Home Of The Ugly

Wait for it....wait for it.....Ok you'll just have to wait for it, my funny surprise and the explanation of today's title that is;  first I need to tell you about the day, starting with breakfast and by the way, I slept really good. This is what I had for breakfast...vanilla yogurt, sliced banana, cornflakes, special K, cheerios and peanuts with a slice of toast spread with peanut butter and topped with more sliced banana, ta-da monkey breakfast. This was good and very filling, but not quite as good as the first time I fixed it.

 

 

As you know, today is Sunday and you may or may not know, today is usually when we do late lunch/early dinner at Mom's, so after breakfast I started getting ready to go. Today was not the day to miss. It was a beautiful, sunny day, it was warm outside, nearly 70 degrees and the grand babies were coming. Here's a couple of shots of the kids from today, which I played around with in Picasa, a great free program I use to organize and edit my photos.

Lexi who just took a big bite of the cake with cool whip, which she requested.

And Miss Mary being her adorable self

When we got to Mom's, Lindsay, Reese and the grand babies arrived at the same time. Lexi escorted me into the house, while telling me about a book she got at church. She was very excited about it and once inside ran to tell her Nana (Mom) about the book. I'm Mimi by the way, for those of you that don't know. While Lexi announced her presense and everyone said their howdy do's, I got my camera out and started getting photos of all the food or at least the food that was ready, which was everything but the barbecued chicken and teryaki rice and since those were not ready they were missed. Sorry. It's all or nothing with me, I guess.

 Fried Chicken

Roast beef and potatoes (some of today's shots were not too good.)

Stuffed Portabellas (I hope someone wrote down the recipe, lol)

Broccoli Casserole

Macaroni Salad

Mashed Potatoes

Salad - spinach, cucumber, lettuce, carrots and cheese

Cornbread

And for dessert there was chocolate cake with peanut butter icing sprinkled with crushed peanuts

And Apple Crisp

This is what I had.

I couldn't eat it all....had to save room for dessert, lol. I had a piece of the chocolate cake. I'm a sucker for peanut butter not to mention chocolate, unfortunately, I was running my mouth and I stuffed it in my face without thinking of getting a photo. Sorry, but it was goooood. 

I had a wonderful time today. I really enjoyed seeing everybody and spending time with the grand babies. It was so nice to go outside and sit in the swing with Mary and watch Lexi play in the yard. It was a good day.

Now my explanation of the title and the surprise.. No more waiting.....On the way over to Mom's we took a detour. We rode by a place called the Apple Baking Company. After seeing their sign, I just had to get a photo. It just struck me as the funniest thing. What do you think? Hope you get a kick out of it too.

More Sunday Dinners

Birthday Celebration Trip To Yoder's And Romano's
Black Bean Tortilla Bake
About Me And Lots Of Pie
The Singing Christmas Tree
Minestrone For the Birthday Girl

Jalapeno Jelly Reviews

It's Saturday. It doesn't feel like Saturday. It felt like another weekday. It sure is boring to write about the same things everyday. I know it must be even worse to read the same thing everyday. I really wish I had a more interesting life to share with you. Food is all I have at the moment and I am thankful to have it. I do try to make it interesting. It's not easy. I like trying to make  the photos look good too. I think the addition of color has helped.

I always wake up thinking about what I will eat and how I will make it look good. Sometimes I think about it in the middle of the night and by morning, I have it all figured out. I was laying in bed awake this morning thinking about breakfast, not really wanting to get up, but knowing it was necessary. The phone rang, that was my cue to get started, so I answered it and started putting breakfast together as I talked. Breakfast was easy, an energizing navel orange and vanilla yogurt with cereal, dried fruit and nuts. Breakfast was yummy and the orange was juicy and sweet.

Today's mix was:
fruit and fitness snack mix
Kix (corn) actually Aldi's brand
Special K (rice)
Cheerios (oats)

I think sometimes I would like to go somewhere were there is no phone and no dogs, some place peaceful and quiet, but I never sleep good in strange places so I wouldn't be any better off, it's a nice thought though.

