Wedding want

One would think that finding wedding shoes would be fairly easy. But I think that it has been MORE difficult than finding the actual wedding dress. This is absolutely ridonkulous because NO ONE will even see my wedding shoes unless I show them!

Because my taste in shoes is usually fairly boring, I wanted to branch out for the wedding color-wise. I am really sick of all of my black shoes! And then I saw Chasing Paradise's post on the Caparro’s Whisper Slide.

I suddenly wanted…..no NEEDED polka dot shoes for my wedding. However, nothing that I wanted came in my size (10) and heel length (not too high b/c CP is only three inches taller than me). So frustrating.

Next, I found these adorable shoes from Charles David (the check slide).

Also not found anywhere on the internet in my size. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

I have visited two different Macy’s shoe departments. I have gone to DSW. I have visited numerous other chain shoe stores. Nothing. At this point, I should just wear a pair that I already own and simply not care.

I will be switching into silver flip flops for the reception anyway.

*sigh*

Sidenote: I’m really sad that I have gotten so wrapped up in something as silly as shoes. As cute as both of those shoes are up there, how often would I get to wear them really? I don’t believe in buying shoes and only wearing them once. Thank goodness I haven’t told CP about my quest for cute wedding shoes- he would certainly make fun of me (which would be totally warranted!!).

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So would it be acceptable to wear flip flops under my wedding dress? I’m not too worried about the “flip-flop” sound as the guitarist will be playing as I walk down the aisle anyway. I have to find something with a bigger heel anyway because the ceremony is outdoors on grass. And I know that technically I can wear whatever footwear I want as it is MY wedding day. But would it be weird????

I can’t cut and paste the flip flop picture as the website says that it is copyrighted won’t let me right click on it. But the flip flops are found here.

Thoughts?????

Whatever I do it has to be soon as my dress fitting is in two weeks and I MUST have the shoes I plan to wear by then!!!

To drink or not to drink?

So CP and I currently have friends of ours who are expecting their second baby next month. As with their first baby (born a scant year ago- that’s right- they move FAST), the wife is not allowing her husband to drink while she is pregnant.

I personally feel that is unfair. Men are lucky in that they don’t have to carry around a baby for 9 months, deal with the kicking, the hernias, and whatever else comes with having a baby. However, they are not built to house a baby. So while it might not be fun to be the designated driver for 9 months for the future mother, guess who gets to be the sober driver once the baby is born (as long as you are done breast feeding for the night)??

I have already told CP that the only time I will forbid him to drink is when it is getting close to my due date. You know, because he will be the one to have to drive me to the hospital and all. :-)

Will you forbid your husband to drink while you are pregnant?

Whip it up week #5

This week I decided to make Blueberry Cobbler! The CSA gave us fresh blueberries so why not put them in a yummy dessert??

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tbs sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ cup butter
2/3 cup sugar
1 tbs cornstarch
¼ cup water
4 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
1 egg
¼ cup milk
Vanilla ice cream

Directions

For topping, in a medium bowl stir together flour, the 2 tbs sugar, baking powder, and if desired, cinnamon. Cut in butter till mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Set aside.

For filling, combine 2/3 cup sugar, cornstarch, water, and blueberries in a saucepan. Cook and stir till thickened and bubbly. Keep filling hot.

In a small bowl stir together the egg and milk. Add to flour mixture, stirring just to moisten. Transfer filling to a 2-quart square baking dish. Using a spoon, immediately drop topping into small mounds atop filling.

Bake cobbler in a 400 oven for 20 to 25 minutes or till a wooden toothpick inserted into topping comes out clean. Serve warm with ice cream.

Difficulty level: Easy

Taste: Great! It wasn't too sweet. The vanilla ice cream was the perfect addition to the dish. CP gobbled it up!

Would I make it again: Definitely. I might cut down on the "topping" part as it is seriously tasty, but at times a bit much if you don't get enough blueberries in the same bite.

Dating Disasters #3

With my wedding coming up soon, I have decided to chronicle some of the best of the worst dates and/or general disasters with the opposite sex. I am what you would call a “serial dater” so I didn’t go on tons of dates, instead choosing the people that I wanted to date carefully and generally dating them for a while. It’s the guys that didn’t last very long that provide the best material (or the ones that I drunkenly hooked up with).

Dating disaster #3:

My time time on match.com was when I lived in Philadelphia. I didn't tell anyone that I went on the site. One of my first dates was with a guy who said that he was in med school. I didn't actually believe that he was a doctor, but went on the date anyway. During our lunch together, he said that he wanted to go into plastic surgery.

