Friday Food-Alfredo

Finished (and delicious!) final product!

 I love alfredo, with or without chicken. There's something about the creamy, garlicy sauce that ranks right up there with my all time favorite comfort foods. 

Yes, I could buy the jarred sauce in a store. But it's never the same. (Not enough parmesan or garlic! And so many unnecessary preservatives.)

• 1/4 Cup butter
• 1 Cup Heavy Cream (here's a link for substitutes)
• 1 Clove garlic, crushed
• 1 1/2 Cups grated Parmesan
• Boil water for noodles
• Cook the noodles

Sautee the butter and garlic

Sautee the butter & garlic!

• In a medium saucepan, combine the butter/garlic mixture and the cream.
• Stir it all well and add Parmesan. 

Taste it. 😉 Add more garlic or cheese to taste. 

New research books!

Please don't ask how large my TBR pile is. No one needs to know that. Not even, apparently, me, as I keep buying fun new titles. Some are fiction (I listen to a lot of historical romance via Libro.fm). Some are research books I like. Yes, I usually borrow many (fiction and nonfiction) through my library system. Inter Library Loan is your wallets BFF.

But every once in a while (more often than not it seems) I need to own the book.

Who else loves fashion history? 

I love learning about the history of fashion. The start of a fabric or the reason for the cut of trousers or a certain pattern. On CBS Saturday they interviewed Richard Thompson Ford and he utterly drew me into his book.

Guess who just bought 3 new amazing fashion history books! 

Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History by Richard Thompson Ford

The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History by Kassia St. Clair 
The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel 

**As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases**

**If you start a membership with my LIbro.fm referral link, I'll earn a free audiobook!**

Self Care Monday-Mondays

 Let's face it, Mondays are hard. Garfield (and Jim Davis!) had it right. 

I've been working on getting myself going on Monday mornings, trying to just push through. I think that might be the wrong term. Push through. But I'm more tired on Mondays than I am almost every other morning no matter how much sleep I get.

So instead of going through the morning tired and cranky, which happens, I've been trying to take 3 or 5 minutes and meditating with gratitude.

Monday again=another beautiful day!

Monday mornings=the start of a productive week!

It's a learning process, not going to lie! But it's all about changing my mindset.

How do you get through your Mondays?

Friday Food-Buffalo Chicken Dip

 There is nothing about this dip I do not like. A couple weeks ago when I boiled the chicken for my pupper's food, I froze some for me. This last week I took it out, thawed it, and made buffalo chicken dip. 

Because Yum.

The recipe is simple.

• Boiled and shredded Chicken (no skin or bones)
  
• 1 package Cream Cheese (8 oz)
  
• 2/3 cup Buffalo Sauce
• 3/4 cup ranch dressing
• If you want to add: diced celery and/or onions
  
• Mix well
• I don't cook everything together first because that just dirties another pan. I mix it together in a mixing bowl then spread it into the baking dish
• Sprinkle cheddar cheese over the top (who am I kidding? There is no sprinkling of the cheese!)
• Bake at 350F for 20 minutes or until well cooked around the edges. 

Let cool for at least 10 minutes. How do I know that? Yeah, ask me lol

Wine and wine corks research

 A former boss of mine once gave me a page a day calendar on wine. I don't remember anything else about it except but the bit I scribbled down regarding wine corks. Apparently wine bottles were either left uncorked when brought to the table--that whole bit about filling the bottles from the cask--or stopped with glass--much like a crystal decanter.

Cork, however, though an ancient method of many things including the soles of sandals, buoys, and yes, wine corks, was not used widely until the mid to late 1700s.

I wish I'd kept the day it was on, I think it had more information. Why did I write it on a piece of scrap paper rather than keep the calendar page? Your guess is as good as mine. 

I did search for this information, but since I don't even know the name of that page a day calendar, I didn't find exactly what I was looking for. However, I did find this!

From A History of Wine Corks and Bottles:

But, it was illegal to sell wine by the bottle in Britain until the 1860's.

I have so many questions! Alas, that article didn't go into details about this very pertinent tidbit! So all those movies and books are wrong? I'm going to have to do more research into this.

Self Care Monday-If then

Something I realized about myself recently was I'm a big If X happens THEN Y...

I'm not sure where this came from or why I started thinking this way. Or even when or how I noticed it. But once I did notice it, it really annoyed me. It's like being given the choice of either or. Those memes that go around, "You can only pick one, would you pick the beach or the mountains?"

Why do I have to choose? Why can't I enjoy both? I do enjoy both. Why do I have to choose?

Why do I constantly think Oh, if X happens then I can finally do Y. I mean sure in terms of a nice jackpot lottery win, I can finally travel the world in a 🛥 private yacht🛥 . Actually, no, I get horribly seasick. But traveling the world sounds amazing!

Believing that I can only do Y if and only if X happens is so limiting and I don't want to limit myself. But can I use it to motivate myself? 

This article from Psychology Today made a good point. Sure, it's about exercise, (*bold is me*) but:

Amazingly, you are two to three times more likely to succeed if you use an if-then plan than if you don't. In one study, 91 percent of people who used an if-then plan stuck to an exercise program, versus 39 percent of non-planners. Peter Gollwitzer, the NYU psychologist who first articulated the power of if-then planning, recently reviewed results from 94 studies that used the technique and found significantly higher success rates for just about every goal you can think of, from using public transportation more frequently to avoiding stereotypical and prejudicial thoughts.

 

 So here's me, trying to think of a good way to implement the if X then Y to not limit myself but to expand myself. And if I want to do Y before X happens, then why shouldn't I?

Cairo Research

A few more books I used in writing Husband of Convenience. These are mostly for reference, I needed details of what things looked like 200+ years ago.

Cairo Anthology: Two Hundred Years of Travel Writing by Deborah Manley

The Sahara: A Cultural History (Landscapes of the Imagination) by Eamonn Gearon

Here's a site on History of Cairo I found helpful. And, of course, Wikipedia's Eyalet of Egypt page, which was a kinda separate country attached to the Ottoman Empire. So not exactly a part of the empire, Egypt operated under its own rules and laws and leaders, but it paid tribute. This lasted from 1517 to 1867. An Eyalet means state in English.