Well, I didn’t like that one

I know I’m doing this just for fun but that little girl needed help. So I started over….and got this.

I like the facial proportions better here. The nose is better and the chin centred…and the shading done better as well….for me at least.

Doodling again…

Just stared it. The nose gave me some trouble but it’s coming. We’ll see what I get when I play with it tomorrow.

More doodling

Well, it’s pretty addictive and soothing, so I’m still at it. This is the latest one.

This was the beginning

This has the background started

This is the finished product

So much fun!

Where we finally have our well

We do finally have a well and it’s wonderful to have water available at home again. We also have the front of our house back looking like a house and not like a construction zone.

This was what it looked like before.

The well itself looks amazing. All new, shiny and blue. It was the hard, compacted earth/clay around it that was an eye sore. The few blades of grass that had managed to survive were sad-looking and sparse. It basically looked barren and desert-like.

So, we got some help.

We had to get new, fresh earth and level it. Then we had to get grass.

And finally, we have a lovely looking yard. we still have to water it like crazy so the grass won’t die but it’s back to looking like a yard.

Success at last!

Yum!

I’ve never, ever made risotto before but this one is super yummy. It’s pretty labour intensive, because it basically asks you to be stirring the rice for 45 minutes but it’s so worth the work. The taste was unbelievable! Even my meat-loving hubby loved it.

Here are some pictures and the recipe comes from Oh She Glows.

Oh, I did cheat at the end a put a dab of real butter into the dish. Just to be completely honest. Still, man alive, it was good!

Doodling…finished!

Finally, I finished the deer and the turtle.

No Picassos but they were so much fun to draw!

Doodling…almost done

That was the start.

This is where I am now. Still not done but almost there.

A visit to the doctor and a new menu

Well, hubby was due to go to the doctor and I sat in. He still has high cholesterol, though better than before and the doctor advised us to follow a Mediterranean diet. I mentioned our previous attempt at a plant-based diet but he countered that doctors never recommend it.

His advice made us both think and the result was we decided to add some mediterranean dishes to our cuisine. Now, this recipe below was a first attempt at Mediterranean cuisine for me.

It comes from this site. And this is what we got:

Leeks and shrimp before cooking

the ingredients we needed

This was the sauce after we cooked the shrimp

The cooked shrimp

All of it mixed together

The final dish

It was actually really yummy. If you do give this a try, let me know how it turned out for you.

Doodling

Just doodling  butterfly…then I added some flowers and a little more yellow.

And now, I’m doing a deer. This was before…

And now…

Not done yet, but I’ll share it when I finish.

Cooking…

So, I’m making up recipes…and we’ll see what comes out. It’s not that I know a lot about cooking or that I have any gift in this area, I was just messing around.

This was the stuffing I made for a lasagna. I actually added cottage cheese as a layer, so this recipe was only vegetarian but it turned out very yummy.

That was the lasagna before it went into the oven.

Then I made banana bread…because we had some really old bananas that needed help. The wax paper is a trick I learned somewhere so that I don’t have to smear butter on the pan to keep it from sticking. It saves calories and keeps the desert healthy. This recipe, I changed from the one on Oh She Glows, I just added chocolate chips. So yummy!

This is my own recipe for a lentil stew. I use green lentils, rinse them, add two large onions chopped up, some garlic diced (probably about two tablespoons; so quite a bit), I chopped up some sweet potatoes, added a few bay leaves and cooked it. After it came to a boil, I let it simmer for about 20-30 minutes and got this.

It’s actually super-good for you, because lentils are amazing, full of protein, fibre, iron and magnesium and the sweet potatoes are really good food as well. It has no oil or fat in the recipe, so it’s super healthy. Oh, add some salt. I can’t tell you how much I added because I did it bits at a time and completely lost track of the amount. Probably 2 teaspoons? But it depends on taste and amount.

So that’s what’s been cooking in my kitchen lately. What are you up to?