My favorite quick breakfast on cold days is a slice of oat bread with peanut butter. Preparation is easy: a big blob of smooth peanut butter on a slice of bread…microwave for 30 seconds…spread the peanut butter like icing over the bread. At first, I tried picking the bread up to eat it…but found using a fork is less messy!
Yummy…and nutritious with protein from the peanut butter and the bread…a good amount of dietary fiber too!
As November is ending - there are a few more items I want to post about….
My 90-year-old mother still enjoys making breakfast herself and my dad. I photographed one of her more elaborate breakfasts when I was visiting: microwaved sausage patty, sauteed peppers, mushrooms and onions + cheesy eggs from a skillet, and a freezer biscuit heated in a toaster oven. I’m glad that modern conveniences (microwave ovens, precooked sausage patties, frozen biscuits) make it easier for her to prepare meals.
A brown-headed cowbird visited out deck on a cold morning….alone, looking very round scrunched down in the cold. It stayed around for a bit. I wondered if it had become separated from a flock or was just enjoying the sunshine and relative safety of our deck.
The sun backlighting oak leaves gives their color more definition. This was a morning that the grass was frosty; by the time I took the picture the frost was beginning to melt but it still added a sparkle around the leaves.
My husband was out at a county park/astronomy site for the lunar eclipse in the early morning hours of the 19th. It was cold but he was prepared for that and stayed until the clouds obscured the moon about 5 AM. He took lots of photos!
Finally – I enjoy finding ways to reuse single use plastic. I’m not sure whether this was a bowl or a dome from a food purchase….but it makes an excellent stand for my laptop when I am using an external keyboard! It allows for plenty of air circulation around the laptop, raises it off the surface of the desk (in case I spill something), and the light shining through it is appealing too!
Now that the deck staining is complete, and we’ve moved the furniture back and hung the deck curtains to block the afternoon sun – I am having breakfast on the deck. My breakfast is in 2 parts: a first breakfast at about 7 AM which always includes dark chocolate (usual herbal tea to drink) and then a second breakfast about 10 AM which varies more. On the morning I took the picture it was crustless quiche with sunflower seeds on top with diet Pepsi.
I open at least one of the drapes so I can see the maple tree. The birds are generally active during the early morning – blue jays and grackles were the noisiest on the morning I took the pictures. The vegetation is so thick this time of year that they are heard more than seen.
Sometimes I take supplies to make a Zentangle tile after I’ve eaten the dark chocolate. On this morning I was surprised at how cool it felt….I opted to make the tile indoors.
Overall – the morning is the most pleasant time to be on the deck in the summer. Some outdoor time is a great way to start the day.
I bought 3 new masks since I want to have plenty to last me between laundry days….and it’s hot enough that I might want a fresh one if I’m out in the afternoon for very long. I ordered them from Society6.
These masks are heritage type prints – from books I was familiar with. The poppy and dandelion are from Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal (available from Internet Archive here). I browsed through it back in 2009.
The solar eclipse one is from Etienne Leopold Trouvelot’s Astronomical Drawings (available from Internet Archive here). I browsed the images in 2019.
These masks are a little different than the 2 I already am using so I’ll wear one for an hour or so around the house to make sure it is comfortable enough for the time it takes to pickup my CSA share (and cut some flowers/herbs in the cutting garden) and buy groceries. I am going to keep a Ziploc of fresh masks in the car for the foreseeable future.
Tweaking the office. I am back to using my bouncy Swopper chair in front of my computer. It seems I am becoming pickier about how my office ‘fits’ my needs with being at home so much of the time. My back is happy today!
Breakfast picnic. I cut up the cantaloupe in chunks and cooked scrambled eggs. My husband cooked hash browns and bacon. And we ate the big breakfast out on our deck. It was the most pleasant temperature of the day. We were fortified enough to mow the yard about 30 minutes later….and that was the extent of our time outdoors until dusk when I went out to cut some day lilies that were blooming in the front flowerbed; I’ll enjoy them in a vase rather than taking the chance of the deer eating the flowers and buds.
Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….
Here are the unique activities for yesterday:
Looking for sunrise. I am always up before sunrise, but I often get busy with other things in my office (which is on the west side of the house) and miss the sunrise. Yesterday was not a spectacular sunrise because it was clear….but I did like the bit of color and the silhouettes on the horizon.
