photo by: dunham_1

I love the Tomato Basil Pesto Pasta Salade made at La Madeleine Cafe.  While living in Austin, we would go there for lunch, meetings, and book club. I loved nothing better than getting a half of a Chicken Salade Croissant and a side of their amazing pasta salade.  Unfortunately I no longer live in proximity to a La Madeleine. I searched for the recipe and came up empty. So I decided to play around with the ingredients to see if I could recreate my favorite. I think I have it!

Tomato Basil Pesto Pasta Salad

1 box Farfalle (Bow Tie) pasta

1/4 cup chopped sweet onion

1/4 cup chopped fresh sweet basil

1/4 cup chopped fresh spinach

3 Roma tomatoes, diced

6 sun dried tomato halves packed in olive oil, finely chopped

2 Tablespoons of Amore Concentrated Basil Pesto

1/3 cup Brianna’s Home style Asiago Caesar Dressing or any other creamy Caesar dressing

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

Salt and Pepper

Follow the directions on the back of the pasta box and cook pasta until it is firm. Drain and set aside to cool down.  While the pasta is cooling, prep the other ingredients. In a large bowl combine the onion, basil, spinach, diced tomato, sun dried tomato, and basil pesto.  Fold in the cooled pasta. Add the Caesar dressing and half of the cheese. Taste. Season with salt and pepper to your liking. Add in the remaining cheese and toss.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.

If you want to go all out, make your own Caesar Dressing and Basil Pesto! I found it easier and cheaper to buy these items. Also I would go easy on adding the salad dressing to make sure it suits your taste. You might add more dressing after the salad has set for a few hours.

I saw this platter at Mod Cottage in Rehoboth Beach, DE. The platter is made of melamine and features a scrimshaw whale graphic. I fell in love and I am blessed that my Aunt Linda bought me the platter for my birthday!  I also found the platter on the Red Barn Mercantile for $32.95

I was reading O Magazine and there was an article about books that you should steal from your teenagers. I decided to try this book from the list and I was not disappointed! I quickly bought the second book in the trilogy and the final book is coming out next month. I have it on order. The Hunger Game series will suck you in!

During the Christmas holiday I received a bag of Dale and Thomas French Onion popcorn. I fell in love with the popcorn but not the price. I followed a link on their site to Popcorn Indiana and I found my new love…Aged White Cheddar Kettlecorn!  It is savory and cheesy.  There is nothing better than throwing in a movie and grabbing a bowl of this popcorn! I have found the popcorn at Whole Foods, KMart, and WalMart.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

The Meaning of Night: A Confession by Michael Cox

LOVE THIS!

My friend Nicole gave me a coupon for Smartfood.  If you ever wander around Target, I guarantee you have seen boxes of this at the end of the checkout counters over the last year.  I am always up for a new healthy snack option and I had a $1 coupon. I decided to try their Chocolate Cookie Caramel Pecan Popcorn.  I have to say I enjoyed the taste of the product. I am not so sure how healthy the snack is, but it does have a good amount of fiber and calcium.  I need to do a bit more research on the health benefits of brown rice syrup and chicory root.  What has me writing about this product is the amount of packaging this product uses. In each of those large boxes setting on the shelf is five 1 ounce bags of the popcorn.  The snack bags only take up 1/4 of the room in the box. You could easily fit 12 to 15 bags in a box.  I am so turned off by the waste the packaging created that I couldn’t enjoy the snack. I won’t be buying more unless Frito Lay changes the packaging.

When I was a child, my mother had a bottle of Avon Rose perfume. I would sneak into her room to smell the perfume. Something about the smell of roses brought a sense of peace and happiness. Over the last few months, I have been looking for things that evoked good feelings. I was delighted to find this new scent by Chloe.  The scent is described as,

“Top notes of pink peony, freesia, and lychee embody subtle freshness. At the heart, midnotes of magnolia flower, lily of the valley, and rose rise to sublimated femininity. A base of velvety elegance comes to fruition through cedarwood, amber, and honey.”

The perfume is available at Sephora starting at $85.oo for a 1.7 oz. bottle.

I made the decision to subscribe to Netflix during this last round of IVF treatment.  I have to stay at home and in bed for the better part of two weeks and I really needed something to pass the time. I have fallen in love with the Australian drama McLeod’s Daughters.  Tess and Claire are strong women and their stories are fascinating.  The series is available for instant download on Netflix, so there is no wait for discs in the mail!  Once you start watching you can’t stop.  If you don’t have Netflix, you can also purchase the series on Amazon.

