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A Little of This and A Little of That

Because of bad weather we had no company last weekend, not even my son and grandson. So I spent some time baking. I like to bake enough to fill up my oven to save on energy.

So I baked two loaves of pumpkin bread and two loaves of cranberry orange bread from scratch. Remember that  large container of OJ that I purchased recently. I used some of that for the cranberry orange bread. This week I also got 12 oz. containers of orange juice. We no longer drink OJ so I have frozen the OJ in 1/2 cup portions for my future baking projects.

We have lots of frozen cranberries that I purchased the Thanksgiving before last. I also have many pecans frozen for breads.

Pictured above is one loaf of cranberry that I almost forgot to take a picture of for you before I froze it. The other loaf Hubby had already started eating before I realized I hadn’t taken a picture. He demolished it by the next morning.  

 Pictured above is my favorite pumpkin bread. One loaf went into the freezer to serve to company this week. Yes, I am having company arriving on Thursday. And we are very excited that she is coming.

When Hubby and I were young, our very best friends had three children. We got together on almost a daily basis. Our kids all got along together and Darla and Jim and Hubby and I spent so many enjoyable years together that I still remember vividly especially going out almost every weekend and almost always spending Saturday mornings together. We loved them like they were our brother and sister. The same is true for their children. Tragedy struck when Jim was 41. He died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. We were so devastated and we did our best to comfort Darla. As a few years went on, Darla and the kids remained our closest friends. One spring break vacation Darla took the two younger kids to California to visit their grandparents. We took her oldest daughter to the airport so that she could fly back to college in Boston.  We got a telephone call from a good priest friend of ours one morning informing us that Darla had died suddenly in California. She also died of some kind of brain abnormality. We were in shock. Darla was flown back to her hometown for burial and we did our best to get everything ready at her home for her family coming in. Their oldest daughter, Allison went back to college afterward. Their youngest daughter who was 8 and their son who was about 13 went to live with Darla’s sister and her family in Colorado. We kept in touch over the years with Allison who is happily married and has a son in college now. The last time I saw her was about 10 years ago. I was delighted when she told me that she was coming to visit us this week. Hubby and I are so looking forward to spending time with her. Hubby hasn’t seen her in 20 years. So I will be absent from this blog getting ready for her arrival and to spend wonderful time and memories with her.  We are also looking forward to catching up with her and hearing about her brother and sister’s families.

So I will post when I have time. But if I am absent, I know you will all understand.  

The other night, I sauteed some onions and Montreal steak sausage in butter for dinner. Meanwhile, Hubby cooked some French Fries in our air fryer.

Hubby loves using the air fryer to crisp frozen items. I find it useless for from scratch recipes. They never seem to turn out well. If I had known that we would not have purchased one. 

We have West this weekend so that his parents can enjoy celebrating Katie’s birthday. So I am planning on making hamburgers and French fries tonight rather than feeding him high caloric McDonald’s ones. We are supposed to finally get some sun and weather in the 50’s so perhaps he and I can get outside for a walk.

I made him a special treat for a snack that he can munch on while he is here. I saw a video on You Tube where a woman who has a large family made snack mix in a black garbage bag. Well, we didn’t need that much so I made some in this large kettle today. I am hoping that he will enjoy helping me put it in gallon size bags tonight. I will leave some out for him and freeze the rest for the future. It will freeze nicely and not take long to thaw when I need it. I think I will call it “Everything But The Kitchen Sink Mix”. 

As always feel free to leave a comment.

2 replies on “A Little of This and A Little of That”

That was a sad story! They were lucky to have you as friends! You kept talking about the air fryer, and I was really wanting one even though I knew I would not. Now, I no longer want one…lol.

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