Buttermilk-Lime Tea Bread

I bought a quart of buttermilk to make a Buttermilk Pie.  Fortunately I had the occasion to make 2 Buttermilk Pies but still had two cups of buttermilk left.  I went searching for recipes and found this one on the Pillsbury site since I was there for another reason which I'll mention later.

When I was ready to do this post I googled for the recipe and found the exact same recipe on the Betty Crocker site with the exact same picture (the pic below is mine).  What do you know, General Mills is the parent company of everything out there - Gold Medal, Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, Bisquick.  I guess it doesn't matter to them what you use, they get all the money anyway.  Didn't this used to be called a monopoly?

Buttermilk-Lime Tea Bread

Filled with refreshing citrus flavor, this quick bread made with flour, buttermilk and egg is an all time favorite! 

Prep Time: 15 Min
Total Time: 1 Hr 15 Min
Makes: 1 loaf (16 slices

INGREDIENTS:

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 teaspoons grated lime peel

3 tablespoons lime juice

1 tablespoon sugar

DIRECTIONS:

• Heat oven to 350°F (325°F for dark or nonstick pan). Grease bottom and sides of 8x4- or 9x5-inch loaf pan with shortening or spray with cooking spray; lightly flour.
• In medium bowl, mix flour, 3/4 cup sugar, the baking powder and salt; set aside.
• In another medium bowl, stir egg, buttermilk, oil, lime peel and 1 tablespoon of the lime juice with spoon until well blended. Add buttermilk mixture to flour mixture and stir just until moistened (some lumps will remain). Spread in pan.
• Bake 50 to 60 minutes or until golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Meanwhile, in small bowl, mix remaining 2 tablespoons lime juice and 1 tablespoon sugar.
• Brush lime juice mixture over top of warm bread. Cool in pan on cooling rack 10 minutes; remove bread from pan to cooling rack. Cool completely, about 1 hour. When completely cool, wrap in plastic wrap. Bread is best served the next day.

 Here is the Pillsbury link:  Pillsbury

and this is the Betty Crocker one:  Betty Crocker

Baked Honey-Mustard Chicken Bites

We went to Kim's on Thursday for the Boudens Christmas.  Everyone brought something to eat and it was my favorite kind of meal.  Appetizers and desserts and we had plenty of both.  Andy made an amazing peanut butter pie, the highlight of the night.
I made something that I knew I could eat and this could be my favorite thing to make for awhile.  I found the recipe on the Weight Watchers website and not only does it look good, it tastes good.

Baked Honey-Mustard Chicken Bites

Prep time: 10 min Cook time: 20 min
Serves: 24

Just dunk and pop them into your mouth. Go sweet with our honey mustard dip or make it spicy by adding hot red pepper sauce.

Ingredients:
8 oz refrigerated bread stick dough
1 pound(s) uncooked boneless, skinless chicken thigh(s), cut into 24 equal-size pieces
1/4 cup(s) honey mustard,

Dipping Sauce:
3 Tbsp honey mustard
1 1/2 tsp low-sodium soy sauce
2 tsp chives, fresh, minced

Preheat oven to 375oF. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Unroll dough and cut it into 24 strips; place strips horizontally in front of you. Top each strip with a piece of chicken and brush chicken with some mustard; roll dough around chicken (chicken will stick out on the ends).
Place chicken bites on prepared baking sheet. Bake until dough is golden brown and chicken is cooked through, about 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes before serving.
Meanwhile, combine mustard and soy sauce in a small bowl; sprinkle with chives. Yields 1 chicken bite per serving.

Movie Date

We're on our way to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo!

Decorations

We put out tree up and did a red and white theme this year.  In the past we;ve done white and silver or green and red but this year we decided to change it.  I went out shopping and Larry did a great job on the tree all by himself without my supervision or criticism :)

This is the wreath we use no matter what the theme although we may change the bow.

Hockey Quilts

When Hunter called before Thanksgiving to ask me to make hockey quilts for all the boys I quickly said yes.  Of course, I never made a quilt before and where was I going to get fabric with hockey images.  As it turns out, there were very few fabrics with hockey motifs and they all had to be ordered online.  And how fast would I be able to make three quilts?  I did find a video on YouTube for making a quilt in a couple of hours.  When I spoke to Greta a week or so later I blamed her for telling Hunter to call me, but then she reminded me that I didn't have to agree to do it.  She was right, but how could I say no.

