A royal wedding cake with a southern touch!

So, yeah, just like billions of others, I caught that royal wedding bug last weekend when Prince Harry married Meghan Markle.  I set my alarm for 4:00 last Saturday morning and I woke up and turned on the TV to watch every single second of it.  Larry woke up and joined me around 6:00 and we watched it together.  Such a gorgeous, perfect wedding and they looked so in love.  Yep, I cried, but mostly because his beautiful mother wasn't there and she should have been.  Sigh.  As soon as Harry and William stepped out to begin their walk to St. George's Chapel, both so very handsome dressed in full military uniform, the waterworks were ON around here.  

The thing I loved the most, though, was how UN-royal the whole thing was.  How the two of them had their OWN wedding and shucked so many royal traditions.  God, how I love them.

Their cake was no exception.  No stuffy old fruit cake for those two!  They opted for a light, fluffy lemon elderflower cake with buttercream frosting.  I just had to try it.  

So I did today!  On our Memorial Day.  Larry and I had hamburgers, hot dogs and this amazing cake.  Now if you search the internet, you will find hundreds of recipes for this cake.  This is the one I chose.  

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups cake flour

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 cup whole milk 

4 large egg whites

2 cups sugar

1 Tbsp lemon zest

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

1 1/2 tsp lemon extract

You'll need all this!

Directions:

Beat the butter and sugar on high until it's all nice and fluffy

Sift together flour, baking powder and salt and set aside

Beat the butter and sugar on high until light and fluffy and add in lemon zest

Using a fork, whisk egg whites, milk and extract together in a bowl

Alternate the dry and wet ingredients into the butter mixture beating on medium until incorporated

Prepare two 8-inch round cake pans with baker's spray

Pour batter evenly into the pans and bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes

For the buttercream frosting:

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup butter, room temperature (that's three sticks!)

3 cups powdered sugar

1/4 c elderflower liqueur (I used St. Germain)

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp lemon extract

Directions:

Cream butter until smooth

On low, add powdered sugar one cup at a time

Add elderflower liqueur, lemon extract and salt

Whip for five minutes

Yummmmm!  Buttercream!  With elderflower liqueur!  

Larry picked a magnolia bloom off our tree in the backyard and I placed it on the top.  A royal wedding cake with a southern touch!

We felt like royalty, fo' sho'.

Souper Bowl Sunday!

I made a Mexican posole (pozole?) today for our Sunday dinner.  Larry found the recipe in the paper last weekend and asked me if I'd make him some for the Super Bowl.

Posole/pozole means "hominy" and there's lots of hominy in it.  Three cups!  Now being the southern girl that I am, I know hominy grits are made from hominy but I don't have any recollection of eating hominy before.  It's nasty.  Bland.  I think you'd remember if you'd had it.

Anyway, I made it and it was too hot for me to eat.  It was PERFECT for Larry. He loves hot spicy stuff.  That's why he married me.  Ha!  He gave it two thumbs up and ate two bowls before his forehead busted out in sweat and his tongue caught on fire.

Here's the recipe if y'all want to try it.  Along with some pictures of a few steps in the process.  It's time consuming because nearly everything has to be minced or chopped.  It's here that your food processor will come in handy!

I think next time we have it, I'll use pinto beans instead of hominy and call it Pinto Combustio soup or something like that.

Ingredients

• 3 cups dried hominy (or canned hominy, drained and rinsed)
• 3 lb pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into 1½-inch cubes
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 3 Tbsp canola oil
• 2 large yellow onions, minced
• 1 fennel bulb diced
• 1 serrano chile, minced
• 6 garlic cloves, halved
• 1 cup freshly ground mild red chile powder (or a mix of mild and hot)
• 3 Tbsp dried mint
• 3 Tbsp Mexican oregano
• 2 Tbsp ground cumin
• 2 cups halved fresh tomatillos
• 1 cup crushed tomatoes
• 3 Tbsp minced chipotles chiles canned in adobo
• 4 quarts chicken stock (preferably homemade)
• Minced red onion, cilantro leaves, diced avocado and quartered limes, for garnish

