Dish 15 Pumpkin Bread

I've made several types of bread, but prior to this fall, I had never made pumpkin bread.  Clearly, I've been missing out.  That stuff is DELICIOUS!   I made it once for "52 recipes in 52 weeks" and liked it so much that I made it several more times.  I think I may be making it every fall from now on, it's so good.  It's definitely one of my top four favorites in the dishes I've made so far. 

Dish 14 Strawnana Bread

What is strawnana bread you ask? Why it's a combination of strawberry bread and banana bread.  No, I did not make this up.  I was looking for some type of new dish to make that involved strawberries and I came across strawnana bread.  As someone who loves strawberries, bananas, and many types of bread, it sounded like a winner to me.  I was quite excited to make it, okay, truth be told, I was more excited to eat it.  It was good, but not quite what I expected.  I expected more of a strawberry banana mixed flavor like you find in strawberry banana yogurt and I can't quite explain the taste, but the strawberry and banana flavors, while present didn't blend in the way I expected.  I'm not saying it was bad, just that it was different than what I'd imagined. 

Washing Machine Part 2: It Finally Arrives

The appliance store mostly delivers during "typical" business hours.  In other, words, when I am at work.  They did offer Saturday deliveries, but I was going to be out of town at a wedding the following Saturday.  My recently retired father agreed to be at my home to meet the delivery guys.  We set up the appointment and three days later, my dad called to say he couldn't be there then.  I rescheduled the appointment and the delivery guys gave me a 4 hour window (between 10 and 2, guess when they arrived?  1:50).  Guess what else happened?  The machine wouldn't fit through the bathroom door.  It would fit fine once in the room, there was plenty of space, but apparently my bathroom door is smaller than a standard bathroom door.  Who knew?  Clearly NOT ME.  Dear ol' Dad was "thrilled."  A couple of phone calls later, a new machine that would fit was picked out, scheduled for delivery and of course cost $170 more.  That Saturday the delivery guys showed up between 9 and 1.  Which means 12:15.  They literally took some doors off my house, left another door wide open so I could freeze while one of them smoked, installed the new machine, made a "nice little" mess, which they did NOT clean up.  They put the doors back on, left, and I cleaned up the mess.  I was SO HAPPY to have a functional machine again.  I did 8 or 10 loads of laundry that weekend.  :-)  And all was peachy for about a week and a half when I tried to dry some towels and they wouldn't dry.  I figured it was because towels take a while to dry, even in my parents' nice dryer I have to run them through more than once, but after three times through and still wet, I was slightly annoyed.  On to a smaller load w/o towels and same problem.  Long story short, someone came to look at it yesterday and the cord short circuited (or something to that affect) and will be fixed as soon as they can get someone over here, possibly Saturday.   

Washing Machine Part 1: Not What I Really Wanted for My Birthday, but such is life

So as you may remember from a few blogs back, my washing machine died last month (the day I got my car back).  I was understandably annoyed, but what can you do, right?  I couldn't afford a new one right away (remember I'd just spent big bucks getting my car repaired).  Thankfully, my parents live close by and they have a functional washing machine, which they let me use a couple of times (including on Thanksgiving, nothing says Happy Thanksgiving like Hi Mom and Dad, I'm going to do 3 loads of laundry in between eating turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, etc).  Additionally, one evening not too long after the machine died my fiance and I had plans to go to his parents house so we brought some laundry with us.  Someone (actually two people) suggested I call someone in town who is good at fixing washing machines.  I called him the week before Thanksgiving and after playing some phone tag, finally arranged for him to come look at my machine the day before Thanksgiving.   Like the cable company, the man gave me a 3 hour window (I'll be there between 9 and 12) and called around 11:55 to say he'd be there in a few minutes.  Can you imagine saying that to your boss?  I'll be in sometime between 9 and noon today.  Anyway, he showed up, told me what was wrong and gave me an estimate of how much it would cost to fix.  And for him to do that cost $60 dollars!  Can I please make $60 to show up for a 5 min appointment?  Don't get me wrong, the guy was nice enough, I knew it was going to cost $ for him to look at it, etc, but seriously, I pretty much threw $60 away.  He also told me to call Kenmore and see if I could find out how old the machine was because it were really old, I might want to get a new machine since they only last so long.  It took some searching, but I was finally able to find out that my machine was 19 years old.  I would have much rather spent the $260-$320 to have the machine fixed than spend the over $1000 for a new one (it's a washer/dryer combo so I couldn't just buy a washing machine), but since the machine was so old, it seemed best to get a new one.  Bring on the empty checking account.  Lucky (or not) for me, my birthday was close by so my parents and my fiance's parents offered to give me money in lieu of a gift to put toward the new machine.  Thank you parents and future in-laws!  So two days after Thanksgiving, it was off to buy a new washing machine/dryer combo or what I like to call, "time to empty my checking account."  My fiance and I picked one out, paid for it (it cost $200 less than we thought) and all looked good.    (Of course as you can probably tell from the title having a "Part 1," things didn't go quite according to plan, you'll just have to come back tomorrow to find out what happened). 

The Third Call's a Charm

Once we'd book the reception location, we wanted to book the church.   I called and spoke to a lovely woman there who told me what I needed to do, but also informed me that they weren't booking for 2014 yet.  She said I should call back in the middle of October and then they'd be able to help me (it was July or August at the time of my phone call).  On Oct. 16th, which is almost as middle of October as you can get, I called the church and they were very nice, but told me that they book still hadn't come in yet and it SHOULD be in by early November (they thought it would have been in by now).  She wrote my info on a piece of paper with a note to get in touch with me and said if I didn't hear anything by Thanksgiving to call then.  So the Monday after Thanksgiving, still NO news so I called again.  I was told that the book had come in--yay!-- and I was on the "to do" list for that week.  A few e-mails, some paperwork, and a small check later and the church was booked.  Woohoo 2 decisions made.  Now it's on to djs, photographers, dresses, food choices--well, you get the idea. 

Dish 13 Cranberry Chicken

Despite the name, the dish didn't taste a whole lot like cranberries.  Two of the main ingredients were cranberries and chicken (gee I bet you'd "never" have guessed that) along with a dressing.  The dish was good, but I really thought it would taste more like cranberries, you know like a version of Thanksgiving dinner with chicken instead of turkey.  Oh, well.  On a scale of 1-10 (10 being highest) I'd rate this one a 6 or 7 so I would make it again, but not immediately.  Maybe a once or twice a year dish. 

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I LOVE Christmas time.  I loved it as a kid and even now as an adult, I love decorating for Christmas, listening to cheesy Christmas music, watching cheesy Christmas movies, baking Christmas goodies, Christmas shopping (except for those people that are REALLY hard to shop for), and of course Christmas/holiday parties.  The stress that comes with the shopping and baking it, not so much, but otherwise I am a Christmas lover.  Merry Christmas!  I'll be back with some more blogging later in the week.  :-)