Happy Halloween from Maxine

Have a spooky day!

First Snow

My sister sent me 2 pictures of the freak early snow storm that hit London yesterday.These pictures are a view out the front door of her work looking at the parking lot and Highbury St. area.
About 10 to 20 cm fell. Arctic air coming in over the warm water of Lake Huron , had a streamer coming in from Grand Bend to Aylmer.
Dumping lots of snow. This is way too early.

Cranberry Orange Scones

My Granny was a fabulous British cook/baker in fact that was her career.
Granny was a scratch baker , never measured a thing.
"It is all in the way it looks or feels or sounds" she would say .
I love breads, in particular scones .
Still trying to perfect them , light and moist is my objective.
This is my thrown together tribute to Granny.
I utilized some leftover cranberry sauce, dried cranberries and orange juice.

Cranberry Orange Scones

2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 egg
1/2 cup cranberry sauce
1/4- 1/2 cup orange juice
1 Tbsp. grated orange peel, optional
1/2 cup cold butter
1/3 cup white sugar
1/2 cup dried cranberries
Topping:
1 TBSP. white sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Preheat oven to 400
Combine dry ingredients together, cut cold butter into flour mix until resembles coarse meal. Add dried cranberries to this mix. Combine egg, cranberry sauce and orange juice and peel together.Gradually add egg, sauce mix stirring until clump forms . This is Granny's "feel" part. Add more orange juice to bind mixture together.
Turn out onto floured board , knead about 4 turns.
Form into a round about 1 inch thick,sprinkle with topping mixture, cut into 6-8 wedges transfer to greased baking sheet.
Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes, until "tapped on the top sound hollow."
This scone turned out to be moist, flavourful and light, but I feel I am still learning.

Posting on my blog

My sister Donna was complaining that before I retired I posted more items on my blog.
Never one to miss a challenge I have for the last week
tried to find something to blog about every day.
Let me tell you, it is tough to find something interesting to post.
Not that retirement isn't great; but oh my, to lose that structure to one's daily life is hard.
I am a creature of routine. Some would say set in my ways.
So today's post, one of the things I do in retirement is swim at the clubhouse
every other day. I love it. One of the perks of retirement.
Salt water pool
Already on these cool autumn day love the
Hot tub , yes those are my toes!
So Donna , hope this makes up for the lack of posts, thinking I will post more on the excitement/ joys of my new found freedom from workday grind.

Sunday Surprise

On a very grey, windy, day with rain, sun and then hail.

We had Sherry, Willie , Brock and Brayden drop by after a hockey tournament in Simcoe.Unfortunately Brayden's team lost the Sunday game.
What was going to be a casual lunch turned into a surprise birthday party.
They brought a gorgeous cake.

This cake was baked by Riny's in Dorchester.

Chocolate with a chocolate cream fruit filling with decadent chocolate icing.
Yes we do like chocolate.
I hadn't had a cake for my birthday so this belated cake was a nice surprise.

This was a fun way to spend a rainy Sunday lunchtime.

Orchids and Xmas Cactus/Green Thumb Sunday

Update on my Christmas Cactus which is now if full bloom. A lovely fuchsia pink it adds a nice cheery look to rather gloomy, very windy and rainy weekend.
The weather forecasters are mentioning the four letter word starting with S for Tuesday. Way too early for that in this part of the country.
Oh, I forgot I do live in Canada.

My 2 orchids are doing well, so far .
Raising orchids is new to me. I have left the Phalaenopsis orchids in the original pots and media. One orchid is in bark , it is the healthiest one, the other in spagnham moss, it is the one that had its partner die and has the white cottony dots on it.
This orchid that I was given from work to save; has new buds coming but it had contained 2 orchids plants, one did die, it rotted. The stronger tall one is putting on new blossoms but has a white cottony dots on it .
In the picture you can just see behind the largest bud a bit of the white cottony dots. I will have to do some research to find out what is the problem.
Right from the beginning the leaves on this orchid have been dull and blotchy. Certainly not the healthiest specimen.I hate to see plants die so if it is possible will try to get this plant to come back. One thing I will be doing is changing from the moss to orchid bark and take Q-tip with a bit of alcohol to see if I can clean up this orchid.
The oldest one is now putting on new shoots.The leaves on this orchid are shiny and bright green.
There is a new shoot starting at the top of the old branch and one starting at the base of the leaves. I can hardly wait to see the progress.

More shopping success

Having settled on my colour scheme, I was lucky enough to find these " guest"
towels at Homesense .They are for the main bathroom.
I had to smile they were part of the display of Christmas theme towels.
But heck they work for me!