Frost warning. We had a frost warning until 9 AM yesterday. Even with the heat keeping us warm enough, both my husband and I opted for a hot breakfast. I had oatmeal cooked with cinnamon and pecans…and then a bit of honey added for flavor and sweetness.
Being fast enough to photograph a pileated woodpecker and a phoebe. Birds are often very active in the morning. Yesterday I was fast enough to photograph 2 birds that are often elusive.
The pileated woodpecker flew in silently to the trunk of the black walnut – I just happened to see the bird as it flew in. By the time I got the camera turned on, it was searching the forest floor…almost out of the range of my camera.
I heard the eastern phoebe and went to the window to see if I could see it. Yes! It was in the sycamore – saying its name over and over.
Catching up on Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:
Sycamore buds bursting (outside). The buds are beginning to open on the sycamore outside (following the pattern observed more than a week ago on the branch I brought inside to observe more closely). The buds on the tree are at varying stages right now…and there are some that look very round. Maybe those are going to be flowers rather than leaves?
Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.
Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….
Here are the unique activities for yesterday – the warmest day so far for this spring but too windy to cook on the grill:
Switching from smoothie to oatmeal for breakfast…but not ordinary oatmeal. I added beet root powder (made the color deep red) and mashed banana while it cooked…and then had chopped walnuts in the bowl. No added sugar!
Starting a Coursera course: In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting from MoMA. It’s divided into eight ‘weeks.’ I’ve finished the first two. I have enjoyed the ‘in the studio’ videos the most.
Becoming proficient applying makeup with a foundation brush. I’ve been practicing for a little more than a week and now can do it as fast as I used to apply makeup with my fingers…and it looks better. The brush has been through one cleaning (the advice it to clean it weekly with soap and water); even though it didn’t look like it retained makeup – the water was definitely makeup colored!
Cutting a sycamore stem to observe the buds opening. I have it in a vase in the kitchen window. I’ll post some photographs once I build up a sequence.
When I was growing up, we doctored our oatmeal with brown sugar and butter…maybe we added some raisins. In recent years, I’ve substituted maple syrup for the brown sugar and, if I wanted raisins, I added them to cook with the oatmeal rather than after the fact. Sometimes I added cinnamon.
Recently, I’ve enjoyed oatmeal with very different additions: cooked with a mashed banana and cranberries….drizzled with honey after it is in the bowl.
It’s a very different flavor. I should have put chopped walnuts or pecans on top to give it some crunch and protein. I’ll try to remember for next time.
I have two favorite foods that are new-to-me this summer.
The first is one I started when my freezer was close to overflowing with frozen veggies from the early weeks of the Community Support Agriculture (CSA) season (while I was traveling). I started making green smoothies for breakfast: vanilla soymilk, frozen ‘greens,’ frozen banana, protein (peanut butter, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, raw cashews).
I put them all in the Ninja without measuring exactly; the consistency is thick shake to soft serve ice cream…always cold and yummy. Perfect for summer mornings. The past few weeks I have been getting cherry tomatoes at the CSA. I freeze them…and combine tomatoes and greens. Then the banana can be room temperature. The smoothies are a great way to start the day.
The second favorite for this summer is tomatillo salsa. This was the first year for tomatillos from my CSA. We’ve had two weeks where the share included a pound of tomatillos. I had to so a little research to decide what a wanted to do with them. I decided on salsa. The husks of the tomatillos are star-like…I enjoy the shape before putting them into the bin to go out to the compost pile.
I pan roast most of the ingredients in a skillet first.
After they are cooked and cooled – I put them into the Ninja along with the cilantro (one time I used parsley because I had a big bunch of it) to make it into salsa….and then store in glass jars left over from other salsa or preserves. It lasts for a least a week in the refrigerator. The salsa goes fast since I like it for salad dressing, stir fry sauce, a topping for hamburgers, or dip for chips/veggies.
Savoring the flavors of summer!
I’ve eaten oatmeal all my life. I probably ate it before I can remember. But I doctor it very differently now that when I was growing up when I pilled on the butter and brown sugar. Yes – I still start with some butter in the bottom of my bowl but not as much and earlier in my life.
And I don’t put just oatmeal and water in the pan (I’ve skipped the salt for a long time). Now I add raisins and orange peel too….sometimes cinnamon.
Recently, I decided to clean out the refrigerator – cranberry orange relish (using it up) as the topping. Yum!
It was a good feeling to make something that tasted so good…and was very different from the same old oatmeal!
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Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
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