Choice Morsels

With the New Year approaching, it's customary with many to eat "lucky" foods. In the south, it's black-eyed peas, which is a type of bean. Elsewhere, it's cabbage. I prefer cabbage myself. I like it cooked many ways, but especially enjoy it boiled, then served with butter, salt & pepper.  Generally if I'm boiling cabbage, I'm boiling it with red potatoes & Hillshire Hardwood Smoked Chicken Kielbasa--and that's called a boiled dinner! Boiled dinners are great "comfort food" in winter, are generally a "one pot meal" and they really take advantage of all those root veggies!  Use your favorites with cabbage, potatoes & any meat your prefer! (The food photos, by the way, are from the internet & aren't my cooking ;) ) So today's Good Eating recipe is Boiled Dinners: both Classic & New England style. Classic Boiled Dinner with potatoes, cabbage & Kielbasa Classic Boiled Dinner Ingredients: A

Finds today are just in time for those you prefer to send to warm wishes for the upcoming New Year rather then Christmas! With that in mind, I especially designed these subway-art style postcards, cards & stamps just for you in this seasons trendiest colors teal & purple!  Stamps: 2015 Teal Happy New Year  Stamp 2015 Purple Happy New Year Stamp Postcards: 2015 Teal Happy New Year Postcard 2015 Purple Happy New Year  Postcard Greeting Cards Available in all sizes: standard, note card & big. 2015 Happy New Year Note Card s 2015 Happy New Year Note Cards ****** To shop more New Years Card designs, go here !

To put a little cheer in your winter day, today's Garden Pic is my Pansies  blooming in the pot just outside my front door right now! In this particular shot, the sunlight brings out their purple tone, but  at a casual glance, they generally look more bluish. Pansies This year, local boulevard corners have been landscaped with Pansies and a little decorative Kale, which is dark green with a frilly white center that gives a feeling of "frost" or "snow" to the landscape. (Did you know you can eat your decorative Kale?) It's just fancy colored and perfectly edible. And, as a bonus, I have a picture of a pair of neighborhood houses: o ne decorated to the nines and the other undecorated except for a lit-up "Ditto" sign. (though it's not clear in the picture--that's what that arrow says!) Hilarious! Here's Wishing You a Very Merry Christmas!

Have you got all your cookie baking done?  Looking for a new idea to try? Today's Good Eating recipe is for an old favorite:   a mocha dipped coffee-based sugar cookie called, "Coffee Dipped Dainties." This is a vintage recipe from a holiday cooking magazine I purchased in 1976!  Dainties make an elegant looking cookie for your cookie tray! You'll need a small jar of instant coffee for this recipe! Coffee Dipped Dainties Ingredients:  1 Tablespoon instant coffee  2 teaspoons boiling water 2 1/2 cups unsifted all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 cup butter, softened 1 cup sugar  1 egg 2 teaspoons lemon juice 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Glaze: 4 Tablespoons instant coffee 6 Tablespoons boiling water 4 cups sifted confectioners sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 1/2 cups ground pecans (or a nut of your choice or none at all) Directions: In sma

The Mama Kat topic for today is:  "Share a story about the best or worst gift you ever received." You wouldn't think chocolate could be a  worst possible gift, but, in this case, it was. It wasn't even wrapped. It was just a Dark Lindt Chile Chocolate bar that a guy from our singles Bible study handed me. He was a regular at our Sunday night study, a Navy guy in the school for learning how to disarm explosive devices. He knew I fancied chocolate and he happened to fancy Lindt's spicy Chocolate Chile bar. So, one evening at our on base Tuesday Bible Study, he called me aside and handed me one of these Lindt Chocolate Chile bars.   "Here, this is for you, " he said. I said, "Thank you,"  accepted it and slipped it into my book bag to take home for later. " No, " he said, his face clearly displeased I'd dare keep it for myself. "I want you to share it with everyone else." What? You give me a gift, the

There's plenty of winter color to be had in Northwest Florida--if you know what to plant or where to look. Last week I featured Firethorn , a shrub that lights up with bright red berries birds love and brightens up the drab evergreen landscape! This week I'm featuring Dwarf Nandina & Asparagus Fern! First: My Dwarf Nandina: This shrub brings fall and winter color to the Florida landscape and stays small. Max of 2 feet. I only have the one. I love that it's orange in the fall and red in the winter! Dwarf Nandina Next: My Asparagus Fern Thick with Red Berries: It's not actually a fern, but is in the Asparagus family. It's scientific name is "Sprengeri." (pronounced "Springer-Rye) This is both a good evergreen that has tiny white flowers in spring and bright red berries in winter that birds enjoy.  It thrives southern zone landscapes and, anywhere, as a houseplant. Here, it's planted in both shade and sun. It's upside is

