Dirt Therapy

I spent the day in the kitchen yesterday and made our entire Thanksgiving meal. This is unusual for me since I'm not good at multi-tasking. We didn't have any Thanksgiving plans this year so we had a great dinner last night and now we have leftovers! I posted yesterday on Facebook about my Broccoli Salad and Cranberry Sauce. I will repost those recipes here. I also made dressing for the first time in my life and I made it in the crockpot. It was fantastic! Michael said that it reminded him of his mother's which was the ultimate compliment. We also made Alton Brown's Green Bean Casserole (with some changes) and it was wonderful. I will have to post that recipe another time since I'm not sure exactly how Michael did it.  And, of course, turkey. Slow Cooker Cornbread Dressing 6 cups prepared cornbread (Michael made me some cornbread the previous night. You can also use Jiffy mix cornbread but I suspect it would not be as tasty). 8 slices of day-old bread (I ...

Today was sunny, cold and blustery. A carpet of red Japanese maple leaves cover the ground right outside our front door.  They are absolutely stunning. I ventured out this afternoon and did a few chores, closing up the outside vents to our basement, bringing in some containers and replacing some of our clear globe lights that hang in the trees. Tomorrow is predicted to be a frigid day with temperatures only reaching into the high 30s.  We've been blowing the leaves into the borders every week but this is a futile job and you can't hardly tell anything has been done the following day. However, we would be buried in leaves if we didn't do it. Where does the pimento cheese in the title come in? Well, after doing our weekly Saturday morning chores, Michael and I spent quite some time in the kitchen. He made us delicious vegetable soup and I made him another batch of pimento cheese. I've never seen a person who likes pimento cheese as much as that boy does! It is qui...

We are back from our annual beach vacation. This year we were at Santa Rosa Beach again (between Destin and Panama City Beach, Florida). The weather was beautiful, sunny days in the 70s and mild mornings and evenings. Only one day of rain - the last day we were there - but I enjoyed it because we were in a house with a tin roof and I was curled up with a good book. Our house also had walls of windows overlooking the beach. It was very cozy. The photo above was just one of many beautiful sunsets we enjoyed. Here are some more photos taken from our deck - Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy