What's for dinner?

Mike picked up a cookbook recently called "Elegant Appetizers". The past couple of weeks he's made Scallops Provencale, Gorgonzola and Toasted Walnuts on Linguine, and tonight's Fish Wellington (pictured). I'm not sure who would serve these as appetizers, because they've been main dishes for us, but all were excellent.

Otherwise we were homebodies this weekend as we watched the 16 inches of new snow fall. This was on top of last weekend's 7 inches, so we're well ahead of average for December and have plenty for snowshoe-ing. Now it's just cold (high around 1 deg F today).

Such a short time with us

I'm not really sure how to say this, and wish so much that I didn't have to. But Buzz died yesterday. He contracted pneumonia, and after four days in the animal hospital, on oxygen and all sorts of drugs, he was still just getting worse, struggling so much to breathe. We had to let him go.

We are heartbroken.

Buzz

A friend of ours has become a foster parent for a litter of kittens from a local rescue organization. She started working on Mike a couple months ago, sending pictures, telling him how good Buzz was with her other cats, etc. They are now old enough for adoption, and apparently we were ready for another cat, so we picked him up last weekend.

Rusty and Detour were not thrilled with the little interloper, but things have gotten gradually better this week. Less hissing and growling, and even signs of wanting to play together. Our theory is that Buzz will keep the other cats young, just like Detour did.

Paducah Nine Patch

Last fall, I gathered up some unneeded quilting supplies to sell at our local quilt show. I went through all of my quilt books and patterns in the process, and decided to get rid of anything that I didn't realistically think I would be making in the foreseeable future. That prompted me to finally start a Paducah Nine Patch from Nickel Quilts. This quilt represents how many blocks I made before I started to get bored with it. It's a nice lap size, but has no planned recipient - unfortunately I've learned that it's nice to have a finished quilt on hand for when a friend is in need of some quilt comfort.

It was a wonderful trip

I haven't given up on the blog, but it's taken a while to get caught up on everything since vacation. Scotland was wonderful, and it was so relaxing to have two full weeks off. We keep wondering why we've waited 10 years since the last two week European vacation. The weather was often damp, but it didn't matter - we were prepared.

Some things just don't mix

While Mom and Dad were visiting this weekend, we made pork tenderloin with blackberry mustard sauce, and had angel food cake, ice cream, and berries for dessert.

Tonight, Mike fixed himself some ice cream again. And quickly discovered that blackberry mustard sauce REALLY doesn't work well with ice cream.

Yuck.

A HeartStrings day

Saturday was a full day of sewing, and such a great day. I finished assembling a top of homespun blocks, and that was just one of many that this group put together. You can see all of Mary's pictures of us here.