Creamed Zucchini Soup

Hi there everyone....hope you are having a great day. Sorry I have been MIA again. For some reason August has been a tough month for JP and I. On the 27th we celebrated 45 years of marriage. I know that is a mile stone for lots of people and it should be. For us, just another day. I did buy a $5 blueberry cake and made roast beef sandwiches and potatoes in the pressure cooker. Nothing too special. No, we did not go out any place as JP is paranoid about thinking people can smell him....which no one can, he just thinks it.

So today I made this soup. Creamed Zucchini Soup. JP said it was a keeper and I should make this again. The recipe calls for just 5 ingredients...not counting the salt and pepper. Yep, that's it.

Here is the recipe:
1/2 small onion, quartered                      2 cloves garlic
3 medium zucchini, skin on and cut in large chunks
32 oz reduced sodium Swanson chicken broth or vegie
2 Tbsp reduced fat sour cream
kosher salt and black pepper to taste
fresh grated Parmesan cheese if desired for topping (opt.)

Directions:
1-Combine chicken broth, onion, garlic and zucchini in a large pot over medium heat and bring to a boil.
2-Lower heat, cover, and simmer until tender, about 20 minutes.
3-Remove from heat and puree with an immersion blender, add the sour cream and puree again until smooth.
4- Taste for salt and pepper and adjust to taste. Serve hot, topping with Parmesan cheese.

1 1/2 cups of soup has 60 calories, 10 carbs, 500 sodium...that's a lot of sodium, but you can cut that down. I think this would be good for the Keto diet.

I have been struggling along with no stove/oven. Guess it is okay. I am not in a rush to get a new one. Was thinking of an apartment size oven. That would give me more room for a small used cabinet for storage. I bought a used hot plate and a small George Foreman grill at Goodwill. Told JP we were going to live on hot dogs and hamburgers for now. He said, no problem. I will still be on the hunt for a electric fry pan. I have my eye on one....but it's at Shopko. Guess I will wait till it is marked down and I have a coupon also.

I have been dealing with a bad back for the last couple of days, oh my gosh it really hurt. Hard to walk and get around. It dawned on me today, how I did it. Moving 35 water bottles from it's skid to the bottom of the cart....my back did not start hurting till Monday. I have rubbed DoTerra's "Deep Blue", also "Deep Blue oil" "Lavender oil". In about an hour I will be taking another "Naproxen" for inflammation. One, every 12 hours....guess that is helping. At least I can get up off the bed, chair and lazy-boy with a little less pain. I may take one more day off to recup….depends on how I am feeling. I have some errands to run before Friday.

JP has decided to work part-time, so we are entering a new phase of life. Should be interesting, to say the least, and quite the challenge financially. Hopefully we will be able to continue doing the things we do. I shall have to rearrange my shopping schedule and not shop so much....that's why I said in the paragraph about hamburgers and hot dogs....our menu is going to change quite a bit.

Well, time to close here....this blog is getting toooooo long. And if you made it this far, keep looking up and here's hoping better days are coming. Cheers ~ Louise

WHAT?????

Hahahahahaha......hope you had a wonderful Sunday. It was beautiful today, sunny and crisp, a good day to be alive!!!!

I put a pork tenderloin in the crock pot along with some of my homemade sauerkraut at 8:30am this morning, by the time we got home at 12:30, the meat temp was 160 degrees. So I waited for about an hour,  putzed around the house, sat on the front porch and turned my water fountain on. Got dinner ready, toast, salad and applesauce. It was a lovely meal to savior on a beautiful day like this.

Checked out what was on the computer, took a short nap and then took Kylie for a little walk. About 5:00 we raked some leaves, cut my peonies, lavender and irises down. Tomorrow is leaf collection. So we need to get as much out there for the city to collect as possible.

So here I am typing away on this blog....nothing much important going on this week that I know of....maybe just finish winterizing the front and back yard. I still have one tomato bush producing, it sits on the front porch...the frost has not gotten to it yet....so little tomatoes for salads are on the agenda for them.

Well time to close....the Packers are about to kick the ball and play tonight...time to go watch them play and win......hopefully. Have a great couple of days and enjoy the beautiful weather till the snow begins to fly!!! Cheers ~ Louise

"Turkey Treat" verses "Altered Turkey Treat"

Hi everyone, how are you all doing today. My, it is getting a little chilly outside, 33 degrees at this point (it's almost 11pm). I suspect by morning it will be in the very low 30's or even 20's?. Burrr....I put my plants in the garage so they don't freeze and can live a little longer, wellllll, at least for another week or so.

I might be having another garage sale on Thursday or Friday (depending on the weather) then pack everything away till next year. So here's hope for nice weather for the rest of the week. Also, added to the agenda for this week is gardening. There's still lots of things to do before the first snowflakes fall. Tulips to plant, leaves to rake, cut down the peonies, lavender, iris's and Star Jasmine vine also the roses need to be cut down, fed and covered. It'll all get done....just in time for winter.