Then, when I was on Shutterfly to order Christmas cards I saw that I could order photo blankets.  Of course, then I had to get hockey photos.  I looked online but I wasn't able to get any pictures that would be of a high enough resolution to be used for the blankets.  I knew Laura was going to Greta's for Thanksgiving so I asked her to take some pictures of the kids ice skating.  Then when I was talking to Greta, she said she had pictures of the boys playing hockey.

I don't remember what took me to the Walmart site, but they had the fleece blankets too but they allowed for a lot more pictures.  I went over to the store to see if they had one in there so I could feel what they were like.  They did have one hanging up, pretty high, so I couldn't feel it but the picture quality was real good.  Later, when I was at Target I took pictures of hockey equipment (I don't know why I didn't think of it while I was at Walmart) - a skate, glove, stick and a net (I took a picture of the picture on the box).

I ordered the quilts and they came quicker than expected.  Good thing too, because I had to return the one I did for Hunter because it had a bunch of flaws.  No questions asked, quick return at the store where my account was credited and then I ordered a new one.  The workmanship was a little sloppy but because the return process was easy I would say that it was a good deal for the price and the boys seemed happy with their blankets.  The pictures below are from the website, not the actual quilt.  The actual quilt wasn't as square or even.

 

Myles's Blanket

 

Hunter's Blanket

Tucker's Blanket

Funny Smells GONE!!

On the Friday before Christmas, just when we were ready to leave to go to Greta's I noticed an awful smell in the basement. It was like a bad sewage smell. If we still had a dog we would have thought she might have had an accident. We didn't know if the toilets were causing the problem or if it was something from outside so we just shut off the water to the house and left. 

I had forgetten all about it until we came home yesterday and Larry mentioned that he still smelled it when he went down to turn the water on but he used some nice smelling glade spray to mask it. 
I woke up early this morning and could smell it again and later on in the morning it smelled more like H2S - hydrogen sulfide (rotten eggs).  When I googled to find the cause for that I saw that it could be a gas leak, but our carbon monoxide detectors weren't sensing anything.  We did have some work done on our furnace about a month ago and thought maybe there was something going on with that so we called our furnace company.  They sent the same guy out who did the repair and he checked out everything and couldn't find a problem.  He did notice that Larry had a marine battery charging and thought that maybe that could be the problem.  Larry had been charging it for about a week, since he's getting like me and forgetting about things.  He disconnected it and moved it out to the garage and we are no longer having ANY smell.  It turns out that batteries have sulfur in them.

Merry Christmas

• ˚ ˚★Merry★* 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ •
• 。★Christmas★ 。* 。
° 。 ° ˛˚˛ * _Π_____*。*˚
˚ ˛ •˛•˚ */______/~＼。˚ ˚ ˛
˚ ˛ •˛• ˚ ｜ 田田 ｜門｜ ˚And a Happy New Year !!
...♥*•♪♫•*¨* ℒℴvℯ ॐ Light *¨*•♪ Joy to all! ♫•*¨* Peace on Earth ♪♫•*¨*

Need to wrap

Webster Park

We took a hike in Webster Park today and hiked the trail that we normally use for Cross Country skiing.  We hope that some of the downed trees and limbs will be removed before we have some snow, otherwise we'll need a big base so that we can get over some of them, especially this first one.

 I love these shadow pictures.  Love looking so tall and skinny!

 Lots of boy scouts were out camping.

Trail Mix

Wegmans has a trail mix bar now in the bulk food section and it gave me the urge to make some trail mix.  What a mistake!  It is so good it is hard to stop eating it and these pictures look good enough to eat.  I didn't use the trail mix bar, I just selected each ingredient and weighed it separately.  The next time I went to make trail mix, yes, I did it again, I weighed all the bags at the price of the trail mix bar $5.99/lb and had about a $1.00/lb savings.

 Dried Apricots

Craisins

Dates

Dried Strawberries

Sunflower seeds

Almonds

Raisins

Christmas M&Ms - peanut and plain

Pistachio mix (pistachios, almonds and cashews)

The almost finished mix until I decided to add some cereal and pretzels

Kashi Cereal

Pretzels

The mix with pretzels and cereal

NOTE:  After a couple of days the pretzels got soggy so I had to remove them.  I like the flavor of the crispy and salty so next time I would just add some before serving.

YIKES - my screen is huge!!!

If the screen on your mac has a window that got so big you can't tell what it is and you can't close it or make it smaller, someone may have accidently hit the keys that do this.
Try the following:

Hold down the "control" key and scroll with your mouse.  If you go down, it will become smaller, up makes it larger.

It's also a helpful tool if you need to see things larger than the standard size of the desktop.