We can go into my views on plastic surgery on another day (and how I was banned from watching Extreme Makeover), but frankly I think that people should work with what they already have. So needless to say, the fact that he wanted to make it his life's work giving people bigger boobs and doing lipo? Didn't make him all that attractive to me.

The icing on the cake? As we parted, we both knew that it would be our one and only date. In the parking lot outside the restaurant, he asked if he could feel my boobs. I refused, incredulous that he would even ask. He went in for the boob feel anyway!!!!!! What a jerk.

The creativity of CP

CP is currently cracking me up at work right now. We have been talking over email today with our officiant (a mutual friend), discussing details of the wedding. Because CP doesn’t like to call the tree/ shrub planting ceremony we plan to have at our wedding a “unity ceremony,” he sent me and the officiant the following email:

Unity Ceremony sounds dopey. Feels like something that was made up in Babysitters Club book.* I'll start the brainstorming:

Celebration of the Wedding Bush (heard this was big in the 70s)
Spreading the Love Seed
Planting Marriage Wood Ceremony (if it’s a tree)
The ancient Japanese Bukake Fertilization Ceremony... everyone stands around the pot and throws fertilizer at the plant...


And yes, I still plan on marrying him!


*On a side note, I used to LOVE the Babysitters Club books! :-)

I have a secret

I have a secret. Despite the fact that this is an anonymous blog, I didn’t tell you guys this for a while.

I joined Weight Watchers while I was down in DC.

Why did I not reveal this earlier? Partly because I wasn’t sure that it was going to work. Partly because I was embarrassed that I thought that I needed a diet program (I know….WW is not a diet. Whatever). Partly because I was embarrassed that after working SO HARD to lose those 20 pounds earlier this year, I quickly gained almost 10 back in my time down in DC. And partly because I wanted to see how the program went before I said anything (aka I wasn’t REALLY ready to start it).

However, I am now ready to tell the world (ummm actually just you guys). :-)

So the first two weeks or so I *might* have gained weight instead of losing weight. Poop.

But I stuck with it, kept going into the meetings and getting embarrassed when the numbers went the wrong way. After two weeks of that? I decided that if I am paying for the damn thing I better start following it! And I HATE being embarrassed.

Since then it’s been only good things. In the last three weeks I have lost 6.8 pounds. I am regularly going to the gym again. I am watching everything that I put into my mouth and recording it. I am making better choices. I am not depriving myself, but making sure that I am smart about it.

AND when I told CP that I had joined? He didn’t laugh as I thought that he would. He asked questions and seemed genuinely interested in my new adventure.

I may not lose all of the weight that I would have liked before the wedding, but my goal is 20 more pounds in the last two months. And after the wedding? I will work on the last 10.

Babies??!!?

Oddly enough, the subject of kids has come up twice in the past week!

The first time was a conversation between CP and me as we were driving to our night dive this past weekend. I’m not sure how the conversation came about, but we started talking about having kids. Ever since I had the conversation with my friend back in DC, it had been in the back of my mind, but I was too focused on the wedding to really talk about it too much with CP (and basically tell him that I was probably going to be ready fairly soon). To my surprise, CP immediately came out and said that he wants to have kids sooner than later as he doesn’t want to be too old. And I agree with him- my friends have sufficiently scared me enough regarding the warnings that come when you have babies at 35 years old or older. Come December I will be 31. Having babies soon simply because we don’t want to be old is NOT the only reason though. We both have stable jobs. Hopefully in a year we will be moving back to our west coast city where we will NEVER move from.

CP and I will have been together for four years the day before our wedding. :-) So while I had said in the past that I would want to be a newlywed for a couple of years before jumping on the baby train, I’m not sure I feel that way anymore. Since CP and I live together and share a joint credit card/joint checking account (we both have separate cards & checking accounts too) we already have figured out that aspect of our relationship. We aren’t the romantic, lovey-dovey couple so the “newlywed” title might not mean anything to us??

I personally would like to wait to start trying until AFTER our move out west. To me, trying to move a baby across the country with all of our stuff would be a nightmare.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The second conversation happened last night when my aunt stopped by on the way back down to NYC. While we were out to dinner, we somehow got on the topic of babies.* Randomly we started talking about IVF and what we would do as a couple if we couldn’t have kids “the normal way.” I personally don’t think that there is a problem with IVF. I don’t know much on the topic and haven’t done any research (hopefully I never have to), but CP thinks that maybe it wouldn’t be the right way to go. My aunt agreed, saying that she has a friend writing a book about the side effects of IVF on the mother (I’m guessing there are issues because they have to inject you with hormones for a couple months).

