Abby Leigh, your daily dose of cuteness…

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It’s Easter, I cook, it’s what I do…

I was talking to my friend, Trish, this morning.  She’s a talented lady, but she doesn’t cook a lot and she doesn’t understand why I do what I do.  I’ve always cooked, my mother cooked, my aunts, my grandmothers, it’s totally ingrained into me.  I don’t do as much as I once did, John and Deanna are coming this afternoon, we’ll eat out this evening, and tomorrow, so all I’ll cook is Easter brunch, but I did make dessert.

John’s favorite is Robert Redford, aka Better Than Sex, aka Lemon Lush.  I’ve made it for years, and he always wants it in the spring.  I asked Deanna what she wanted, and she wanted coconut cake.  So I tried Ina Garten’s recipe.  I love the Barefoot Contessa, and this cake turned out great, so I bet it’s a keeper.

When I was frosting this cake this morning, I pulled out my cake spatula, and had another one of those reality checks.  I’ve frosted cakes with this spatula for forty years now.  Forty years!  And  the Cuisinart that I used, I’ve had since 1978!  Those of you who know me, know that I have every kitchen gadget known to man woman.  Some day my family will have a lot of gadgets to sift through, a lot of memories attached to them, also.  But since I come from a family of cooks, I’m sure the traditions will live on.  It’s a warm fuzzy thought on this gorgeous sunny day.

And Sunday brunch?  It’s going to be an adapted recipe of my friend Linda’s recipe from Eating Well, Living Thin, Crustless Asparagus Quiche, Stuffed Banana French Toast from the Neely’s on FoodTV, fresh fruit, strawberries and pineapple, and for John, Orange Julius’s.  Yep, it’s the same recipe that they’ve served at the mall all of these years.

I was also thinking about the younger women who read this blog, and I will give you a few suggestions.  This old cook has been around the block many times, and I’ve picked up a few good tips.

• Clean out your dishwasher before you start cooking.  It’s a lot more fun to cook in a clean kitchen, as soon as you use something put it in the dishwasher.  Keeps you sane.
• Always work in the sink, the counters stay uncluttered and cleanup is a snap.
• Put things away as soon as you use them.  Don’t leave that flour sitting out, put up that vanilla.  When you’re finished and tired, you won’t have a big mess.
• Enjoy what you’re doing, put on some great music, take your time, it’s not a race, set the timer when you’re baking, make notes, double check your ingredients before you start.  Have fun with it.
• Invest in good equipment.  It’s the best advice I could ever give anyone.  If you’re going to cook, it’s worth the money to have nice things to use.  You can pick up great quality pans and bakeware at Marshall’s, TJ Maxx and Tuesday Morning.  I shop these stores regularly, you never know what jewel you will find tucked away and for a lot less money than kitchen stores.

And now about those recipes.  Here they are, enjoy   ~ jan

Ina Garten’s Coconut Cake>>>

Robert Redford Dessert/Better than Sex/Lemon Lush>>>
Note:  I make this in a 8x12 pan, because I like a thicker filling.  I also squeeze half of a lemon into the pudding/milk mixture and grate lemon zest on top.  Add extra pecans, too – you can never have too many nuts!

Crustless Asparagus Quiche>>>
Note:  I changed this just a bit.  I cook my bacon, then saute green onions, mushrooms and red peppers in the drippings, drain really well, blot with paper towel.  I don’t use nutmeg or onion powder or veggie bacon, I use real bacon, and I bake this in a large Au Gratin dish.  Oh, I top this with quite a bit of parmesan cheese, maybe 1/3 cup or so,  before it goes into the oven.   It’s a great recipe!  And so easy!

Stuffed Banana French Toast>>>

Orange Julius

* 6 oz. frozen orange juice concentrate, use it right out of the can
* 1 cup milk
* 1 cup water
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1 tsp. vanilla extract
* 8-9 ice cubes

1. Combine all ingredients except ice cubes in blender.
2. Blend for about 1-2 minutes, adding ice cubes one at a time.

This really made me sad…

I'm not one to live in the past, I'm pretty upbeat most of the time, and move forward with my life without a lot of hassles.

