A visit from forum friends, plus ethnic foods (kind of)
I had company this weekend, and it was such fun! Peppi came from Chicago with her Dad and Sherry (sheshebop) visited from Indiana. They both arrived on Friday, and in honor of Peppi's Dad and their German heritage I made sauerbraten. At least it was the Michigan girl's version, LOL. I didn't have the final item I needed to finish off the "gravy", so Peppi brought it along:
Yeah, I'd never heard of Apfelkraut either, but it's kind of like a very dark and very thick apple butter, Peppi says it's fermented. She also brought some potato dumplings to go with dinner and a jar of spiced red cabbage. I made homemade dark rye bread and a "German" apple cake. I doubt that it was anything close to German, but that was what the recipe said, and it was frosted with cream cheese frosting. Yeah....German. Ahem.
We were up until far past midnight, gossiping and solving all the ills of the world. Peppi's dog, Emma, was loving my stubby tailed cat, Sparky, they both weigh about 15 pounds and they played together very well while the big dogs tried to ignore them.
Saturday morning we had homemade corned beef hash, eggs, toast from the rye bread, and pumpkin muffins. Unfortunately the only thing I remembered to take a picture of was the muffins!
Unfortunately Peppi's Dad was in a hurry to go home, so they left after breakfast. I offered to take Sherry anywhere she wanted to go, but she expressed a preference for just sitting around the living room and catching up, so we talked the afternoon away, munching on a tray of cheese, olives, crackers and sopressata in lieu of lunch.
the small appetizer plates on the right were a gift from another Cooking Forum member, Doucanoe/Linda. She made them herself and I miss her, you betcha...
For supper I hauled out the Atlas and made fresh pasta:
Half were this size and the other half were long strips for a batch of lasagna later.
I made a sauce with the last of the garden eggplant, ricotta cheese, the end of the garden tomatoes, and some cream. We also had the last of the golden beets from the garden, a Caesar salad and some of the blue Hokkaido squash, along with a Pane Bianco that sounded good with the pasta. (Yes, LindaC, I removed the ricotta carton from the table, LOL)
To be continued, because I'm out of room for pictures.....
Comments (19)
9 years agoRelated Discussions
The Forum Friends Support Sherry
Comments (43)Ellen, welcome to my world, where EVERYONE is taller than me. Even you. (grin) Karen, we all missed you, I would love to see you again, and Pam, one of these days we'll meet up, I'm sure. And you'll be taller than me too... CC, that would have been great fun to meet you too. Maybe on my next trip out to visit the California boys, we'll be driving that one, I'm betting. No way would Elery leave his "favorite girl", Molly! Annie...See MoreWhy we visit the Smaller Homes forum...
Comments (83)Autum it can be staggering on the cost of lots in some areas. We are really low end here from about 12K for a city lot which are 50 by 150 ish. They vary. We bought half an acre for 19K. Wish it was smaller but to get what we wanted on the lot we needed this much because it is a triangle. So we ended up with more dreaded lawn than I wanted. My friend has two houses one huge at 6 bedrooms two story.Daylight basement being one of the stories. Barns out buildings and a second smaller two bedroom house all on almost 10 acres for 160K. So on the other end of the scale there are places going pretty darn cheep. Certainly more than we want to deal with no matter how inexpensive. As far as DIY it is so much harder as you say the older you get. Some thing that I could easily do in an hour and not even batting an eye takes me so much longer now and I some times have to think if it is even worth it. And with my DH 10 years older then I am I can not always ask for his help now as I need to consider if it will cause him as much pain if not more than me. I was just thinking today to get it all done as fast as I can now or seriously consider hiring some one to help me. I just hired a guy the other day to lay some pavers in the dogs yard to lower the mud level in the house this winter. There was just one little corner needing to be finished filled in.He lifted and carried four pavers at a time when I would struggle with carrying ONE. And my knee does not work=bend like it should any more. Needs surgery I have to wait on. My ankle is still healing from a fall a year ago.I struggled to carry an end table this morning to move it from one room to another. A few years ago it was not hard to move.And I still have not finished painting the inside of our house and usually I have a house painted inside and out in the first year. This was a new house but builders paint is crappy. NOW the outside needs painting too. Next year and we all will get to decide what colors. So glad this is a small house. The cost of paint is staggering now and where I buy it in Oregon they added two dollars a gallon fee for?? some thing about the environment.GGGRRRRRRRR...See MoreMiss Manners might like to visit some forums