Joy's Cranberry Bread from Audrey

I got this recipe from Audrey after I had a piece of the bread that was so good.  It's her mother's recipe so that makes it even more special besides being delicious.

Joy’s Cranberry Nut Bread

2 Cups sifted flour
1 Cup sugar
1 ½ Teaspoon Baking Powder
½ Teaspoon Baking Soda
¼ Cup Shortening

Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda.  Cut in shortening.

¾ Cup Orange Juice
1 Tablespoon grated orange rind
1 egg – well beaten
½ Cup chopped walnuts
2 Cups chopped cranberries

Combine juice, rind, egg and pour into dry ingredients to dampen.  Stir with a spoon
Fold in nuts and cranberries

Spoon into a 9 x 5 x 3 loaf pan, sprayed with Pam.  Bake 350 for one hour.  Check for doneness in center by inserting a sharp knife into the center.   Cool on a cookie rack.
===========================
I  bought a fruit cake for Larry that we sampled at BJs so might not make this for a little while.

That fruit cake is dangerous, hard to take a little piece because of th ebig pieces of fruit.  It's in the freezer now and I'm hoping to get it hard enough to slice through those big pieces and get reasonable slices since it is so filling.

Print Files from Folder

In order to get to use Terminal (in Utilities on a Mac) to list out the files and be able to save them do the following
Open Terminal - go to Application/Utilities

Type the following:
cd /volumes

An easier way to copy the files is:

1) Open TextEdit (or, I assume, any text application).

2) Navigate to the folder in question with your Finder.

3) Select a file within said folder and press command A to select all.

4) Press command C to copy.

5) Return to TextEdit and hold down command, option, and shift, and then hit V to paste and match style.

I found this here:  http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=586589

Buttermilk Pie

After having the buttermilk pie at The Yesterday Cafe I had to try making it myself.  It's really easy but each slice (1/8 of pie) has 11 points plus.  I had a sliver for 4 PP.   I found a bunch of recipes but this is the one I decided to use and will make again:

Choo-Choo's Buttermilk Pie from The Dairy Hollow House Cookbook
by Crescent Dragonwagon

Taken directly from the book:
1 unbaked 9 inch pie shell
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
Beat in:
2 rounded tbsp flour
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup buttermilk
1 tbsp vanilla
the grated rind of 2 lemon
Pour this into the unbaked pie shell and sprinkle liberally with
fresh ground nutmeg (or cardamom)
Bake 45 minutes.  It should be slightly browned but still a little liquid. Don't worry.  it will set deliciously as it cools; please don't overbake.
Glenna's note:  Bake until center temperature reaches 140 degrees on a meat thermometer. The center will still be slightly fluid but eggs set at 140 degrees so the pie will be done.  Do not overbake.

Going Home

On our way home from Georgia we stayed at the Town Place Suites in Winchester, VA and we had a beautiful suite for our one night stay.

And the timing was perfect to eat at a local Japanese restaurant, Sansui and use the American Express Small Business Saturday promotion and save $25.   The  Sushi dinner and Japanese beer after a 9+ hour drive were just right to send us back to our luxurious accomodations and fall asleep in preparation for the 6+ hours ride home.

 This was our complimentary dessert, an orange sliced in in such an interesting way to eat out of the skin.

I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing

What a difference it makes when you have a huge island, 2 ovens, 2 sinks, and 8 pairs of hands to help with the preparation of a Thanksgiving dinner.  It was like the grasshopper and the ant but we didn't have any grasshoppers.  Just lots of ants who helped with the preparation and then got to partake in the delicious meal we all got to share.  And I tried everything we had!

Top to Bottom (L to R) Sausage stuffing, dark meat, turnips, green beans, fresh cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, stuffing, sweet potatoes, salad, white meat

Buttermilk pie, apple pies, cheesecake, leftover birthday cake

Fortunately today we went for a 3 mile hike at Rock Hawk Effigy & Trails

Happy Thanksgiving

Week in Review: Nov 17-23

Wednesday 11.23.11
Everyone is here today.  Larry, Michael and Tom played 9 holes of golf.  Bree and Stephen were actually able to get on the same bus from the airport to get out here.  Doris left me in charge of taking Stephen's birthday cake out of the oven when it was done while she went to pick them up.  Unfortunately she didn't remember when she put it in the oven and said I should do the toothpick test in 10 minutes.  I did test it and it came out clean but figured I should give it another 5 minutes anyway.  Later on I asked Doris if I did OK and I FAILED.  The cake collapsed because the inside wasn't done.  On the good side, the inside was chocolatey and gooey and everyone liked it.  Michael did a good job of hiding the disaster under globs of frosting.

