Forty-One and Definitely Counting!

No, not years. Not for another 5+ years! But forty-one days until I touch down in my beloved Portland, OR and get to spend an entire week with Kat, Josh, Melo, Chrissie, Keving, their girls Leina and Kulia, etc., etc.!!!! Can you tell I'm out of this world excited? I haven't been in Portland since August 2005. Wayyyy too long ago for my soul. And, of course, I've already told Kat about all the wonderful things I want to do while I'm visiting. Too many things, actually. But she knows me, and knows that once I'm there I will be thrilled, no matter what we do.

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler!*

So, what's in a muffuletta?, originally uploaded by kyredbutterfly.

Happy Fat Tuesday, everyone! My only form of celebration will be a work pot luck where there will be no jambalaya, gumbo, red beans and rice, crawfish, benets, or muffulettas! This is the educational sign that hangs in the French Quarter grocery that supposedly created the wonderfully delicious muffuletta. No matter how you celebrate, eat, drink and be merry!

* Let the good times roll!

A Hint of Yellow

DSC00207, originally uploaded by kyredbutterfly.

It snowed again this week. Thankfully, it didn't last long. But as I've said, I'm ready for spring at this point, which always means tulips for me. I think I may have to splurge this weekend and buy some to put in a vase...on a high shelf where the cats can't eat them, or knock them over. I didn't get a chance to download more pictures last night, so I dug around in my archives and found this little shot. I love the almost technicolor quality of the red, and that one blaze of yellow! Yellow Week has been so much fun. Thanks Erin, for hosting it! (Check out Erin's banner, too. I love all that green!)

Yellow Week 4 - Yarn Love

Before I could pick an angle to snap a picture of the yellow yarn on the quilt, Cassius snuck up and started getting comfortable. Eventually, he was resting his little chin on the skeins of yarn - so sweet. But photographing a black cat can be difficult with the best of light. At night, getting a good shot is nearly impossible for me. But I liked this one best, with the yellow light infusing the shot. However, he was much happier when I stopped taking the pictures and he could settle in for a long nap.

Don't forget to jump over to Flickr to see all the other great pictures from Yellow Week! I'm so impressed by the submissions. It's like we're willing spring to come.

Yellow 3 - Tonight's Dinner

I've decided to go Moroccan for dinner, so here are some of my ingredients for my take on the Squash and Chickpea Moroccan Stew from SmittenKitchen. When I add the saffron threads, even my dinner will remind me of yellow week! As the picture shows, I'm going with a fresh lemon instead of the preserved lemons called for in the recipe. I'm not sold on them enough to go on an expensive search. A little lemon juice, some zest, and a little more salt added to what's called for will be just dandy for me.

Tea Time - Yellow 2

A mug of lemon tea was a welcome respite to a stressful day. Made all the more so because my computer and/or internet has been giving me fits for days now. Just when I commit to uploading pictures daily for Yellow Week, my computer doesn't want to let me link to pictures on my blog or upload them to Flickr. A borrowed computer was the only way to solve the problem!

Yellow Monday

***For some unknown reason blogger won't let me upload my photos tonight. Please see the links below, or click on my Flickr link to the right, to see my first four entries into Yellow Week. I'm going to try to keep working on this, but until then...***

Erin is hosting a color week. I jumped in at the last moment, knowing that it would be a challenge for me on several levels. It would require me to post daily, and it would require me to put my photos out there amongst other much more accomplished photographers with much nicer cameras than my little point-and-click Sony Cybershot.

Don't get me wrong, I love my camera and it's more than enough for me, personally. But when I look at other blogs with pictures taken with cameras that create immensely better photographs, and are taken by people who know something about taking a good picture, well, it's a little intimidating. But mostly, I knew that I am sick, sick, sick of winter and ready to embrace spring. The warm weather from last week was just a flirtation. So I knew I needed to go looking for spring, and Erin's color week was just the thing to help me find a few moments of spring in my days.

I took these shots in and around the state capitol, since I knew I wouldn't be getting home tonight until after dark. I at least wanted my yellow to look cheerful. I was surprised that I found so much yellow lurking around me!

This and That

If I had blogged last week, as I intended to, the title would have been "Snap, Crackle, Pop" as the perfect description of living through the snow and ice storm that shut down large swaths of the state. It snowed all day on a Tuesday, then that night the ice started, and you could hear the tree limbs creaking and snapping under the weight of the ice. Finally, by Wednesday, lines started snapping and transformers popped as the power went out, at our house and throughout the state. Here are my pictures from the front porch and back door of our house.

**

But this weekend has been about puttering around the house, cooking, laundry, knitting, and listening to "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" on CD. My second attempt at bread from this book was much more successful than my first loaf (the rest of that dough went into the trash after the storm). Seriously, is there anyone out there that doesn't have this book yet? Everywhere I look, someone is blogging about baking something from it. I've had it for several months now, but peer pressure finally got me to start trying it. This could be very bad for my health goals for the year!

**

The mushroom barley soup I made to go with it on Saturday tasted great, except for some of the mushrooms were too woody to eat. This is rather disappointing, since they came from a "gourmet" dried mix of mushrooms I bought at Costco. I love mushrooms, but they have such horrible shelf-life that I like to use dried mushrooms. These looked like a good deal, but if half of them aren't palatable, it doesn't do me much good. The broth and the rest of the soup is great, though. The recipe is definitely a keeper. I just have to find a better mix of dried mushrooms.

**

Today I indulged in one of my favorite meals. I made a "hearty" breakfast of scrambled eggs with peppers and onions, hash browns and bacon. I adore breakfast. I adore hash browns. And I love, love, love bacon. So much so that this is the first time I've bought bacon in over a year. I have a hard time saying "No," so it's better if it just never enters my house. But I'd been craving this kind of breakfast for about a month now, so I finally gave in on a lazy morning. It was a very nice treat. When I was in law school I'd cook this kind of breakfast once a month or so, for my roommate and I. It's the only kind of luxury I could afford back then. It's a good thing I don't indulge in this habit too often, however! The bread is going to be bad enough.

(**Sorry for the stars...for some reason I keep having trouble getting new paragraphs to format correctly. This at least keeps the entire post from being one very long block of text!)