CP and I did have a casual conversation about whether we would adopt or not if we weren’t able to have kids. The gist was that we probably wouldn’t adopt….and would just have a bunch of Fuzzy Britches and be able to take trips all over the world every year! :-)

What would you do if you couldn’t have kids “the normal way”? Would you go through IVF? Would you adopt?

*Unlike some people, she didn’t jump to the next relationship question (aka “when are you guys going to start having kids?”).

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On a side note, I can’t believe that I am talking about babies. Seriously. I mean, lately I have been feeling more comfortable around kids (i.e. not running away from them as soon as I see them), but to contemplate going off the pill??? (I have been on since 1997- holy crap!) To contemplate wanting to gain weight?? Sigh. I AM getting old!

Whip It Up Week #4

I have yet to stick to the Whip It Up “theme” for the week, but decided to change that last night! The theme for this week was “healthy recipes” so I bet you are surprised that I made Banana “Ice Cream.” :-)

Ingredients:

5 bananas
¼ cup skim milk

Directions:

Cut up five bananas and put in Ziplock bag to freeze overnight.

The next day, using a food processor (a blender DOES NOT have enough power), add the bananas and pulse to break them up into smaller pieces. Add in the milk. Run processor for about five minutes, stopping occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

NOTES: The original recipe didn’t call for skim milk but because my processor was having a problem with the sticky bananas, I decided to try to make it a little smoother. It seemed to do the job. If your processor seems to be having problems cutting up the frozen bananas, stick the big pieces of banana in the microwave and heat for 20 seconds.

Difficulty level: Easy

Taste: It tastes like….bananas. I know, shocker, huh? The milk added a bit of creaminess to the “ice cream” and I thought that it tasted fine. CP put fresh raspberries on top of his dish and thought that it was still a bit boring. I tried the “ice cream” with peanut butter (just okay), fresh blueberries (again, just okay) and sugar free vanilla ice cream. The vanilla ice cream was a nice complement to the banana taste and I really enjoyed eating them together!

Would I make it again: I might. FI wants to see if we can figure out how to make it into a sorbet so that he finds it a bit more interesting…..

**For some reason Blogger is not allowing me to post the picture of the ice cream right now. I will try to get it up tonight!**

Dating Disasters #2

With my wedding coming up soon, I have decided to chronicle some of the best of the worst dates and/or general disasters with the opposite sex. I am what you would call a “serial dater” so I didn’t go on tons of dates, instead choosing the people that I wanted to date carefully and generally dating them for a while. It’s the guys that didn’t last very long that provide the best material (or the ones that I drunkenly hooked up with).

Dating disaster #2- a gem from high school:

Andrew was the new guy in school. I don't think that he was the same year as me, but somehow we got to talking- sadly enough, I think that it was about Great America (a Six Flags theme park in IL). Anyway, I guess that he picked up on the "ask me out" hints that I was sending and we made a date.

In high school, the cool place to go was the Olive Garden (ha ha ha). I don't remember much about our conversation, but at some point, it turned into Andrew talking about wanting to go into the military. He then said, "If a grenade was to fall into the Olive Garden right now, I would jump on it to save you."

Ummm huh? Why would a grenade fall into an Olive Garden in the suburbs of Chicago? And why would you jump on it to save me, someone that you barely know? In my mind, if this was Andrew's idea of "romance" then there was no need for a second date....

Have you ever had a guy say something he thought was romantic, but something that totally turned you off??

It's Monday? Again?

I really hate coming into work on Mondays utterly exhausted. It’s bad enough that it is Monday and I have a whole workweek ahead of me….but then to be so tired that it is extremely hard to drag yourself out of bed? No fun.

Although Friday (with my headache) wasn’t fun, my overdose of Tylenol Extra Strength worked enough for me to just have a dull headache during the second part of the day. And thus I was able to pick up CP at work and head out to the Michael Franti & Spearhead concert. One word- AWESOME. CP and I have seen Franti a number of times in the past few years and he never disappoints. I would highly recommend you check out his music if you haven’t already. Seriously. NOW.

