SUNDAYS WITH CELIA VOL 77
Hello and welcome to Sundays With Celia Vol 77. I’m delighted you stopped in today.
We got another batch of snow that started Friday night and will continue off and on through Wednesday. As they say, be careful what you wish for, because I must say, enough is enough. So what does one do between shoveling snow and writing blog posts? Well yesterday I pulled a ham bone out of the freezer that I had saved from Christmas. It was one of those yummy Honey Baked Hams. I threw it into my wonderful All-Clad Slow Cooker (which I adore!) and turned it into a fantastic Ham & Bean Soup. Served it with my yummy recipe for Sweet Corn Bread and enjoyed a warm & comforting meal and a movie with some dear friends.
Drinking Tea On Sunday
Drinking Tea: The Most Civilized Practice In The World
I heard that said somewhere once and it has always stuck with me. It struck a cord. Because really, nothing bad ever comes from sitting down in the afternoon with a warm cup of soothing tea. Perhaps you take your tea alone with a good book. Perhaps you enjoy it with a friend over a good chat. Or maybe you’re simply sipping tea like me as I write this blog post.
So Speaking Of Tea…
This week I was asked to bring dessert over to a friends’ house as my contribution to a gathering of friends for dinner. So I had seen a recipe in the March issue of Sunset Magazine for a Carrot Ginger Tea Cake with Lime Glaze that sounded really good. The cake was described as…
“Dense but not too sweet with loads of moisture from both carrots and carrot juice. A hint of heat from two kinds of ginger, fresh & dried, and a kick from a tangy lime glaze.”
So I decided to make it and bring it to my friends’ house for our dessert! Yes, it is supposed to be served with TEA, and is not really a DESSERT, but HEY, it sounded really yummy.
And it was! And everyone loved it and asked me for the recipe. The thing is the recipe isn’t mine, it’s from Sunset Magazine, so you’ll have to click here to get it. Please tell them I was kind enough to send you;)
Looking Back On Sunday
We have had a very snowy week here in Lake Arrowhead, California! In fact, it hasn’t snowed this much in years! So I documented what winter looks like at my house, and took you on a little tour around the Becker abode in this post.
So many people tell me they are surprised to learn that it snows in Southern California.
Well I live in the San Bernardino mountain range of Southern California, where the highest mountain peak, San Gorgonio, tops out at almost 11,500 feet.
I can only imagine how much snow fell up there this week! If you missed this week’s post and want to see more of my winter wonderland click here.
Getting Techie On Sunday
WARNING! I’m about to sound like a commercial here, but it’s only because I am truly very excited to share with you a few things I am genuinely excited about! And I’m kinda proud of myself because for a mature-ish woman of a certain age I’m kinda with-it (if I do say so myself) these days in terms of the latest and greatest tech gadgets. That is, thanks to 3 of my with-it sons who gifted me a couple of really great items for Christmas this year. So let me explain.
When one of my 4 sons was home prior to Christmas I was complaining to him that the relatively newish SMART TV that we have in our bedroom did not have the Amazon app available on it.
So that meant I could not watch any Amazon Prime shows in my bedroom, like Suits, which I’m currently really crushing on. I’m a little late to the Suits party, which is currently in season 8, which means you can binge watch it endlessly if you get hooked now.
But the only way I could watch Suits and other Amazon Prime shows was on my computer. So this particular very techie son (he is a Google Sr. Engineer) tells me to buy a CLDAY USB to HDMI Adapter. What is that you say? Well, it enables you to mirror the display of your laptop onto your TV. You can also use it to show your photos on your TV, and be charging your computer at the same time. So I got it and it’s great and all.
But then my other son comes home and says, Mom, that’s so awkward having to hook your laptop up to your TV to watch Amazon Prime shows. And I must admit, it was. So he says, “what you really need is a handy-dandy Fire TV Stick.” And I checked and it was much cheaper than I expected, only $49 bucks. But I was hesitant and didn’t buy it because remote controls scare me.
But low and behold he gets us one for Christmas. Well let me tell you folks, this thing is absolutely the BEST THING EVER!!!
So I’m an Amazon Prime member and with this device I get unlimited access to thousands of movies and TV episodes, plus ad-free listening to millions of songs on Prime Music. I also use it to watch Netflix shows, and I can still watch regular cable TV. And the best thing about it for me (because I’m really not all that much of a techie after-all) is that it is voice activated. I just speak into the controller and tell Alexa what I want to do. Easy peasy. So unlike most bulky remote controls, it is not impossibly difficult to operate.
And speaking of talking to Alexa….
Well, we got another really awesome gift for Christmas from my DC dwelling son. An ECHO SHOW!
I have to say it was my favorite gift of all. I love it for a whole lot of reasons, but I love it the most for ONE reason in particular. You see, my grand-babies in DC also have an ECHO SHOW . And whenever they want to, all they have to do is tell Alexa, “Call Grandma CeCe.” And I can’t tell you how excited I get when I hear Alexa announcing that I have a video call coming in from Elle and Wills. It is so nice to see their sweet little faces there on the screen in my kitchen.
Other than that I love Alexa because I can ask her almost anything and get an immediate answer.
- I use her as a kitchen timer every single day when I’m cooking.
- She reminds me to do things like water my plants (which I never remember to do regularly).
- She tells me when I have to scoot out the door to appointments so I’m never late anymore.
- And I play music on my Echo Show all the time.
- Plus, as you can see, it serves as a clock and it tells me the outside temperature.
- It will also give me the weather forecast for the week and pretty much anything else I can think of.
- And the other quite remarkable thing about this gadget is that my son also got one for my 92-year-old dad who also loves it! I find it amazing that a man of his age adapted to it overnight and probably gets more use out of his than I do out of ours!
Mine is the 1st generation of the Echo Show which you can buy for $99. They have recently come out with Echo Show 2nd Gen which is $179. It has a bigger screen and apparently better sound.
So, I hope I didn’t bore you to death with all this tech stuff but I am really enjoying my stuff and wanted to tell you about it, just in case you didn’t already know.
What are you doing on Sunday?
Well, from my snowy, white, wonderland I wish you a happy Sunday. I hope you enjoy a nice, warm cup of tea, a big slice of Carrot Ginger Tea Cake with Lime Glaze, and that you start watching Suits if you haven’t already. I know I love it extra special because it’s about lawyers, and my Chicago dwelling son is about to start practicing law in Chicago, but it truly is a VERY entertaining show. They must be doing something right because it’s lasted 8 seasons, it stars Megan Markel, a real Duchess, and they’ve announced a spinoff show called Pearson. It’s named after Suits character, Jessica Pearson, played by leading lady, Gina Torres. And the spinoff show will take place in Chicago, SO, you know what show I’ll be staying up late watching when it comes out…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=32&v=uNTcp__XF2I
Thank you very much for joining me here today. Have a really great week. See you back here next Sunday!
So there you have it: SUNDAYS WITH CELIA VOL 77
Thanks so much for dropping in!
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All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Unless otherwise noted, all photos are the original property of Celia Becker @ www.AfterOrangeCounty.com and may not be reproduced without specific permission. This post contains affiliate links. If you click on a link and make a purchase I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. It’s what helps to make this blog possible. Thanks very much for your support.
