mom's strudel

(can't believe i just wrote her name in lower case. she deserves ALL CAPS more than anyone i've ever known).

my mom made the most incredible saturday morning strudel. folks raved about it. little did i know that it was quite simple to make. follow this recipe and you'll have enough to make three, yes THREE, strudels of your own.

the dough.

can you read that?

now divide the dough into thirds and pop them in the frig for a bit.

or bake one and pop the other two in the freezer for when you forgot to plan ahead for the in-laws' overnight visit.

when you're ready to proceed, roll out the dough to a large rectangle (approximately 8" x 18") and smear with 3-4 tablespoons of jam/jelly/preserves whatever.

all rolled out with blueberry jam

then fold over the sides to cover the jam and bake in a 450 degree oven. for "20 minutes or until golden".

pull it out and dust with confectioner's sugar.

you'll thank me.

it's one of the easiest recipes ever and yet it garners accolades beyond belief.

now that's style

just outside of chicago yesterday, our son proposed to his lovely (and shocked) girlfriend while they flew over a field he'd plowed the day before. 

she said "yes"

and as one of his facebook friends so eloquently put it:

"Way to set the bar so high! Suddenly asking a lady for her hand in marriage over some endless bread sticks and salad at The Olive Garden seems kinda anti-climactic."

so for all those single men out there, this post is definitely a "serving suggestion only".

good luck improving on it.

"our orange pot is famous!"

that's what my husband said when he saw today's copy of the Wall Street Journal.

dig.drop.done ad with orange pot

(close-up of pot at home)

so maybe the pot's not famous...but it was part of the set i designed for one of our clients, dig.drop.done, that the Journal wrote about in an article on the bulb industry's efforts to encourage women to consider planting bulbs.

(you can see the online article here, with the ad featured in photo 5 of the slideshow.)

 oh, and that cake? it's a fake. styrofoam disks and spackling. made that too.  

trickery

back to the pot....it's an old 13-quart le creuset i found on ebay a few years back. ebay is a great source for these pots if you're willing to go with "used" as the retail prices are ridiculously high (the 13-quart goes for a whopping $445).

here's a link to one of the really tasty, almost as famous, dishes that has come out of that pot to date.

chicken 'n dumplings

and since the weather right now is just begging for chicken 'n dumplings, let me encourage you to make some this weekend, in any pot. it doesn't have to be a famous one.