The rest of the weekend was spent scuba diving. First in a nearby lake in order to do navigation drills. Then we were invited to a shore night dive (actually two) which was really cool because all of the underwater creatures here in MA (fish, lobster, crabs, etc) are very busy at night. With only a small flashlight and somewhat murky water, I stayed pretty close to the dive master so that I didn’t get lost! Yesterday we did two boat dives off the coast of Cape Ann. The water was a bit colder as we went down 50 feet, but there were definitely more interesting things to see! Starfish, more lobsters and even an ocean pout which looked a lot like this:

Not my picture of an ocean pout

He was definitely the highlight of the dive as I was not expecting to see anything that big (he was probably about 6 feet long)!

After this weekend of diving, I’m even MORE excited about the diving we are going to do in Mozambique for our honeymoon….but also a little worried that we are going to be utterly exhausted after 6 days of diving! Seeing that we are both so tired after only two days it will be interesting to see how our body reacts to 6 days! Maybe instead of gaining weight on the honeymoon we will be the odd people that LOSE weight! Ha!

Ugh

Woke up this morning at 4:30am with a ridonkulous headache. Maybe a migraine? I don't know the difference between the two and I have never seen a doctor about it.

An hour later, despite a semi-overdose on Tylenol Extra Strength and water, I still was not better. I finally called work at 7am and told them that I would not be able to make it in today.

A couple times of year, I have these headaches/ migraines that only start when I am asleep. The last time I had one was last summer when CP and I took a trip up to Montreal for his birthday. I woke up at 2:30 in the morning and paced around the room crying because I couldn't get the pain to stop. Sexy, huh?

I still have the dull pain of the headache right now, 8 hours later, and am worried about this weekend. CP and I have our advanced scuba diving course (to prepare for the honeymoon) and the deeper we go down, the more pressure I will be under. Here's hoping everything goes okay!

Book suggestion

If anyone is looking for a good book to read this summer, I would highly recommend Beautiful Boy by David Sheff. I just finished the book on the way to work and on numerous occasions, I have welled up with tears. It is a very powerful story and the book was hard to put down.

For some odd reason, I have always enjoyed reading stories about addicts or people with emotional problems. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey was one of those books (although I do remember commenting that he had quite a fantastic memory while being so high). Do I like to read these books because they are the written version of reality tv? Is it because I can feel better about myself knowing that I haven’t had to go through any of these experiences? I’m not sure.

I am lucky enough to not have anyone close to me with an addiction. My grandmother was an alcoholic, but she died before I was old enough to really even recognize or understand that she was sick. Supposedly my cousin is also an alcoholic, but I haven’t seen him in over 10 years so I have no clue if that rumor is true (although he is supposedly coming to the wedding- I guess I could find out then). I am very lucky in this regard.

Even in college, I somehow knew that I was not able to become addicted to alcohol. After particular hard nights of drinking I never said “I will never drink again” like some friends did- I knew better that of course I would drink again. However, my body would not physically allow me to drink heavily the next night. Plus now that I am older I have become quite the wuss with alcohol. Although it wrecks havoc on my whole losing-weight goal, I love the fruity drinks where I can’t taste the alcohol. I rarely do shots (although that would be a way to cut down on calories).

And I guess the information on drugs given to us in middle school was enough to scare me, because I stayed away from drugs in college (not to mention the fact that I was drug tested for my sport once I qualified for Nationals). In fact, I was impervious to it. Recently someone that was in the same fraternity as my ex-boyfriend in college told me of all of the people that did cocaine in the house (not my friend and not my ex). I never had any idea, despite the ridiculous amount of time I spent there. Weird (and scary at the same time).

The book did get me thinking of how hard it would be to have a child go through such an addiction. I am curious to read the book by the son, Tweak, to find out his version of the events….

Any good books you have read lately? I am on a reading kick and need suggestions! :-)

Whip it up week #3

This week I decided to try to make Olive-Thyme Foccacia!

Ingredients

2 cups tepid water
½ tsp sugar
1 envelope active, dry yeast
6 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
2 tbs minced thyme
1 ½ tbs olive oil
½ cup black olives, pitted

Directions

Put tepid water in a bowl and sprinkle with the sugar and yeast. Leave in a warm place for about 15 minutes until it starts to froth.

Mix the flour, salt and half the thyme together in a large bowl, then add the oil. Make a hole in the center and pour in the yeast mix. Stir with a wooden spoon, gradually taking in the flour from the sides until thoroughly combined. Knead into a firm dough that leaves the sides of the bowl clean.

Cover the bowl with a damp kitchen-towel and put somewhere warm to double in size.

Turn the dough out onto a greased baking sheet and punch it down, spreading it with your fingers or a flour-dusted rolling pin, to make a rectangular shape.

