Choice Morsels

Today's Garden Pics are shots of my Cheers Daffodils from bud to fully open to vase! Cheers Daffodils are a cluster style daffodil with multiple small double blossoms. I ordered them from a nursery catalog and those 5 original bulbs multiply every year, giving me more and more! They have a light, sweet fragrance reminiscent of baby powder. Buds:  Ready to Open:   Fully Open: Vased with Dusty Miller:   This is a small nosegay style arrangement in a 5-inch ginger jar vase with 3 stems of Cheers Daffodils and two Dusty Miller stems with the Daffodils arrangement in a cluster on one side & Dusty Miller on the other. Both perform well in a vase! A lovely Cheer-ful bouquet to brighten this gray & rainy winter day with their sweet fragrance!  (Dusty Miller can be rooted in water, so I'm hoping these might root along the way, too!) ***** That's it for today! Do check out my Mama Kat Thursday post!

Greetings! Last week of February!  My flower beds are starting to come alive! Lot's of nice pictures for Garden Pic Wednesday this week! This weeks Good Eating recipe is another one from Pinterest I decided to test: Shrimp Asparagus Stir-Fry With Lemon Sauce! The picture was so pretty plus I  happen to love shrimp! Hubby is less enthusiastic about them, but willingly gave it a try. He generally likes Chinese. The original recipe called for fresh shrimp I would need to peel & de-vein (ugh ) and fresh asparagus ( $$ )! I also increased the ginger & garlic amounts, because going by the recipe didn't give it enough flavor & I increased the cornstarch to compensate for the added water from using frozen shrimp. The original recipe also called for lemon juice, which I didn't use and I found lemon zest alone made it plenty lemony enough.  (I'm not a huge fan of too much lemon anyway.) So I have transformed this recipe into a quick EASY recipe ...

The Mama Kat blog prompt for today is:  "Something that made you smile this week." Well, here it is:  the Pinterest pin that made me explode with laughter this week: That's it for today! I have lots of humorous stuff on my "Stuff I Like" board & my "Hilarious Shirts" board at my Pinterest  plus other interesting stuff, so do stop by! **** What was your smile this week? **** Interested in joining the Mama Kat fun? Check out the rules here ! Thanks for visiting!

Today's North Florida weather is a day time high of 50 degrees F and tonight, 25 F with a "real feel" of -13!  I have all my blooming daffodils, gerber leaves, amaryllis, hydrangea's & the Winter Jasmine covered. They'll have to stay covered tonight and tomorrow, which is predicted to also be below freezing. It might be hard to believe, but I remember a Febuary in like 1986 or 87, when we were living in base housing, we had humid temps over 80 degrees F! That was unusual actually for here. Needless to say, that particular year was a drought year, starting out so hot so early like that! Still, I need to go out and work on trimming down the pampas grass--or something, while it's dry & sunny. It's after 12. Probably the heat wave time for today. :) Todays' Garden Pics: My Winter Jasmine shrub in full regalia!  You can see leaves are starting to pop out!  It must be pruned right after blooming to keep it shaped.  Apparently, according ...

Greetings! Today I've decided to try a NEW slow-cooker recipe for cube steak I saw in Pinterest. I have pin board called "Food Ideas, " which is where I put any recipe pins I think I might be interested in trying out. Then I just set up a new pin board called, "Pin Recipes I've Tried, " where I can put all those recipe pins I've already tired. I always make notations on these as to whether they're good or not and what improvements I might have made.  (This board is at the bottom, since it's a new.) I decided on this recipe because cube steak is a fairly inexpensive cut of beef. The pack I bought had just 4 cube steaks in it that were only slightly pounded. For slow cooker use, the cube-steak can't be pounded too thin. Apparently, some cube steaks are more heavily pounded for tenderness and will be marked for "Skillet Use Only "--so you want to watch out for this. Such cube steaks will dissolve to nothing in a slow cooke...

The Mama Kat prompt I'm doing for today is:  "Do a photo journal showing us what winter looks like in your town." I live on the Florida Panhandle, slightly to the rural side, since I live in the county outside the town limits. Rarely any snow, but definitely some freezing temps. Here, a "Blizzard," is something your order from Dairy Queen. DECEMBER This is my neighbors across the road. In Florida, people decorate whatever. JANUARY First daffodils in my front bed: FEBRUARY Chipping Sparrows dining on leftovers under the feeder.  Last, a view across my back yard: You can see my veggie garden in the foreground that I've been working on walling in with blocks. First row is in, second row to go, then bags of dirt & peat to raise the soil level within. I have to be ready to plant by about mid-March. (Both the Sparrows and the Back Yard view were photographed today.) The pine trees are also in bloom and you can...

I'm waiting for rice to steam to go with my leftover Gyoza right now, so why not work on today's post? I know the pine trees around here do flower---I see the evidence in the form of yellow pollen coating the windshields of cars and everything else. That's where pine cones come from. But because they are so high up, who ever thinks of what they look like? Then the other day, I was looking out the back door and noticed the  nearest, lowest pine tree branch was loaded with blooms that looked bluish-purple. I thought, "Wow, I should take a picture and have a closer look."   The sun was shining on one blossom just right, so I got out the camera and took this shot of these surprisingly attractive pine flowers: This pine is native throughout the southern coast and is called a "Slash Pine" or "Swamp Pine." And bears these bluish-purple flowers! Most are 60 to 100 feet in the air, so not exactly in plain sight. I just happen to have ...

Welcome to the first week of February! It's supposed to be 31 degrees tonight, so after cleaning up the front walk beds, I went around covering various things that either are blooming, about to bloom or that have sensitive leaf buds, like my hydrangea's.  I picked all the yellow daffodils and brought them inside for a cheerful vase on my counter. For Garden Pic Wednesday this week I have an excellent photo of a pine tree flower! You didn't know pine trees flower?  Well, you'll have to stop back for a look! Today's Good Eating Recipe is a family favorite my Mother used to make often for us as kids: Old Fashioned Cinnamon Raisin Bread Pudding! What Old Fashioned Cinnamon Raisin Bread Pudding Looks Like This is just your basic wholesome old fashioned bread pudding made with just eggs, bread, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, sugar & raisins! No sauces to make. Just simple bread pudding. We'd eat it hot with a little evaporated milk poured over the top....