A Breather At Best

So I took a breather. It was kinda nice, although my time was filled with a thousand other things, it was still nice to not feel an obligation to write. I figured when I started thinking about it again, then it would be time to start. This time I don't expect myself to write everyday, but will learn to enjoy my writing, baking and taking pictures at will.

This past month has been almost disastrous. We are going on 39 days of at least one person being sick, and at times there were 3 of sick at the same time. I've missed a wedding, a dinner party, and a few holiday festivities here and there. I've been holed up and held down. Mia has missed a few days of school, and I've missed teaching days. Remarkably, no matter how terrible my girls have felt, they are remarkably upbeat.

All that said, Halloween still went well, and we managed to do some trick-or-treating. I have 3 sugar pumpkins to roast and a pie to bake, and Halloween decor to put away. I've been deep cleaning a lot of things in prep for Thanksgiving with the Johnson's - I'm pretty excited about this!

So this morning I woke up pretty early (really, what's new?) and immediatly started my coffee cake muffins. I doubled the recipe because it was suppose to be for the kids at the preschool - today was my work/snack day. Five minutes after I pulled the last batch out of the oven, and carefully wrapped my cut veggies, I got a call that school was cancelled. Great, what am I to do with all these extra muffins? Good thing we have neighbors.

Last night I tried this very different recipe for chili. I found it on momswhothink.com. It had things like ground cloves and red wine. Hmm, different - so lets try it. Didn't think to take a picture but it looked and smelled amazing! Mark and the girls ate it right up, but I had some reservations.

For starters, I was 1/2 cup short of a batch of cornbread to go with it, by the time I figured that out, the chili had been on the stove simmering for almost 2 hours and I wasn't going to go the store. So I had some other garnishes that worked just fine. The flavor that the cloves added was different, but good, just not outstanding. The red wine however, was far to overpowering. I really thought it could do without. Anyways, I'll file the recipe away in my box with a sticky note of what not's and see if it see's the light of day again.

Update on my grapes - they still aren't sweet enough to make jam with. By this time, the family of racoons and various birds are eating up what I left behind. This year, they will definitly be feasting. I still test taste in hopes that I'll get enough to make a batch or two, but for sure for sure will NOT be getting my 12-15 batches. 100% the weathers fault. Thanks. Now to start planning Thanksgiving!