Postcards from the Trail

Okay, I'm throwing in the towel. I've been holding off blogging for a while to entice myself to finish blogging about my vacation in France. I give up. I haven't been working on it for a while and I need to move on. I'm not going to totally forget about it. I hope to go back and post date a few entries. But it is time to move on.

I hope everyone had a great holiday. We had a great time with our friends M&L. We got together the weekend before Christmas for dinner. L brought a wonderful roast from Seabreeze Farm. I roasted it until it was just 140 degrees which left it very tender. L also brought some great potatoes and kabocha squash. I made dessert - Black Chocolate Espresso Cake. A coworker recommended the recipe and helped me purchase some awesome baking chocolate from the Chocolate Man.

New Years was low-key as usual. M came over and we played Sequence for a while. But everyone said good bye about 10pm and none of us made it midnight.

It was a bit warmer today - above 40 degrees! It has been cold the past couple of weeks. The cat has been very lethargic but today was not bad. We got out and did the Discovery Park loop. For luck, I cooked some black eyed peas. I found some fresh black eyed peas from Friedas and used a recipe from Deborah Madison. This is recipe is close but not exactly what I cooked. The vegetarian recipe I found had onion, celery, green onion, bay leaf, thyme and garlic that was sauteed. After cooking for about 15 minutes, add allspice and chilpote chile powder. To this add, 2 cups fresh peas and 1 quart of water/broth. Cook for about 40 mintues and then add salt and cook until soft - about 20 additional minutes. They were very good. I served them with rice. A nice start to the New Year.