Choice Morsels

Garden Pics today are of my Winter Jasmine shrub. It's a flowering  shrub common in the Deep South where winters are mild. I grew this one from a cutting. There are apparently two types of Winter Jasmine: this yellow & also a white. I like the sunny yellow. It was especially spectacular this year! First picture is a closer view of it's pretty yellow flowers: Winter Jasmine Blossoms Here is a View of the Full Shrub: It has a beautiful trailing form, like a weeping willow. Those branches touching the ground, however, can root and I want to avoid that, so once it's done blooming it will be getting a haircut. Winter Jasmine Shrub That's it for today. I'll be taking some time off, so next post won't be until Wednesday, April 6th!  See you then!

I bought a jar of pickled beets the other day and thought I'd do a post on "Beets." I love them. Pickled. Roasted. Boiled. Cold in salad. Harvard style. I like the tender young greens in a salad, too. They're super easy to grow in the ground or in a patio container. Beets are a member of the same family as Amaranth. Beet trivia :  Though very low in calories, beets have the highest sugar levels of any veggie, but unlike regular sugar which hits your system fast, beet sugar is released very gradually. Health Benefits: *  Beets are high in vitamins & minerals: boron, potassium, magnesium, iron, vitamins A, B & C, folic acid and fiber. * Beets are good for your liver & blood.  * Beets, like chocolate, contain trytophan, which relaxes the mind and gives a sense of well-being. Not everyone can eat chocolate, so eating beets can have a similar effect as eating chocolate. My Favorite Recipe For Beets: Beets are great boiled with beef

On the topic of trickery, my story sounds like the start of a joke, "Well, there was this insurance salesman see..." When Hubby and I married, he already had a life insurance policy with this particular fraternal insurance company. He'd been required to get a life insurance policy for his kids sake by the court as part of his divorce deal and, conveniently, a salesman for this particular company was waiting right outside the door, ready to sign him up. So after the wedding, we're stationed in Florida and living in base housing and a salesman from this fraternal insurance company started visiting us regularly. He was a happy, jovial fellow and--silver-tongued, though we didn't know that at the time. We actually believed him when he told us he was planning on opening an office and how perfect we'd be to help him do that--in Montreal, since the insurance company's home office was in Canada. His name was Clyde and he talked like that every time he

First up is today's Garden Pic is a pretty shot of my pot blueberry blossoms as buds preparing to open, then fully open. Their tips are such a pretty pink! The leaves were pretty all winter like this. Pot blueberries or patio blueberries are designed to be grown in containers. I'm still figuring out how to prune mine so they'll bear lots of berries.  (It's all about the pruning!)  I have one bush that's just laden with blossoms and the other isn't, but it's got lots of fresh growth that will bear well next season!  They only bear berries once a year in spring.  **** The New Stove My 28 year old stove was in bad need of replacing and having the re-plumb seemed a good reason to go ahead and decide on one. Plus having to pull a kitchen cabinet out for the re-plumb anyway just made it all that much easier make sure the space size was properly sized! So here it is : This is a Frigidaire gas range in black. I selected this model

This is a recipe I saw in Pinterest that looks like  a fun Easter treat-- Cadbury Egg Cupcakes! I chose this picture just to show how they look in the middle of the cupcake. The  base recipe can be any kind of cake & frosting you want to do! I haven't tried it yet, but I want to bake a batch up this coming Sunday for the Air Force kids to try out on Sunday. I think they'd get a kick out of it!  My new range hasn't been delivered yet, so I have no oven for baking just now, though I  should have it this week sometime, though. Making these cupcakes is just a matter of mixing up some cake batter, filling cupcake liners, placing a Cadbury egg on top, then baking. The egg magically sinks into the middle. Then cool & frost as simply or as elegantly as you desire. That's it. Cadbury Mini Egg Cupcakes: Ingredients: 1 box of cake mix, any preferred flavor 2 Dozen Cadbury Mini Eggs, any flavor 1 container of frosting, any preferred flavor Directions: P

