word-less wednesday.
May 22, 2013 · 6:00 am
how to cook the perfect day: a winner.
Congrats to our randomly-chosen winner of this sweet, autographed cookbook: Sarah!
Here’s what Sarah had to say about her favorite artist: ”I love Nikki McClure’s art. I also adore Kelly Rae Roberts and her mixed media creations.”
Ooh, I am very in love with Kelly Rae Roberts’ art right now, too. I’d say she’s my current fave, myself. Her work has been inspiring quite the color revolution in my home decor, I must admit! Have you all checked her out? Click here to learn more about Kelly Rae.
Sarah, please email me at fresh_scratch@yahoo.com and leave me your address.
Thanks to all who entered. Happy Tuesday!
monday meal madness!
Did you know that Monday’s not only the day I share dinner ideas with you, but it’s also the day I make breakfast foods? Yup. Monday is yogurt-making day, instant oatmeal-making day, and granola-making day.
Lions and tigers and bears – oh, my!
Do you make your own breakfast foods?
Would you want to see how I do those three things? Let me know. I’m mulling over some new post ideas.
Meanwhile, get out your grocery lists! Here is a look at what we had for dinner last week.
Stuffed French toast from Weelicious: 140 Fast, Fresh, and Easy Recipes
So heavenly. It’s basically a cream cheese and jam sandwich made into French toast. Nothing to not like about that!
Pair it with some cantaloupe and bacon-in-the-oven, and you’re good to go.
Mr. Fresh Scratch loves to make tofu stir-fry. In fact, it was the first meal he made for me! I had never eaten tofu before. It certainly did not prove to be my last time. Our second date was just about twelve years ago, right about this time of the year, and when I arrived, he was chopping all kinds of things for this stir fry.
Bananas, even.
I sat down at his kitchen table and started to chat while he bustled around. He interrupted with, “Are you going to help me with dinner or what?”
It was love right there, folks.
I attempted the ranchero eggs from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
.
They smelled amazing, tasted amazing, looked amazing….{you know there’s a but coming here, right?} but I just could not get the eggs to set right. So, um, the eggs were pretty much hard boiled.
Kind of weird. I liked it, though, but I don’t think anyone else in my family cared for them too much. I ate these for many a lunch last week!
Saturday morning was the perfect morning to have a big batch of spaghetti sauce bubbling away on the stove. I had also planned to try my first attempt at making ricotta. However, there was no cheese cloth at the co-op down the street, so I took it as a sign to buy the ricotta and put off making it. he, he.
Voila, manicotti. One of the Mr.’s favorite foods. It was pretty much a prerequisite to know how to make this before saying, “I do.”
I leave you with another classic Mr. Fresh Scratch dinner: chicken breasts fried up in a pan with some sort of potato on the side. He could probably eat this every day.
Happy Monday!
Filed under Cookbooks, Meal Ideas
insta.friday!
When someone who is four years old wakes up with a super bad, itchy rash just as you’re finishing the final episode EVER of “The Office” {sniff, sniff!} late one Thursday night, your weekend starts a day early.
Just ask me!
So, hello, Friday – the end of the school year is in sight, and I am looking forward to a whole ten weeks or so filled with days that each feel like you {you as in Friday. Not you as in you, reader. That would be weird.}. And no essays to grade!
Let’s not forget that tiny detail.
Around here, Friday equals all cell phone pictures, recapturing the sweet moments of my week. You can follow me at kellisamson on Instagram if you want.
I’m linking up over here:
Ben Affleck on the cover of my film society flyer? Why, thank you. Thank you very much, film society people!
Ben, if I were a high schooler, you’d totally be decorating the inside of my locker. If that’s not true love, I don’t know what is.
{Don’t I sound like such the stalkerella??}
Love this cookbook. My mom and her friend gathered recipes from all kinds of people around our little town in Connecticut in the 80′s. I love to use it and see the names of my friends’ parents or my teachers on the recipes.
Teensy loves to have Lois’s broccoli soup each year on her birthday.
A collection of little small-town cookbooks like these would be so much fun, don’t you think?
Teensy’s birthday party at the ever-so-grody old Skateland was rainbow themed. I loved her balloon bouquet!
But…how long do they have to float all over my house? Is it bad that I’ve been stabbing them privately in the laundry room, one at a time?
Mother’s Day. One of the top two days of the year, fer sure, man.
I slept in. They brought up my tea. They made me waffles. They let me Pinterest for a long, long time.
Teensy-Weensy {aka: Clementine} gave me this adorable magnet she made at pre-k. Teensy gave me a portrait of herself she drew. In it, she is sticking out her tongue. She is so very eight years old. She also wrote me a letter saying she appreciates that I don’t let her dad make good on his threats to throw her toys away when her room is a mess.