It was a quiet, uneventful day, except for the occasional dog bark or loud vehicle drive by. Some days both are more frequent. For lunch, I chose nachos. I had pinto beans and a spoonful of brown rice with spinach and tomato. I topped some tortilla chips with the beans and rice, tomato sauce, because I didn't have any taco sauce, salsa, or canned tomatoes and I sprinkled them with taco seasoning and Mexican blend cheese. I stuck them in the microwave for about a minute and a half and then put some red and green bell pepper, butter lettuce, mushroom and onion on the side and topped my nachos with jalapeno slices and sour cream. Very sloppy, very filling, and very good. The tomato sauce was a great sub.

Later I had myself a jalapeno jelly taste comparison test. I have 3 different brands of jalapeno or hot pepper jelly (Reese, Stonewall Kitchen, & Mrs. Millers), some weight watchers cream cheese and Ritz crackers. I wanted to taste all three together to see the actually different. I had six actually, 3 off camera and 3 on.

 

Now for the results. And the winners are....

Hottest - Reese

Sweetest - Reese

Mildest - Mrs. Millers

Prettiest - Stonewall Kitchen

Preferred  - Stonewall Kitchen

Most Expensive - Stonewall Kitchen

My conclusion - I actually preferred the heat of the Reese, but it's also sweeter than I prefer. The Mrs. Millers and the Stonewall Kitchen are very similar with SK being slightly hotter. The Mrs. Millers has more green pepper pieces, but I think they must be bell pepper since they are mentioned in the ingredient list and the heat is absent. It will all be eaten eventually, of course the Stonewall will be the first to go. I will continue to search for the best. BTW the Weight Watcher's cream cheese was great. If it's not real, it doesn't matter, it's good. It also has a little less fat than the Neufchatel or reduce fat cream cheese.

Dinner was easy. I had onion rings with salad. 

Salad Ingredients

baby romaine

spinach

red bell pepper

green bell pepper

onion

mushrooms

pinto beans

sundried tomato vinaigrette

fresh cracked black pepper

 

I love onion rings, not the minced ones, the ones with the whole onion ring inside. For some reason, they are hard to find in grocery stores. Every now and then they have them at Aldi's. Most stores have the mince onion rings. They are too sweet for me. I want the real thing.

How did you like the pepper jelly review? Should I try to do more reviews? Any suggestions?

Dinner And A Movie

Another beautiful day. I tried to sleep in this morning, but it just wasn't happening. I had several puppies who just weren't going to hear of it. Some mornings I get up to let them out and they just look at me, like, "What do you want?" and then there are those days like today when they act as though they are going to die if I don't let them out the door. DH usually lets them out when he gets up around 5 or 6 am., so I know they don't need to go that badly, but there's no resting until I they go.

I got up and let them out and I tried to lay back down, but I couldn't go back to sleep. I had to figure out what I was having for breakfast. I had another half of an everything bagel that I needed to eat and no cream cheese, @%$#$! I eventually decided on an omelet. In the mean time I had a little cappuccino snack mix to get me going and tide me over while I fixed my breakfast.

My omelet was one egg, a splash of milk, spinach, and sundried tomato with salt and fresh ground pepper. I toasted my bagel, topped it with my omelet and sprinkled it with a little shredded tomato basil yogurt cheese. The cheese and the sundried tomatoes were from Yoder's. It wasn't very pretty to look at, but it was pretty dad-gum tasty.

I got to try out some of the Fiesta plates and bowls I got from Mom. Mom gave me some Cobalt blue, turquoise, plum, and yellow or sunflower (I'm not sure if they are the same). I looked on the manufacturer website to see what other colors they have. I really liked the tangerine, lemongrass, and peacock. They have more pieces than I realized, like the square plates, casserole dishes, glasses, and more.

For lunch today, I had my leftovers from O' Charley's. The teryaki sesame tilapia was awesome. I love the sweet spicy combo. I cooked the last of my fresh broccoli to go with it. I enjoyed every bite. The rice was the best part.