In the video I posted yesterday, the lady was talking about grieving for what you used to be, and wouldn't you know, something happened just after I watched that video that gave me a total reality check!

I haven't had hair long enough to pull back for years, but it is now, and I was working in the garden and needed a clip to hold it back. I told hubby that I had saved all my hair stuff, it was on the top shelf of my closet. Of course he had to go through every single box, I thought they weren't there, but tucked into the corner were three Victoria Secret boxes stacked on top of each other, I opened them,   and there they were, all the cute hair "thingies" that I used to wear.  Here is one of the boxes, they were all filled with things I had long forgotten.

It was a sudden rush of memories, to those so called glory years that we’ve all had, and will never have again. All the cute hair stuff that I had then, but could never wear now. Well, first of all nobody wears any kind of scrungie anymore, but even if they did, a sixty year old woman would look pretty silly in most of this stuff. Can’t you just see me in a leather barrette or a leopard scrungie?

I think I have a few boxes of my clothes from my past stored away, but you can darn betcha I'm not going to be looking in those boxes any time soon. I could have just sat and cried! Don't know why it hit me like that, I guess it was that woman talking about grieving for the past. I don't care what anybody says, how enriched our lives are now that we're older, how much smarter we are, blah, blah, blah - looking in the mirror and getting older is a real bitch!

From the Today Show this morning….

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What’s cookin’ at Ryan & Lindsay’s house…

Daddy cooked Abby’s first meal today.  Was it a hit?  Ummmmm, not so much.  It will be interesting to see what kind of food he will cook for her. 

Ryan loves to cook, he’s totally passionate about food, so no doubt, when she’s old enough, bebe Abby will be introduced to all kinds of food flavored wih herbs and spices. 

Wonder how that will work out?

I found a recipe for him today, salmon (Lindsay’s favorite, by the way) steamed in the Babycook with new potatoes and asparagus, then pureed.  She’s not old enough for this yet, but it won’t be long…

It will be an adventure, feeding this child.  I’ll keep you posted…

It’s finally getting green in Heavensville

I’ve harvested a couple of crops of chives, perennials are poking their heads through the ground, Mollie basked in the sun on the patio this afternoon, and then I caught her eating something gawdawful, who knows what it was.  She always eats bugs and dirt, Maggie never does that, but Mollie doesn’t have a discriminating palate.

I feel like I’m emerging from a cocoon, I was at Burdette this morning, watching the ducks, visited with Trisher and baby Hayden.  Even new babes remind me of springtime.

I have clusters of finches on my feeders, saw my first red winged blackbird of the season, life is good here…

Hooterville sent me the best critter cam, you need to check this out.  We saw a groundhog on here yesterday, he fell in the water, climbed out and kept right on eating. Keep a window open, check it thru the day, you will be surprised at what you see.  Sometimes the guy that set it up will be on here live, responding to people asking questions, it’s really interesting if you’re a nature lover.

Here’s the cam>>> 

Ang and I have so far resisted making Pioneer Woman’s Murphy’s Hot Hamburgers.  Oh my, this is white trash food at it’s finest, and both of us just think it sounds diner perfect.  I ran it past Ry, he wasn’t a fan, but his momma sure would like this.

How bad for you can this be – oh, just horrendous, so I haven’t made it, but I will, you know I will.

You want the recipe, sure you do.  If anybody gives this a try, would you please fess up and tell me about it.

Here’s the recipe with step-by-step how to, enjoy ladies…>>>

~ jan

let the good times roll…

Families are a wonderful thing….

Uncle John and Abby are best buddies.  Ryan and Lindsay are in Nashville this week, John sent me this picture tonight, I just had to share…

It’s cold, it’s warm, it’s March…

We’ve had a tease for the past few days.  I planted onions and chives, then today it was 40 degrees.

