Weekending

Linking up with Holly and Sarah for Hello Monday:

Mainly just pictures of food... If all goes according to my blog post planning, the next post I write will have more exciting pictures so bear with me.

Alyssa and I returned to Ohio during the early morning hours of Friday. It was good to be home though we'd had a good (if stressful for part of it (not meaning to be coy, I'll write more about it later)) time in Florida. I regretted the decision to have a Coke Zero on the late flight and didn't fall asleep until about 3:30 am. 

Alyssa slept in (I was up by 6:05 😕). I got started on unpacking and laundry after seeing Donnie off to work. When Alyssa got up, she and I ran some errands including going to the grocery store. Later she got together with her best friend from high school while I washed my car in the driveway. The temperature got up to 77 degrees!!

Alyssa and I picked up some salmon at the grocery store and Alyssa said she'd make dinner for us that evening. After eating every meal out for days, the idea of a homemade meal not made by me sounded perfect. Plus Alyssa's salmon tastes incredible. And we ate on the patio because it was so gorgeous out. WIN WIN WIN.

A few pics from Friday:

It hadn't been washed all winter- it was so gross. I don't have a good after picture but I did get her clean!

This would be the high- literally and figuratively of the weekend weather as Saturday and Sunday were both rainy and icky.

Alyssa and I got Big Gulps on Friday afternoon (for 25 cents)

Dinner- so good- Alyssa made the mashed potatoes, too. She found the salmon recipe she uses on the TikTok. It contains honey and soy sauce among other ingredients. 

We had a nice evening on the patio. We ate, played cards and then it was time for dessert and a movie :).

Saturday morning, I woke up feeling super refreshed as I'd had a great night of sleep (less than three hours the night before usually has that effect :)). I didn't run as I'd tuned my bad ankle while in Florida and wanted to give it rest. 

I got started making caramel sauce for the brownies for the dinner we were supposed to host that evening for Donnie's uncle's birthday dinner. While I was making the sauce, Donnie's uncle texted saying he thought we should postpone the dinner to another evening due to possible severe weather later that day and into the evening. I decided to continue making the caramel sauce and the brownies- I'd freeze them and then have less to do whenever we end up having the dinner.

Brownies via cake mix? Sticks of butter in glass bowls? What is going on? 

Regarding the cake mix, this particular brownie recipe calls for cake mix as the base. But you don't add oil or eggs as if you were making a cake. What you add is melted butter and evaporated milk. The result is batter (and then "brownies" when baked) that is super rich and decadent. 

This recipe calls for a layer of caramel in between two layers of the cake mix/brownie batter (ergo why I made the caramel sauce).

The recipe called for melted butter so I needed something to melt the butter in. My favorite mixing bowl in stainless steel- I couldn't put that in the microwave and so I came up with a pretty good solution to avoid washing another dish. I melted the butter in the dish that I was going to bake the brownies in. I poured as much of the melted butter as I could into the bowl that I was going to mix the brownies in. I couldn't get every little bit of butter out but that was Ok since the recipe said to grease the bottom of the baking dish. I was impressed with my idea- 😊.

Baked brownies- the dish was heavy with brownie/caramel deliciousness.

I had to try a piece or two! Soooo good!

I covered this container and put these bad boys in the freezer for consumption at a later date. 

Alyssa and I went out to get Big Gulps again and we picked up dinner from one of Alyssa's favorite restaurants for dinner. She got together with a friend after dinner and Donnie and I watched a movie.

Sunday morning we watched church online. Donnie had some work to do and Alyssa was catching a ride back to campus in the afternoon. We heard a great sermon, had lunch and then Alyssa got ready to go back to Columbus. It's never easy to say goodbye to my baby but we'd just spent a lot of time together and she'll be done with her first year of college NEXT MONTH! 

Speaking of baby, my SIL sent me some adorable pictures of MG. She is just too cute!