Pardon My Therapy

 

Two posts in one day? I don't think I've ever done that but this is mainly a blatant attempt not to let some of my October 2024 pictures go to waste. Food pictures, at least. I'll forget about all the garden pictures I took this summer and fall.

Apologetically, I admit it is also an attempt to make time for the creative outlet of blogging. I don't have time to blog because I am so slow at just doing the basics of living these days but I think I really need to create something other than trying to check off my to do list and scribbling away at night on six books that will never be published.

And so, as self-help therapy, here is an October breakfast.

Scrambled eggs with fresh dill from my kitchen porch, cheese grits with jalapeño from the porch pots and lime juice, toasted cream biscuits made two days before--I had extra cream left in the fridge and tried this recipe for the first time. My son said they were almost like a cookie--our son in the first picture with his two darling daughters at a Daddy-Daughter Dance. Won't be replacing my buttermilk biscuit recipe but they were interesting.

Beer-braised Roast Beef from an old Bon Appetit recipe, found here at an old post at my other blog. at https://dewenaswindow.blogspot.com/2020/02/a-perfect-day-for.html. 

There was homemade mashed potatoes, for once not microwave ones, and broccoli Julia Child, Vol. 1. Basically reducing lemon juice till thickened then whisking in butter a tablespoon at a time, S & P. 

Leftover meat and gravy from this roast makes the very best vegetable-beef soup.

And there was the Chicken Tetrazzini I made one day.

Served on my wedding china for our 63rd anniversary. I've made hundreds of this casserole over the decades and it's a family favorite with two of our sons. I even used cream this time but RH and I finished our meal and decided to call our firstborn and see if he wanted the rest of it. He came and got it and they declared it wonderful. This is the story of so many of our old favorite meals; we just don't like them anymore. The sad thing about this is that with no leftovers I had to cook again the next night. 

There was Guinness extra stout in the roast beef and also in the dessert for this meal--brownies! Very good recipe from Yankee magazine but I couldn't find a link. 

 

And then there was this delicious Spice Applesauce Cake with Brown Sugar Frosting in one of my Lee Bailey cookbooks. RH took some of it to his brother and we gave more to our son and this was left for us. We had a slice every night until the last crumb was gone. 

In Alexandra Stoddard's The Art of the Possible she talks about Dr. Richard Totman's idea of a "blocked action." Stoddard says "whenever we become stuck...an overwhelming sense of hopelessness takes over. When we are unable to initiate and carry through activities that express our aliveness, it causes stress. This stress then upsets our chemical balance, weakening the immune system. It is not how much life stress we have, but how we manage it that determines our health."

Something to think about as part of my therapy.

Tiny Toys

 

Tiny toys. How I treasure them. 

This vintage (?) Jack-o'- lantern stole my heart and I cried when RH accidentally knocked him off and broke one leg. Now he sits in a safer place above my kitchen sink and after Halloween is over moves to a dresser in my bedroom, year round.

Can you spot BreeBree outside the window just above Jack? The dachshund salt and pepper shakers were a gift from Court years ago, more tiny treasures.

Here's two more tiny toys that live in my kitchen year round.

I don't know why I love them so much. 

I know the Good Book says to put away childish things when you become a man, but after all, I'm a woman. 

A woman who loves tiny toys. Maybe because I never had a dollhouse? 

Happy Halloween! to anyone who happens to drop in on my practically abandoned Across the Way.

Dracula wishes you a Happy Halloween and says you're the treat to his trick!

(And he was in my Halloween card from daughter Christy years ago. I save everything.)