What can I say? I am to please.
Then they brought out the big guns: a new camera bag from Jo Totes for my new camera. Uh, whoa. Speechless!
While they washed my car {one of my little requests for the day}, I took a bath while listening to the new She and Him album {their best yet!} and reading a magazine. Awesome!
Then my friend Marie and I met up at the movies for “The Great Gastby” in 3-D.
While ordering our drinks, they offered us Rocky Road for free. Because we’re moms. Fo’ real.
It was pretty much heaven.
Remember my guest room makeover and the wall with the fabric-covered initials of my family? I didn’t like that wall. I took the letters down and put each one above its owner’s night stand. Way cuter.
And then I framed these cute quote cards I’ve been collecting at Trader Joe’s, and framed those with this awesome turquoise frame I found at a thrift shop this week.
There. That’s much better!
Can I be a guest at my house?
Lots of evenings were spent on the couch this week, gazing up at the lilac bush and reading to Teensy. She fought against Harry Potter for some time, but now she is hanging on every word. Score!
And there you have it. That’s what I’ve been up to. All that, and watching the finales to all my shows. Looking forward to many a’ free evening in the months to come, but I will miss you, Jim Halpert!
The End.
how to cook the perfect day: a giveaway.
Because I apparently set my alarm for pm instead of am this morning, let’s turn this day around, shall we?
I’ve recently finished cooking my way through Nikki McClure’s sweet little cookbook, How to Cook the Perfect Day
And now I’m ready to share the love.
Nikki was generous enough to donate a signed copy for one of you lucky readers {thanks!!}. I went to her beautiful, green-built home and studio this past Monday. She is perched just above the Sound, and all her windows showed a work of art that was either lush, green forest or water and sky. Her studio is spacious and filled with light. She had just finished a paper cutting for next year’s calendar, and it felt so sacred to be there at that moment – like witnessing a birth.
My favorite recipes in here have been the yeast rolls {I’m never buying buns again!}, the biscuits, the ginger ale {can you say awesome base for a mojito?!}, and the curry. I’m excited to hear what my lucky winner finds to love in this sweet book.
So how do you get entered to win? Easy. In the comments below, let me know who your favorite visual artist is. A winner will be chosen at random Monday night after 6 pm Pacific time, so get your comment in before then!
May the force be with you.
gatsby.
Carey Mulligan’s Daisy says his name perfectly and breathlessly: “Gatsby.”
After witnessing Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, that’s how I hear his name in my brain. There’s just no going back to plain old “Jay Gatsby.”
Opulent. The latest incarnation of this film can be described in no lesser term. It is a true feast for the eyes. Everything is big and glittering and full of promise. From the moment the film began, it was everything I’d visualized as the high school student who read it more than once…for fun.
So what if a lot of the set is digital. Doesn’t Gatsby believe in a perfection that doesn’t actually exist?
While the supporting cast of this film is brilliant {Loud and crazy Isla Fisher as loud and crazy and colorful Myrtle? Seeing BFFs DiCaprio and Toby Maguire together? Carey Mulligan’s Daisy Buchanan, with her perfect skin? Amazing!}, one absolutely is haunted by DiCaprio’s performance as Gatsby. He brings absolute heartache and longing to the role. He is a man of a thousand expressions, and they are put to magnificent use here. As an audience member, I couldn’t help feeling on eggshells, like things were about to crack any moment, because Gatsby’s desperation was played so close beneath the surface of his suave exterior. So close, there was no way to miss it. DiCaprio’s Gatsby isn’t just a guy who is hoping to get the girl – he is the guy who is obsessed – dare I say, delusional and stalker-like? Oscar nomination, please? He brought an intensity to the role that has been missing from every other Gatsby. You feel like his very existence depends upon Daisy leaving Tom to be with him. And I suppose it does.
Truly, his character broke my heart. It’s the same reason why I read this book a few times in high school: who doesn’t relate? Who doesn’t think – when you are young – that if you were just a bit more, well, more – that all-important person would come back? When you are young, you don’t understand that you are enough. You’re too afraid to be as-is, because how boring is that? And you think you have all the time in the world, so of course Daisy will wait for you to become rich while she foresakes all other men. Uh, no, my friend. That is not how the world works! But we couldn’t see it then, could we?
All of this – combined with the hip-hop music, the signature Luhrmann cinematography, the desolate Valley of Ashes – is just as it was meant to be. I can’t help but think Fitzgerald would’ve loved it. I certainly enjoyed all of the homage paid to his words as they visualized – quite literally – on screen, leaving us with the book’s memorable, often-used last line:
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Meanwhile, can I please have Nick Carraway’s bungalow?
Filed under Film Reviews
