Wisdom Teeth and Productivity

My sister got her wisdom teeth removed on Friday. This means that she has been on a steady diet of smoothies, mashed potatoes, yogurt and mac n' cheese. She is already sick of the latter "soft" food.

This event is a prelude for my own wisdom teeth extraction procedure that is yet-to-be-scheduled, but planned for sometime between now and mid-September. I am THRILLED... *Sarcasm*

Anyway, the poor thing is doing better. She lucked out and didn't even have swelling. But she cannot wait until she can eat normal food again, like meat and veggies, etc. I have been responsible for making dinner in the last few days and I feel so bad that the rest of my fam is eating marinated chicken or BLTs and she is stuck with her boxed mashed potatotes and a smoothie. Granted it was a chocolate, banana, peanut butter smoothie, which I graciously made for her even though I am semi-allergic to PB and the smell makes me nauseous.

Aside from entertaining my sister while her mouth still hurts, I was pretty productive this weekend! I went to the Puyallup Farmer's Market on Sunday and was super excited to see more variety of veggies--as the weather warms up. My dad purchased some cherries and I bought $10 worth of yummy chevre. Half of it was fresh cheese that is seasoned with dill and garlic and is delicious spread on sandwiches and crackers. I also bought a semi-hard cheese called Mopsy's Best. It was really good and had the light, crisp flavor common to cheese made from sheep's milk. I bought just a small hunk of it and ate the entire think for lunch.

What can I say? I REALLY love cheese. I always say that I would be so sad if I became lactose Intolerant someday...

On Sunday, I went to Mass in the morning and listened to a really sweet story about "The Holy Cookie" aka the bread (body of Christ). I then came home and made scones for the first time. I found a recipe for Lemon Blueberry Scones and thought I would try it. I am so excited to say that it turned out really well!

The scones were light, flakey, bursting with frozen blueberries and had a light flavor of lemon. They were glazed with a simple glaze of lemon juice and powdered sugar. I found the recipe online on a blog, http://bakingbites.com/2010/04/lemon-blueberry-scones/.

I love to experiment and try new recipes and find that my tests usually warrent 1 out of every 3 recipes that are actually good and worth keeping. For example, last week I made Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies. In theory, these sounds super delicious. However, my brownies did not look like the picture and weren't very good, even though I made sure to follow the recipe VERY closely. Part of my failure rate stems from my tendency to substitute ingredients and not follow the recipe exactly, so I suppose that I deserve to fail 2 of out 3 times :-)

But my scones were delicious. The recipe only made 8 good-size scones and they were gone by the end of the day. I definitely suggest this recipe if you like lemon and blueberries. My next scone recipe is going to be pumpkin, similar to those sold at Starbucks.

Here is the recipe, courtesy of Baking Bites:

Lemon Blueberry Scones

2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter, chilled
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp lemon zest
1 cup frozen blueberries

Preheat oven to 400F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut butter into 6-8 chunks and add to flour mixture, tossing to coat. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour until mixture is sandy and butter is well distributed, with no pieces larger than a big pea.
Add in milk, lemon juice and lemon zest and stir until dough comes together. If dough is too wet, add an additional tablespoon of flour to the dough.
Either keeping the dough in your mixing bowl, or turning it out onto a lightly floured surface, knead dough for about 1 minute. Flatten dough and add blueberries. Knead gently for 30-60 seconds to distribute them. Divide dough into two balls and press each into a disc about 3/4-inch thick. Use a knife to divide each disc into quarters and place scones on prepared baking sheet.
Bake for 17-22 minutes, until scones are golden brown.

Lemon Glaze (optional)
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar

Whisk glaze ingredients together until smooth, then drizzle over still-warm scones before serving.

***

My productive day continued with me going for a really nice run along the trail down by the Puyallup River and back through downtown. It was so warm and pleasant outside that I could not resist taking an hour out to go for a run.

I love days where I get a lot done and feel that I really made my time worthwhile. Today, I am trying to decide what to cook for dinner (hopefully something that my sister can enjoy as well) and getting ready for a job interview later this afternoon. Wish me luck!

As I close this post, I hope that you all out there in blog-land can have a productive day! It doesn't have to be something like a chore or a to-do list, but rather something that makes you happy, and uses your time well. Better yet, go make some scones.