Follow Your Bliss

Monday, September 24, 2012

I've been cooking for 50 years. I'm so tired of all the recipes I've made again and again that I need to find new ones. Now that I am retired, I have the time to research recipes, and every once in a while I find a winner. The one that follows is easy to make and delicious. I think you could use any kind of meat.

Boneless pork chops are baked with a flavorful sauce, delicious with rice or potatoes.

Cook Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1/2 cup flour
2 teaspoons paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 pounds boneless pork chops
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
1/2 cup chopped celery
4 ounces sliced fresh mushrooms
2 cups milk
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preparation:

In a pie plate or wide, shallow bowl, combine 1/4 cup flour, paprika, salt and pepper. Lightly dredge chops in flour mixture. In a heavy skillet, melt butter or margarine over medium heat. Brown chops on both sides; transfer to a shallow baking dish. In the same skillet, sauté chopped onion, chopped bell pepper, and chopped celery until onion is tender; add mushrooms and continue cooking until onion lightly browns; add remaining 1/4 cup of flour, blending in well. Add milk slowly, stirring constantly, until sauce is thickened. Taste and season to taste; add lemon juice. Pour sauce over chops in baking pan. Cover with foil and bake at 350° for 1 hour.

Serves 4 to 6.

Hello, Fall

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Cool evenings = fun with friends

Mums

Coral Flower Carpet rose opening

New plants in the window boxes

Carding Mill

Carding Mill up close

Tamora

Late volunteer tomato nestled in the leeks

Pepper plants that are still going strong

Zepherine Drouhin that I gave up on a couple months ago, has put on 3 feet of growth in the last few weeks. I think it must have been too hot for her without an established root system to grow well this summer.

Pansies and gentian violet

All pink Pinky Winkies

Pyracantha berries are cheerfully orange!

-Jess

Quiet

Monday, September 10, 2012

This poor blog is probably going to be quieter (at least from me) over the next several months. Summer is ending and once I get a few cool weather annuals in I think I'll be happy to say goodbye to gardening maintenance for a few months. I had a pretty large landscaping project planned for this fall but I think there is just not enough time to do it justice right now and honestly, I am not up to it. It will have to wait until spring.

I did put in some fall veggies including broccoli, leeks, chard, spinach, bok choi and I think it is finally cool enough to go ahead with some lettuce seed. We've still been getting lots of peppers off the plants and our beans are finally finishing up. The kids are out there daily snapping them off the vines and crunching away on them as they run around and play. Ella is especially looking forward to fresh spinach and broccoli!

We are fully back in the swing of homeschooling again and all our activities are up and running now too. I've got a pretty hectic schedule due to our choice to participate in a myriad of activities for the kids. The killer is swim team practice four nights per week! I haven't even had a chance to sit down with either of those shirt patterns and cut out pieces and get to work. However, I helped my daughter and one of her friend make doll pillows with a (simple) pattern we found in Sewing School, so a little sewing has happened around here even if I wasn't the one doing much of the stitching!

All this is to say that my crockpot has been pressed into service and so far I've made one recipe that is really worth blogging about. I am not one to follow a recipe. I'll find something that looks good and easy to make I'll see if I have what I need on hand. If not, I change the recipe to work with what I've got. I used the Apple and Onion Beef Pot Roast recipe from the Fix It and Forget It cookbook as my inspiration.

Apple and Onion Beef Pot Roast

3 lbs. boneless beef roast

2 apples, cored and sliced

1 onion sliced

2 Tbls. of soy sauce

2 Tbls. Worcestershire sauce

1 cup of water

3 cloves of garlic chopped

1 tsp. sea salt

Directions: Brown the roast in a pan before putting into crockpot. Mix salt and chopped garlic into the water and sauces. Pour over roast. Layer on apple and onion slices on top. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours.

I served this with mashed potatoes - yum!

-Jess

Two Patterns

Sunday, August 26, 2012

I've got two patterns I've been itching to get out and try my hand at making. I am pretty sure both are above my skill level but not trying means I won't ever figure out how to sew well. I've got the Reader's Digest Book Of Sewing that has helped me quite a bit when I've been stuck while working on other small projects so I hope that will keep me going with these patterns.

The first I am going to try is the Sew Liberated Schoolhouse Tunic pattern. It has pleats (!!) and sleeves so will be more challenging than I've tried on my own before. I will probably make a mock up version in cheap muslin first to get a bit of wind in my sails before I cut nicer (expensive) fabric for the real deal. I found this tutorial on the blog, Don't Fear the Ripper, and let me tell you, I'll be using it!

I found another pattern I like really well, the Tova pattern by Wiksten. It is similar to the Schoolhouse Tunic but has a bit more structure. It is definitely an Intermediate level pattern which makes me nervous but we'll see how brave I feel after I've given the Sew Liberated pattern a whirl.