I bought this Villa Footed Bowl from Pottery Barn.  I just loved the shape of the bowl and found it to be the perfect size for their Rose potpourri.  The small bowl is only $20.00.

photo by: British Red Cross

This photo has just haunted me today.  I don’t know anything about the boy other than he was injured in the earthquake and was receiving care in a Port-au-Prince hotel.  I would consider myself a somewhat jaded person after years on working in the nonprofit sector, but this tragedy has really struck a nerve. I have watched television all day and read every scrap of information online.  The history of this nation reads like a Greek tragedy.  I wanted to do something and after looking at all the ways to help, I decided to make a donation to fund direct aid to the country through a organization called Mercy Corps.  I  have made donations to Mercy Corps in the past to assist other countries in times of natural disasters. If you would like to donate any amount please click on this link to my fundraising page with Mercy Corps.

Back in the beginning of December,  I purchased a set of Christmas cards at a Barnes and Noble, that is not my local Barnes and Noble.  They were made of a lovely card stock and had a bird sitting on a branch on the outside and Season’s Greetings written on the inside.  Simple and lovely.  I got home and wrote out the first card.  Upon pulling out the envelopes, I find that all 21 envelopes in the box were sealed.  I called the store where I bought them and I was told to return them to my local store.  Unfortunately my local store never had the cards in stock and the other stores were sold out of the cards.  I picked out new cards, checked the envelopes and learned an important lesson:

Always check the cards and the envelopes before buying stationary at Barnes and Noble.

Well fast forward to a few days after Christmas and I walked into my local Barnes and Noble and there was a huge sale table with cards and calendars on the table.  I decided to look through and I was excited when I found a box of the cards just like the ones I had returned. Well, I had to apply my new life lesson, so I open the box only to discover the card I had written on sitting on top of the sealed envelopes. When I returned the item apparently it was just restocked. I spoke to customer service and explained what had happened and asked that they get rid of the cards. They apologized and assured me this never happens and they will make sure they are labeled damaged and properly disposed of. I learned another important lesson:

Barnes and Noble restocks damaged return items, so check every last thing you buy for damage.

My friends and family got a chuckle out of this story. I posted what had happened to my Facebook account.  Well last week my best friend was shopping in our local Barnes and Noble. She had been with me when I originally bought the cards. Well she is a bargain shopper and she was going through the Christmas cards.  She came across a box of Christmas cards with a bird on the front. She had to look. Sitting on top was the Christmas card I had written and all 21 sealed envelopes.  She took them to customer service. Explained what had happened. OF COURSE THEY WERE HORRIFIED!  They put a sticky on it, wrote damaged and placed it behind the counter, so that it would not be restocked by accident.  She called me. I was perturbed but I learned another important lesson:

My local Barnes and Noble is extremely unorganized and could give a crap about their customers.

Well today I decided to go to my local Barnes and Noble to pick up a couple of books about traveling to London and the UK.  I walked up to get into line to pay and right next to the line is a table with sale items such as calendars and you guessed it, Christmas cards. I look down and there they were…I can spot these cards from 100 feet now, much less on the table right next to the check out counter. I picked them up, took a deep breathe and opened the box of cards.  The card I wrote was not on top! For a moment, I thought wow I am jaded, they had to get rid of those cards by now, maybe they had another box in stock.  I decided to follow the first rule, which was to check the envelopes. Sure enough they were all sealed. Then I decided to follow the second rule, so I counted the cards and sure enough they had thrown out the card I had written on, but put the rest in the box and restocked the item. Which brings me to my third lesson, Barnes and Noble can’t organize their staff or stock.  I went up to the customer service counter, asked for a manager and explained what happened for the fourth time.  I was assured the matter would be handled immediately. I learned another important lesson:

Barnes and Noble lies, lies, lies.

I now have daydreams about finding the cards again in a future visit.  I have thought about carrying a trash can with me and burning them in the middle of the store. I have thought about ripping them into confetti bits and tossing them at customers as they enter. I have thought about taking a Sharpie to the outside of the box.  I have thought about screaming “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”, at the top of my lungs and collapsing to the floor kicking and flailing my arms. In the end, I have concluded I won’t be doing anything that could get me arrested and I WILL NOT be going to my local Barnes and Noble for anything in the near future.

This year we celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. We had decided on gifts to mark the occasion and then we were both hit with inspiration.  Instead of buying a piece of jewelry that would sit in a box and instead of buying the complete works of Robert Heinlein in their leather bound editions, we should instead go on a trip and create some new memories! We have such fun on our trips and I would rather have those special moments than a box from Tiffany. We have decided on London and the surrounding areas. If you have been there, please drop a note about your favorite place in London!

Last year I found J. Kaye’s Book Blog a little too late to join her reading challenge. I was determined this year to join the fun. I am challenging myself to read 100 books in the coming year.  I have decided to make the challenge a little more challenging by stating that they have to be books I have never read before. I have read some books 5 or 6 times a piece.  I am also not allowing romance novels to count.  I can read a 300 page romance novel in under two hours.  My husband seems to think I should up the challenge to 2oo books because he thinks 100 books for me is a breeze. I think I will take a look at my progress in July and consider upping the challenge but for the moment we will stick to 100 books in a year. My first book will be A Bone to Pick by Charlaine Harris. I love her Sookie books and her Harper series. I am just getting into the Aurora Teagarden series.  If you would like to join the challenge go to J. Kaye’s site and join the 400+ of us who have already accepted the challenge!