They are a warm taupe colour with the circles , 2 shades of green , forest and moss, cream,bronze, silver and a milk chocolate.

Pillows

Since moving into this new home I have been struggling to decide on my colour decor.
I knew I needed to update the colour palette from a dated floral look but how to do it without losing many of the treasured items I have collected over the years.
Because the home is smallish it needed to have the colour scheme work throughout the home to keep the feeling spacious.
I had chosen browns and cream with accents of black but felt it needed a punch of colour.
Managed to utilize many of the pieces from our other home but some how it wasn't feeling warm , lacked personality.Needed something............
Love the French country look......
Seen a lot of chocolate and blue, chocolate and reds, some just monochromatic. Nothing excited me, sparked my creativity, gave me a direction.
I love home shows, watching lots of HGTV, Steven and Chris, Cityline.
Not sure which one of these shows inspired me , on one of them they were showing a green with the brown.
Eureka! Green is my favourite colour .
Would it work ? What shade? Could I find what I was looking for?
I went shopping on Monday , just window shopping and there at The Bay while strolling though the housewares department there on a shelf, pillows, lots of pillows.
They were the right shade, green with a slight yellow touch , not fluorescent. Here are the 3 I picked;
The touch of floral motif on the one pillow ties into my blinds on the windows,the striped one has all the colours of the house combined in one, the last pillow is a lovely luxury look crinkled look.

With this new accent colour I feel like a have direction to go forward to bring the touch of French Country into my home.............

Midway Taffy Apple Pizza, Failure Success?

When I went to the Simcoe Fair I picked up this recipe book from the Food Fare area.
There are lots of interesting recipes to try. Looking for a dessert to try I picked Midway Taffy Apple Pizza. Sounds so good doesn't it.Seemed easy.
Prep:

Step 2;

Ready for oven;
Looking good!
Maybe I first went wrong when I decided to use tortillas ( which the recipe said I could rather than pizza dough) or maybe when I decided to use McIntosh apples( they were on hand) with the skin on(healthier)or was it the cranberries instead of pecans ( not a nut in the cupboard) or maybe it was setting the oven slightly lower, 400, and a shorter cook time 15 minutes( since I was using tortillas).
Results:

This looks like a dog's dinner, it ran over in the oven, burnt on the edges, tortilla was too light for the weight of the other ingredients.Did not look good on presentation.
Did it taste good? Oh yes ,it was delicious.
Will I make this again ?
Yes, just to prove it can be done. Will I follow the recipe closer, yes!
If you are brave enough to try it here is the recipe. If you have success, I would love to know and see how it turns for you.

Midway Taffy Apple Pizza

pizza dough or flat bread
1/4 cup caramel sauce
250 ml. cream cheese , soft
2 large apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
1 TBSP. butter, melted
2 TBSP. brown sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/3 cup pecans, chopped
Chocolate sauce
Combine caramel sauce with cream cheese, spread on pizza dough.
Combine apples with melted butter, arrange on pizza.
Add sugar and cinnamon.
Drizzle top with more caramel and chocolate sauce.
Bake at 425 for 15 to 20 minutes.

Birthday

It was my birthday on Monday.
I will NOT be telling how old I am!
To celebrate my Mom took me to lunch. We went to Red Lobster , we both love seafood.
Shrimp platter for me.

To start the lunch we both indulged in Sunset Colada's; haven't had one in a very long time, so good!
Mom and her shrimp and lobster plate

Thanks for the treat , Mom.

Happy Anniversary

All the best to Mom and Lorne!

Christmas Cactus

This Christmas Cactus is just about to flower , a little early!
This cactus was considerably bigger before we moved . The branches being rather brittle, it got knocked around broken in half. It summered outside on the front porch over July, August, and September; rebounding beautifully. Up close and personal!
Just wish it would flower closer to Christmas.
Maybe I will try an Easter Cactus , do you think it would flower at Christmas!:_)

Happy 40th Birthday

My nephew Chris is turning 40 on the 21st of October.
Caroline his wife threw a wonderful surprise party with lots of family and friends.

Chris is hard to surprise but she managed to do it.

Fire truck birthday cake.
Chris has been a volunteer fireman for many years and just the morning of the party helped out at the pancake breakfast fundraiser.When Chris and Caroline married part of their wedding was a ride on the fire truck .






Guests watching the opening of presents, Chris is certainly going to have lots of wine to sample and lots of Crown Royal to share.









A great time!