Directions

1. Place hominy in a large container; cover with cold water. Refrigerate 24 hours. Drain; reserve.
2. Season pork with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large (8-quart-plus) pot over medium heat until smoking and hot. Working in batches to avoid overcrowding pan, brown pork 5-7 minutes, turning to brown on all sides. Transfer pork to a large plate. Add onions to pot; saute 3-5 minutes or until golden. Add fennel and serrano; saute 3 minutes. Stir in garlic; saute 3 minutes. Stir in chile powder, mint, oregano and cumin; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Stir in tomatillos, tomatoes, chipotles and pork. Add stock; bring to a simmer. Stir in hominy; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to maintain a very gentle simmer. Cook 2½ hours, stirring every 30 minutes or until pork is almost tender and hominy almost perfectly chewy (kernels will have burst open for the most part by this time).
3. Season and continue to cook 15-30 minutes or until pork is fork-tender. Add more stock or water, if needed (posole should be looser than stew, but sturdier than brothy soup). Serve in bowls accompanied by garnishes.

A little trip to the mountains

Larry and I spent a few days this week in the Georgia leg of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Cleveland and Helen.  We could not have picked a better time to go and the weather was absolutely perfect.  Crisp, cool mornings and highs in the afternoons in the 70's.  Oh, how welcomed that weather was!

We stopped on the way at Rucksack Military Surplus in Gainesville where Larry was able to find a bunch of patches he didn't already have and I got a pair of gray Army training shorts that I LOVE.  I sleep in 'em.  Then we were off to Babyland General Hospital in Cleveland to see the babies in the cabbage patch!  I've wanted to go there since I was a teenager and got my first CBK, a preemie boy that I named Jory, after a V.C. Andrews character.  I was really, really into V.C. Andrews books back then.  We could see the hospital from the road and it was sooooo pretty!  There were pots and pots of flowers and rocking chairs all the way around the porch.

A sweet nurse offered to take our picture in the famous cabbage leaf chair.  I was more than a little giddy to be there!  Ha!

We walked around the hospital and the gift shop.  I'd already made up my mind that I was taking one home with us and when I saw this little red-haired, green-eyed girl, I knew she was the one.

We took her out of the box (OMG, whoever packages these dolls does NOT want you to be able to get them out.  She was strapped and tied down everywhere.) and Larry took this picture of us.  Awwwww.

Her name is Grace Hannah, named after Larry's grandma, Grace, and my grand-grandma, Hannah.  We paid a little extra for her birth certificate and off we went to Mountain Laurel Antique Mall and walked around in there for a little while.  I found a couple of things I couldn't live without.  :)

I loved this plate!  It's the Helsinki design by One World.  I'd love to have the whole set or at least find more of it.  I've never seen it before.

And this funky little vintage trivet.  I couldn't leave it.  :)

We had rented a cabin at the top of Little Andy Mountain several months ago and it was the most beautiful little cabin in the most beautiful little spot.  We didn't want to leave!  Gorgeous mountain views, sunrises, sunsets from the deck, and the moon and the stars through the huge window across from the bed.  It was just amazing and sooooo romantic.

If anybody would like to stay here, leave me a message and I'll give you the info.  It's got a living room, kitchen, bedroom and bath, Jacuzzi tub, hot tub, gas grill, pool table, TV room downstairs with a leather sectional sofa, washer and dryer so you can do your laundry, a full bath downstairs and a beautiful wraparound deck.  We loved it and will definitely go back!  It's so funny because when I posted the pics of the cabin on Facebook, a friend of mine recognized it as the cabin she and her husband and baby son stayed at years ago! 

We got to Helen around 6:00, starving slap to death and couldn't wait to get our hands on some authentic weiner schnitzel!  We found it at Hofbrauhaus Restaurant and G.I. Germany Pub.  We went all out with schnitzel, German potato salad, sauerkraut, cheese beer dip with a baked pretzel, German black forest cake, German chocolate cake and we even tried escargot for the first time.  They tasted just like stuffed mushrooms.  I still don't understand the big deal with escargot.  Probably won't ever have 'em again but at least I can say I tried 'em!