So I just switched gears, went out and picked up goodies for Miss Abby’s easter basket.  Oh how much fun this is, I remember last year, wondering what this grandchild was going to be. 

It’s so much fun having a little one again.  I’ve never experienced buying girl stuff, so I’m really enjoying this.  Okay, I’ll share, one of the things I bought her were flip-flops.  I did, pink flip-flops.  Can you imagine that,  for a six month old.   She may never wear them for more than a picture, but won’t she be the cutest thing with them on her feet.

Spring Cleaning

My mother was big on spring cleaning.  Turn the mattresses, drag the braided area rugs out to the clothesline and beat them with some kind of ancient wire rug beater contraption, air the feather pillows, wash windows with vinegar, dry with crumpled newspapers, wash the curtains, starch and iron them, to name just a few things.  The woman would get wound up and there was no stopping her.  No wonder I’ve never been a fan.

Hubby has built several homes over the years, so that was always a great solution to spring cleaning, just move to a new house.  But now that we’ve settled into the condo, it’s been seven years now, and it’s pretty easy breezy to take care of, except for the grout in my stone floors.  There’s always “something” to make life a bitch, isn’t there?  And those floors that I just had to have because they were made of tumbled limestone with uneven edges and wide grout that looked so wonderful when they were installed have turned into a nightmare.  Not everywhere, just in the kitchen and the utility room where they get a lot of traffic.  Oh, and under my computer desk in the sunroom.  You can imagine how they look underneath where I live my life most days.

The grout is almond color, so that makes the upkeep harder, and it was sealed a couple of times when it was installed, but over the years those areas have turned darker, and because the edges are uneven, we have much wider grout lines than regular installed tile, and it’s a royal pain in the patootie.  The solution has been for poor LC to get down on his hands and knees with some nasty smelling caustic cleaner and scrub it with a brush.  Not a fun job, trust me.

We’ve been watching infomercials about steam cleaners, my cleaning lady, Krista, bought one to try, but it was flimsy, and didn’t work that well, so she returned it.  So I started Googling, found out a lot about them, people prefer the canister cleaners to the mop ones, and say that the hand held ones don’t work that well, so we bought a highly rated, McCulloch MC-1275 from Amazon last week.  And that’s another story, that Amazon, aren’t they they awesome?  I buy things from them, and have them in two days, free shipping, no schlepping through the stores, and the best prices anywhere! I’m a bonified Amazon groupie, as I imagine many of you are, too.

But back to my story.  The cleaner arrives, hubby fires it up this morning, it has a long handle, no stooping over, a scrub brush on the end, it runs for up to 30 minutes before you have to refill the tank, and let me tell you, this thing will rock your world!  OMG, the dark tile turned immediately back to almond, with practically no effort.  None!!!  All you do is stand there and hold the thing and it does the work.  Wow, the possibilities are endless.  It will blast dirt from the corners of your woodwork that you can’t get to, I’m going to clean my stainless faucet with it, I’m absolutely estatic.  Of course he’s the one using the thing, so that makes me even happier! ;0)

Sad, isn’t it, that at this age all you get worked up about is a steam cleaner…. 

But if you want to part with $100, give it a try, you will be so impressed.  It’s not that expensive, and it’s is a goodie!  Definitely money well spent, pinkie swear.

~ Jan

I’ve got a great recipe for you….

My mother loved anything sweet, and she was always baking a cake, angel food, german chocolate, coconut, banana, there was always a cake in her big white tupperware container.  And in the 60’s when bundt pans came along, she took it to a new level.  Oh, she loved that bundt pan.  It was harvest gold, teflon coated, and she thought that thing was awesome.

And one of the best recipes to come out of her kitchen using that bundt pan was her Lemon Supreme Pound Cake.  It was so good, and the longer it aged, the better it was.  Lindsay loves anything lemon, so I decided to make one for her to see if she liked it, too.  I Googled recipes for it online to compare with the one she always used, found an updated version, using more lemon juice, powdered milk, more eggs, and I gave it a try.  It was even better than mom’s. *GASP*  It really was, the extra lemon juice and the powdered milk gave it great texture and taste, and I grated lemon zest on top of the icing, so it was really puckery with lemon infused flavor.  Linds loved it, of course I loved it, LC thought it was good, but just a bit too much lemon for his taste.