Ally made sugar cookies

in the afternoon while Larry and I took a 3 mile walk around the neighborhood where I got to pass my favorite turkey again but the big attraction this time was the giant fire ant hill.

Tuesday 11.22.11
Ally took a walk with us today.

 When we came back I sat outside and had a visitor.

Doris went to the airport to pick up Tom so we had happy hour outside and Michael made a fire in the firepit.  We had salmon for dinner with leftovers.  I repeat, no going hungry here.

Monday 11.21.11
Larry and Michael played golf again today, but later in the day.  I drove to Conyers in search of hockey fabric so I could come through with Hunter's request for hockey quilts for everyone for Christmas.  No luck.  I went to Joann's, Walmart and Hobby Lobby and that took me all afternoon.
Doris and Michael made do it yourself pork and beef fajitas for dinner with salad and beans & rice.

No chance of going hungry around here!

Sunday 11.20.11
Michael and Larry played golf this morning and Doris went to church and for a walk with Joan so I had time to myself and was here when Ally arrived.

Today was also the day to deal with the squirrel issue.  Michael built a barrier for the squirrel and used a 2 KG weight to block the opening, however he was still inside so we had to let him get out.  I wanted to take a picture of him coming out so I sat there and waited and waited.  When I wasn't going to watch for a while, I put the weight back.  When we went out to move it, it turned out that he had pulled it all the way in so that he could get around it and get out.  Just to be sure he was gone, I put some nuts both inside the barrier and outside it.  Later on the outside nuts were gone but the inside one was still there.  I put a cashew on the inside and pistachios on the outside, maybe he doesn't like cashews??? but we never heard any more noise.  Tomorrow the pest control guy comes to more permanently fix the problem.

 Above is what the squirrel did to the inside of the vent and below is the weight the squirrel pulled into the vent in order to get out.  It was heavy!!  Don't want to mess with a squirrel.

It was time for another movie marathon.  We watched The Town with Ben Affleck, Conviction with Hilary Swank and The Dilemma with Vince Vaughn.

Saturday 11.19.11
Doris and Michael went to the Georgia game today but we took a bye.  Another beatiful day so we took another beautiful walk.  Joan and Bill came for dinner and we ate delicious chicken that was bought from a local farm market  and Joan brought this yummy cake.

Friday 11.18.11
This morning someone came and put a shut off on the hose outlet until it can really get fixed.  We went to The Yesterday Cafe in downtown Greensboro for lunch and we each got a Blue Plate special.  We each got blackened grouper that came with corn bread and two sides.  We each got a squash casserole and larry got mac and cheese and I got collard greens.

 We shared a piece of Buttermilk Pie for dessert and ordered one to pick up before Thanksgiving.  I definitely want to try making one of these when we go home.

Doris and Michael got an earlier flight so instead of coming at midnight they arrived around 6.
Thursday 11.17.11
This was a very interesting day for all sorts of strange things happening.  I noticed in the morning noises that sounded like some kind of critter scurrying around in the ceiling of the bathroom.  It remined me of the noises I used to hear coming from the attic over my bedroom when I lived on Mt. Airy although there it sounded even louder.  I was going to mention it to Larry but forgot until he told me he saw a squirrel going into the vent outside the house.  The vent that led directly to our bathroom.

Since Doris and Michael weren't here there was nothing for us to do in the meantime other them let them know.  We took a walk around this area but drove to another location so we could see some new sights.  We wound up in an area where there were lots of vacant lots so not too many houses to see but it was still a beautiful day.

We played some pool and I actually beat Larry by getting in all the balls and the 8 ball and not by default because he missed the 8.  YEA!!!

 Later that night I was in the bedroom watching Private Practice.  During the last commercial break I flushed the toilet but it sounded like the water was still running.  After awhile I went back in and checked but it didn't appear to be doing anything but it still sounded like there was water running from someplace.  After awhile I woke Larry who fell asleep watching TV in the family room and said "I think we have a problem."  He went to investigate and found that the water was running out of a hose in front and it wouldn't shut off.  At 11:20 PM we called Doris & Michael in Boston.  Tomorrow someone would come to look at it.  In the meantime, we turned off the water in the house and went to bed.

Wednesday 11.16.11

Today it rained and rained so we had a movie marathon but in between the rain we did get a chance to get out for a walk around the neighborhood. That is when I got my first glimpse of  the turkey lawn ornament.

We watched Red - Bruce Willis et al, Burlesque with Cher and Christina Aquilera and Waiting for Forever.