Wednesday, June 25, 2008

No stitching, but I've been busy!

Seems I'm still in one of those lulls where I can't seem to focus and find the time to do any stitching. I have so many things that must get done around the house. Since there's been no stitching, I'd like to share some of what I did yesterday.

Early in the morning I decided to put a roast in the crockpot. Roast was on sale at my local grocery store and my family loves my roast and gravy with mashed potatoes. I decided to do it in the crockpot to keep from heating the house. I'm trying to be energy conscious these days. Here's a peak at my roast. I also fixed mashed potatoes, broccoli salad, and cucumber salad. You can see dessert later in this post.


After getting the roast started, I realized I needed to bake bread because we were almost out of bread. I have been baking our bread for years now. It's something I enjoy doing. Most of the time a slice or two disappears as soon as the loaves come out of the oven, but this time I did manage to get a picture before that happened.

While I was mixing the bread, I noticed I had two bananas that were going to have to be used or consumed with a straw. Somehow mushy bananas do not appeal to me....so I decided to make banana bread. I am a diabetic. My banana bread recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar. I altered the recipe so I can eat a little of this. Instead of the sugar I used 1/2 c. Splenda and 1/4 c. sugar. I believe the literature on Splenda says to use it cup for cup when you substitute it for sugar. I have tried that and thought that the item was too sweet. When I cut back on the quantity of Splenda, I liked this banana bread much better. You can see....it still rises nicely and browns just as well as with all sugar.
I also wanted to make a mixed berry cobbler for dinner. So I mixed that and put it in the oven to bake at the same time as the banana bread. I used some frozen berries that I had bought. I also used Splenda in the dough for this cobbler.
About the time the banana bread and cobbler were coming out of the oven....it was time to put the bread in, so I made best use of the oven heat and had the oven on for as short a time as possible.

After all the baking was done.....I then got busy with a chore I have been putting off for so long.

Yes, that's right....ironing slacks for DH. I don't enjoy that task and so I let it pile up until I have a mountain of ironing. I ironed 10 pair yesterday and have a few more to do today. Then I still have plenty of shirts to iron.

As you can see, I'm busy. I'm just not doing much stitching or posting to this blog for that matter. It's difficult to post when I'm not working on anything interesting. I'm sure hoping that changes soon!

7 comments:

Amelia said...

Sounds like you have been a busy chef in the kitchen. My husband is diabetic so must use sugar substitute as much as possible.

Enjoy the eating ... must get the strength to do the ironing (which I too do not like to do)

Amelia in Oklahoma

Andrea said...

I'm on my way to your kitchen Belvie - my mouth is watering - lol !

Angie said...

Y.U.M.!!! It all looks and sounds soooo delicious!! Any left ... I'll be there in just a few minutes! :) Would you mind sharing your bread recipe? I'm a recipe junky, and I've already made note of how you did the banana bread with Splenda. :) Oh, and I detest ironing. :/

Norma said...

Wait for me! I am headed your way for dinner. Best thing is I can have dessert. You put me to shame with all this cooking as I am only doing what I have to.

No stitching here either. I am going to get run out of the quilting web ring. Oh well, it the spririt is not moving, not much you can do about it.

jovaliquilts said...

I have found that Splenda is really sweet, too. That berry cobbler looks great! I made a triple berry pie over the weekend, love those berries!

Cheryl said...

I was where you are about a week ago. With a lot of great advice from fellow bloggers they suggested that I pick something to stitch on for myself that I really wanted to do. That got me right back in the mood. Boy your goodies look so yummy, I'll be right over :-)! I am with you on ironing the pants thing--I HATE THAT JOB. I can never get the creases right!

Tracey said...

I also iron all my husbands shirts and slacks and a lot of my stuff, that I guess I don't really neet to, because my sisters always say, you''re going to iron THAT??? I say it looks a little fresher that way and I love the smell of the lavender iron spray I use. I try not to let it pile up so I'm not overwhelmed, I do it once a week. Tracey