Brush the top with extra olive oil and sprinkle with the remaining thyme. Poke regular indentations in the top of the dough and push olives in them.

Bake in a preheated oven at 450 degrees for about 35 minutes, or until the top is just turning golden-brown.

Difficulty level: Medium

Taste: I am not a fan of olives so that is why you only see them on half of the foccacia bread. I am wondering if the recipe doesn't call for a lot of salt because of the salt in the olives?? Unfortunately both my side AND CP's side needed more salt. I think that it would have been nice to top the foccacia with kosher or sea salt and the thyme.

Would I make it again: Probably. It was my first time making foccacia so now that I know to add more salt, I think that it could be really tasty. I wasn't expecting it to make so much so only make this recipe if you want a lot of foccacia! :-)

The sometimes frustrating CP

So I haven’t talked a lot about wedding-related stuff too much lately. I guess it was because I needed a little break? CP and I did a few things while I was down in DC, but for the most part, I have just been emailing possibilities to CP and him shooting them down. Grrrrr.

For instance, I was able to do a lot of research on different vows while at work in DC because I was so damn bored. I sent him an email chock full of them. Instead of constructive thoughts and ideas of things that he did or did not want to say, his response to one of the vows that happened to mention the word God? “There is no God.” Okay funny man---so if we take that word out, would you still be opposed to saying these words in front of our friends and family?? *sigh*

Another example is my (stolen) idea of a guestbook. For those that are married, have you even looked at your guestbook since the one time you peeked through it after the wedding? Through internet research (again, bored at work), I found a couple that instead of having a regular guestbook, bought a cookbook with a lot of white space so that guests could find a favorite recipe and write their comments/ good wishes next to it. I thought that it was a great idea- buy a cookbook that we would be interested in and then be able to use it--while finding fun guest comments! His response? “I don’t want our wedding to be too theme-y. We already are do the herb/ recipe thing for our favors and this would just be too much.” Frankly I see it the opposite way- nothing else that we are doing has to do with cooking...so instead of having a book that sits around on a shelf collecting dust, why not get something that we would use?

Overall, I am really happy that CP is involved in the wedding, is helping me making decisions, etc. but sometimes he is frustrating! Instead of then proposing a NEW solution, he just shoots down mine. Although, I guess I can’t complain too much...it’s better than if he was indifferent to everything!


Oh, and also while I was gone? CP went and tried on tuxes. I really wanted to be there, as I have told you guys how much I like seeing him in a suit. When we first discussed tuxes, CP decided that he wanted a bowtie. I thought it was a silly thing, but decided it wasn’t worth it to argue about it. Then he also got into a suspenders kick. That’s right- he wanted to wear a bow tie and suspenders to our wedding. So….he basically wanted to look like a stuffy 50 year old English professor. Awesome.

Thankfully when he went to try on tuxes, he came to the conclusion that ties and vests look much better. Crisis averted and we didn’t even have to argue about it. SCORE! :-)

It's Monday already???

Please send help. My 30-year old body can’t handle the hike that we did yesterday! Yes, I always drag on Mondays but today it was even harder to get out of bed! My legs DO NOT appreciate the fact that I didn’t stretch them out after the hike either.

Overall, it shouldn’t have been that hard of a hike. The vertical was a little more than 800’ to the top of Mt. Norwottuck (in the Mt Holyoke range). The problem was that the state park didn’t have any maps when we arrived at the trailhead. No matter, we had an AMC map! However, the AMC map didn’t name all of the trails….and not all of the trails were marked. Fantastic. So we ended up on an unnamed mountain biking trail (whoops) and when we finally thought that we were back on the right path, we climbed to the summit on something that was definitely not a real trail! We didn’t see any markers, but could tell we were getting closer to the top, so even though it was all loose rocks from washouts, we continued up to the top.

We were REALLY proud of Fuzzy Britches. Back out west (when she was 20 pounds heavier) she would have been dragging for most of the hike. But yesterday? She was fantastic. Keeping up with CP, looking back to make sure I was okay when I fell behind (ha ha), etc. There was a pond at the beginning of the hike that she got to swim in so she was pretty happy puppy.

I’m really glad that we were able to do the hike. We had to constantly spray ourselves with Off because of the ridiculous amount of mosquitoes (the hike was through woods) and I found a tick on the towel used to dry off Fuzzy Britches (we will continue to do tick checks on her for the next few days or so), but it was a great workout! CP and I both agreed that we are going to have to do some more hiking/ working out before the first weekend in August. CP’s sister comes out and she wants to hike one of the presidents in NH (the White Mountains have a number of tall mountains named after different presidents) with us. Those will be a lot higher and harder so we have got to get into shape!!!