We made a quick walk through Helen after supper (well, we kinda rolled through Helen after supper), stopped at Hansel and Gretel for some fudge and got a few groceries at Betty's Country Store and called it a night.  Friday morning, we went back to Helen and Larry dropped me off while he went back to Mountain Laurel to get something for me that I couldn't see.  I walked around by myself, had an apple strudel at Hofer's Bakery (if you're in Helen, you HAVE to go to Hofer's!  We went three times!) and waited for him to get back.  It took him a little longer so I went shopping!  I got a Helen t-shirt, a pretty tie-dyed top and some Christmas presents.  So, yes, I have officially started Christmas shopping!  

Once Larry joined me, we had lunch at Hofer's. Reubens with sauerkraut and melted Swiss cheese!  Hofer's need to stop.  Really.  Their sweet tea was as good as mine, too.  I heart them so much.

We walked the town again, visiting the toy store, the model train exhibit, the Christmas store, Nacoochee Village Antique Mall (where I got a 1961 promotional Empire Golden Scroll Pyrex casserole dish with the lid AND the cradle!  I also hid a rock that I painted there and a lady visiting from Pennsylvania found it and posted it on Facebook.  Made my day AND hers!), the grist mill and country store and then went back to Betty's for some German beer and coffee and went back to our cabin and crashed.

Saturday morning, early, we had breakfast and then went to Cool River Tubing to tube down the Chattahoochee River.  We signed up, got a push stick (and later on discovered that we needed TWO push sticks) and took a bus ride up the mountain so we could start upriver.  The bus driver was a really sweet elderly man and it was a pleasant ride.  Just him and me and Larry.  Nobody else had signed up yet so we had the river to ourselves.  We got our tubes and off we went.  I probably don't have to tell y'all how awkward it is for a pudgy girl to get into an inner tube in the river.  But I got in there, finally, and got situated.  Kinda.  Larry had the stick and he also held onto to my tube, bless his heart.  His arms would pay for that later on.  We set off down the river and it was really so, so nice.  It was about 55 degrees and there was a little breeze blowing and we just floated.  Most of the way was smooth but there were some areas where the water was rushing (I called it "rapids"...ha!) and there were some areas where the water was so deep the stick wouldn't touch the bottom but for the most part, the water was low and we got stuck on rocks.  A lot.  I was pretty hysterical after a while.  It was just so, so funny. 

There was this one big rock that I got hung up on and I had been trying to help Larry get us unstuck by rocking the tube and I rocked myself up over the rock (this is where two sticks would have been lovely) and the water splashed and filled Larry's tube with water.  With his phone in the bottom of the tube.  He let go of me and I floated away from him while he went to the bank to dump the water out of his tube and he slipped on the slippery rocks and fell into the water, soaking his phone for the second time.  He wrapped it up in his sweatshirt in the only part of it that was dry, the hood, and started out to get me.  I was hung up on a rock by that time, of course I was.  When I drifted away from him, I was a little scared but the dang water was three feet deep right there so I knew I wouldn't drown.  I just liked having him close to me.  So when I got hung up on that rock with no way to get loose since I had no stick, I yelled back up the river, "I'll just wait for you right here!"  I can't even write into words how hilarious this whole thing was.  I guess I could have gotten out and gotten loose but that thought never occurred to me at the time.  I just waited for him.  He got to me and got me loose and off we went, on down the river.  If so much of the river hadn't been shallow, we wouldn't have kept getting stuck on rocks and poor Larry's arm wouldn't have gotten such a workout. 

Larry took this picture of me, with his soaking wet iPhone, as I floated away from him.  He said I look so forlorn in this picture.  Bwah!! 

