Weekend Recap

This past weekend was pretty mellow, we stayed home mostly and ate really well.

I went out Friday night to Frijtz on Valencia with a couple of girls that I used to work with. It was a fabulous time. I love hanging out with people that I have not seen in a while and I love mussels, frijtz and salad! We had wonderful conversation and great food. The Babe was very sweet to drop me off before his workout and pick me up when he was done, very nice. I would have taken the bus, but took him up on his offer.

Saturday we took some things to storage, cleaned up a little and went to Whole Foods Market for some dinner making supplies. I had decided to make a large Italian dinner on Saturday night and needed some spicy Italian chicken sausage to add to my sauce and some bread for garlic bread. After we shopped we ate lunch at the store and then headed back home.

When we got home I decided that I needed to tackle cleaning out the heat register and down into the duct as much as I could with the vacuum. Besides me being allergic to cats, I am even more allergic to dust and dust mites, they literally make me feel like I am going to die (sneezing so hard, itchy eyes). It has been getting cold in our place and we had yet to turn the heat on because of the dust in the duct that accumulates over the summer. So, this task was a little risky, but I had my mind made up and just wanted to get it done. I slowly unscrewed the cover to the duct and removed it and when I looked in there, holy cow...where does this stuff come from? I swept it all out with the vacuum and by the time I was done, I was too hot to turn the heat on. As of this posting, we still have yet to turn the heat on. I didn't have too bad of a reaction to cleaning it all out, thanks to all the new drugs and asthma meds I am on.

I started my kitchen duties by making chocolate pudding (vegan, Tim didn't know) for dessert, I wanted to get that done and in the fridge so it would be cool by the time dessert came around. For dinner I made fettuccine with spicy chicken sausage sauce and garlic bread - may not sounds like a large Italian dinner, but the Babe's portion was served on a mini platter (which he chose from the cupboard). We had a nice bottle of Merlot and hung out the rest of the evening at home. The pudding was wonderful, I had not made pudding in a long time, yummy!

Sunday afternoon while the Babe was playing tennis I decided I wanted to bake something. I had planned on making bread on Sunday, but nixed it for some reason or another. I remembered that Robin sent me home with some large fresh picked apples the weekend before and a pre-made pie crust disk so I made a little apple tart. I sliced the apples thinly by hand and placed them on the disk with a little crust popping out around the edge. I covered the sliced apples in a mix of sugar, cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg and ginger, folded the little edges over and baked it. The entire house (all 750 sq ft of it) smelled fabulous! When the Babe came home from tennis his face lit right up because he knew something was baking (tis the season). When it came out the oven we both ewwed and ahhhed. For dinner, I thought I would bake the left over pasta so I pressed it all into a casserole dish, mixed some eggs and Parmesan cheese together, poured in on top and baked it for dinner. What a great left over dish and an even better dessert.

A fine weekend at home for sure.

PS-Robin, not sure what kind of apples those were, they are GREAT for baking, hold up nice and are the perfect blend of sweet and tart.