I posted the recipe on Jan CAN Cook.  Check it out, and if you want a great spring cake, this is the recipe for you.  Make it a day ahead, it’s better when it ages.  And that Tupperware cake container, well I used a covered glass cake stand for mine, after all, it isn’t just mom’s cake anymore, and that cake stand was so much prettier than the Tupperware….

Doesn’t this make you smile???

Yeah, I bought her the hat.  No, she would never actually wear it, but it sure is cute for a picture…. Nothing like playing dress-up with your sweet little grandchild…

Abby is five months old now, isn’t she just precious…

Grandpa and Grammie are enjoying her so much, and oh, how she's changed in a month. She's curious about everything, watches the M&M's, sits really still and watches you intently when you read her a book, and wants to stand on those little legs all the time. We were watching cartoons on YouTube earlier today, oh she liked that a lot, too!  I know, all of you grandmother's are nodding and understanding.

I'm new at this, and I try not to gush, but she's just SO adorable!

Guess who's coming to dinner?

Just another night in paradise in Heavensville…

Me:  “I’ seem to be doing a lot better with my hot flashes.”

Hubby:  “Really?”

Me:  ‘Yeah, I don’t rip off my nightgown and throw it across the room anymore in the middle of the night, haven’t you noticed?”

Hubby: (after a lengthy pause) “Congratulations, you’re officially an old woman, now.”

I then whacked the old fart over the head with a pillow as hard as I could. 

Men Schmen!!!

Spring is coming…

The winter wheat is greening in the fields, the birds are singing, I’ve got my spring flowers in the living room, the Easter decorations are out, the M&M’s are sporting pink and purple bows in their ponies, and my cold is slowly getting better.

If you don’t frequent my Jan CAN Cook blog, I’ve posted quite a few new recipes to that site.  You might want to check it out, see if there is something that interests you. I just bet there is.

Think green. ladies!!!
~ jan

The good, the bad and a rant about Food Network

I’ve got a head cold.  LC came home from work sick, and I didn’t dodge the bullet this time.  I’ve been pretty miserable, but there is something positive that’s come from it all, so I’ve got to share it with you.

Earlier in the week I started having sinus headaches, really bad ones, nonstop and the further into the week I got, the more they intensified.  I was taking all kinds of OTC meds, trying to make it better, and all it was accomplishing was giving me a cotton mouth and making my skin crawl. 

By Wednesday I was getting desperate, and decided to put on my big girl panties and use the sinus irrigation that I’ve been talking about.  Hubby was using it, yeah, he bellyached about it at first, sputtered and coughed, but if he could do it, surely I could.

So I sucked it up, literally, and took the plunge.  And you know what, hubby must be a real wuss, because I didn’t think it was bad at all.  If you hold your head over the sink, open your mouth, and exhale when you squirt the solution in your nose, it’s not a biggie at all.  I used it Wednesday morning, it helped a little bit, but not much, but I tried it again Wednesday night.

I woke up Thursday morning, feeling gawdawful and thinking “well this is obviously a bunch of hooey, this isn’t working at all.”  So I dragged myself out of bed, went online and started reading about sinus irrigation.  I read several posts that told me that you had to use it repeatedly for it to work, if you were having severe symptoms, use it 4-6 times a day.  It’s not addictive, it doesn’t irritate your membranes, people have done this for a thousand years, and people swear by it.

Okay, I could do this, I decided to do it every two hours.  I started using it at 9am, and my headache at that point was a solid 10, it hurt that bad, but by 3pm, using that NeilMad bottle of saline solution every two hours, the headache was down to a 6, and I was starting to drain.  I know, it’s a lot of info, but necessary.

