Tomato Soup

This was the best tomato soup I've ever made at home - it's from the Barefoot Contessa's cookbook - and it wasn't hard to make at all.

Heat 3 T olive oil in a large pot, add 1 1/2 cups chopped red onions and 2 carrots unpeeled and chopped, saute about 10 minutes.  Add 1 T minced garlic and cook another 1 minute.

Add 5 large chopped vine-ripened tomatoes, 1 1/2 tsp sugar, 1 T tomato paste, 1/4 cup packed fresh basil leaves chopped, 3 c chicken stock, 1 T kosher salt and 2 tsp pepper...stir well.  Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer 30-40 minutes til tomatoes are very tender.

Add 1/4 cup heavy cream.  Then in small batches (very carefully) blend the soup (and pour back into pot) until the big pieces are gone and the soup is thick and creamy.

Serve with julienned basil leaves and croutons (I cut multigrain bread into cubes and stir fried in butter, the sprinkled with Parmesan.)

Delish!

Fingerlings & More

These are a delicious combo of veggies I wouldn't have thought of, had it not been for Barefoot Contessa's cookbook!

Roast fingerling potatoes (halved lengthwise), with fennel tossed in olive oil, S&P (just the bottom of the bulb cut into six pieces) at 425 degrees about 30 minutes (turning once).  Then add in haricot verts and asparagus (cut into 3 in pieces) and toss again, roast another 15 minutes or so. (I did two different baking pans).  I loved the flavors!

This is super delicious!

January Road Trip

Road trips are the best.

If you live in the Central Texas area or are visiting here soon, here's a detailed account of the trip we took today - starting at 8:30 am....  We LOVE to drive through small Texas towns and look for bridges, old old vacated buildings, nice eateries, courthouses, town squares and anything else weird, interesting, or just plain cool!  We use websites like Texas Escapes, Texas Handbook Online, and we just type in the towns' names, print out the history and also some of the sites to see.

From Austin we drove first to Oakhalla, TX (not far from Lampasas) - and just drove on through to Kempner.  (Hwy 190 and RR 2313).  Then to Rumley, and on to Topsey, Pidcoke, and Purmela onto Ireland (one of my faves for old buildings!) and Aleman.  (We drove by the Pidcoke Cemetery and past it, to see a beautiful creek and valley nearby - Bee House Creek).

Here are a few pics of the old buildings we saw, plus the safari ranch we drove through in Topsey. 

Cute church with a bell!

See the faint painting of balloons and there's sign that says coffee on the 1st weekend.

The Topsey Exotic Safari was $11 pp (adults) 

We then stopped in a bit larger town, Hamilton, to eat lunch around 1pm at Central Perk - super delicious sandwiches, wraps and soups in an old house with a nice patio.  After we ate, we planned to walk the square (around the pretty courthouse) but we met a blind man and ended up helping him get groceries and get home!

Next, we drove to Pottsville and Indian Gap (my favorite picture below of an old schoolhouse - see the Indian face under the center window?)  We read that Indian Gap got its name from the gap between two small mountains there - and we saw it!

We drove on to Priddy, Center City (an old oak tree there is supposedly the very center of the state of Texas - we found it but it looked very dead!) and then Star.  Below is the Star Historical Museum, and it's believed the town was named for a mountain nearby that has five points that make it a star shape!

We then drove on back, planning to go to  Copperas Cove for a movie there (Cinergy Cinema) (they have a very cool theater), but we opted to meet our kids for dinner instead :)

This was a super fun road trip.  We always pack trail mix ( several kinds of nuts, pepitas, dark chocolate pieces and dried cranberries and cheerios!), a bag of magazines or books to read if we stop in a park to take a break, and water bottles for drinking!)

It's a great way to spend a Saturday on the back roads away from major highways looking at the past and reading the folklore surrounding these towns that used to be...or still are.

3 Closet Hacks

Sometimes...organizing parts of your closet is so therapeutic and satisfying...here are my finds today.

I used shelf dividers to hold a place for all of my smaller purses and clutches - now they're not all over the house!

Next, I got my hats off of the doorknobs and hung them on hooks on the wall of the closet.

And finally, I set a collapsible laundry tube, one that can easily be carried to the washer, just inside the closet door, replacing an old laundry sorter.  It doesn't look like much, but it's awesome... 

At the Table

Next time you have a dinner out with a bunch of kiddos at the table (we had 7 tonight!), stop by the Dollar Tree for these goodies:

journals (Dory and Princesses), pens that have different colors of ink, and sticker sheets you can cut and place several in each journal.

This way the kids have something fun to do while you wait on the food to arrive...it does work...for the most part :)

Veggie Crisps

These tasted so good!

I shaved an eggplant with my peeler - into thin strips.  I used my spiralizer to slice a peeled sweet potato into thin strips (they need to be very thin).

In a pot of hot oil I fried these in two batches, about 10 minutes each, and took them out to drain on paper towels.

In a small bowl I combined 1/4 tsp coriander, 1/4 tsp chili powder and 1 tsp season salt.  This I sprinkled and tossed with the crisps.

YUM.

Scarf Solution

I've bought scarf hangers, put hooks on the wall, and tried all sorts of ways to organize my scarves.  However, they all end up in a mess, covering each other up, falling on the floor...

I recently organized by clothing drawers using the KonMari method, where you fold clothes into  squares and put them away on their sides, in drawers, and I've loved it.

I wondered if this would apply to scarves, and so I cleared out a shallow drawer, folded the scarves into squares and it worked - except they would fall over if they didn't fill the space - so they needed a bookend (or scarfend) to hold them up!

I found a heavy candle in a jar and used it, and it will double as a drawer scent (unlit of course!)

I think I'm happy with this solution!