My long day...

I am bleary-eyed from culinary endeavors, just waiting on my puppy dog to decide to gird his loins enough to face the grass or no-longer-crusty-snow to tend to his business.  Oh, my!  Do I ever want to crawl into bed.

I was mincing the roasted bell peppers for my Black Bean Soup with Roasted Bell Peppers when I noticed a shape emerging.  Silly Myrtle finished the shape and snapped a photo.

I am very excited to noted that I adjusted the recipe for my black beans. I mean, I had created an awesome recipe to begin with, but now it is EVEN BETTER!  I added coriander, dark brown sugar, and a bit of butter.  Everything is better with a bit of butter, right?

I licked the pan.

For a while, I was pondering the idea of not cooking the Beef Stew with Beer until the morrow.  Only I had not frozen the non-economical-but-beautiful slab of beef when I got home from the store yesterday.  So, I plowed on with my cooking.

A foreshowing of the tastiness to come!  [Okay, I admit that I am still proud that I learned to properly braise beef.]

I let Amos lick the spatula and ladle once all the servings were in the mason jars.

I cooked all bloody, blooming day.  From 9:23 AM until 6:11 PM.  I didn't try to kill myself by cooking both dishes at the same time.  I cooked slowly and methodically and washed up as I went along.  Slow and steady wins the race.  However, slow and steady is still exhausted at the end of that race.

On the morrow, I plan to do nothing but just breathe.  Maybe a fire.  Maybe.  Despite the terrible pushing through today, I am glad that there is now a balance of tastiness in the basement freezer that I had substantially emptied out.

I still had to fight a ginormous urge to hop in the car and buy some chicken.  Six chicken breasts is not a sufficient number in my kitchen freezer. Not at all!  Now, I have to decide between tasty chicken dishes instead of just making them all.  I should make something new, but that Chicken with Bourbon Mustard Sauce has been calling out to me, even invading my dreams!

I cluck.

Speaking of clucking...

Firewood Man is a new daddy!  He's raising baby chicks!!  Since all things are about me, that means I can have fresh eggs when I want them.  Such a Renaissance Man!  Of course, I nervously asked him if he'd still have time to both help me paint and to mulch with his new responsibilities.  Selfish I am.

My sister found this calendar in a Dollar Store.  I am not a calendar-on-a-refrigerator kind of girl, but I thought that having a calendar staring back at me all the time might help with not knowing exactly when I was ... what day it was.  I thought that this was a most special calendar, a perfect calendar for my home.  A Myrtle calendar, if you will.  I finally got around to flipping it to March and realized anew just how perfect it is!  A most splendous bargain.

If only Amos would finish........