Thursday, March 1, 2018

On the Last Day of February

Yesterday, Wednesday, the last day of February, I had a very relaxed day and "recuperated", which means I didn't do anything much!  In the morning, I had a phone call from neighbor T who was calling to see how I was.  Later, I put away the laundry and emptied the dishwasher and I posted my February Goals Update.

For brunch, I ate some of the leftover pancake breakfast friend R had brought - a little of the scrambled eggs, one piece of bacon, and about a quarter of a cranberry-orange pancake.  There is still another pancake and a quarter, left, as well as a lot of egg, another piece of bacon, and some hash browns!  I thought daughter might eat some of it, for her brunch, but she chose to finish the rest of her Japanese teriyaki beef lunch from the day before.

When we went to pick up the Japanese food, the other day, and I asked her to buy some grapes from the market next to it, she heard it as "crepes" instead of "grapes" and she got all excited because she loves crepes!  So, I promised to make her some crepes and yesterday, at tea time, I decided to make some to have with our tea:

The first one out of the pan
She had hers with Nutella, I had one of mine with some leftover canned corned beef and the rest with sugar and lemon juice.

Later in the evening, since daughter had asked for curry puffs for dinner, I made some:

Curry Puffs
I used two packages of frozen puff pastry (each package contained eight 4-inch squares of pastry) and they are filled with a mixture of cooked ground beef, onions, celery, potato, tomato, grated carrot, seasoned with curry powder, chili powder, curry leaves, salt, lemon juice, etc.  There was enough of the ground beef mixture for 14 of the 16 pieces of puff pastry.

With the remaining two pieces of puff pastry, I made us a dessert:

Raspberry Pastries

I spread a spoonful of raspberry preserves in the middle of the pastry, sprinkled the edges of the pastry with a little bit of sugar and baked them for about 15 minutes (at 350F).  Then, I filled the middle with fresh raspberries and spooned a little more melted raspberry preserves over the berries.  They would have looked pretty with a dusting of powdered sugar on top, but I didn't have any powdered sugar.  It was sweet without being too sweet and daughter loved it so much, I gave her half of mine, as well! 

After that, I was too tired to do the dishes, so everything was piled in the sink, overnight!  Daughter put away the leftovers and I told her to freeze some of the curry puffs to take back with her, but I don't know if she did that or not. 

Friend R called in the evening, before I made the curry puffs and we had a long chat.  Later, just as I had finished making the curry puffs, cousin V called to ask how the surgery went and how I was feeling. 

In between writing my blog post, speaking on the phone, and baking pastries, I played sudoku, read blogs, corresponded by email with a friend, and relaxed, er, I mean, recuperated!

Yesterday, I was grateful for:
- Another day to recuperate
- Leftover pancakes for breakfast
- Phone calls from neighbor T, friend R, and cousin V
- Curry puffs for dinner
- Raspberry pastries for dessert and the fact that daughter liked them so much

Looking back, it was a nice way to end February.  How was your day?

10 comments:

  1. How well you are doing getting stronger by the day. Love hearing how much your daughter is enjoying your meals. There is nothing better then when your mom cooks for you.

    We have signs of Spring all around us, tulips really coming on and birds singing. Today we have had a little sunshine but quite cold.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Sandy. It is a pleasure to cook for her. She does help, when I ask her to and she makes me cups of tea. :)

      Glad to hear that you are seeing some signs of Spring! It is such a hopeful time of the year, isn't it? With everything to show signs of life after a cold winter. Enjoy the sunshine, but stay warmly wrapped up while it is still cold, though.

      Delete
  2. Everything looks so good, I confess that I had to read your blog post very fast and not linger on the pictures because I knew I'd start craving crepes and raspberry puff pastries. And the curry puffs sound delicious too. Now, how many hours til dinner? Two and a half?! Arrgh.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ha, ha, pay back time for all the pictures of waffles and brownies you post, Nathalie. :D Weren't you going to make some whole wheat crepes, though?

      Daughter entered the list of my crepe batter ingredients (1 egg, approx. 1 cup milk, approx. 1/2 cup flour, bit of salt - I didn't really measure, except I used a 1/4 cup scoop to get the flour out of the bag; the batter made 8 crepes) into some online calorie counter and figured out that each plain crepe was 53 calories. I guess that's OK for an occasional treat? She calculated the calories for the puff pastries, too (250 cal. per pastry square according to the package + 100 cal. for the approx 1/3 cup ground beef filling) and concluded that...we consumed a lot of calories! LOL. We each ate two curry puffs, last night, and I had half of a raspberry pastry and she had 1 1/2 raspberry pastry. Today, I had 1 curry puff for brunch and she had 2. We'll have rice and fish curry for dinner, with green beans, dhal, and cooked greens.

      Delete
  3. All this take of crepes reminds me of the Crepe Shop in New Orleans a favorite place to go for lunch when I worked downtown. Yum!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That sounds wonderful, Live and Learn. Crepes with some sort of savory filling would be a good thing to make and take to the office for lunch, I'm thinking!

      Delete
  4. The most amazing crepes I ever tasted were in Brittany when I was about 20 and visiting a friend. We went to a
    Creperie where the crepes were amazingly thin, cooked on a huge round crepe griddle and they tasted of butter. They could be eaten with preserves or an egg or who knows what else, it's too many years since I was 20 to remember, LOL.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bushlady, that wounds wonderful, too! I once had crepes in a restaurant, where they were served filled with some chicken in a sauce and that was pretty good, too. But, as a child, I always had crepes (which we called pancakes) with jam or sugar and lemon juice, or, occasionally, for a treat, with coconut cooked with palm treacle, which is my favorite filling!

      Delete
  5. Those curry puffs look fantastic, and what is not to like about crepes?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Anne. I think just about anything encased in pastry tastes good! And, quite possibly, the same is true of crepes, too!

      Delete

Thank you for visiting my blog and commenting. Your comments are much appreciated. Please comment in English. Thank you.