Oh What a Beautiful Morning!

I woke up this morning to find a light rain had fallen. While that's sometimes not the best of news, it just washed everything clean and sparkling and I had to take a few pictures.

This is what I saw the very first thing this morning as I opened the shade.


And when I opened the back shade, this is what greeted me, Off in the distance you can see Santa Rosa Dam. This thing is HUGE.

When I finally got up (I'm quite lazy these days) This is out our side windows. These trees are so beautiful, we're not sure but we think they might be Russian Olive trees. All the tiny flowers are coming up and it really looks like Spring here in Santa Rosa.


And I must apologize, these pictures were taken from inside the rig through rainy windows, so they're not as sharp as I would like. Also, the dark windows distort the colors, but I still wanted to share our view with you. I'll try to take more pictures later when the weather is a bit "brighter".

This is indeed a lovely park.

The rain stopped early with the sun intermittently peeking out, but it's cool and a perfect day to cook!

Last night I set a pound of mixed beans to soak, so today it will be a long slow cook in the crockpot. There's just something so soothing about a big old pot of beans, don't you think? I'm always trying different ingredients, today I'm playing with heat, some chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce, a new cilantro dip I'm trying, we'll just have to see how they turn out.

{Well crapola! during the long cooking, I looked at the beans when I should have just let them simmer and I broke my crockpot lid! When we first started traveling I was sure I wouldn't need a crock pot, but I found this one for $3.00 at a yard sale and it has been a great thing to have when we stay for a while. I guess I got my $3.00 worth out of it, but now I have to decide on a new one. Amazon, here I come!).

Anyway, before the crock pot fiasco, I looked around the rig and discovered we had a bunch of apples that were going soft, so I got on the internet looking for apple recipes and came up with this recipe for Apple Bread.

After doing a bit more research, I decided to replace half the oil with butter, half the white sugar with brown sugar, triple the cinnamon, add about 2 tsp of fresh nutmeg (and if you don't use fresh nutmeg, you really don't know what you're missing), add in another cup and a half of apples, replace the walnuts with pecans, and just for the heck of it, throw in about a cup and a half of Craisins.

WOW! Here's the loaf out of the oven . . .

And here's the moist chewy goodness of the inside.

You'll notice the recipe makes two loafs. I almost only made one, but thought it would be nice to have enough to share, and boy am I glad I did!

This one is a keeper.

And now I'm off to bake a fresh loaf of bread to have with our bean soup for dinner, YUM!

And before I go, here's one final shot, taken after the sun had come out and the sky had blued up a bit.

We're going to like it here.

Life is Very Good!