Sephora is the only distributor of Philosophy’s Cinnamon Hot Dots body wash. This is the only cinnamon based body wash I have found in a while. My husband loves it!

Fresh’s Sugar Lip Treatment

I hate chapped lips and I have tried just about every lip balm, chap stick, lip gloss etc. out there without a clear winner. I had a great coupon for Sephora during the Christmas holiday, so I used it to buy this lip treatment that had been recommended.  Fresh’s Sugar Lip Treatment with SPF15 has kept my lips in perfect condition this winter.  It is expensive at $22.50 for a tube but there is no denying the end results!

Progressive Magnetic Measuring Spoons

I love my new Progressive Magnetic Measuring Spoons.  These spoons are magnetic, so they snap together for storage and the best thing is that each spoon is level on the bottom, so you can measure out a spice and set it aside until you need it. No SPILLS!  They make these in the above color or in stainless steel.  I found them on sale for $5.99 on Macy’s before Christmas. The best price I can find now is $7.95 on Amazon.

Barefoot Contessa’s Maple Roasted Bacon

photo by: misocrazy

Ina Garten is a genius! I made this bacon as part of Christmas breakfast. I did not make enough.  This would make my top five of favorite foods. I don’t have a picture of the finished product because it didn’t stay on a plate long enough for me to get a picture.  Make sure you use center cut bacon and real maple syrup when making Maple Roasted Bacon.

I have been away from blogging as I handled a lot of personal things.  Our first IVF cycle failed, my mother has been ill, I had a flu/strep throat combo, my 13 year old cat has been sick and the holiday season just came out of nowhere!   Pete and I are charging forward with our second IVF attempt.  I am very nervous and trying really hard to balance a sense of hope with a sense of absolute dread.  My doctor performed a test to check my anti-mullerian hormone.  The test results suggest that I have a small egg supply.  This means that I won’t produce as many eggs as most women going through IVF.  On the 8th of January I start my stimulation medications. My hips and shoulders are already aching in anticipation of the shots that I have to have have each morning and evening.  I am just praying for a chance and trying my best to keep my spirits up. The Christmas season has been a blessing because it has given us a chance to step back and to give thanks for all the wonderful people in our life.  It is so easy to concentrate on what you think is missing  versus embracing what you have.

I am so excited about the coming snow! I love having snow during the holidays. I am going to stay in and bake cookies and enjoy my Williams-Sonoma hot chocolate!

Lancaster Quilt and Textile Museum

Lancaster Central Market

Buchanan’s Gardens

Shenck’s Mill Covered Bridge

Wheatland- Home of President James Buchanan

Siegrist’s Mill Covered Bridge

I am not sure if I have shared this before, but I only have the poverty plan for cable television. We decided that paying $60 a month for channels that we never really watched was not a smart choice. We pay $15.00 a month for basic service.  I really miss Food Network but I found a PBS cooking show called Everyday Food. Everyday Food is produced by Martha Stewart Living.  The show has a theme and five different chefs create dishes that fit into the theme. The other day they had a show called Meat and Potatoes. One of the dishes highlighted was Prosciutto Wrapped Pork Chops. I decided to try the recipe tonight for dinner. My husband and I really enjoyed the dish. It is really easy to do and it only took about 20 minutes to prep and cook the dish.  Do not skip the lemon wedge. There is just something delightful about  fresh lemon over pork. Trust me!

Ingredients:

4 Boneless pork loin chops

Coarse salt and ground pepper

2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme (I used dried thyme.)

4 slices prosciutto

2 teaspoons olive oil

Lemon wedges, for serving

Directions:

1. Season pork chops with salt and pepper. Sprinkle thyme leaves over each, pressing, to help them adhere to the meat. Wrap 1 prosciutto slice around middle of each chop, like a belt; press ends to seal.
2. In a large nonstick skillet, heat oil over medium-high. Cook chops until golden brown and cooked through, 4 to 5 minutes per side. (Cook in two batches, if necessary, to avoid crowding.) Serve chops with lemon wedges.

Bourbon Slush
6 ounce can of frozen orange juice
6 ounce can of frozen lemonade
1 cup sugar
6 cups cold water
2 cups water with 2 to 4 tea bags steeped
1 1/3 cups bourbon

Mix well together orange juice, lemonade, sugar and 6 cups cold water. Then add 2 cups of tea and bourbon. Pour into a bowl and place in freezer until slushy. Serve by itself or half slush with ginger ale or lemon/lime soda.