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Last night I made a tortellini dish that I had been wanting to try. It was basically an Alfredo sauce with mushrooms and tortellini (2 packages), that after you put it all together put under the broiler for a few minutes. I substituted a package of baby spinach for one of the packages of pasta. It was disappointing to say the least - the pasta`was from Trader Joe's and the worst I've ever had from them - texture, flavor, etc. the sauce never really came together and I couldn't taste the mushrooms. Oh, and my pan was hard to clean - hah. Anyway, I wasn't going to throw it away, so tonight I baked a dish of it in my toaster oven. It was an improvement but the pasta itself still had issues.

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Happy Birthday BakerAunt!

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Last night Will made beef stew from Ina's Comfort Food. We had leftovers tonight and again tomorrow before he leaves for Chicago on Wednesday. It was what he wanted before he left and there will be enough for me to freeze. He's finally moving - the date has been on and off for several months, but everything is in place now. I'm going to miss him, but I'm so glad he's getting a chance to move on with his life.

I'll be cooking more now 😂

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I forgot to post that I made an olive oil lemon cake from the New York Times last Sunday (as Joan can attest, it's been a long week here in Georgia). I had Meyer Lemons from my neighbor that I wanted to use - I still have more. It called for almond flour and AP. They didn't have almond flour so I bought some sliced almonds and ground them in the food processor and I ended up with almond meal since there was still skin on the slices - it added a nice texture. The recipe called for white chocolate which gets melted and mixed with the olive oil before you add any other ingredients. You couldn't taste the white chocolate. I also used some of the Domino golden sugar which was on sale so I bought it. The appeal to me is that it is less processed and I'm not using a lot of sugar these days. We really like this cake - the Meyer lemons give it a subtle flavor. It clledcfor both zest and juice. We talked about how to amp up the lemon flavor a little. Obviously using regular lemons would do it, but I thought maybe adding some lemon juice powder in with the dry ingredients would add flavor without changing the texture which was really nice. Any thoughts?

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BA - I would choose snow as well. After I posted the pictures of my backyard, my sister asked if the weather made me miss the Northeast. I said, no- I miss it in the summer when it's hot and humid!
Below is the camellia bending low

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Joan didn't get the ice storm but we did! The news said that Glynn County got hit the hardest. I will post a pic of our camellia tree tomorrow. We were without power from 5 yesterday morning until 10:15 this morning. Had to shower at a friends house before work. It was cold! And remember I'm from New England. We had so many layers and so many blankets but managed to stay warm enough. Our neighbors have a small generator and offered let us plug in an extension cord (I have 2 exterior ones we used). We were able to use the tea kettle and the toaster oven which really helped. Thank goodness for my hot water bottle! To top it all off - next week is going to be in the 60's! It will feel like a heat wave😂

Will cooked our leftover chicken soup on the grill using the baking steel to make it easier.

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Joan, I'm sorry to hear about your friend - sending healing prayers.

Also Joan, if you think we're cold, you really don't want to fly to Chicago to have pie with Len right now - it's way cooler there ☃️

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We had the Italian Wedding soup tonight and it was really good. Will came home with a cold so I'm glad I had chicken soup for him. I had two minor issues - one I didn't dice my carrots and celery enough - they were supposed to be ¼ inch and mine were bigger so they took longer to cook down. The other is that the recipe called for tiny pasta, tubitini or stars and the smallest I could find was ditalini which cooked up bigger than I'd like - both are easy fixes and we have plenty of soup, might even need to freeze some.

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The temperature is supposed to be 34 (feeling like 26) by the time I get up in the morning - it was high 60's today. The cold weather is supposed to be here pretty much through next week. And, Will comes home tomorrow, so yesterday I made stock from the rotisserie chicken I bought last week and a batch of steel cut oats for breakfasts. Today, I prepped meatballs and vegetables for Ina's Italian Wedding Soup that I'll put together tomorrow afternoon after we get home - I'm picking him up at the airport and then we're going to Trader Joe's which we always try to do when we're in Jacksonville.

I took a PTO day for tomorrow and I'm glad I did as I didn't realize how exhausted I was from the last two weeks until I stopped.

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Happy Boxing Day everyone! We had a quiet couple of days and went to friends' house for brunch on Christmas - very nice. Leftover charcuterie for dinner last night and then again tonight with tomato soup. That was great after a busy day at work.

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We had charcuterie (assorted meats & cheeses) with some roasted balsamic mini peppers, roasted olives with whipped feta, I also made crostinis. We will be able to nosh on this for a couple of days. My manager joined us tonight - Will had picked up her dog from doggy day care as it closed earlier than we did, but we were able to leave shortly after 5.

We've been invited to brunch tomorrow morning which will be nice.

Merry Christmas to All!

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Happy Birthday to Diane! I hope she enjoys her pie.

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The picture of the Meyer Lemon cake I meant to send

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I made my Meyer lemon bundt cake tonight after work. Well, I put it together and baked it tonight. Last night I zested the lemon and combined it with the sugar; then I squeezed the lemon juice and put it in the fridge. This morning I set out all the ingredients I needed for the cake, so when I got home I was ready. It came out beautifully! I will take a picture in the morning before I wrap it.

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Sorry to hear bout your freezer Mike. I too hope it's an easy repair. We went through our fridge and freezer after the power outage with the hurricane - we also had stuff that should have been tossed out before. A hazard of freezers

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