This is what I saw out my kitchen window early Sunday morning while preparing our dinner…

This picture doesn’t do the scene justice, but the sun was coming up over the hill and the colors were even prettier than they look here. It’s wonderful to have a lovely view out my kitchen window. I often see bunny rabbits or squirrels down in the yard and get to watch them while I clean up my prep dishes. I love that.

This girl’s becoming a regular weekend visitor, but I love having her home. She’s had a frequent ride, so that’s enabled her to get away from school for a day (long enough to get her laundry done!). I’m glad we are close enough for her to be able to come home frequently. You know your children have grown up when they come home to visit and bring a hostess gift! How sweet!

I used Allen’s Green beans. I cooked them with a couple tablespoons of butter in their liquid until the liquid evaporated, then added the pearl onions, and a couple slices of cooked bacon, crumbled, and cooked them until the onions had cooked.

The red potatoes were a simple dish for Sunday. I quartered red potatoes, drizzled them with olive oil, salt and pepper, and placed them in a baking dish. I set my oven timer to let them bake for 45 minutes. They were nice and crispy on the bottom side – mmmm.

The biscuit recipe was a new one I tried from Cooking Lite Cookbook. I didn’t care for the consistency, so I’m not going to share the recipe. However, I’ve made the Angel biscuits from Cooking Lite and they’re just as good as any other biscuit recipe I’ve made.

Angel Biscuits

1 pkg dry yeast (about 2 1/4 tsp)

1/2 cup warm water (100 – 110 degrees)

5 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup vegetable shortening

2 cups low-fat milk

Cooking spray

1 tbl butter or marg., melted

1. Dissolve yeast in warm water in a small bowl, and let stand 5 minutes

2. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cup, level with a knife. Combine flour and next 4 ingredients in a large bowl. Cut in the shortening with a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add yeast mixture and buttermilk, and stir just until moist. Cover and chill for 1 hour.

3. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

4. Turn dough out onto a heavily floured surface, and knead lightly 5 times. Roll dough to a 1/2 inch thickness, and cut with a 3-inch biscuit cutter. Place on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Brush melted butter over biscuits tops. Bake at 450 degrees for 13 minutes or until golden. Yield: 2 dozen

This dough will keep in fridge for a couple of days, so you can use just what you need for a great breakfast or supper.

What’s been cooking in your kitchen lately?

With love,

The Lord was so good to allow us to make a trip to the Smoky Mt. Natl. Parkway on Monday. The colors are just beginning to turn to a yellowish shade. The day was a bit overcast and as we climbed the mountain it got down to 37 degrees at about 4:00.

It drizzled for a bit, then we rounded a curve, looked to our left and saw this…

I pointed and shouted, “God keeps His promises!”

How gracious of the Lord to allow me to see this rainbow before I teach the story this Sunday!

Around another corner the sun was peeking through the clouds onto one section of the mountains. The sun is always shining somewhere, isn’t it?

I love a tunnel in the mountains…so beautiful!

We got to spend Tuesday at Dollywood with some dear friends.
We even had a tail-gate lunch with them! We were envied by passersby and rightly so! It was a lovely day, good fellowship and a great lunch!

I love Dollywood in the fall. Harvest decorations are everywhere.

The blessings at the end of the week were the Sunday roast that I salvaged! If you read my post on Monday you’ll remember that the Sunday roast beef was tough as shoe leather. My husband sliced it into little pieces for me yesterday morning, then I put it in the crock pot with a little water and some homemade barbecue sauce. I put the crock pot on low for six hours. That meat turned into soft, warm, squishy barbecue that melted in our mouths! Thank you, Lord!

We topped our sandwich with a little cole slaw (the southern way to eat barbecue).

I served it with potato salad that Alli had made and some buttered corn. Mmmmm!

On our way home from Pigeon Forge we stopped in Cosby, TN at an apple farm where I bought apples, pumpkins, and molasses. At my husband’s request I made these Molasses cookies for dessert…

These cookies are crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside. They are a perfect autumn cookie! Since October is National Cookie Month I am making a different cookie each week. I give most away, but we will eat a little bite of something sweet after supper.

As I sit and recount the blessings from this week I remember that there were a couple of hard things that were peppered into our week too, but through it all, God was faithful. He always sends little reminders of His love (the rainbow), grace blessings to encourage (time away to refresh, a warm cookie and a cup of coffee), and His presence to convict and guide us. He is such a wonderful God and I’m thankful He is my heavenly Father!

What blessings have you experienced this week that you can praise God for? I’d love to hear about them!

See you in church.

With love,

Yesterday’s post was about a mother’s guilt for not being everything she could have been. What do you struggle with the most as a mom? Is it anger? Fear of the future? Lack of knowing how to parent or discipline?

Perhaps your days of parenting a young child are over, are there other issues you’re facing now that are difficult?

Your responses will help me to know what issues could be addressed in the future.

Please share on this Noteworthy Wednesday.

Recently I had a friend ask me what I thought about the statement, “Every mother’s middle name is ‘guilt.'” She said she’d really like my thoughts on that. I considered it for a couple of days – even mentioned it to a couple of women and was interested in their responses. “Oh, boy, isn’t that the truth!” was pretty much what I heard from others.

Alli got to come home from college again this weekend (this was the planned visit, last weekend was a little surprise and grace blessing). I try to make foods when she comes home that she doesn’t get at school. So for Sunday dinner I got a beef roast and cooked it my traditional way like I posted here. I realized Saturday night that I didn’t have any Lipton Onion Soup, so I went on-line and looked for a substitution for it. I found this recipe and used it instead. It was very good. I’m so glad to have a recipe for this now, and not have to worry with keeping the dry soup in my pantry! We also had red skinned mashed potatoes, and carrots (they were cooked with the roast). I also served a green salad.

I have to tell you, though, that the roast was tough! Ugh! Not only was it expensive, but also a huge disappointment. I cooked it slow and low, but evidently I got a not so good piece of meat! I’m just glad I didn’t have guests! I sure hate it when the main dish is a flop! Since you shouldn’t cry over spilled milk, I guess I can’t pout over tough meat!

Nothing tastes as good as food cooked at home – (even if it’s less than perfect), and I love it when my girls make requests for their favorite things when they are here. Food makes connections; it brings a family together, and is so worth the trouble it takes to make a meal in your own kitchen on a regular basis.

Alli’s boy/friend joined us on Saturday for a few hours of bike riding on the bike path in the town next to us. He got here early in the morning, so I figured I’d better have something for breakfast when he arrived. I tried a new recipe – Snickerdoodle muffins. We LOVE snickerdoodle cookies, so when I saw this recipe, I knew it was something we’d enjoy.

This muffin isn’t really pretty, but it was hard to get a good picture because all that cinnamon and sugar on top wanted to fall off, but they were yummy!

Snickerdoodle Muffins
2 c. flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. cream of tartar
.3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 c. butter, melted
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 c. milk
1 tsp. vanilla

Topping
1 c. sugar – I used 3/4 Cup
2 T. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Either butter a 12-cup muffin tin or
use cupcake papers. (I ended up with 16 muffins)

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. In another bowl,
combine the melted butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and vanilla. Stir until
combined. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients and mix lightly
with a fork.

Fill the muffin cups with batter. Top each muffin with the
cinnamon/sugar mixture. It can be applied heavily.
Bake 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

It was a beautiful fall weekend here in East Tennessee and cooking in this kind of weather is just fun! What’s been cooking in your kitchen? Have you had a flop recently like I had yesterday?

With cups full of love,