I met a TV celebrity yesterday. And she was lovely. We chatted for hours and hours. Well, at least it seemed like hours to the people behind me in line for the book signing.
It’s Melissa D’Arabian. In case you don’t know her she’s a star on the Food Network. And you need to get to know her. She’s great! That’s me on the left and my friend, Karen, on the right with Melissa. Karen is the one who turned me on to Melissa when she was competing for the title of The Next Food Network Star. I watched that show and was cheering for her all the way. It was so fun when she won. Exciting because she was a hometown girl from Keller, Texas!
She then launched her show, Ten Dollar Dinners and now she has published a cookbook.
It’s a great book. I can hardly wait until I have time to sit down and read it cover to cover. That should be in about 2035. In the meantime I’ll just make a few recipes.
Not sure what I’m telling Melissa here, but she was obviously quite enthralled with my story. Good thing you can’t see the look on the faces of the people behind us in line.
Did I mention that we talked for hours and hours?
See how fun the book is? I like her philosophy – save money and think about cooking in a different way. I’ll let you know when I try out some recipes. You might need to get her cookbook too, don’t ya think?
The food pics really made me want to run straight to the kitchen and start cooking. I wonder if that’s what she means by “thinking about cooking in a different way?”
Melissa likes to sign her books in a really bold, colorful way. I told her I had a blog so she personalized my book. And apparently hours and hours of talking to her is a chat. She is one smart cookie.
Off to the kitchen to cook dinner for $10. By the way, it’s dinner for four. Wanna join me?
Hugs,
Barb
Pumpkin Baked French Toast
It’s even better with real maple syrup drizzled down.
Dry ingredients: cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, salt and sugar.
Oh! And cubes of crusty bread. I used Ezekiel bread, but you can use anything you want.
Wet ingredients: milk (I used coconut milk, but almond would be fine too), butter (I used Earth Balance), vanilla, pumpkin and tofu. Yep! That nasty vegan stuff. You’ll love it in this recipe.
You put all the wet things in the blender……
And blend ’em all together. It’s a really hard recipe. Not.
Then you dump the dry ingredients in an 8 x 8 inch baking pan. I sprayed with cooking spray first so it wouldn’t all stick to the pan. And pour the wet ingredients over the top. Cover with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge overnight.
And even more so if you pour on a little extra real Vermont maple syrup. Yum.
Jenny showed us this lovely quilt that she’d finished. I know, I know. It’s not Dear Jane. but if you’ve been paying attention on this blog, you already know that Dear Jane Club is definitely not all about Dear Jane. We just happen to share a love for the DJ quilt. And other quilty things.
Here’s an up-close of Jenny’s pretty quilt. We all ooo-ed and aaah-ed at the appropriate times. We’re good about that.
One gal finished the piecing of this triangle for the border of her DJ quilt. Don’t ask which gal. After all, I only have this picture and it doesn’t give away much. Except the fact that someone was working on DJ on this particular month. Whatever mo….. never mind.
And see? JoAnne was quilting on her fabulous red, white and blue DJ. Yeah, JoAnne! She keeps us all going with DJ quilts. Even though we don’t even try to keep up with her.
Apparently it was Vera Bradley day at DJ Club! Of course the fact that Vera Bradley makes the cutest quilted bags might have something to do with a lot of them showing up at a quilting gathering. But when I walked in that day and glanced around the room and started counting the bags…. oh, my! We absolutely had to gather them all up for a photo op.
You math teachers out there can really relate, right?
Just Sayin' Sew 