Happy Halloween

Well this Halloween turned out to be a bust for thousands of Connecticut children because of the first "winter" Nor'easter that came through on Saturday.  Over 700,000 households in the state don't have power and there are trees in the roads in many communities that are making it very unsafe to have a Halloween.  Derby didn't get hit that hard.  There weren't very many people who lost power.  My parents (in Farmington) have had no power since 4 p.m. on Saturday and they have a large limb sitting on top of their house. 

So far I've had about 1 group of kids every 10 minutes.  So, maybe I will get rid of all this candy I bought.  Most of the kids are from the neighborhood.  I never really understood why we don't get more kids since it's a condo.  You'd think a lot of kids would want to come here since there are so many units in a small space.  Maybe we have a reputation of having a lot of grumpy old ladies, ha ha.

Betty-Crocker Lemon Apricot Chicken

This was pretty okay...well it was good.  This is like the first time ever I have had all the ingredients for a recipe I wanted to make except for one thing, apricot preserves.  I have the frozen chicken breats in a bag in the freezer. I thought they would defrost if I put them in the fridge during the day.  They didn't quite defrost all the way so I cooked the chicken 10 minutes more. The chicken turned out slightly overcooked.  I would say this is a good busy weeknight recipe.  Nothing spectacular but tasty enough...

Here's the link to the recipe: http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/lemon-apricot-chicken-cooking-for-2/.

I had couscous and corn with it.  I didn't use the healthy bisquick.  One serving is 7 points on weight watchers.

Blackberry Muffins and No Playoffs

So, if the Yankees had won I was supposed to go to the American League Playoffs tonight. Instead I stayed home and made sloppy joes and blackberry muffins. Oh well. Here's a picture of the giant screen at Yankee Stadium when I was there for game one of the ALDS before it started pouring.


The blackberry muffin recipe is very similar to the raspberry lemon ones I made a while back in my blog. I guess I am a creature of habit. I'll try to try newer things in the future. I was thinking of making pear muffins but I didn't think the pears would be ripe enough. When I got to the store I saw they were pretty ripe but I hadn't brought the list of ingredients with me that I needed. Anyway, this recipe is from the William Sonoma Muffin Cookbook (2003), p.38. The blackberries were tarter than the raspberry recipe. I think I liked the muffin part of the raspberry recipe better, but these were still good.