*Picture 1: one of 4 (?) grocery stores that we visited on the Hill. Voborils love to explore local grocery stores and see what's the same and what's different. We bought produce and pasta and canned tomatoes here to make pasta amatriciana.
*Picture 2: After many years we finally made it to Ted Drewe's in person, and I got to visit their gift shop. It was delicious, fast, and worth the wait.
*Picture 3: Our backyard where I would go talk to my sister and do my pokemon go nonsense each morning.
*Tomorrow I'll make ricotta calzones for the first time. I thought about using frozen pizza dough, but the description of the recipe says that calzones need a slightly different dough--I'll trust that this time.
*Today I'm making slow cooker swiss steak (already in the crock pot) and egg noodles. This recipe doesn't have any tomatoes in it and I used a homemade cream of mushroom soup. Hopefully later today I'll make marbled banana bread in small loaves for this week's Christmas treat.
*Yesterday we had sour cream cardamom waffles. I doubled the recipe. I had mine with plain yogurt and brown sugar; we had lots of other toppings available. They were wonderful.
*Tuesday the Son made a really nice butternut squash soup. It had cream cheese in it! He also had it with chicken mole from Trader Joe's, which was fine but not our favorite.
*Monday I made lemon orzo meatball soup. I love this soup; I usually halve the recipe. We finished it that night.
*Sunday we grilled burgers, hot dogs, and wahoo weiners and had it with caesar salad, pasta salad, etc. The cookies below are peanut butter dried cherry and I made them last week.
*Bought my first pumpkin for the outside today and put a fun hat on the lion.
*Mom is hemming curtains for the kitchen window.
*Actually chores for today include lots of emails and postcards and then research on obedience and St. Benedict. Laundry and groceries are done!
*Shortly after moving we had family reunion, and then shortly after that my parents and son and I drove my brother back to Virginia, taking in sights along the way.
We spent day 1 on the way to Kingdom City, leaving on Sunday after the final family reunion brunch at our house. In the morning we took a trip to Ozarkland, tourist trap extraordinaire, and then continued to St. Louis. For day 2 we did some time in Forest Park including the greenhouse known as the Jewel Box and then found our Airbnb near The Hill after an address snafu and almost walking into a stranger's house. The Son and I slept in the basement in beautiful, cold, wonderful beds.
St. Faustina Kowalska, one of the two optional memorials for today, is a 20th century saint of Poland. She died at 33 in 1938, a cloistered nun, but is famous for her description of devotion to Jesus as Divine Mercy, accompanied by a portrait of Jesus with blue and red rays coming from his heart. Pope St. John Paul II, also from Poland, named her a saint in 2000 along with proclaiming the second Sunday of Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday.
(Picture found on wikipedia, cited as
I sent to pictures to my friend who made the vase and painted the seal to let her know she was still remembered in our new home.
*Tomorrow I'm making sheet pan balsamic chicken and carrots, from a recipe I cut out of the newspaper about 10 years ago.
*This is actually a week of new recipes. Tonight I'm trying salad bar stir fry from Cook's Country, similar to the tagged recipe. I'm using frozen veggies because they're cheaper than the salad bar.
*Last night I made sesame noodles with shredded chicken. I think the family prefers a straightforward peanut sauce, so I'll do that next time.
*Tuesday night the Son made tomato-basil soup from Betty Crocker. I think most of the family prefers a smoother soup, but the son really liked it. I might repurpose the leftovers into pasta sauce.
*Monday night I tried another new recipe, butternut squash risotto. It was a really good risotto, but I don't think the squash, despite being a labor of love, really added much to the dish. I'll just do straightforward risotto next time.
*Monday I also made the last picture below, apple-pecan pancakes. They were wonderful.
