Fog, Cheers Alex, Cheese

Coming home from the pig tail dinner Saturday night, it was pretty foggy, but not too, too bad. Sunday night and into Monday morning it was even foggier, still thick at 9 in the morning. We don’t usually get fogs like this, but we have had so much sunshine in the last few days I guess it’s not surprising. We were lucky it wasn’t as thick on Saturday night or we would have had some trouble getting home. This picture is looking over our balcony wall at 9 a.m. My friend is going golfing at 10 today, I think she might be out of luck. I love digital cameras. Matt couldn’t do that with his camera, take a shot and put it on the computer.

I know that I have written a minimum of 1421 blogs, but without laboriously counting I don’t know the full total as I deleted a lot of the early ones because Blogger said I had run out of space to put categories so I have an idea there are at least a two or three hundred more, bit of a nuisance because I don’t know exactly. ( I do have hard copies by the way). However, I used to get very few comments from anyone until I joined the A to Z Blogfest this year. My readership increased but not dramatically but it was nice to see. A lot of this was due to Arlee Bird and Alex J. Cavanaugh who regularly comments on my blog, thanks so much Alex, and now there is going to be a Blogfest all about Alex. I will not be taking part as I don’t really know enough about Alex, I haven’t known him a full year yet. But he really is a wonderful person and does his level best to help bloggers and writers everywhere. Not only that, he has written two great books, Cassa Star and Cassa Fire, great space stories and there is a third one on the way.

Today we checked out my favourite store, Vincenzo’s and talked to the catering staff about doing a cheese tray which I actually had already seen online, guess I could have ordered it there, but I didn’t know if they were more or less set pieces. You can change the selection a bit. For instance, neither of us like Cambazola but we do like Borgonzola, so changed that. Whilst there we picked up a few different kinds of crackers to go with the cheeses. Plus I bought myself some Mascarpone – shouldn’t surprise you – and some more gherkins, primarily for making Tartar sauce to go with fish, dill pickles just do not work. The tray will be picked up on the afternoon of the day we are entertaining. We are planning a wine and cheese get together in December for some of our bowling friends.

A friend posted this recipe on Facebook last Sunday. I was fascinated and decided to share it with you.

Strawberry Santa's
Ingredients

1 lb large strawberries
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
3-4 Tablespoons powdered sugar (or sugar substitute - to taste)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Rinse strawberries and cut around the top of the strawberry. Remove the top, (enough for a hat). Clean out the whole strawberry with a paring knife, if necessary (some of them are hollow already. Prep all of the strawberries and set aside.
2. In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla until creamy. Add cream cheese mix to a piping bag or Ziploc with the corner snipped off. Fill the strawberries with cheesecake mixture.
3. Once strawberries are filled, top with the 'hats.' Decorate according to photo. (Black candy sprinkles for the eyes.)
4. If not serving immediately, refrigerate until serving.

Have a great day