Catching Up at Home

Where HAS the time gone?

An all too common sentiment by many, including ourselves, as year-end fast approaches.

It's been a while since my last post about exploring the Zippo Lighter Museum in Bradford, PA. This was definitely one of the most unique and interesting places we've visited. Even better as it was completely unplanned after seeing a sign on the highway and detouring.

So often unexpected happenings are the best.

While not unexpected, travel is happening again An upcoming 🦃 holiday road trip will be to visit family and friends in our native NJ and PA. 

So what's been taking up so much time in the past couple of weeks?

Home cooking because as much as we did enjoy some a lot of  wonderful foods (and wine) on our Portugal adventure, we enjoy home dining. Since our apt kitchen is galley-style and best suited for a single chef, we've been trading weeks. Some of my recent meal plans have included soups and comfort food since this is the perfect time of year for both.

Above is a mini peasant bread from a recipe by Alexandra Stafford called My Mother’s Peasant Bread: The Best Easiest Bread You Will Ever Make which was included in her first book, Bread Toast Crumbs, a favorite in our collection. If you have Pyrex bowls and a few hours this bread can be done right before dinner. The recipe calls for making two mini-breads, but I halved it to bake a single. This is a no-knead bread, plus there's no preheating for the baking bowls.

Since soup is a wonderful accompaniment to fresh bread, the homemade soups were a tomato-based vegetable soup and a first-time broccoli-avocado soup with no dairy added.

Chicken pot pie just scream comfort food (you mean yours doesn't?). It also was a great way to use the excess chicken breasts bought on a supermarket sale. I had always leftovers from a store-bought rotisserie chick, but poaching and shredding chicken breasts was so easy and a definite a game-changer. I didn't include a link as there are plenty of online sites to explain the process. This pie also made good use of a single frozen pie crust and fresh vegetables of onions, celery and zucchini, a defrosted cup of peas and carrots was also included. Leftovers were the best part of this meal served with a side salad.

Pizza is one of our favorites and we have made it often with varying success. Recently, we tried a new recipe from fellow blogger Rain for this Thin Crust Pizza Dough. It was one of the best recipes tried. The recipe makes two 9-inch pizzas, but only a single one was made. The remaining dough was frozen and used for a second pizza night.

Much time was given to sorting through and organizing photos from the Portugal trip to create a photo book. Assembling it with photos and accompanying text took the better part of a week working several hours a day. Brochures collected along the trip and the tour itinerary served as guidelines to recall everywhere we went. And, the Internet was a huge resource to provide historical background. 

As for previous trip books, this one was created online using Snapfish which always has great deals, that can be combined. One was to add extra book pages beyond the 20 included at a 55% discount. I took advantage of that one increasing the book size to 50 pages. There was also a 75% discount on holiday photo cards, so for the first time I ordered family-themed ones to supplement my holiday card sending.

Other local events that took consumed the past couple of weeks included the annual Veterans Day parade in downtown Nashua. We attended, but no photos were taken this year.

The Nashua Public Library held a Mystery Masquerade (costumes optional) which was a great fun (and free) event. We are fortunate in that the public library here offers many free events such as children's story times, book groups, recent and classic film screenings, game night, guest speakers and special events. It's a lot different than the library I went to years ago.

Jim Brickman

Getting into the holiday spirit early, we attended a concert at the Nashua Arts Center that featured pianist and composer Jim Brickman on tour with The Gift of Christmas. While we have been long-time fans, it was news to us that Brickman has been called America's Romantic Piano Icon. He is considered the best-selling solo pianist with 22 number one albums, 33 Top 20 radio hits and 2 Grammy nominations. 

Coincidentally, he shares a distinction with fellow performer Barry Manilow, as both started their early careers by writing advertising jingles.

The show was simply done with Brickman performing solo as the scheduled female vocalist had suddenly been taken ill.

Since we are traditional and do not decorate until after the Thanksgiving holiday, this show was a gentle lead-in for what's to come.

Apologies to fellow bloggers for not keeping up with recent posts, many of which have been read; however commenting has been sporadic.