We got to the end of our hour-long tour and there were the two little Mexican boys who were going to help us get out.  This little skinny kid says, "Be careful, ma'am" and I'm like, "No, honey, YOU be careful!"  I was actually worried for his safety.  A chunky, middle-aged woman desperate to have her feet on solid ground again.  Yeah, honey, YOU be careful.  You might get pulled in here with me.  I got out with his help and my foot completely out of the tube and in the river and then Larry got out of his tube and it slipped out from under him and down he and his phone went again.  We were SOAKED to the bone by then and we just knew Larry's phone was toast.  We'd already talked about going to Verizon and just getting a new one today.  We walked up the walkway and deck to the Cool River store where there were towels and bathrooms and dry clothes.  We got us some dry t-shirts and tried out the phone.  It still worked!  I posted on Facebook that those Otter Box cases are NO joke and that we had one more miraculous story to tell about them.  I had my phone run over at the beach by a Ford F-150 pickup truck and my phone was fine, not even a scratch on it.  Larry's iPhone was in an Otter Box, dunked THREE times in the Chattahoochee River and it still worked.  We took the case off and dried it best we could and got on the bus that would take us back to our truck.  

Oktoberfest kicked off this weekend so the Oktoberfest parade was going on so we got to see that on the bus on our way back.  That was an unexpected treat!

We started home around noon and noticed that Larry's phone was not charging. I've never used it but I've sure heard about the rice trick so we stopped and I went in and got a bag of Mahatma and we tried it.  Worked like a charm!  The phone's working great now.  

We probably had the best weekend trip we've ever had.  The weather could not have been better, the little town and mountains were beautiful and we laughed so much our faces hurt.  

We can't wait to go back.  But next time, there'll be TWO push sticks.

A Day in HOTLanta!

Larry and I drove up to Atlanta this morning to go to Scott Antique Market.  We'd been wanting to get up there for years and we finally made time and went!  We had the best time!  That place is huge.  So huge that they have shuttle buses to take you from the North building to the South building and then back again.  

Before we went to the antique market, though, we hit an estate sale over in the Virginia-Highland neighborhood, in a tiny little 1,200 square foot bungalow, built in 1935, in desperate need of some TLC, but is STILL selling for $555,000!  Location, location, location, I reckon.  I'm guessing by my HGTV-watching experience, that it'll take about $50,000 to fix it up and that's just the cosmetic stuff that I can see.  I have no idea what's behind the walls and under the floor.  Anyway, it was an adorable little house and we got some cool stuff there.  We got a whole basket full of stuff for FREE because Larry climbed up into the attic and pulled down an old WWII footlocker for them.  In that basket were 43 Keurig coffee, tea and hot chocolate cups, some diabetic testing strips, a bottle of Sun-Ripened Raspberry shower gel from Bath and Body Works, a 1981 kitchen tea towel calendar (I love those!), a small Pyrex flamingo pink casserole dish with the lid (!!) and a cute little striped glass pitcher just perfect for lemonade.  I got all that and Larry picked up a vintage Navy peacoat, an old Georgia flag and an old Army/Navy helmet.  Oh!  And we found an old General Electric clock radio, one like I've wanted forever.  That sale was definitely worth the stop!  The neighborhood was beautiful, everybody was walking their dogs and babies and there were little shops everywhere.  We joked that we need to live in a neighborhood like that, if for nothing else but the diversity.  $600-$700K houses, though?  Naaaah.

Here are all those Keurig cups!  It's really funny how God works sometimes.  I had JUST YESTERDAY said I was going to get some coffee cups and bring them to work for our Keurig in the office and then, boom, the Lord brings me to these. 43 for FREE. 

This is the peacoat.  Oh, Larry looks sooooo handsome in it.  It fits him perfectly and there were even two other ladies there eyeing him at the estate sale when he tried it on.  Down, girls.

How amazing is this old clock???  And it works!

 

Here's the helmet and Santana's very first album.  We picked it up at Scott's for $2.

We got to Scott's about noon and we went to the North building first, not knowing any better, bless our hearts.  Don't go to the North building.  It's full of expensive carpets and expensive art and stuff you can't afford.  It's all pretty to look at but you'll leave it there.  I promise. 

See, pretty to look at.  $2,500 to $4,000.  We left 'em there.