Today's Mama Kat blog writing topic is to share 8 accomplishments this week: #1) Repainting the range hood has been on my "to-do list" for a couple years. So getting that finally done yesterday was my Number One accomplishment for week--considering how arduous  all the degreasing & sanding was! The prep took a couple days, but the final result is totally worth it. #2)  Tried a new dessert I found on Pinterest, which turned out to be really great & blogged about it. See it here . It's also on my Pinterest board under "Pinterest Recipes I've Tried." #3)  Tuesday, I "baked" 2 sweet potatoes & a butternut squash in the slow-cooker for a couple meals. We had the squash tonight in African Stew .  Except I used ground chicken instead of ground beef.  #4)  Walked around the yard with my camera, collecting photographs of spring blooms for my Garden Pic Wednesday posts. #5)  Dug up and split a really larg

Couple months ago, this Oakland Holy was in a pot; now it's in the ground.  It's just in front of where the Cedar tree we had cut down previously was. The stump grinder guy from the tree cutting company very kindly used his machine to dig a hole for me just for the Holly. It seems happy enough. It's blooming. I guess it has berries year round.  I saw these Dwarf Iris at the Commissary last week and just had to have them.   They were only $3 for the pot and it has 6 bulbs in it. What a great deal! I intend to plant them among my miniature Daffodils in the the back bed, where they can naturalize that area together. Last, I have a collage photo of my most recent project: repainting my range hood! I just finished painting it today and it came out beautifully. The exhaust fan itself is in excellent condition. Even the bulb is the original from 27 years ago, because I use it so seldom. It's just the exterior that looked crummy. It got crummy looking

Yes, I tried another new Pinterest recipe and this one is a winner! The primary dictionary definition of a "Dump Cake," is an easily made cobbler in which cake mix is dumped over canned fruit or pie filling.  This recipe was pinned from Del Monte, which means it's been a recipe that's been created & tested in a corporate test kitchen. That's one benefit of all those label, can & box recipes provided by manufacturers on their product packaging. You can even buy cookbooks featuring nothing, but package & label recipes of which many are vintage. The only changes I'd suggest is add one more 15 oz can of fruit. It can be more peaches, cherry fruit cocktail, regular fruit cocktail or whatever you want. (So, I've noted 4 cans of peaches in the recipe.)   It just needs a little more volume on the fruit quantity.  And stir a teaspoon or two of cinnamon into the fruit! Otherwise, this is an excellent, quick dessert you can serve hot with v

Today we're talking about chocolate. My favorite chocolate treats and, let's face it, I don't eat candy that's not chocolate. Nothing fruity or sour or minty or chewy or hard and I don't like anything that gums up my molars, like Butterfingers or Clark Bars. So--if I'm going to eat chocolate, here's my Top Ten Favorites: #1) For special occasions, like Valentines, it has to be Mounds. #2)  For everyday, Hershey's Dark Chocolate Kisses are my go-to treat. I always have some in the freezer. I'll have 2 after lunch and sometimes another 2 after dinner. #3)  For Christmas, a dark Chocolate assorted is a favorite gift: I prefer 60% to 80% dark chocolate. A single bar makes goes great with a mug of coffee! #4)  In lieu of a Hershey assorted, I'll take a Dark Ghirardelli: I think I had both the Hershey assortment and a Ghirardelli at Christmas that I gradually worked through by the end of January. #5

 Yesterday I weeded along the south side of the house behind the Strawberry bed, along the block wall border and cleaned up the rain garden area. Today, I continued working on the bed behind the rain garden, raking out leaves, mulching them with the mower, then replacing them. I moved some of the Canna root clumps. They tend to spread and I like them to form a back row.  Today's Garden Pic is a recent photo of a really beautiful Spiderwort in my garden: Turns out, this pretty weed is edible.   Virginia Spiderwort is what is most common throughout Canada and the Eastern U.S. and is easily found growing in the wild, in your beds, in your grass, everywhere. It acquired the name "Spiderwort," because the roots could be used medicinally to treat spider bites. The plants other names included " Lady's Tears," & "Indian Paint."   I literally have tons of it. Everywhere. It is perennial and blooms cute bluish flowers. Here in the South,