By the time I went to bed Thursday night, I had no headache, and was able to sleep.  The only medicine I had taken was two Excedrin early in the morning, too.  I continue to use it, probably about 4 times a day now, and even though I feel horrible, I have no headache and my head isn’t congested, it’s sore, but I can breathe and I’m pain free.  So bottom line is this – if you’re sick, this isn’t going to cure you, but it sure does make your symptoms much better, and you don’t have to fill your body full of synthetic medicine in an attempt to breathe normally and decongest.

Will I use it again?  You betcha I will, I’ll use it daily.  Especially with spring coming, this will flush all the pollen out of my nose.  So, if you have problems with sinus, run, don’t walk to your nearest drugstore and buy this!  It’s awesome, pinky swear… ~ jan

Okay, enough of that, now I’m gonna bitch about the Food Network.  Ryan and I discuss this all the time, how good it used to be, and how bad it is now.  I was watching Paula Deen just now, O-M-G, they’ve tried to turn her into a sex siren, and it just doesn’t work.  She’s got on the big wigs, she’s throwing all kinds of sexual innuendoes to her younger male guests, and she looks absolutely silly.  And then they trot out her long suffering hubby, Michael, who looks like he would rather be having a tooth pulled than be on that show, and she’s coming on to him, and he’s so uncomfortable he can barely talk.  Sheesh!!!!  I saw a rerun this week of one of her earlier shows, she was still annoying as hell, but she was at least acting her age…

And then there is Rachel Ray, who is also annoying beyond belief, and ever since the tabloids were full of her husband’s infidelities, they’re doing major damage contorl and have  had her talk about him nonstop, like he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, trying to convince all of us what a great husband he is.  She used to talk about her pitbull, Izzy, too, but ever since he bit off another dog’s ear in the dog park, she hasn’t mentioned him.

And The Neelys.  Oh, baby, baby, baby, they make me just want to barf!  That man is no more of a cook than any other ordinary guy, he’s just trotting around in that kitchen, kissing up to her and thinking about all the money they’re raking in.  Well, they better save what they make, because I just don’t see them going on to greater things.

Oh, I can’t leave out Giada De Laurentis out of this either.  The way she rolls her tongue around all the italian phrases just annoys the beejusus out of me.  That girl is such a pain, and I’ve seen her talk down to her mother and her aunt on that show, too.  She is so full of herself, I can’t stand to watch her.

Sandra Lee, meh, she’s cute, she’s entertaining, colorful, I can handle her. Not my favorite, but she’s done a lot with what she has to work with.

But I saved the best to last, and it’s not even a rant.  I love the Barefoot Contessa, I adore this woman, she’s the only one on that is a true cook, in my opinion.  Sure, she talks about her husband, too, but they’ve been married for forty years, so I think she’s entitled.  Ina Garten, you’re a rock star, keep up the good work…

And that’s it from here today. I’m going to take my blankie and go back to bed now.  Later ‘gators…

Spring???

I told hubby yesterday that I might get some radish seeds and plant on the patio in my stone planters.  His reply was, “Isn’t it too early?”

And I told him that Mother used to throw radish seeds in the garden on top of the snow.  Well, guess what, it snowed last night!

So do I, or don’t I plant those seeds?  Somehow I’m just not quite in the mood was much today as I was yesterday.    I think  I’m just rushing the season.  Will it really be warm in just a few weeks?  It seems so unlikely this morning, with snow on the ground, but it is almost March.  So here’s to hopin’…

Now let’s see, what kind of radishes do I want to plant?  French?  Icicle?  So many decisions on such a winter’s day…

It’s Deanna’s birthday…

She’s a ruffles girl, loves everything girly, so I got her this funky apron.  She loved it, took a picture right away and sent it to me.  She had a great day, John made her Perfectly Perfect Chocolate Cake from Jan Can Cook archives.  Ohhhh, lucky girl, that cake is killer!!!

Happy Birthday, sweet girl.  You’re positively adorable!!!