Another Victory For Mushroom Lovers Everywhere! (And Other August House Stories)

This week at August House:
The Little Momma donated a picture to the Arts Counsel for their auction, and the bidding was fierce, but I won it back in the end, so now I am the proud owner of a matching set of skulls (the one mom drew with pencil and gave to me for graduation, and now "Blue Skull").

Yes, it is on the ironing board in my kitchen with the iron, a pottery bowl I bought just before Christmas (Shavonne has the matching bowl) and now a matching mug that I also won at the auction. The ironing board is in the kitchen because it was a quilting day.

"How is the quilting going?" you ask. Thank you for asking. We're done with bag 5 now, and that means we're more than half way done! We were informed this week that you are supposed to name your quilts, and so we thought long and hard, and decided to name this quilt...

The Big Bang!

The above picture is after completing bag 4, and below is just a sample of what it would look like with the addition of the bag 5 pieces.

Just bags 6-9 to do, as bag 10 is already done! Next week is our last official class for this quilt, and we will likely get it done here soon afterwards.
"What's next?" You ask. There is a block of the month quilt called "Phat Tuesday" that we're going to do, and the next class after that is for a wedding ring quilt:

Phat Tuesday is above, and of course, wedding ring is below.

This week in the kitchen, I tried a few new recipes, and felt that all three were successful (and delightful). It was a stressful week at work, so these are all in the "comfort food" category, not in the "healthy and helping me get skinny" category of food, but, whatcha gonna do?
First, I have to say that I have a great husband, who didn't complain at all when I had to work all day on Valentines day and didn't even give him a card on time, let alone do anything at all special for Valentines day. I know that V-day doesn't mean anything anyway, and like I said, he was cool with it, but this week I decided to surprise him with a little late V-day treat: "Chocolate Heart Peanut Butter Cookies!"


Second, because I'm still a kid at heart, I LOVE macaroni and cheese, and I have a lot of recipes for different macs. This week I tried "Martha Stewart Mac & Cheese" and it was FABULOUS! This uses aged sharp white cheddar as well as Gruyere cheeses, so it is not cheap, but it is worth it!
And now, the moment you have all been waiting for...Another Triumph For Mushroom Lovers Everywhere...I did my best to recreate a Meditrina favorite, and made Mushrooms and Brie in a Port-Wine Reduction Sauce:

I don't have an actual recipe for this one, because I just made it up as I went along, but I based it loosely on this recipe here.

As you can see, no one really liked it much...

And before I let you go, I finally got a better picture of the happy puppy:

Cheers!