Comments (81)Beagles said exactly what I was thinking. To be honest, your old hand drawn sketch was too difficult for me to really understand. I knew what you were trying to do - figure out if it would work. To see if your concepts were sound. I get that. But I can also understand how the more technical-minded folks on GW would get annoyed when your responses were brushing off what they considered to be the bones of your project. I read most of your posts (here and on th other forums) and it always seemed like you were saying "eh, we'll figure out if the house is going to fall over later...but look at my pretty inspiration pictures". (if that wasn't what you were saying I apologize but that's the impression I got) Not knowing if the bones are good enough seemed to be the big stumbling block in the lines of communication. You want to know if it'll look right and everyone else is trying to ask if it's even possible. But now with the new plan sketch it's much clearer to me what you're trying to do (maybe it's the engineer in me). As far as your first floor layout, I like it but I would consider shrinking the opening to the living room on the front wall and move the hall/coat closet into that corner by the front door. So when you do have guests coming in they don't have to walk to the center of the house to get their jackets. Your clawfoot tub bathroom is nice but I think that if you moved the sink to the common wall with your master bath then you could maybe add a small linen closet where the sink is now. That way guests wouldn't have to go into your bedroom space to get extra TP or towels or anything. Just some thoughts. I have no idea what to tell you about the roof lines and outside view of the home without seeing what your mock up looks like. I'm not good at picturing things in my mind. And macybaby I have a picture of myself looking much the same except I was covered in plaster dust from our demo. We haven't gotten to the mudding stage yet, but I'm sure I'll be covered from head to toe again. We knew going into our kitchen renovation that the sunporch would have to come off and be rebuilt. There was essentially no structure. As soon as we took the trim off we could see that the corners were made from 2x4's in an L shape...we thought we might have load bearing windows. No headers back there at all. The only we saved was the roof. Luckily we didn't find any other major damage in the rest of the kitchen that we didn't anticipate. We're tearing out the floor down to the joists and even some of those are going to be repaired (sistering new joists to them to even out the floor)...but again, we knew to anticipate this before starting. Our kitchen budget was roughly $25k (not including a 5% contingency) and I think we're going to come in at $26k. I consider that a success. Of course we were hoping to come in closer to $15k but we did all of our investigation work a head of time and knew what kind of budget we needed to do it right. Of course I would've rather been thinking about paint colors and stain for the cabinets but I kind of figured, why waste my time and tease myself thinking about the pretty stuff if I didn't even know we could afford it. And the only reason our kitchen is getting done in the budget we have is because we're also doing all the work ourselves (with the help of some friends). All the demo, framing, flooring, electrical, plumbing, drywall...everything....See MoreGerman Themed Dinner Party - Ideas?
Comments (27)Yeah, but they said that the Fedewasser that I was talking about, the so white it's green and has bubbles stuff, is only around for a month, and everyone was serving it. It's fermented with yeast (according to the article), and if it gets older it goes brown and boozy. Unless someone is making it near you, it's not an option. So I learned a lot today that I didn't know when I was young and trying not to be overserved. They sell it (sold it?) in huge portions and it's very refreshing. Until you stand up, you don't feel the alcohol. :)...See More- 9 years ago
9 years ago- 9 years ago
- 9 years ago
- 9 years ago
- 9 years ago
PRO9 years agolast modified: 9 years ago- 9 years ago
- PRO9 years ago
- 9 years ago
9 years ago
9 years ago- 9 years ago
9 years ago
9 years ago- 9 years ago
- 9 years ago
annie1992Original Author