I went out and picked up a few things at the store this evening. Mainly it was a dog run. We can't have the puppies going hungry. I also picked up some cream cheese. I got the Weight Watcher's brand, that is real cream cheese, isn't it? It was the same size package, but cheaper, so I thought I'd try it out. I wish I'd remembered it at Aldi's. It's about 70 cent cheaper there.  I had a few peanut butter pretzels before we left.

 

When we got back we started planning dinner. I had more leftovers. The brown rice with spinach and tomatoes and orange and yellow carrots with green beans and red bell pepper. I'd eaten it with a thawed salmon patty earlier this week. I didn't feeling like having salmon with it again, so I decided to have some pinto beans. It was good, but again, the rice was the best part.

While I was having dinner, I decided to watch my chick flick, Nights In Rodanthe. It wasn't exactly what I had hoped for. I liked it, but I didn't "really like" it.  I'll just leave it at that, to avoid spoiling it for anyone else.



 How about some movie or meatless meal suggestions. What good movie have you seen recently and/or what's your favorite meatless meal? If you're interest in checking out some other movie's I've watched recently, check out this one and this one. Ok, that's it, I'm done. Come see me tomorrow.

Go Home Or Go Shopping

 I slept 5 hours straight. I know that doesn't sound like much, but it's something I haven't done in a very long time. On nights I considered good sleep, I would usually wake up every 2 to 3 hours. I considered it good because I was able to go back to sleep within 30 minutes. The longest I've slept was 4 hours without waking and I was usually exhausted, then when I did wake up I would either not be able to go back to sleep or I would sleep waking every 20 to 30 minutes until I gave up and got up. Five hours is wonderful. I even had a dream. I dreamed of eating chocolate cake. When I got up, after getting online, I found out today was chocolate cake day. How weird is that? I had no idea before that.

I got up early, let the dogs out, in and then I went back to bed and slept some more. It was nice. When I got up I had half an everything bagel from Panera's. I spread a thin layer of cream cheese across it, since I completely forgot to get any when I went to the grocery store and just had a little left in the frig, luckily it was enough to do the job.

I fiddled around the house for a little while doing the same things I normally do, then we got ready to head over to Mom's. She had some Fiestaware dishes she was willing to donate to the blog. I can't wait to try them out. I hope to find a few more odd and end pieces eventually in some other colors. I hadn't had lunch and I figured I would wait until I got back. I wasn't planning to be gone long.

When we got to Mom's she had other plans. She wanted us to go shopping with her and then grab something to eat out. It was a lovely day to be out. Do I say no, go home, eat leftovers, clean etc. or do I go shopping and eat something fresh that someone else cooks for me? Hmmm......Duh? You know what I did.

Lunch turned into early dinner. We went to O' Charley's, no more afternoon buffets for us. She and I did the 2 entrees for $14.99. I'm so glad we did. I chose the Teriyaki Sesame Tilapia, grilled whitefish with peppers, onions, mushrooms, and red pepper flakes in pineapple-sesame sauce served over rice. It was super yummy, the best thing I've eaten out in a while. It ranked right up there with Ruby Tuesday, which I love, love, love. I even had leftovers, score!

Sorry, but the bread gets the thumbs down. Too sweet.

My rare soft drink indulgence, Sierra Mist.

This looked so good, I had to get a bite before the picture.... not, I just about forgot, lol.

We also went to Starbucks afterward for a decaf peppermint latte. This was a previous shot, the one I got tonight was actually larger, not intentional. One day, I'm going back when I haven't just eaten and have myself a plain coffee and a pumpkin scone or maybe a gingerbread biscotti. Their stuff looks so good. It would be sad how big I'd be if I lived next to Starbucks and had unlimited funds. I'd also like to try their veggie, egg, and monterey jack artisan breakfast sandwich.

This wasn't all I ate today. I had a fig bar before posting the pictures and later more potato chips than I needed while I was finishing this up.

I didn't accomplish much at home today, but I had a good time and hopefully there's tomorrow for cleaning. It's not like the mess is going anywhere. I never did get any chocolate cake, did you? Cya tomorrow.