Pantry Challenge, Kale Grape Blue Cheese Salad, Scandinavian Heart Flip, Where's Winter???

  

Pantry Challenge-
I've really saved some $$$ the last 2 weeks doing this. I'm making my way thru the freezer, and my grocery cart was pretty empty today- mostly dairy, fruits, veggies. I made some shrimp jambalaya last week (lots of leftovers), baked some frozen chicken. I made another pizza. Yesterday Dave was gone for dinner so I did grab a bag of shrimp at the store and had a giant shrimp cocktail for dinner. Yummy, with leftover home-made extra spicy sauce. I dug out a package (one of my rare boxed mixes) of a Krusteaz blueberry muffin mix. I added cinnamon, nutmeg, and almond extract. I will say- if you want to make muffins or scones their mixes are wonderful! Really great quality, but I wish they'd make some whole grain versions. Tonite I made Cuban-Style Black Beans & Rice with canned beans, veggies, lime, and rice I had on hand. Very healthy and filling! I did add extra Chili powder, some Cumin and Thyme. I always double or triple the batch we like it some much. Just add lime wedge, cilantro. Sour cream if you like!

Sorry, we ate the salad too fast to get a pic, maybe next time :)

Kale, Grape, & Blue Cheese Salad-
I found a couple versions of this and modified it to make my own recipe. Here's how I made my new kale salad recipe-
Take 1 bunch of fresh kale, wash, strip off ribs. Rip into a large bowl, drizzle with 1 TBL. olive oil, and sprinkle 1 TSP. of salt. Massage well and really work the kale for about 1 minute. It will soften and be sort of silky. Add 2 TBL. red wine vinegar, fresh pepper, and toss well. Mix in red grapes and crumbled blue cheese, about 1/4 each. Toss well. You could sub bacon for the cheese of use other sweet fruits.  It was really awesome!!! It's a keeper!

Scandinavian Heart Flip-
With my love of folk art, and Scandinavian country decor, I decided to do something to bring the outdoors in. I had a $5.00 off a $10.00 purchase at Jo-Ann's fabrics. Easy shopping to do. I walked around Jo-Ann's til I had a Eureka! moment. Here's what I bought, 1/2 off, with a coupon-

I couldn't find a plain twig heart so I decided to use it as a form. I bought moss "ribbon" (who knew?)-

$3.50

I used a wire cutter and scissors to remove the plastic pips and ribbon-

All ready

I then wrapped the moss and secured it with a little wire-

Some of the moss fuzzies fell off, so I used some spray adhesive to cover some of the exposed twigs with the green fuzz. I wanted it to look rustic and not too perfect. I trimmed down some left-over burlap for a ribbon and hung it up. It was a bit too long, so I just overlapped it-  I love it! Total cost $6.00! I re-used the pips into my ivy-

In the same mode- I found a nice Scan-style frame the other day I had stored. I printed out an antique map of Scandinavia and framed it. Maybe it will help me get there sooner :)

It's on my list of things to go and see the Fjords of Norway and visit Sweden-

From Visitnorway.com A World Heritage Site

Sweden, on the coast, from VisitSweden.com

Maple tree should be naked!

Where's Winter???
It was 47 and sunny yesterday. A bit of rain today and almost 50 today. Our back maple tree looks like the shot above. What wrong with this picture? The tree should be bare! We had a mild Oct., 8 in November with 9" of snow, then the leaves never fell off the trees. They're still falling.

Bizarre weather coming next week, in the 50's! What the heck! While I'm glad we don't get the storms they do back east, we need some cold weather, or my garden will suffer~~~ Wishing for snow ;)