 Freddy-the-Frog Mercury, as Larry called him.  $395

We're always looking for globes for Ami.  We looked at this one.  

 

I really did LOVE this vintage counter and stool set, though!!  $4,800 and they coulda been MINE.  Sigh.  We don't have anywhere to put it anyway.  Sigh.

 

Thanks to my good buddy, Erika, who on Facebook told me to get the heck outta there and get down to the South building, we hopped a ride on the shuttle bus and went down there.

MUCH more our speed! 

We walked around outside until we were about to burn slap up (oh, Lordy, it was HOTTTTT) and then we walked around inside, where it was nice and air-conditioned and they had fried catfish.  I found a Pyrex Daisy bowl, some political pins and oh my goodness, two sets of clackers!!!  I've been looking for clackers everywhere.  I found 'em outside, in a box, just sitting there waiting for me.  The whole clacking thing came back to me immediately and I'm proud to say that I remain the reigning clacking queen!  Larry was quite impressed.  Kinda like he is when I recite the Preamble to the Constitution to him.  What can I say?  I am a child of the 70's and I loved me some Schoolhouse Rock.

Here are the three pins I got.  Michael Dukakis was the very first person I ever voted for, in 1988, when I was 21.  I was so proud.  Been votin' Democrat ever since.

Larry actually found a lot of stuff he liked today!  Patches and pins and helmets and peacoats.  He racked up!

Here are my Pyrex bowls and that sweet little pitcher. I already had the largest Daisy mixing bowl but not the one that's this size.  Larry said I was not leaving Scott's without a piece of Pyrex.  So I didn't.

And the best part about our day??

Atlanta has NO gnats.

It's the middle of December...

 ...already!  Eeeeeeek!

We've been busy around here!  We started the month off with another little heart scare with Larry.  We spent three days going back and forth to the VA hospital in Dublin, where they ran tests and we saw doctors and then he spent 24 hours in a Holter monitor for a suspected blockage in his carotid artery.  He's been lightheaded a lot lately and they told us it's actually atrial fibrillation he's suffering from and not a blockage at all.  He's had AFib all of his life but since it gets worse as you age, we're going to take some extra precautions with medication to prevent him from having a stroke or worse.  Thank you, Lord, for that blessing!

Once we got past that, we decorated the yard and put our lights up!

Oh, they turned out so pretty and it looked beautiful!! 

And then we had some much-needed heavy rain and the lights all bit the dust.  We got out there and fixed it today but we lost a strand of lights to a short. 

Banjo loves the new loveseat we got a couple of weeks ago.  I kinda love it, too.

He also loves the heart smiley emoji pillow I got for Larry's stocking...  He's so used to me bringing toys home to him and he thought that was just another one of those days.  I didn't have the heart to tell him.  Would you??

We also treated ourselves to new bedding for Christmas!  600 TC sheets and king comforter and shams.  Larry's first reaction was that it looked like a hippie threw up on it.  Perfect.  Just our style!  :D

 

I've mentioned a few times that I would love to know exactly where my family came from.  I've always been told England or Ireland but unless we actually trace our family tree back that far, we'll never know for sure.  So Larry surprised me with an early Christmas present of an Ancestry DNA test!  I was so excited!  Spitting in the vial was a little gross, though.  You have to fill the vial with spit up to the little mark on the side and then combine it with an activating solution in the cap.  Yuck.  I got through it, though, and we sent it off.  I'll be able to track the whole process online and today, they updated the status to "Arrived" so it's there!  I can't wait to find out what it says about me and my family.

I picked up these vintage Santa taper candles for my tea cart yesterday for a dollar at an estate sale in Macon.  I could not believe the condition they were in.  They are adorable!

At that same sale, I got this vintage Josef Originals Santa face plate.  It was also a dollar and is selling for $18 on eBay right now.  I actually squealed out loud when I saw it and I grabbed it up quick before anybody else saw it!

And today, Larry and I made Christmas cookies.  We made chocolate chip pecan and turtle cookies as well as sugar cookie cutouts.  We had so much fun!  And they turned out great.

We even made one for the Birthday Boy.