The Mama Kat blog prompt suggestion for today is: "Share a Favorite Quote." So here's another round of my favorite quotable quotes pulled my Pinterest "attic," where I keep lots of stuff--both useful and otherwise. This quote tends to be true about me.  Sometimes I have to remind myself not to over-indulge in trivia talk, especially if I'm with a crowd I know isn't interested, but give me someone interested in Marvel movie trivia and it's game on! I love this one! Somehow modern comedy & comedy writing has arrived at believing that funniness requires being foul-mouthed and lewd. I like this one because I think the people who "don't back out" once they know you, whether you're weird or not, are the ones who really love you for who you are. And those are the ones worth having. This one makes me chuckle because it's so totally relatable. I do this all the t

You can't say Florida doesn't have winter color! Today, I took my camera and walked through the neighborhood and down the road about a quarter of a mile to snap a picture of this gorgeous, berry laden shrub! I didn't know what it was, though I see it often here and there in all over the place. I think it plants itself. Birds like the berries. So I looked it up. It's called Firethorn.  This particular one is a self-planted, gone wild one down by a power pole along the road. But it is a landscape shrub that can be planted on purpose and it prized for it's fast growth and lovely winter color in north Florida--though it requires meticulous hedging or it will get 20 feet big. It's branches can be cut for indoor arrangements and it does well in a vase or can be used to accent a wreath.  I took a pair of clippers and picked some one year for a vase. From a different wild-growing Firethorn elsewhere. However, Firethorn doesn't have the word "

Tis' the season for baking!  One of my seasonal favorites is fruitcake. I usually bake one or two to mail to my Mother, because she loves it so. And you can't beat a home-made fruitcake! Last year I posted a recipe for Banana Walnut Fruitcake , which is  Today's recipe is another I've used many times over the years for a chocolate fruitcake called  "Brownie Fruitcake." This recipe recipe calls for walnuts, candied red cherries, mixed candied fruit and chopped dates. But instead of buying an Old English Mix, I recommend just getting candied pineapple and green candied cherries!  These are the tastiest of the candied fruits! Recipe makes one loaf. Brownie Fruitcake Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts 1 cup halved red candied cherries 1 cup mixed candied fruit 1 cup chopped dates 1/2 cup hot coffee 1/4 cup Hershey's Cocoa 1 3/4 cups sifted all purpose flour 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Today's Mama Kat prompt is: "You saw it on Pinterest....does it really work?" Saying, "I found this on  Pinterest," can be fatal words.  Pinterest is sort of "caveat emptor" place and I 've tried many Pinterest ideas, particularly for the garden that fell far short of expectations. But today I have a winner: this Pinterest pin featured a whole bunch of fashion fixes including a recipe for how to "unshrink clothing." I have a couple pair of 100% cotton knit pants that---despite all my care not to put them in the dryer--still ended up in the dryer anyway. So I wanted to try this recipe on a favorite pair of brown knit pants I've had for several years that had gotten ridiculously high water. Here's the recipe: #1)  Fill a sink with lukewarm water. Add 1 cap full of Baby Shampoo, then put the clothing item you want to un-shrink in this soapy water. #2)  Let the clothing item soak and gently work it through. Th

In Florida people decorate whatever they can with seasonal cheer.  Case in point, this Garden Pic of the Day:   my neighbor's palm: I've done a little decorating myself: This is my mailbox in it's new Christmas garb. The old garland and bow I'd been decorating it with for years finally wore out Today's special outside task was sealing the seams on all my rain drain pipes, particularly on the two in back that run underground to a dry gravel well.  Should be good to go now for next rain. ***** So what outside stuff do you decorate? ***** Stop back tomorrow to see what's up for Mama Kat!

It's started. All the Birthday Greetings are starting to roll in from various manufacturers I'm signed up with online--because my Birthday is this month! Which makes being signed up a pretty good deal! Proctor & Gamble sent me a selection of downloadable options that I can print, such as recipes or bookmarks. (I'm going for the bookmarks.) And in the mail today I got a Happy Birthday postcard from Chicken of the Sea that has a$1.00 off coupon for one Chicken of the Sea item. (I'll probably go for the Wild Salmon. I love canned Salmon!) Sometimes I get special birthday sweepstakes in my email from like Dove or Pillsbury and being a member of Ruby Tuesday's "So Connected" Club means there will be some email freebie. (Last year it was 2 dessert cupcakes!) Today's Good Eating Recipe is my White Chili recipe, which you can use with either leftover Turkey or Chicken. The recipe is pretty basic with lots of room to make adjustments. It'