made his own instruments and they sounded pretty good. I'm not sure what they were called.

This guy was singing in Spanish and in French I don't know what he was saying but it sounded really pretty.

back yard picnic

We were suppose attend to the 35Th Mt. Dora Art Festival today to see the 285 artist that have displays but Erica had a future soldier training to go to, so we will be going tomorrow because she really wants to go with us. I will  put up pictures of it tomorrow if I get a chance. We usually dress artistically and after ward we usually have fancy art inspired foods but since it's the super bowl tomorrow we decided we would just have to have the art food today. Because you can't eat fancy art food for the super bowl. It's just not right.

Veronica was sitting around board in the back yard yesterday and  wanted to have a picnic but it was too cold and windy today so we ate at the table and put the picnic off for another day. 

One of the foods I always like to make that feels fancy to me and that is different than just cucumber sandwiches is taboule wraps. I came up with the recipe one day just off the top of my head.

The ingredients are:

taboule salad

cream cheese

ham

and tortillas

I just mix the cream cheese up with some Italian seasoning (mostly garlic) and use that as a spread. than make a layer on the tortilla with ham and the taboule salad. Taboule salad is Mediterranean. It's made out of Parsley, tomatoes, Bulgar (cracked wheat), onions and olive oil. I find it at the deli in our store. I'm not sure exactly what cracked wheat is. I think it's just like wheat that's not ground or something. Any way....just roll them up and slice at about an inch for each one. The longer they sit the better they taste. They are good to take to impress people at a pot luck.

My kids like them so you know they are good.

 I also bought little petit fours at the bakery. Mmm.... Those little cakes are so good.

We sat around and ate our fancy art lunch with out going to the art fair but we definitely will be going tomorrow. I can't wait. Later tonight is the Bud Shoot Out. Chris wasn't sure if he would be working or not this Saturday so we decided to just watch it at home.