Talking About Cheese Cake and Blue Apron Dinners

Hi there everyone...how you all doing this fine day. I should be outside pulling weeds.....but....I am dreaming about cheese cakes!!! I have had this post in a draft for over a month or more. Thought I would bring it up and drool a little bit today. I finally bought myself a (promised at Christmas) spring form pan. I had a couple, but they were rusted and old, inherited from JP's mother and grandmother. I decided to sell them, some lady bought them....months later I saw them in her garbage, they were moving.

I have been wanting to make a cheese cake for a very long time, checked out many, many recipes, till I found this one, which was easy and to the point. My graham cracker crust was VERY thick, which JP liked. As you can see, I had a few crumbs left over and sprinkled them on top of the finished cake.

This is my first "real" Cheese Cake, I shall have to make another one, as the spring form pan sits in the dinning room on a desk, for me to look at every day, if I put it away, I will forget about it. This way, I see it everyday and it reminds me to make another cheese cake. I have seen some recipes using the spring form pan....shall have to try them all someday.....sometimes, someday never comes....right?

A slice of heaven in one bite! Yes....this was! So good, plain and of course embellished with strawberries and  Cool Whip!!! No calories.....right?!?!?

Below are some meals I made from Blue Apron. Sorry to say, I have cancelled my subscription to Blue Apron. They were great and I really enjoyed them.....but to keep JP happy I had to eliminate spicy seasonings....like below, radishes were spicy....so no radishes on his Ginger Pork Burgers with Black Bean Mayo and Roasted Broccoli. Ginger makes things spicy too, so eliminating those two things kind of defeats the taste of what the burgers were supposed to taste like. This meal, by the way was delicious because for my burger, I kept the ginger and radishes in my burger.

Top Chef's Winner - Seared Steak and Mushroom Sauce with Mashed Potatoes and Broccoli.....now this was delicious.....really liked this recipe and will do it again...no spicy in this dish.

The next meal was Chicken Paillard and Olive-Raisin Sauce with Warm Fennel and Potato Salad. No spice here either. What was interesting about this meal, was working with the fennel bulb. Never worked with that before. Again the meal was delicious with no spice.

I had to think long and hard about cancelling my subscription, and had to think of all the pros and cons. The meat and vegetables were always fresh and if there was something missing from the box, all I had to do was contact them that an item was missing and they would give me credit for the next meal which would be FREE!!!

Blue Apron is a good company to deal with. Never had a problem with them. Don't know about the other companies that offer meals. But I think just for now I will stick with the basics for JP, meat and potatoes and fruit. Simple, simple and more simple.

I found too, that being on the Keto/Atkins diet, Blue Apron was not conducive to those diet needs. Too much salt and carbs are added to the delicious meals. So that was another reason to cancel. Blue Apron said they were sorry to see me go and if I ever had a change of heart, I could come back. I guess, no change of heart is in the future for me at this point.

Well, time to close, I guess my weeds are calling my name as are my cards in the basement....yeah, there is always SOMETHING that calls my name. "Hey Stupid" (my step-father always called me a "stupid idiot" so I am used to that name.)

Talk later....I shall have more cards for you from Betty's class last Wednesday. Keep looking up....better days are coming soon and very soon. Cheers ~ Louise

WOW ~ Last Day of February!!

Hi there everyone. Hope you are enjoying the last day of February. Where did that time go. Was keeping busy with card making, organizing income taxes, losing weight on the Atkins/Keto diet and keeping my blood sugars down. Yeah, it's been an okay month. Looks like March will come in like a lion with cold....hopefully go out like a lamb.

The above card is a sample of a birthday card I made for the oldest nephew...he'll be 9 years old. I will take a picture of the card in a few days. I decided to make 4 of these cards for the 2 nephews and 2 nieces. That will make things easy, won't have to think of 3 more ideas.....keep it simple, sam!!!

So our back yard is in very bad shape. It flooded out.....what a mess!! This is the worse, it has ever been in the 26 years we have lived here.  We live in the lowest part of the block. So all the rain water drains into our yard. Last year was bad, but not as bad as this. 

It rained all night last week and the water spread into the pond area. The yard was under water completely. Thank God it did not spread into our basement. I can't imagine what people are going through when there houses are under water.

Looks like an ice skating rink....now if I had some ice skates, I could have tried it out!! This would have been great when I was younger....I loved ice skating, but I fell in a hole and sprained my ankle and never skated again.

The flooding spread back into my fire pit area. There's no grass growing back there, now I think the whole back yard will be like the fire pit area. I put some grass seed down last summer....but nothing grew. Guess I will try again.

As of the last couple of days, the weather has been in the 40's so the ice melted quite a bit. Our yard is starting to look normal again. I will be glad when Spring arrives and things start turning green again.

I have some good news about my Atkins/Keto diet. This morning, when I checked my blood sugars, I write everything down on a sheet. Also figured is my weight. So, I lost 1 pound in February....that's not much. BUT when I started this diet on 7/5/17....the grand loss is now 22 lbs. Not bad for this old girl. My Doctor will be happy. Hopefully my A1C will be in the low numbers too.

Well, time to close here. Have to go finish working on my taxes. You have a great day March 1st...hope the Lion does not roar too loudly in your area of the country. Keep looking up ~ better days are coming, soon!! Cheers ~ Louise