If I become totally flummoxed I may call my former sewing teacher in Ashburn at the NOVA Sewing Studio and see if she'll let me come and receive help for a few of the trickier parts of assembling the garments. Ella has made a few things from her children's sewing book, Sewing School, that we got during last school year and she loves to stitch while listening to me read aloud or while listening to audio books in her room. She's old enough now to attend classes so if we can carve out time in the old schedule maybe I'll look into going bi-weekly for lessons again.

-Jess

Gaudy

Friday, August 17, 2012

I find that I prefer really fluffy, ruffly, gaudy flowers. I find this puzzling because I am not typically a ruffly, fancy girl. My wardrobe is pretty sedate as I spent a good chunk of my adulthood in solid black during my years working as a hairstylist in a salon. It has taken me years to comfortably wear colored or print clothing and I still typically favor very neutral colors and classic styles. My home has some strong color but nothing is particularly fancy or "shabby chic" or anything along those lines.

So why do I like such outrageously gaudy flowers? I love roses, puffy phlox, hydrangeas, peonies and dahlias. I love zinnias and petunias and verbena. I always plant geraniums, euphorbia and sweet potato vine that creeps everywhere. I adore larkspur, double hollyhocks and showy daylilies. I could keep going but you get the idea.

I've been planning for two new beds that we will be putting in and planting this fall. One will have a crape myrtle as the anchor and then have a mix of peonies and roses. I've been pleasantly surprised at how much I really like the single blooms on Coral Flower Carpet roses, so I will be sticking with those. I am most certainly going with Coral Sunset peonies because they are pretty and apparently have strong stems to hold up the flower heads. I am trying to focus on structure over blooms and it is very hard for me. I need to find some solid evergreen plants to anchor the beds. Maybe I should explore ornamental grasses a bit more. I'm not really sure at this point, I just know that I need to continue to think and plan and consider plants that I wouldn't typically be drawn to.

Suggestions are appreciated!

-Jess

Bœuf Bourguignon

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

This recipe is easy to make and tastes oh, so good.

Ingredients:

1/4 lb mushrooms, sliced 

6 small pearl onions cut into fourths 

3 Tbs butter 

1/4 lb bacon, diced 

1 lb Top Sirloin steak, cut into 1" cubes

1 Tbs flour 

1/2 cup Burgundy wine 

3/4 cup beef broth 

1 bay leaf 

2 cloves garlic, minced 

1/2 tsp ground thyme 

1 1/2 cups carrots, diagonally sliced Salt Pepper hot buttered noodles 

1 1/2 Tbs parsley chopped

1. In a large skillet, sauté mushrooms and onions in hot butter until golden brown.

2. Remove from skillet and set aside.

3. Add bacon to skillet and fry until crisp; remove with a slotted spoon and reserve.

4. Add Top Sirloin steak to skillet and fry in bacon fat, stirring frequently, until well browned.

5. Return mushroom and onion mixture to skillet and add flour; toss until flour disappears.

6. Add wine, beef broth, bay leaf, garlic and thyme.

7. Simmer, covered, for 30 minutes, stirring frequently.

8. Add carrots and cooked bacon, and cook covered, for 15 minutes longer.

9. Season with salt and pepper.

10. Before serving, remove bay leaf.

11. Serve over hot buttered noodles. Sprinkle with parsley.

--Lissie

August Garden

Sunday, August 12, 2012

As always, the garden is starting to look tired due to the heat, and frankly I am also getting rather tired of going out in the blazing sun to care for it. I've been watering, pinching back here and there but for the most part we've definitely entered the wild and wooly days of late summer. The catmint and agastache are desperate to be cut back hard and my Westerland roses are out of control. It is going to take a ladder at this point to prune and when I get around to it in late September, I am going to prune them back significantly.

There are a few plants that are still putting on a pretty good show and they are always troopers for me.

Sedum, it is just coming into its own right now.

Blushing Bride Hydrangea, I prefer the soft blue so I keep it more acidic. The contrast between the blooms that are drying out and those that are newly blooming is very pretty.

Gold Flame Honeysuckle. This is my last year for her to live in my garden as she needs more sun and room to grow well. She's going to my neighbor's house in October but right now she's very lovely and sweet with some pretty blossoms.

Thank goodness for crape myrtles. I know they are probably as ubiquitous as Knock Out roses but they are so reliable for being pretty in late summer. I have all Natchez as I thought white blooms on the trees would be a better neutral backdrop longterm.

Blue Chip Dwarf Buddleia. This has been a big surprise for me this year. Last year I planted them and they did OK but this year has been amazing. They required just a tiny bit of pruning in May and they have pumped out pretty purple blooms all summer long with zero maintenance other than being on the drip system. The hummingbirds, bees, butterflies have loved them and my kids have been fascinated getting a view of all the critters at their eye level. I got these from Lazy S Farm, they ship plants about as perfectly as one can and they were $9 per quart which is much cheaper than I've seen them anywhere else. They grow so fast that it doesn't matter if you start with a quart sized in April.

We have small kids so these pots, which I love, block off a long fall down the cement stairs to the basement. The coleus, lemongrass and sweet potato vine all love the heat.

Very pretty purple shade for the drying Blushing Bride blooms.

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