Living-Deliberately.com

a new friend, bringing in EGGS, after we’ve all been up all night blogging.  I swear….this foodie is freakin’ starving and those eggs, no matter how they’re cooked, are going to be fantastic!

Why are we blogging for 24 hrs. straight???? In an effort to Connect the Globe for Good! So head over to theworldsbiggestblogparty.com, choose a charity (or more) and click on their “donate” button! It’s that easy and the $$ goes directly to some very wonderful causes.

No donation is too small; just give! (and maybe spread a little of your own Saturday simple pleasure in the comments?)

Fried Green Tomatoes.

The kids were watching the movie of the same name (one of my favorites), and we have plenty of green tomatoes in the garden, so it became rather obvious what to have for dinner tonight!

Fried Green Tomatoes:

Slice them thick; nearly 1/2 inch. Cut at least two large ones.

In a bowl, mix 2 eggs and about 1 cup of buttermilk and soak the tomato slices.

In another bowl mix 1 c. flour, 1 c. cornmeal or grits, salt and pepper, and a pinch of baking powder.

With a fork, lift the tomatoes out of the egg mix and dip into the flour, getting a thick coating on both sides and the edges.

Fry in half bacon grease, half olive oil until golden on both sides (flip half way).

We like them just with a little more salt; David sprinkles his with hot sauce, and once in Atlanta, we had them topped in a red pepper sauce and covered in melted goat cheese. Deee Vine, I tell ya.

What’s your Saturday Simple pleasure?

Mine: Gettin’ organized.

Today my little closet office got a top to bottom cleaning, as did my purse, laptop bag, and  to-do notebook.

What’s yours?

White Stilton Cheese with Apricots.

And it’s certainly awesome with mango in it as well.

Classified a “dessert” cheese, this stuff is heavenly nectar. Smooth, creamy, with a gentle tang (not scary like normal Stilton). My eyes automatically close and I sigh involuntarily when this stuff hits my tongue. It’s sublime.

I don’t get it on Saturdays. In fact, I don’t get it at all since our TMM, insane gas prices, and the sudden weed-like growth of our children. It went on the back burner along with wine and organic chocolate. But not too long ago a friend brought some to a pot-luck; I tell you it took total restraint to not steal the entire thing and hide under the table cloth or lock myself in with it in an unused office! It was a blessing that most of the potluck partakers were a little afraid of it and so didn’t touch it. Think I’m exaggerating?? Give it a shot. Go on, I dare ya. Buy some and just TRY to eat it unaffected. It’s the kind of cheese that will make you marvel at creation and the wealth of goodies the earth gives to us. It’s the kind of cheese that will inspire you to abandon all plastic and cardboard food offerings.

It will blow. your. mind. And it’s just….so…simple.

The internet.

Okay, so maybe it’s not so simple. But I was thinking today how there is no other vehicle in my life as powerful as the internet for broadening the human audience of one to another.  It affords an amazing chance to get to know something about people I’d otherwise have no chance to connect with on any level.

As it turns out, this particular Saturday is crazy-busy, with more work than pleasure, even pleasurable work! But in taking a moment to look at my incoming links, I saw this new blog listed. She’s put me in her sidebar, a hindi mother of two utterly adorable kiddos, and for a moment in time I caught a glimpse of a beautiful life that made me smile, that I otherwise wouldn’t have seen. Take a look, send her some of this wonderful traffic I’ve been blessed with (75k hits last month!! Thanks!); catch a glimpse. She has a stunning thought posted at the top: “In the midst of winter, I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer.”  Quiet inspiration; love it.

This one is free: the smell of freshly cut grass.

It’s hay season around here and we live downhill from a large hay baling farm. It seems all the hay in the county has been mown, rolled into large round bales, and then loaded onto semi trucks to be hauled up our hill. There are probably 10 or so trucks a day going by, loaded with 20 or so large round bales, and then the next morning, the same hay, rebaled into neat little rectangles and shrink wrapped headed back down.

Add to it my boy, who has taken a liking to mowing the flatter sections of our yard, and the neighbors, bouncing around on thier riding mowers, and the air is constantly fragrant these days.

It’s a warm, summery scent, which together with the cool breezes and suddenly-lush shade that’s grown, has made for some beautifully stunning days this week.

It all makes May one of my very favorite months.

please share your simple pleasures in the comments, and if you blog it, be sure to link it!

Stoneyfield’s Vanilla Truffle Yogurt

True, it’s the Strawberry featured in the picture and true, ever since the discovery of how fantastic whole milk yogurt is I’m pretty much hooked on it served any way, most especially the cream top of plain whole milk yogurt scraped into a bowl, topped with coconut almond granola, fresh berries, and drizzled with local honey…..sigh. BUT…

every afternoon (not just on Saturday’s quite honestly) I have a little cup of their vanilla truffle bliss. It’s got a chocolate sauce layer on the bottom and the cream layer on top; mixed together the entire concoction is NOTHING like the syrupy, gross, thin stuff I used to think yogurt was. This is thick and creamy and nourishing and good…and no corn syrup or funky things included. It gets my brain going for writing and working and is the best “pick-me-up” in the afternoon that I think I’ve ever found.

