Spring

I love spring. The flowers, birds, new grass, I love all of it. I was out this evening watering my flowers and I thought I would share a couple of my favorites with you.


One of the azaleas in the front of the house. We bought this 11 years ago when we moved it and it was so little. I didn't think it would ever grow.


The lilac is my absolute favorite. I have 2, a white and a purple. The purple one is right at the front porch and when you walk up to the house that is all you smell.


This is the white one. It's a lot smaller than the purple which is huge but it still smells heavenly.


My dogwood. I love the white dogwood. This came from my mother in laws yard. She gave it to us when we moved in. Do you see the pink azalea at the bottom of the tree? It was mixed in with the dogwood and we were afraid to try to separate them, I didn't want the azalea to die. Every year it has come back out and bloomed, it doesn't get any bigger but it keeps plugging along.
I will have peonies this year. My Dad gave me a bunch of them last year and all but 2 of them came up this year. I really didn't expect them to bloom the first year but most of them have buds on them so as soon as they bloom I will have pictures to share.

Every week I try to make at least 2 new meals. I collect cook books and I tons of them, including my Mawmaw's cook book that was given to her in 1957 by her mother in law.




This is my favorite and I will always cherish it. It has her handwriting all through it on recipes, grocery lists and what she was making for whom. I love it and I feel very blessed to have it.
Anyway, I try to make 2 new recipes each week, it doesn't always work out that I am able to do it with our schedules but the past week we had 2 incredible meals, if I do say so myself. I thought I would share one of them with you.
COUNTRY CHICKEN CHOWDER
2 tablespoons margarine or butter (I used butter I always cook with real butter)
1 1/2 lbs. chicken tenders, cut into 1/2 inch pieces ( I used boneless skinless chicken breasts)
2 small onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, sliced
2 small carrots, sliced
2 cups frozen corn
2 cans (10 3/4 oz each) cram of potato soup
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon dried dill weed
1/2 cup half and half

Melt butter in large skillet. Add chicken; cook until browned. Add cooked chicken, onions, celery, carrots, corn, soup, chicken broth and dill to slow cooker. Cover and cook on low 3 to 4 hours or until chicken is no longer pink and vegetables are tender.
Turn off heat; stir in half and half. cover and let stand 5 to 10 minutes or just until heated through.
I doubled everything on ours, there's 5 of us and I usually have to double recipes. This was wonderful, you have to try it. Right now I have bar b que in the crock pot with a new sauce that we haven't tried before. That is for dinner tomorrow night. It smells wonderful. It has red wine vinegar in it and I was a little leery I've never cooked with that before, but I'm game to try just about any new recipe.

I hope you had a great weekend.