Am I wrong?

Last night CP brought up wanting to invite four coworkers that he attends happy hours with to the wedding. (CP is a contractor so they don’t work at the same company) I simply asked if he actually was friends with them/ would he keep in contact with them after the wedding? He said that they might be good business contacts later on. I said that we shouldn’t use our wedding for networking!!! It should be our friends and family that we want there.

My stance is that all four of them have wives, so that’s 8 extra potential guests at our wedding. I’m not sure of our actual per plate cost but I think it’s somewhere around $60. So $60 for 8 people plus the amount of alcohol consumed (unknown number) and there is another $500 (not counting alcohol!!) on people that you go to happy hour with and want to invite for networking purposes?? Keep in mind that we have already sent our invites out AND he has a number of people (at least 3 that I can think of) already invited from his company (he has been working there longer so I am okay with that). I selected to only invite 1 person from my company because she is my boss. I am friendly with a number of people at work, but I have only been working here since August…

We then had a lovely fight and didn’t speak to each other that much the rest of the night. Awesome.

Am I wrong?

Why I need to take an SVU hiatus

Why I need to take an SVU hiatus

By Nonsequitur Chica

Last Monday on my second to last day of work down in DC I arrived at my metro stop and got off the train. I walked towards the escalator and could have sworn that I saw a bloody severed hand. I kept staring at it as I made my way towards the exit, but couldn’t quite make out exactly what it was. No one else in the metro station seemed to be checking it out so I decided not to deviate from my usual path. In my mind I then decided that what looked like the base of the severed hand was too clean of a cut for it to actually BE a severed hand, so that I would forget about it.

I also decided that I clearly watched too much Law & Order: SVU this spring while in DC. CP doesn’t like the show so when I was able to DVR that baby while in DC? Oh I DVR’ed the heck out of it. Invariably, USA would play 8 of them in a row at least one day a week, along with a couple of episodes every day. I’m not sure how long that show has been on, but I would say that I have now watched most of the episodes. Yeah they weren’t in order so I would get confused when one day Ice-T was hanging out with Richard Belzer, and then the next day Belzer would have a totally different partner. I also couldn’t figure out when Mariska Hargitay was off having one of her babies or off because she had pneumonia. *shrugs*

All I know is that due to my excessive SVU-watching, I thought that I saw a severed bloody hand in a metro station. I still have no idea what would have looked enough like a bloody hand to catch my attention. But I think that some time off of SVU is warranted. Then I won’t think that I found severed body parts in public transit systems!!

NBC shouldn’t be worried though….I’ll be back come fall for the new episodes! :-)

Whip It Up- Week #2

CP and I decided to whip up some yummy food for the Fourth of July weekend with friends. CP made goat meat sausage and an Italian-style sausage. Both were delicious! Meanwhile, I decided to use my new baking pan received at my bridal shower to make.....Lemon Bread!

Ingredients
6 tbsp shortening
1 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon zest
1 lemon, juiced
1/2 cups chopped walnuts (optional)
1/2 cup powdered sugar

NOTE: I did not put walnuts in.

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 and grease and flour a 9 x 5 loaf pan.

Whisk together flour, salt and baking powder. In a large bowl, cream shortening, sugar and eggs together until light and fluffy. Add milk and flour mixture alternately in two parts; mix well.

Stir in the grated lemon zest and walnuts. Pour batter into greased and floured loaf pan, baked at 350 for 45-60 minutes.

Cool bread in pan for 5 minutes. Mix together powdered sugar and lemon juice to make a glaze. Pour glaze over warm bread.

NOTES: I used our new Kitchen Aid mixer to whip together the shortening, sugar and eggs. I love it! Also, when you pour the batter into the pan, it doesn't fill up the entire pan. Don't worry- it rises!

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture before people dug in!!

Difficulty level: Easy

Taste: Great! It was a big hit! Lots of compliments on the dish.

Would I make it again: Most definitely!

Oops

I have been neglecting the blog a bit! I guess I have been too busy getting back into the swing of things at work and at home with CP and Fuzzy Britches. :-)

Will be back tomorrow with a fresh new post. I hope that all of you had lovely holiday weekends. We spent time with friends and I cleaned the house because CP reverted back to his bachelor days....