Good nutrition has so many beautiful whole foods available… how can plastic, overly and artificially sweet, cardboard-and-microwaved imposters possibly compete?

If you’ve got a Saturday Simple pleasure to share leave it in the comments or share the link to your post!

Baked potatoes in my crockpot!!!

Actually, just about anything in my crockpot. Since my oven died I’ve been using this more and the roasts that it produces are simply fantastic!

But a new habit has formed; just after my morning routine, which wraps up around 10:30, I scrub 6-7 russetts and put them in the crock. From there I clean house, work and play with the kids,   make lunch, work on the computer while the baby naps, go for a run, come back and organize a “tidy”…and then dinner is ready! Fry a few slices of bacon, break out the cheddar cheese and sourcream and butter, some chives, and saute some brocoli and we have it done. The potatoes are tender and perfect and I didn’t have to wrap each one in foil (a fairly simple method that makes their skins nice and seasoned but for some reason annoys me and I procrastinate  so often  with that we almost never had baked potatoes before).

Got your own saturday simple pleasure? If you blog about it, leave me a link!

pancake mornings.

For over 4 years we’ve had buttermilk pancakes and sausage every Saturday morning. We’ve missed a few here or there when we had a busy day but for the most part, we protect our Saturdays as family time and get it started with pancakes. They’re made from scratch, served on heavy white plates, and have slabs of real butter melting into organic maple syrup puddles. The sausage is locally made and the coffee is freshly ground.

“pancake” was Rowan’s first double-syllable word and on friday nights, it seems the whole crew goes to bed smiling knowing that the next day is a relaxing, sleepy, pancake morning. We cuddle in bed, the kids take turns drawing invisible pictures on daddy’s back, and then the kids nudge me closer to the edge of the mattress the hungrier they get.  I always start with the water for the coffe/french press. The recipe has long been in my head and I can throw it together with my eyes closed. The griddle is hot and  on rainy mornings like this one, with a copy of last week’s NY Times nearby and a deliberately clear itenerary, it can’t get any cozier than that.

It’s a simple pleasure that this week, will restore my spirit in more ways than one.

If you post your own simple pleasure on your blog, be sure to put a link in the comments. I love reading them!

Here’s one that I enjoy every single day of the week, one section at a time…

The Sunday NY Times

We got a sample subscription, four free weeks followed by four discounted weeks. I probably have to nix the full deal until we meet a few more financial goals. But I can guarantee I’ll still pick up a copy when I’m in town; both my food co-op and my coffee shop sell it. I love it!

Section after section I appreciate the wordiness, the fantastic layout, the attention paid to details. The content is often challenging but in a cerebral way…not mindnumbing TV with commercials and the writing is always well done. Even the ads are beautifully laid out! NY is a world and a half away from my little town here and I wouldn’t necessarily want to live there (though a visit involving many little restaurants and musuem tours sounds wonderful!). It’s often spread out all over my bed on weekend mornings but I take the time to read almost every article, or at least a pretty thorough scan, throughout the week. It’s best savored on a morning for sleeping in, covers and a loved one nearby, and hot coffee too. Only a plate of eggs benedict, swirls of golden hollandaise and sunny yolks subtly intact, served in that very bed, with that same loved one and that hot coffee would make it better and as the family cook I haven’t figured how to get it and stay in bed yet!

So, always a treat, the Sunday NY Times is my simple pleasure this Saturday. I loved the responses last week; don’t forget to post your links if you write one too!

I’m going to start a new feature…highlighting one of my favorite simple pleasures every Saturday morning. The only criteria is that it has to cost less $20 and be something that contributues to my quality of life in large ways. Sometimes it will be a treat, sometimes a favorite tool, sometimes a necessary thing that is much appreciated. I’d love this to become a carnival of the simple things we enjoy, so if you blog about your own be sure to post a link in the comments section.

Simple pleasure:   New windshield wipers. 

Yes indeedy, right up there with new socks! It seems our wipers get worse and worse and every rain storm we vow to change them but when it’s dry again we forget. Around here, we have one driver who adjusts the wipers with the rain fall and one driver who will insist vision is fine without them and never use them. Unfortunately, the one who never uses them is the one who is generally in charge of car maintenance ;-).  And so, at the point where one little rubber thread was flapping in the wind one day and we had about a two inch band of cleared windshield in a heavy spring rain while the rest ran in blurry rivulets,  the little red hen took herself to Advanced Auto and saw they were running a special. It was a discounted price AND free installation. Herr Rooster was much pleased to have one thing crossed off his list without even trying (now there’s a simple pleasure if I ever heard one!) and the one who uses the wipers can see again. A good thing as we enter a weekend with a snow/rain mix in the forecast!