This month’s “What’s on Your Plate” blog challenge was restaurant inspired. Since we still eat mostly at home, I’ll say this blog was inspired by HEB grocery store and their “Texas sized” shrimp.
One of the meals my husband and I discovered is Baked Shrimp Scampi by Ina Garten. In addition to the HEB shrimp, another inspiring factor of this recipe is the substitution of one of the ingredients. Read on to find out….
Continue readingI haven’t felt much like blogging, but I’m feeling overdue. I’m thankful for blogger challenges such as “What’s on Your Plate?” and “What’s on Your Book Shelf?” I’m going to slip under the November deadline with a belated Thanksgiving post right now! I’m also grateful for my talented and attentive husband, whose been doing more than his share of the cooking this year. What’s on my book shelf? My husband’s collection of old cook books. What’s on my plate? Meals cooked by my husband using those old cook books.
In honor of Mother’s Day, I decided to share one of my favorite recipes that Mom handed down to me. Even though she is no longer on this earth, I’m surrounded by her beautiful art work and a load of great recipes. Mom was a gourmet, but my favorites from her collection are always the most simple recipes. I’ve never made this cheese cake when it wasn’t just fabulous. It’s so simple!
Why should I stop writing about eggs? Especially now that Deb at The Widow Badass and Donna at Retirement Reflections have started the “What’s On Your Plate” writing prompt challenge.
I have a love-hate relationship with eggs that started after the end of my first marriage. Broke and single, eggs were a cheap, easy and versatile source of protein. Sixteen years of flying solo and newly into retirement, my first blog was about trying to poach eggs in a Berndes pan. It was a 72 hour disaster that ended in the disposal of an otherwise incredibly good cooking pan. I whined to a good friend who told me to write about it. Suddenly, I was a blogger who wrote about eggs (and then other things.)
Continue readingIf you’re not tired of hearing about the Texas Freeze, scroll on. In response to this week’s Sunday’s Stills Challenge, here are a collection of “white” photos from how we spent our first wedding anniversary.
Normally, when it snows in South Central Texas it looks like this little bitty pile on our Sego Palm. I took this photo, as a joke, to document our first snow day as a married couple. Little did I know that this was the first of many snow days to come.
A friend suggested I add an item to my blog menu; Weird Little Problems. When I find the patience to sort through the latest changes in WordPress, I’ll do that. Meanwhile, there’s this one – egg trouble, or shall I say MORE egg trouble.
There’s something about weird little problems that give me a boost of creativity, or cause me to lose my shit – rarely both. But this is one of those times. I’ve had problems with eggs before. I wrote my first blog about Eggs Trapped in a Berndes Pan over three years ago. A lot has changed since then. And a lot hasn’t.
Continue readingDo you believe in fairies, love creative re-purposing, or like positive stories about how people spend their time? You might be interested in what my fellow third culture friend Miriam Lusk Berry has been up to during this pandemic. In addition to being a nurse, Miriam is a Mom, a daughter who gets to live with her own Mother (rather than be separated) and has a beautiful Grand Pyrenees mix named Maggie. Maggie deserves some credit, for it is her walks that produce the treasures used in creating her “shire.”
I recently attended an incredible retreat by Advivum Journeys (https://www.advivumjourneys.ca/). A group of total strangers gathered in Molokai for “The Reimagined Self” at Hui Ho’Olana. We were exhausted from travel, life’s dealings, or both. Even so, a few of us decided to ride into town, away from the comfort of the resort or its facilitative processes.
We were introducing ourselves in the outdoor lobby of Hotel Molokai and waiting for one final member when there she was! Wait, I was told the age range of retreat guests was “middle-aged to 80.” Here was this 30-something woman with long, freshly washed and damp hair, wearing a strapless sun dress. She had to be one of the facilitators. She was full of energy and literally stood on her toes, then landed on flat feet as she extended her hand. “Hi! I’m Laura!” Continue reading
This is me, enjoying my sun-room and dreading the end of day light savings. Wearing my brightest colored outfit, in denial, and shifting through conflicting feelings. I love the fall and I hate the fall. I love the cooling temperatures and the approaching holiday season. I hate the “falling back an hour” and losing the early evening day light. Continue reading
Along with the love of art and photography comes my obsession with framing. Vintage framing. Growing up, I always had a large collection of frames in which placed photos of friends and family. I preferred antique or vintage frames, but any frame would do. In part, this was due to my military brat upbringing and the longing to hold on to memories of friends after multiple moves or family I rarely saw (and in some cases never knew.) But I also think I got this from my Mother, Artist Jacqueline Stubbs. She was the same way. Every time I moved, one of her contributions to my unpacking would be the creation of a family wall. Here is one of her with me as an infant, on my current family wall. In this case the frame and the photo are vintage!! Continue reading
ARTISTIC PENSION 
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