Years ago I picked up a post card, on it were some turkeys and an eagle....the caption said "It's hard to fly like an eagle when you work with a bunch of turkey's" Hahahaha, I guess I have never forgot that postcard and I am sure I still have it tucked away in some folder. Really don't know what that has to do with what I am going to write about. But one always needs a good laugh here and there....guess that was my laugh for the moment.

Now about "the turkeys". I received an email a few days ago from a lady in Texas. She is a demonstrator for Stampin'Up. It seems the turkey in the above picture was pinned on Pinterest. I thought that was neat when I read her email. But as the email continued, I found out the originator of the turkey treat, Kirsteen wanted me to know she designed the turkey and wanted credit for it some place in my blog. Because I did not realize she designed the turkey, it was kind of hard to give credit where credit was due. In her words, "I happened to log on to Pinterest this morning and saw a pin of a Turkey Treat made with the bow die, the link takes me to your website and pictures of your Turkey Treat which is obviously a slightly altered CASE from the Turkey Treat I made in August."

I responded, "I did not realize the idea came from you." I explained how I came about the idea through a card making class I go to once a month. And, I probably would not be making anymore turkeys and this would be my one and only, who will sit happily on my dinning room table. One turkey in the house is enough.

So the above picture is the original Turkey Treat made by and copyrighted by Kirsteen Gill, a Stampin'Up demonstrator in Texas. This is her original post of the turkey and how you can buy the tutorial to make the turkey http://www.creatinwithkirsteen.com/index.php/3d-projects/1225-turkey-table-treat   Also, if you are a Stampin' Up fan and would like to follow Kirsteen on Facebook and Pinterest: here are the addresses: https://www.facebook.com/creatinwithkirsteen and http://pinterest.com/create_kirsteen/ Her website is: www.creatinwithkirsteen.com   So let me just say again....sorry Kirsteen...I do hope this has been resolved.

So there you have it.....I guess we all case each other's creations, maybe to the tee and maybe altered a little. Kind of like recipes, we might get a good recipe and change it in some way. Very seldom do I do something exactly...tonight I did though. Made a big pot of Harvest Soup and some meatballs....I honestly followed the recipes....now that is a miracle. I shall change the meatball recipe a little....tooooo salty. You just may see that recipe on my blog as it was a really healthy kind of meatball using Mann's Broccoli Cole Slaw and hamburger.

You all have a great day and keep looking up for your redemption draws nigh.
Cheers ~ Louise

Lavender.....or Russian Sage???

Hi everyone.......hope your day was good!!! Ours??? Was a little tuff. There was a bad storm last night, which caused a lot of damage. Knocked down trees, limbs and power was lost to 90% of the Fox Cities.
The electric went out about 12:50am. I was just about to heat up JP's late night dinner.
I had made Lasagna Soup (batch 6) earlier in the evening so I had that ready for him. Also on the menu was fish and string beans. I had to pull out my fondue pot and heat his soup up in it.....worked like a charm.

In the picture above is my Lavender. Planted when I first moved into this house 22 years ago....the plant has gotten really big and never fails to do it's thing year in and year out. I've transplanted this lavender in two other places. This blog is basically for Patty @ Attic Clutter as she likes lavender.

Here is another shot of the lavender. I picked quite a few branches and brought them in for the winter.

Here is a bunch of lavender in one of my older vases that will probably sit in there till next year, then it will be time to change the flowers for new ones.

So today was kind of a rest day, even though the electric was off. I took Kylie for two walks today. The first one was to see why there was so much traffic going down our block....you would have thought we were on a main street or something. Well, it turned out there was a tree down on Drew St. So people had to detour down our street. A tree was down on the next block over and down 3 blocks on our street. So that is why there was so much traffic today.

I had to think about what I was going to make JP for his lunch. Egg salad....so I boiled 4 eggs in the Fondue pot....again it worked like a charm.
Heated up more soup and (already steamed) corn on the cob in the Fondue.
Oh did I forget to tell you.....heated hot water for coffee for Louise.

No electric for a day was okay.....but I might find it hard to do without electric for days and weeks on end. 17 hours was long enough. 
OH and then did I tell you, NO INTERNET for the day. I missed reading my email and blogs and catching up on everything that was going on in this world. Thank goodness I had my "transistor radio" and could listen to Rush, Sean and Mark on talk radio!!!

I did manage to watch "Life of Pi" on my DVD player till the battery went low. The movie was okay, still trying to figure out what it is about. Anyways, the DVD player stopped playing and then all of a sudden the electric went back on at 6pm.....YAY!!! So then Kylie and I went for another walk to see how things cleaned up, came back and did some work outside, picking up branches from the storm and such. No watering tonight....there was plenty of rain last night.

Well, time to close this blog. I still have to check out facebook and see whats happening there. So you all have a great evening and here's to a good day tomorrow. Keep looking up for your redemption draws nigh. Cheers ~ Louise