Not Really A Girl Scout Cookie

Do you look forward to Girl Scout cookie season?

Do you prefer Thin Mints? Tagalongs (Peanut Butter Patties)? Shortbreads (Trefoils)?

Or is your first impulse to grab a box of Samoas (Caramel deLites)?

If so, I ran across this recipe for a Samoa Tartlet.

I don't think it tastes anything like the Girl Scout cookie but it is delicious nonetheless.

Couldn't find a jar of Dulce De Leche but snagged this ice cream at Vons.

Ingredients: toasted coconut, butter, flour, brown sugar, salt, chocolate.

After 'base' is cooked, sprinkle chocolate and put back in oven to melt.

Use a spoon to spread the melty chocolate.

Toasted coconut: in the base, on top, save some to top the ice cream!

Delicious!

This will do until cookie season rolls around again in 2014!

San Diego Central Library

It opened at the end of September.

The new downtown library near Petco Park.

Shiny and massive and modern and a bit concrete-y (but in a good way).

Lego model of the library!

Self checkout stations.

Terrace outside the entrance.

Renewed my library card.

Asked some questions at the reference desk.

"No, we do not have audiotapes to learn Finnish. That would be like learning Swahili. And we don't have that either." 

Checked out some new bestsellers at the kiosk...

Wish they had more than two elevators as the wait was forever so never made it past the 4th floor.

Good enough reason for a return visit!

Side Note:  The gentleman at the reference desk downtown was able to track down two sets of Beginning Finnish audiotapes at my local branch library. Go figure. Stopped there on my way home and the librarian said they have been out of circulation, as in not checked out, for two years and she wasn't able to find them on the shelves. She will call me back when she is able to locate. Probably shouldn't hold my breath.

Roasting Vegetables

Red yam, red pepper, onion, carrots, potato, eggplant, zucchini, tomato.

I have roasted cauliflower flowerettes, sprinkled with olive oil and cumin in a hot oven.

Wedges of russet potato also brown up nicely.

But these are single vegetables in a single layer on a single sheet pan resulting in a browned caramelized tasty nugget.

Which is how I have always roasted vegetables.

Until recently.

I was searching the internets and I found a recipe for:

BEST EVER ROASTED VEGETABLES!!!!

...which made me wonder if they were any good.

Exclamation points can be deceiving.

So I chopped up a bunch of vegetables (I used the selection pictured above) into somewhat small pieces and made sure that the onion was sliced thinly.

Tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Baked at 375 degrees for over an hour, tossing the vegetables twice during the cooking process and tasting until I liked the 'doneness' factor.

This is the end result.

It might seem like an odd combination but it was quite tasty and can be eaten as a side dish or when you just feel like a big bowl of vegetables for dinner. 

Two days later I incorporated the leftovers into enchiladas:  dip a tortilla into enchilada sauce, spoon roasted vegetables onto tortilla, sprinkle cheddar and jack cheese on top, then roll up and place into baking dish. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Yum!

Bates Nut Farm in Escondido

First weekend in October.

Wandered through the massive pumpkin patch, checked out scarecrows, visited the Farmer's Daughter retail shop to try on fascinators (a feathery spider topper, a little pumpkin hat perched high above a headband, veiled witchy look with tiny tiara was my favorite), sat on a hay bale under a tree to lick a homemade coconut ice cream cone and watched little kids swing from a climbing wall.

This was our first trip to Bates Nut Farm.

Wheelbarrows were available to haul your pumpkins (or your kids)!

Or if the whole family wanted a ride...

Lots of photo ops -- this little girl has paparazzi!

Yet another way to ride around the fields.

Yikes, the hot sun has not been kind to her make-up.

Remembered to check out the nuts before we headed out.

Puppy Love

Snoozing on the cool patio.

Spent yesterday a little out of my element.

Surrounded by colorful squeak toys, a water bowl and a half-empty bag of treats.

And this little gal.

A Golden Retriever/Labrador mix.

Wide awake and holding still for the camera --- a rare moment.

Right now she is ALL puppy.

Energetic.

Playful. 

Excited about the wind, a leaf on the ground, dangling shoe laces.

But she has big responsibilities ahead and a lovely family of four to help her get there.

This sweet little pup is being trained as a service animal!

But first there are holes to dig, snails to sniff, toes to lick....simple pleasures.

Essential Oils

A year ago, a very good friend of mine got into essential oils.

Let me define 'got into'.

She used them on herself and her family. She spread the word. She became a distributor. She even holds a weekly open house on the subject.

Up until then I had never heard of essential oils so I attended one of her Friday sessions to hear the spiel.

Bottles were opened and sniffed. Ahhhhhhhh. Divine.

Lavender, lime, orange, grapefruit...(I especially love the smell of citrus)!

In the world of oils, you can supposedly wipe out your entire medicine chest and replace it with essential oils that are plant-based.

But there is nothing in my medicine cabinet to wipe out. I don't even take aspirin.

So when my friend wanted to 'fix' me, 'cure' me, 'help' me.....I was having a hard time coming up with a condition or issue or problem that she could attack with an oil.

Until summer.

Or what I refer to as MOSQUITO SEASON.

I gathered every bottle, spray and lotion ever used to protect myself from the evil skeeter and lined them up in a row.

It took up an entire shelf in my otherwise empty medicine cabinet.

She replaced those products with this.

A pretty glass bottle which was filled with 8 drops of TerraShield (an essential oil blend) and 8 drops of Lemon oil and water.

Just shake and spray.

It smells nice.

I used it at the lake house in Finland. FINLAND. The country of a thousand lakes and therefore a trillion gazillion bloodthirsty beasts. 

And it worked. I sprayed all over, from my feet to my scalp EVERY TIME I walked out of the house.

Yahoooooooooooooooo.

Ok, at the end of Day 3 the sprayer jammed and I was forced to resort to Cutter Mosquito Repellent (nothing worse than that toxic smell but it was my only backup).

But for three whole days I was skipping through the mosquito jungle (i.e. the path to the lake) and I was fine. And happy. And I smelled good.

Lest you think I was just lucky, I ran outside the last day of our stay (unsprayed due to the need for speed) to chase a 2-1/2 year old that got loose. Yes, he can outrun me, especially with a head start, but we were not outside that long. I returned to the house with over 20 bites.

A month later I passed the bottle of TerraShield and Lemon oils to my sister so she could mow her lawn in North Carolina during the summer months without a Hazmat suit (or her version of one that consists of a long-sleeve crew neck shirt with long pants tucked into men's socks that reach mid-calf....can you spell A T T R A C T I V E?). She tops this suit of armor with bug spray and wears bug bands on each wrist. Yet she still gets bites and welts.

Since using the TerraShield/lemon combo spray she hasn't had a single bite!!!

Last week we started getting ants in the kitchen. Not one or two little picnic critters but more like an ant attack. We checked the crime scene and traced the source of entry to the windowsill and sprayed it with stinky toxic Raid. Then cleaned up the pile of dead ants in the morning and tried not to choke from the fumes.

The ants came back.

It was suggested that we try our magic skeeter potion on the windowsill to prevent an ant attack.

We did.

And it worked!!!

Early Halloween

The pumpkins and skeletons were out in full force on Labor Day weekend...which I guess is slightly more bearable than seeing a tinsel-decorated tree while temperatures hover around 90 degrees.

Difficult to enjoy Fall stuff without Fall weather.

That being said, I LOVE HALLOWEEN.

And Roger's Gardens knows how to set the scene!