Easy Cheesey Fettucini Sauce by Toni

Simple easy dinner. Its just a bowl of pasta.  Ok..this is not diet.  But so good.

As usual I don't have a recipe....but I did try to get some adequate measurements.  The red utensil is a 1/3 cup measure.

Start boiling the water in the sauce pan.  When the water is boiling add 1/2 package of fettucini noodles. (Salt water if desired)

Then in a meduium sized skillet, add about 3 tblspoons of butter, melt and sautée with four cloves garlic and about 1/8 cup finely chopped onion.

Cook about 3 minutes, careful not to burn the butter or the garlic.

Add a few tablespoons of flour and mix well and then add about 1/3 cup of half and half. I was cooking lightly over medium or low  gas flame.

Stir in a heaping 1/3 cup of sour cream...(uh huh.... so now you know how good it will be).

Add salt and pepper as desired and 2 tablespoons of parsley.  Fresh is THE best but I was out and this was a no trip to the store meal.

Add a handful of cheddar cheese.  Mine was about 1/2 cup.. (Tillamook cheddar) I have big hands, so maybe more.

Stir in about 1/3 cup parmesan cheese.  Again fresh is best, I only had the Kraft stuff. Even more parmesan would work... cheese y'know!

Add in about 1/2 - 3/4 cup of water to thin and let cook simmer about 10 minutes. (Broth would be tastier...I had none)

When the noodles are ready, per package instructions, or how you like it best, strain and put back in the pan and add about 1 cup of the sauce...There will be an extra half a cup of sauce or so....
Go ahead and add it if you want.

Enjoy...then blog about it.  (Simple ingrediate list after the pics)



3 tbls butter, 4 cloves garlic, 1/8 finely chopped onion, 2-3 tbls of flour, 1/3 cup half and half, 1/3 cup sour cream, 2 tbls parsley, salt, pepper, handful cheddar cheese, 1/3 cup parmesan cheese, 1/2-3/4 cup water..(broth would be better)

cheesecake....

There was this time .. a few weeks ago... I wanted cheesecake....

It turned out great.  I made extra  crust....   There was caramel topping and whipped cream involved.

Recipe. Cheesecake

soapy news

The lastest soap to come out of the soap kitchen is pumpkin spice.. it's a light scent with tumeric for coloring and ground oats for scrub.

The blend has 5 ounces coconut oil for lathery moisture. 

I love homemade soap.
 

People writing songs that voices never share

Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
'Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dare
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools" said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming

And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence

~ Paul Simon

belated summer cooking -Tupperware

So totally annoyed with my blog app....my issue is that I upload multiple pics to from my phone, then I go to app or blogger to uncover draft but I can't see the pics.  For me that part is the worst about blogging.  I need keypad and free fingers to write but I need also to upload my photos journals.  Am I whining?  Perhaps... :).   I don't like this typing on the phone thing... ha ha how do people type on phones.... ;) kidding, I just did it. 

Ok so last year, in efforts to cook chicken in the 100 degree temps, I  decided to get some microwave cookware.  Yes.. I went to a real Tupperware  party.  I got mini tupperware prizes too. That party was a freaking blast... women, food and wine.. what more to say.  Fun for days!!!

I bought a cookware set on sale.. with free cookbook.  I never got around to doing much with it.... so this year... epic hot summer... I got a 7 dollar whole chicken.. rubbed it down with chili powder, salt and pepper and stuffed with celery.  

Bad blog notes..because I can't remember how many minutes per pound.... I cooked it for 37 minutes.  

There was a how many mins per ...pound instructions but I can't remember.  Text me and I can find out.  Also.. add a cup of water or broth. 

It turned out fantastic.  No oven.  A chicken is a lot of meat, so I make chicken tacos and soup meat.  Check out the skin and doneness of it .. wow!!

I know some think this is undercooked... it just needs to sit longer. It was perfect.  I checked with thermometer.
 

Those wings..

 For the Tacos..

The top pile was for tacos the middle pile was for soup with the chopped celery.... deboned and de-skinned...(boooo.. but I have fat to loose on my own human be-ing that I carry around..soooo..so I have rules..)

 Soup mix in fridge. For the next day. 

 

 
Taco meat for tacos...
 

