Suzanne Schaffer

The end of May is always blissful. The weather is comfortably in between cool and stifling, school is almost out, the days are longer and flowers are in bloom.  Here's my newest thing to be blissful about. Coffeemate has come out with a natural creamer that they appropriately call Natural Bliss . It comes in Vanilla, Low Fat Vanilla, Caramel, and Sweet Cream. They are all good, but the regular vanilla is my favorite (the low fat just doesn't taste as good). Four ingredients: milk, cream, sugar, vanilla. That's it. This stuff is amazing. I now start every day with boiling water, a Tazo Chai tea bag, Vanilla Natural Bliss (two tbsp) and a packet of Domino Light (mix of sugar and stevia for just 5 calories!). I can't tell you how happy this cup of tea tea that I drink all day long makes me.  Another lovely May thing is this pretty butterfly that I caught flitting around my flowers this week. I ran inside and grabbed the camera. It stayed still for t

I received this Pillsbury Cookbook as a wedding shower gift in December of 1991. It's always been my basic cookbook, it is full of so many good things! As a rule, anytime I try a recipe I write the date by it and whether or not we liked it. I pulled this cookbook out on the 17th because I wanted to make a tuna casserole for my kid who said I never make casseroles (there's a reason for that...I make what I like LOL). I flipped through it to find a tuna casserole recipe and started to prepare it when I looked at the recipe above it and realized that I was making this one twenty years to the day after I'd made the one above it. What are the odds of that? I marked the first one as "gross" and the new one as "yummy".  

Don't you just love the first spring in a new house? Watching to see what blooms and where. These rhododendron bushes in front of my house are gorgeous right now! I just wish they'd stay bright and colorful all year instead of returning to a dreary green.  My front porch. Doesn't it make you want to come share a cup of tea with me?