Honey Mustard Pasta Salad

I was asked to bring a salad to a Thanksgiving gathering and queried whether she meant green, pasta, jello, or other, to which she responded that it was my choice.  I've never made a pasta salad before and as I was in possession of neither greens nor jello, it seemed an opportune moment to experiment.  Now if you know anything about pasta salads or have ever googled a recipe pertaining thereto, you know the choices are infinite.  I wanted something a little more exciting than a basic mayo/ham/pea concoction but since that is what I had in my pantry and I didn't want to buy a lot of ingredients it would have to suffice.  I found a recipe for a honey mustard/mayo type and thought it sounded good but modified it using my honey mustard dressing recipe and the results were excellent.  Just tangy enough, just sweet enough, and just a little different.

Honey Mustard Pasta Salad:

Dressing:

Combine 1 1/2 cups salad dressing (miracle whip) with 1/3 cup each honey, vinegar, and yellow mustard, salt and pepper to taste.  For best results, let the dressing (or the entire salad) sit for at least 6 hours to allow flavors to blend.

For the salad:

Boil 16 oz of your favorite pasta (I like rotini) in salted water and cook until 'al dente' (firm to the bite), cool under running water.  Mix in whatever else you have/like.  I added 1/3 cup diced onion, 6 boiled eggs, 2/3 cup frozen peas, 2/3 cup diced ham, 2/3 cup shredded cheese.  Add dressing and mix well, you can add some milk if the salad is too dry, check every so often as it sits; mine needed about 2/3 cup but it made a nice creamy salad.  Chill and enjoy!

Twice Baked Potatoes

This is a tasty, handy, and filling side dish, meal, or appetizer for special occasions or group gatherings. The best part is you can pretty much modify it to your own tastes and with ingredients you have on hand.  I prepare it ahead of time, keep it in the fridge until needed, top it as desired, and then just throw it in the oven to heat through.

However many baked potatoes you would like (size, type, etc. to taste), cooled.

Cut each cooled potato in half lengthwise, scoop out the innards and place in a bowl, and set intact skin aside.  Mash potato innards with milk, butter, salt, pepper and seasoning to taste (onion, garlic, parmesan cheese…) and refill each skin.  Refrigerate until needed or top with preferred toppings (cheese, ham, onions, peppers, bacon…) and replace in oven, heat through and serve.

The Zombie Apocalypse

I don't get it, I really don't.  What's with the zombie craze?  Last year they showed up on my doorstep the day after Halloween asking for canned goods for the local food shelf.  This year, they were running all over main street (with a few teenage mutant ninja turtles) during our town's trick-or-treating event for little kids at the local businesses.  There's even a movie coming out somehow combining zombies and Jane Austen.   I think I'm the only one not onboard with the idea that a zombie apocalypse is a nice change from all the end of the world talk centering around climate change or the latest respiratory virus out of Asia.  Hey, if teenage mutant ninja turtles can make a comeback, why can't Y2K?

What is so fascinating about animated corpses that thirst after brain tissue?  Why would you want to dress up as one?  I really don't get it, in fact, I much prefer Y2K, at least with Y2K I don't have to try explaining to my three year old why that guy over there has an eyeball hanging out of its socket.  On the bright side, they aren't teletubbies (are those things still around?), which are probably the most frightening thing ever conceived by the mind of man (furbies are a close second).  Now there's an idea, forget Jane Austen and zombies, let's do zombies versus teletubbies!  Can I patent that?  I'm probably too late...

Going to pieces

I said I would never do it again, the last time it took me 20 years, this time it took me 48 hours.  My husband was gone for 2 days, so in the interim I succumbed to some sort of 'nesting' induced madness and cut out, sewed together, and hand stitched a binding on a Queen sized quilt.  My three year old and I binge watched Jane Austen movies and disney cartoons from the early 90's while I sewed like a maniac.  I am not a fervent sewer (I can sew a straight seam and that's about it) and I have no idea what got into me.  The great news is that I discovered a way to make a quilt without any actual quilting.  Last time I paid someone to do it, this time I just cheated.

Upon my marriage, I inherited a comforter of the same vintage as my beloved disney movies and it was the ugliest thing ever, never seeing the light of day unless a house full of guests invaded, requiring every blanket in my possession for their comfort; it was probably the worst dowry ever.  I ripped out the original seam and intended to use only the batting and the black fabric from the bottom, but the thing was so old and decrepit that one could literally see through the original fabric, instead, I just sewed a new quilt top over the entire thing then put on a new binding and voila, a quilt with no quilting.

I also had in my possession a set of queen size flannel sheets, and even though I love flannel sheets, I had never used these even though I had had them in my possession for 8 years.  Why?  I am not a cat loving spinster in my late 50's.  And while the giant, smiling snowmen on the flat sheet and the pillowcases were cute and no doubt impressed my mother (who meets the above description and bought said sheets on clearance and presented them to me as a christmas gift, little believing anyone could have taste differing so greatly from her own), I had never been forced by necessity to use them.  So I hacked them to shreds (or rather into blocks and binding strips), sewed them together and made a rather adorable (and soft) comforter.  What was unpalatable as a whole, was actually rather pleasing in six inch squares and will now find daily use in the colder months rather than moldering in my linen closet for another decade,