Purling Oaks

If this is.........

Cincinnati, it must be Wednesday. Dh and I are attending a meeting here and we are staying downtown. It is a very nice downtown with cool restaurants and Fountain Square with a TV screen the size of, oh, Godzilla on the side of a building.

Since we are FoodTV addicts, we set off to find some Cincinnati-style chili. This evening we tried Skyline Chili. (Sorry for no links, I'm posting from my 'phone.) I ordered Coney Dogs and DH had the classic 3-way,which is (keep it clean!) on spaghetti. Both dishes were great, even with the mountain of cheese. There is a hint if cinnamon, nutmeg, and perhaps chocolate in the chili. I cannot confirm that since the recipe is secret.

/from your roving blogger in the field

Happy Hearts

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you will all be my Valentine.  *g*

DH and I are going to enjoy a nice venison pot roast dinner with a nice bottle of red wine.  Now, when I say nice bottle of wine, my usual qualifications for a bottle to win that would be to have a pretty label and taste pretty decent.  (Think Trader Joe's)  However, I have friends who have higher standards for the fruit of the grape.  DH and I are lucky enough to have some wine on hand that met their standards (and has a nice label) and goes well with venison.   I'll see about pulling that out of the basement wine cellar.

Once again, snow is falling in my part of the world.  Nature is generously adding an inch or three to the weather people's initial forecast.  (I am so glad I did not go into the field of meteorology for my career!  I am not suited for not hitting the mark, day after day.)  We may get about 8 inches of more snow today.  The drive home was a bit earlier and slower than on a sunny day but uneventful.  Thank goodness.

Treasure to trash to treasure

Heaven. I slept past 7 AM this morning, which is an hour-plus past my normal wake-up call during the work week. I love weekends with no "events"---they seem like a luxury. I love event-filled weekends, too, but variety is lovely. Coffee is a part of my morning routine that I really enjoy. However, I've been trying to kick my addiction to a speciality creamer that contains partially-hydrogenated fat ---- so today I'm trying a bit of honey as a sweetener with a bit of milk. Not bad. Certainly better tasting to me than sugar.

In our township, there is a central location for garbage and recycleable drop-off and it is open Saturdays all year. We've left our old light fixtures there and someone else has recycled them into their house. Well, today, DH came home with a treasure. Someone, most likely a woman, started this tablerunner embroidery kit and there was a matching kit for four napkins. I wonder about the circumstances of how these items became trash to someone. Did someone pass away or was there another reason for this work to be discarded? I think the completed work is lovely.
The embroidery floss for the rest of the table runner is missing but the instructions are complete and list the colors, so the floss should be replaceable. I believe I will add this to my list of projects to work on and complete. I hope the unknown crafter would like that.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Here's a fun photo of something you don't often see---a resting hummingbird.

Snooping the nest

Well, the crowd (so to speak) is gone for now and I spent the day teleworking. Here was my yummy lunch of grilled ham and medium cheddar on light rye bread with a side of bread and butter pickles.

***************************************

After work, I watered the vegetable garden and the herb garden. Gosh, is it ever dry! The oregano is flowering but was looking very sad and wilty. I looked later this evening and the plants are looking happier. I guess I let that task go a bit too long, didn't I?

After watering, Dan and I did a little bluebird house snooping and here is what we found.
There were three about a week ago so we are assuming they are starting to fledge out of the nest. Summer goes so quickly, I suppose I'll be seeing ripe tomatoes soon.

Peanut butter cookie, extraordinaire

I woke up this morning and, with some fear, twitched the hotel curtains apart and looked. No snow! I thought: Great! The forecast was wrong, which is fine. So, I made some coffee, read a few blogs, then got ready to go to work. Then I peeked out the window again. Drat! Snow....and it was blowing.

Lunchtime rolled around. There's a bunch of white stuff in the air and on the sidewalk. Sigh. I bundle up and walk over to the Rochester Deli. I've mentioned it before. Today, I enjoyed a bowl of minestrone.






I brought a cookie back with me.
Confession. I've had these cookies before---they are peanut butter cookies dipped in *nice* milk chocolate. And it is not just any peanut butter cookie. Oh no. These are sugary, light-in-texture, melt-in-your mouth peanut butter cookies. Yes, the cookie was long gone by this post. The people at the deli are really nice people, good small business owners, and who ever is making the soup and baking these cookies has my devotion. *g*

Here's the parking lot scene at my hotel about 5:30 pm today. Wet, heavy snow. A scene of Spring. Riiiiight.

Gazpacho!!!

Bless you! No, I actually meant the chilled soup. I'm on the road this week and I ate at a new-to-me deli, The Rochester Deli, for lunch today. I was told they are famous for their corned beef or pastrami but when I saw the soup of the day was gazpacho.....I had to have the soup! So, I paired it with a nice cheese sandwich and vinaigrette cole slaw and was in heaven. I remembered that I was low on blog material after my first few bites, so sorry, you get to see what it looked liked five minutes into my meal.
The gazpacho was excellent and was an inspired selection by the deli since it was unseasonably warm today. My Jeep's thermometer said it was 80 degrees F on the way to the hotel. I'll definitely try the corned beef sandwich later this week.

I'm on the road with DH, which is my very good fortune. We are having baked Italian-style breaded boneless chichen breasts, a salad of Boston lettuce with a zesty french dressing by Brianna's and some garlic french bread. All obtained from the nice store across the road and prepared in our little kitchenette. Life is good. *grin*

I'm almost to the left front of Sonnet but no pictures for the blog yet. Soon, I promise, soon.

Friday morning coffee, YUM!

I woke up in my own bed this morning (yeah!), kissed my honey, and slippered into the kitchen to make coffee. We love coffee in the morning and we especially like it made in a percolator on the stovetop. We've tried other methods, but this is our favorite. We made it this way when camping a number of years ago and decided we shouldn't just enjoy it when camping. (Especially since we don't find a lot of time to camp.) When visiting, both our mothers comment on how good the coffee smells. I am sure some of that aroma comes from the freshly ground beans but the method must play a part too.

There was a package waiting for me when I arrived home last night. It was from Blue Moon Fiber Arts! Could it be the first installment of the 2007 Sock Club??? No, it is a bit too early for that.....but it was my order of January One and G-Rocks! They are both lovely colorways and these are my first skeins of STR but not my last, for sure.

Finally, for this morning, there is some actual knitting content!! I made some progress on Sonnet this week. This chilly weekend may also lend itself to knitting so I hope I'll have another photo on Sunday that shows me knitting the back!

I had some help with the photography this morning. Fuzzle found the beginnings of Sonnet acceptable.....