Weekly Round Up: Easter and Time At Home

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, reads, and a few crazy stories.  Oops I did not mean to fall behind on blogging, but it happens.  Let's catch up!

Eats

We've settled on Saturday night for our big family Easter party.  Our divide and conquer menu is:

Ham (by Hubs, always takes much longer to cook than the package advertises)
Mini quiche (by me.  The recipe that I've been using for a billion years is no longer on line, so this year I used this one.
French toast casserole by SIL #3
Cheesy potato casserole by SIL #4

Fruit by Adult Nephew and fiancé (wedding this August, thanks for asking!)
Dessert, also by me.  Our standard chocolate chip cookies, and I was in the mood to play in the kitchen so I also made jello shots.

As you may remember, I made red, white, and blue jello shots for July 4th, which came out very well.  I was expecting the internet to be awash with cute Easter jello shots, but came up dry.  The recipes out there were either for different sized cups than I have, and the ones that matched my cup size were...how do I say this nicely...not the best looking (example here).

I decided to use my July 4th recipe with yellow, blue, and what I hoped would be pink.  We didn't have enough vodka, so I got a bottle of whipped cream flavored to try.  As it turned out, I couldn't tell the difference between the plain vodka and flavored vodka ones - they all tasted like jello.

I couldn't decide if I wanted to do three layer, two layer, or single color so naturally I did some of each.

No issues with the single layer shots.

The double layer shots also came out well.

The triple layer shots...yeah it turns out that you can't stack red and blue together or the result looks like all of the unappealing shots that I saw out there.

Anyway, lesson learned.  I had fun playing with the colors, and everyone likes jello shots at a party.

After the party Hubs and I were left with a mountain of ham and nothing else, I went ISO a fun potato casserole recipe.  I made half a batch of this.  The reason for the half batch is that there are only two of us at home right now.  We'll continue to eat the ham until the potatoes are gone and then we'll put the rest away in the freezer to bring back in quiche later.

Workouts/Wellness 

Spring is here!  I'm almost done with the hiking challenge, and one day it was so nice that Bikey McBikerson came out of the shed to play.

The warmer weather means the return of water season for Doggo.  Why walk on the trail when you can walk in the creek alongside it?

And then she went full Sea Serpent.

In other wellness news, I don't want to jinx anything but...my sleep has been excellent lately.

What's different now compared to December when my sleep got noticeably awful?  NOTHING!!!  I have no explanation for why my sleep got so bad or why it's been great for the past few weeks, but I'll take the great sleep streak.

Watching

Back in 2020, Hubs and I went on a spree of watching Gritty 70s NYC movies, and the spree ended with just two titles, Midnight Cowboy and Taxi Driver.

Well, we're back baby!  We were having one of those random conversations at dinner which brought back memories of a movie that I saw in high school.  But was it really as good as I remembered?

Oh yes, The Taking of Pelham 123 was flawless.  It's a very simple story about the hijacking of a subway car, and it was perfect for a date night movie.  It was also a great follow up to Seinfeld, since Jerry Stiller is in it.

Outside of date night watching, TV is hot right now.  I'm staying current with the new season of Outlander and am almost caught up with The Pitt.

Reading

The last time we talked, I had just started The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty, inspired by my visit to her home on the Jackson trip.  Sadly it was a meh.

Next up: remember I'm Glad My Mother Died?  Well, Jeannette McCurdy is back, this time with her first novel, Half His Age.  It's about a high school student with a crush on her teacher, who is [see title of book].  McCurdy nailed what it is like to be in high school, that's for sure, and I like what she did with the ending.  Other than that, I've been out of high school for a while, so the story was not nearly as interesting to me if it would have been when I was one third of my age.  However, I like the author so you can probably count on me for a read of anything that she writes.

After that I floundered for a bit trying to find the next book, so I went back to an old friend for a reread.  I first read The Far Country by Nevil Shute when I was in junior high, and if you forced me to pick a favorite book of all time, this might be it.  The story deals with a young woman who gets a chance to leave the brutal economy of post WWII England to stay with relatives in Australia, where adventure awaits.

Currently: I heard about How to Survive in the Woods by Kat Rosenfield on the Sarah's bookshelves podcast.  It was described as "Sleeping With the Enemy meets Heartwood" and so far it is...eh, OK fine it's not landing and might end up being a DNF.  The reason I'm still reading is that it's a short book and something about the story is strongly reminding me of an old suspense movie, and I'm interested enough to see if I'm right about that.  If so, do I say what the old movie was since that could be a spoiler?  Sometimes it's tough to decide where to draw the line, but no need to think more about that until I find out either way.

What's Next

Another week at home, and then I'll be headed on another road trip!  Woo hoo!

Peace out!  How was your Easter, if you celebrate?  Do you have a water dog?  Whatcha reading?