 

Next evening soup was yummy.
 

Easy summer time cooking.  I am sorry my post is so casual.... need to flow better with a keyboard. That's how I blog... free flow.

For my food buds.. I have a cheesecake that was grand to post.  I recommend cheesecake to the world.  It was delicious. Pics coming.

Happy cooking... do your best for heathy, clean..kind, food. Doing the best with what you have is a win!  

Cook and be happy.

 

 

August Read - South of Broad

It is early August here in Northern California.  It is about the time of year when people have quit complaining about the heat and have finally committed to the heat and warm sunny skies.  The yard is starting late summer shriveling from long sunny days and having never quite recovered from the previous drought years.  The side lawn was completely forgotten this summer and remains a wasteland, even the weeds jumped ship to the main lawn of crab grass and everything that survives in a front yard that isn't grass.  The summer makes me feel lazy at times, especially on the days where it is just too hot to run or do anything.  At least on some days that is my excuse.  Today being one of those days.  One of those days where I am not training for a 1/2 marathon and seriously the guilt of not doing so has vanquished for the rest of this day at least.

Late breakfast, naps, no chores... and while I should be dusting and getting the house ready for the week, I decided to blog.   

What am I reading these days?  I can't seem to finish books unless I have a review or blog tour. Which is partially the reason that I like to do them. Accountability... I mean one can't just give up reading????    I am reading a book called Crash and Burn, Lisa Gardner.  It is good, just a bit scary, so I don't read it before bedtime.  I am also making my way through a book called Self Therapy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness and Healing Your Inner Child...by Jay Early.  It's a self help book, so I am making my way through it, and I say that step by step is the way to make it through the book.  

I have stacks of to-be-read books all around me. I think that comes from a time when I didn't think I'd feel complete if I didn't have books near by with all kinds of choices.  It is amusing as I recollect about that time as I would have NEVER read two-three books at a time.  The days of grieving over a finished book have been long gone.    Now I can sit and read morsels of different books and I am not so driven to even know what is happening next.  It is kind of  like the tv, I will put it on and get episode 2 when I feel like it.  That doesn't bode well for actually finishing books that I start.  Commit Toni Commit!

This afternoon I pulled a book from my bedside table.  South of Broad by Pat Conroy.   I know many of my book blogger friends and associates have read this.    I don't even know what it is about, but I opened the book and started reading and it was like a gourmet reading treat. And I could only wish that Nick Nolte was reading it...to me as he narrated Conroy's other book in movie form. So in my mind he is reading it to me.    It stimulated my mind and I can't wait to get back to it and I suppose that is why I decided to come here to talk about books this Sunday.   

Would anyone care to read with me? Let's check back next month and chat about it. Pretty please.

Biography

Pat Conroy is the author of eight previous books: The Boo, The Water is Wide, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, Beach Music, My Losing Season, and The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes of My Life. He lives in Fripp Island, South Carolina. Photo copyright: David G. Spielman

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage” (The Washington Post) by the celebrated author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini

From Publishers Weekly:

Charleston, S.C., gossip columnist Leopold Bloom King narrates a paean to his hometown and friends in Conroy's first novel in 14 years. In the late '60s and after his brother commits suicide, then 18-year-old Leo befriends a cross-section of the city's inhabitants: scions of Charleston aristocracy; Appalachian orphans; a black football coach's son; and an astonishingly beautiful pair of twins, Sheba and Trevor Poe, who are evading their psychotic father. The story alternates between 1969, the glorious year Leo's coterie stormed Charleston's social, sexual and racial barricades, and 1989, when Sheba, now a movie star, enlists them to find her missing gay brother in AIDS-ravaged San Francisco. Too often the not-so-witty repartee and the narrator's awed voice (he is very fond of superlatives) overwhelm the stories surrounding the group's love affairs and their struggles to protect one another from dangerous pasts. Some characters are tragically lost to the riptides of love and obsession, while others emerge from the frothy waters of sentimentality and nostalgia as exhausted as most readers are likely to be. Fans of Conroy's florid prose and earnest melodramas are in for a treat. (Aug.) 

How can you resist that editorial?

Happy August!  Have a great week of peace and love.  #nevergiveup