THE AMARYLLIS

 Hello, friends!  Hope you are all having a great week.  I wish I could write more often but...  I lead such a boring life.  Especially lately.  It is so hard to think of something to write about.

Yesterday I took Joe to get his second Covid-19 shot.  I was not allowed into the hospital, so I sat in the car in the parking lot and read a new book that I bought.  I got a quarter of the way through it.  It is a fast read, so I know I will finish it soon and then do a post on that.

Last night Joe started to feel sick and he has been in bed most of today.  I have been giving him chicken soup and easy to eat things.  Tonight I felt like having Chinese food and so called out.  I got soup for him, but he wanted to eat chicken and vegetables, so that was good.  Yesterday and earlier today he had no appetite at all.  Right after dinner he went to bed again.  That is probably the best place for him at this point.  He was told he might feel badly for two to five days but that was just his body fighting off the shot and this was a good thing.

The only other thing I've been doing is laundry and cleaning the house.  And sleeping.  Lots of sleeping.  I told you it's boring.

So today I thought I would show you the amaryllis I got for Christmas.  I planted it the beginning of the year and it has just last week stopped blooming.

In just two days after planting it, it looked like this.  So exciting.

It got bigger.

And bigger.

The bud was still tightly closed, though.

A few days later it started to open.  The flower looked like it was a pretty light pink.

But the more it opened, the darker the flower looked.

The next day it began to open more.  This was the flower on the morning of February 1st.

And here it is in the afternoon.

The next morning it was fully open.  How pretty!  You can just see a second bud behind it.

Here's a better picture of the flower and the bud.

A few days later there were two flowers.

Two flowers and another bud.

The third bud got bigger and bigger.  And a fourth little bud appeared.

And now the third bud started opening up.

And there were four flowers now.

I know amaryllis plants usually have four flowers.  Imagine my surprise when another two buds appeared as the first flowers were dying off.

The flowers were so gorgeous with their dark red petals and the white star pattern.

This is a picture of the third flower that appeared.

This picture shows flowers one and two that are wilting and almost dead.  Flowers three and four are blooming.  Flowers five and six are still buds.  The whole lifespan in one shot.

A closeup of bud five.

And bud six.

Flowers one and two are gone.  Flowers three and four are just about done for.  And flowers five and six are almost open.

Flower five is fully open.

And so is flower six.

It was so nice seeing flowers blooming in the middle of winter.  Especially with all of the snow we have been having.  In just about a month I will be able to go outside and plant some beautiful flowers in the yard.  But this was nice.

Hope you have a good evening.  I will be posting Joe's message from Sunday below if you want to listen to it.  See you soon

Kathy

VALENTINE'S DAY

 

Hello, friends!  I hope you are having a wonderful Sunday.  It is still icy around here but this week it is supposed to warm up and hopefully everything will be gone by next weekend.  Even the stuff that we are supposed to get tomorrow.

Joe is giving the message today in church.  Because Pastor was sick Joe was supposed to preach two weeks ago.  But the weather was so bad church was cancelled.  Then he was supposed to preach last week.  But it was icy out and we were warned by our news stations to stay off of the roads.  So church was cancelled again.  Finally today he will get to give the message.  I will tape it and link it here if any of you want to see it.

But let me tell you about Valentine's Day.  It really started on Friday when I got a phone call from a man who asked if I was Kathy and where did I live.  He had an address of 4723 and we are at 4722.  So he was looking across the street and there are no houses across from me.  Just the Vietnam Veterans building and two parking lots.  No wonder the guy was confused.

I went to the door and he handed me two packages.  One was a beautiful bouquet of flowers with a balloon and the other was a box of chocolates, a white teddy bear and a beautiful card with another balloon.  You can guess it was from Joe.

The chocolates were so good!  They didn't last long.

On Sunday (Valentine's Day) Joe gave me another box of chocolates.  This was a beautiful heart shaped box.

For lunch Joe made me chocolate chip pancakes.  I had never had them before.  He said he used to make them when he was in the Marines and everyone loved them.

He really does know his way around a kitchen.

Here's the stack of pancakes he put in front of me.  We shared them, of course.

