book club 31 - right man, right time by meghan quinn

 2025-31

 

sunday dinner - this and the last of us

 we found this new to us cheese at the store and it was really really good.

boiled some potatos, roughed them up, tossed with olive oil and seasoning and cooked in the air fryer.  bacon wrapped steaks on the bbq.

 

 

for dessert, i cried and cried over the last of us.  can't believe there is only one more eposide and that was the last of joel.

throw it back - harrison hot springs

 i have posted this or a similar picture before but i was looking thru photos on the weekend and feeling melancholy and this picture is just so pretty. 

reading watching listening loving eating

 

reading 

 my first Agatha Christie novel

watching 

 nosferatu

listening 

 the weeknd - the boy is obsessed

loving 

 my haul from the garden center

 

eating 

spicy chicken gumbo

 

book club 30 - wander by ryan benz

 2025-30

 

friday night dinner for 2 - this and the season finale of amazing race

 

rhubarb update may 17

 what do you mean i thought i'd been posting rhubarb photos this past month and i had actually not been?

we've already cut it down and given away the rhubarb once this year, but apparently that just encouraged it.  why can't my berries grow crazy like this?

 

book club 29 - kulti by mariana zapata

 2025-29

 

waiting for our bubble tea

 

a trip to desert hills and horstings farm

 

book club 28 - the ascnt by ronald malfi

 2025-28

 

reading watching listening loving eating

 reading 

on kindle.  i cancelled my kindle unlimited subscription and am trying to get through what i've downloaded before my current month expires.

watching 

the amazing race and survivor

listening 

to Wake of Corrosion, an audio drama

loving 

the longer days - sunshine in the morning, sunshine in the evenings, hearing the birds

eating 

the apple muffins that everyone insisted that they loved and then never ate another one.

 

a new era of notebooks has begun

 i have spoke before many times about my cooking notebooks and binders, and how i am working on paring down my cookbook collection, and about how i have likely hundreds of recipes saved on my phone, in my computer bookmarks, on pinterest and tick tok.  so why do i fight each and every week to find meals to cook?

part of it i think is screen fatigue, i look at a computer screen all day for work, and while i have been known to enjoy some mindless scrolling on tick tok - how else am i finding all these cooking videos? - most nights the last thing i want to do is sit and scroll through hundreds of videos to find the one i want to make that night.

so i decided to make a new notebook.  an end game notebook, if you will.

i visited the notebook aisle of my local dollar store and picked up yet another notebook, and one lunch break at work i sat and copied 4 recipes from tick tok into the notebook and lo and behold, i had dinner planned for the next 4 days.  

 progress has been slow because i have to be in the mood to watch a video and transcribe it to the notebook, and also be sitting somewhere that i can write legibly, so this book is useful, and that is not lying down on the couch watching Cardinal and trying to stay awake.

recently i decided that since i'm trying to streamline, i should copy in the recipes that i either love or still want to try from the green binder too.  the green binder is messy, probably 90% of the pages are either ripped from magazines, or pages cut from magazines or printed out and taped to full size pages in the book.  my new notebook system, i had already decided, would be much tidier, all neatly handwritten in a book.  

 

that lasted 11 seconds until i actually opened the green binder and the first 3 pages that fell out were family recipes of my and the misters family that I would rather have the original of, and not copied.  so i taped them in.

after i taped them in i was like no more!  but i already know that won't necessarily be true - i have a few of my moms recipes that she wrote out and i always loved her handwriting, so i will want to keep those too.  

i'm using a critical eye as well with the transition, not adding everything, but looking and seeing if it's worth keeping - if we already made it, would we want to eat it again?  if we haven't - realistically will we make it?  i've already recycled quite a few pages, and didn't even feel bad about how long i have held on to some of them.  sometimes it's good to let go.

book club 27 - queen of myth and monsters by scarlett st clair

 2025-27

 

vanilla granola

 

3 cups rolled oats

1 cup finely chopped nuts

1/2 cup honey

1/3 cup olive oil

pinch salt

1 TB vanilla

Mix, spread on a baking sheet and cook at 325' for 15-20 minutes, stirring once or twice

book club 26 - the final gambit by jennifer lynn barnes

 2025-26

 

grocery shop - costco april 27

 

 

yogurt, dry ribs, chicken, cheerios, pineapple, mrs dash, umami seasoning, pasta, coffee, pico, tortilla chips, soap, bread, sausage rolls, eggs, more chicken, blueberries, cucumbers, cabbage rolls, tomatos

$263

book club 25 - the day we meet again by miranda dickinson

 2025-25

 

book club 24 - deep end by ali hazelwood

 2025-24

 

cookbook clean up 63&64 and a rumination

 ok so in the month since i last did a cookbook clean up, our decorating plans changed and I did not lose my bookcase after all.  but i would like less cookbooks on it so i could maybe put some of my journaling stuff on it - and truly, many of these books have not been used in years.  why am i hanging on to them?

book 63 to go is a Guy Fieri one - first my kids wouldn't eat most of this and second, all the recipes have too many damn ingredients.  this guy (hee hee) just can't have a simple basic recipe.  I've sat with this book out for months and no matter how many times i go through it, i can only find 3 recipes i am even remotely interested in trying.  

this second one hurts a bit more but like i said, some of these books I haven't looked at in years - and this is one of them.  again, not the kind of food my family will eat.  i have real hesitations about donating this one, but realistically i just don't think i'm going to cook from it any time soon.

 and lastly, some motivation to myself to keep going in all things - 

book club 23 - the vegetarian by han kang

2025-23