Friday, March 21, 2014

Early Friday Starts, Food and a Layout

I was up well before dawn.  Like 4:15.  As in AM.  As in not even the slightest lightening in the sky from a rising sun.  Early.

As I'm driving the mostly empty streets it's interesting to see what happens over night and is, more than likely, wrapping up as the rest of the world wakes up.  All the closed, dark stores.  Except the 7-11 which all-lights-on-open and has an unusual (to me) number of cars in the lot and people wandering in the store - loading up on big-gulp sizes of coffee I'm guessing.  

Another stretch of dark parking lots and empty buildings as I head for the highway, then boom, big, bright lights and lots of cars fill the bustling, really big, truck stop just off the highway.  I've heard it's one of the largest west of the Mississippi, but who knows.  It's an everything-you-need little town on this enormous slab of black-top.  As I get on the highway, which is pretty empty too, I can see trash trucks behind businesses, street cleaners in parking lots and big semi's delivering all kinds of food and products to grocery and big box stores. 

It's interesting, but I think I'll take my comfy bed for another two hours instead, thanks.


It was St. Patty's day this week, which fell on my cooking-for-the-folks day.  We also had hubby's brother and nephew in town for some Spring Break skiing, so we hosted them, too.  I've got some Irish in me - 50% to be exact, so naturally Corned Beef had to be on the menu.  I found this Guinness Glazed Slow Cooker Corned Beef on Pinterest.   My brother-in-law has Celiacs disease, so I didn't use Guinness, but instead used a gluten-free dark beer.  The meat was amazing!  Very moist.  The glaze. . .well, if the liquid had actually become a glaze I know it would have been great.  I don't know if was the lack of gluten in the beer, that I didn't add the beer until half way through the cooking (so it didn't cook off enough) or the amount of liquid was just too much to reduce to a nice thick glaze - the recipe didn't list an amount of cooking liquid to keep and use; I had a lot.  I will make it again trying it with the Guinness and I'll measure out some liquid to make the glaze.

Spring Break looms before us next week and I'd love to get, once again, my studio space cleaned up.  The kids have wrecked havoc down there and I've just done the drop and stack method of cleaning, so it's pretty bad.  When I find first a path to my table and then the table itself, I'd love to play with my March kits and get some more of my ProjectLife® 2013 done.  I can use Nancy Longo's layout as inspiration - she used the Authentique Flourish line found in the Bigger than a Breadbox kit to produce her pocket-page layout.


It's time to start digging out.

Happy Friday,

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