I don't have a lot of Valentine decorations.  I got this little heart picture a couple of years ago from Rite Aid after the holiday.  I think I paid only $2 for it or so.  I know it was really cheap because they were trying to get rid of the Valentine's stuff.

At Target a few years back I got this Valentine's bowl.  It is such a pretty robin's egg blue inside with a gold XOXO on it.  I put M&Ms and Dove chocolate hearts in it.

Here you can see the outside of it.  There are lots of little hearts with sayings on them like the candy conversation hearts.

Joe bought a Valentine's wreath for the front door from a lady in our neighborhood.  She makes them and this was the last one she had.  It's so pretty.

And I have a large foil heart in the window.  That's the one that was usually on the door.

And that's about it for my decorations.  I bought a new garden flag for Valentine's Day, but it was too snowy and cold for me to get out there to put it up.  Oh well, there's always next year.

And then the day got interesting.  I started getting a nagging headache.  As the day went on, it got worse and worse.  Then my stomach got upset.  And I ended up with a full blown migraine.  Great!  I had planned a great meal for Joe and I ended up on the sofa (didn't even make it to the bed) in the dark trying not to throw up.  It was not a nice end to the day.

The next day, though, I did manage to make the dinner I had planned.  We had a pork loin that was so good and juicy.  And some green beans, wax beans and carrots mix.  For dessert I had made an apple cobbler.  Everything was good and we both enjoyed it.

So that is my Valentine's story for this year.  It all turned out OK in the end, but what a time we had.

And now here's an extra for you.  I always talk about my fried rice and how good it is.  Some people have asked me for the recipe and I put it on my YouTube channel.  Here is the link so that you can watch it and see how it is made.

Now I have to get off of here and get to church.  Hope you all have a wonderful day.

Until later...

Kathy

MONDAY MAGAZINE ON A TUESDAY

 

Hello, friends.  I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day yesterday.  I will tell you all about mine in a future post.  It was... interesting.  I have so much to catch you all up on but time just flies by and before I know it, it's the next day.

I just realized recently that it's been awhile since I showed you a magazine, so I thought I would do that yesterday.  But it all spilled over to today.  The issue I'm showing you is allrecipes from December 2018/January 2019.  Not that long ago!

Ready, Set, Bake! is a list of ingredients that you should always have in your pantry.  Flour, sugar (white, brown and powdered), baking powder, baking soda, yeast, salt, cinnamon, cocca, nuts, vanilla extract, food coloring and butter.  Hurray, I have all of these things all the time!

Season's Eatings was interesting.  I never thought of putting baking spices into the things I was cooking.

This recipe was for clove-scented tomato soup.  Cloves in tomato soup?  Maybe I should give it a try.

How about nutmeg in a spinach pie?  That sounds interesting.

Pumpkin with ginger sounds pretty good to me.  I think I am going to be doing some baking.

This one, though, sounds a little strange to me.  Scallops with Oranges and Vanilla Beurre Blanc.

This pork loin is made with cardamom.  I don't think I would like that either.

This article on winter vegetables was interesting.  I don't make a lot of squash even though I like to eat it.

Other winter vegetables they have recipes for are Brussels Sprouts, Broccoli, and Bok Choy.

I liked this article on weeknight meals.  I'm always looking to make something different.

The sheet pan Apple Honey-Glazed Chicken above and the Cod and Salisbury Steak with Mushrooms below all deserve a try.

This Bigger, Better Baking was a fun article.  Imagine baking one huge item instead of a lot of little ones.

A massive chocolate chip cookie that is cut into wedges.

A sugar cookie made into a snowglobe.

Or a supersized cinnamon roll.

There were recipes for celebrating three winter holidays.

Yakisoba for the Lunar New Year.

West African Peanut Stew for Kwanzaa.

And Scottish Bubbles and Squeak for Boxing Day.

And finally this article on taking one meal and making it an indulgence or a healthy option.

Broccoli cheese soup or Broccoli soup with pistachio gremolata.

American lasagna or Very veggie lasagna.

Orange beef stir fry or Sesame-orange beef and veggie stir fry.

There were a lot more article in here that were really good.  I hope you enjoyed this little peek into the issue.

I'll be back soon with another post.  I hope!

Until later,

Kathy