Corned Beef and Cake

G and I sat down to coffee this afternoon.  I love that a hot drink of some sort is now an afternoon routine.  Usually accompanied with something sweet.  G has a wee bit of a sweet tooth that I had trained away, but came back during deployment.  And because he's a skinny minny I indulge him... he's had 3 different sorts of dessert today!

We spent a couple hours working on clearing out more in the nursery.  Lots of old papers to the recycle.  Several boxes full in the trunk to go to Goodwill.  And nearly half the room is cleared out.  Three huge boxes hold the 9' (very full) Christmas tree, and a couple are ornaments and whatnot.  So clearing out the Christmas items and the room will be nearly done.  I'm ordering a Christmas tree bag that rolls to put the whole tree in.  A whole corner of the room is books waiting for us to put the bookcases together in the office, which is on the books for this week as well.

For dinner we had thawed out a corned beef from Trader Joes that turned out to be pre-cooked...so dinner was fairly simple.  I put potatoes, carrots, cabbage wedges and onions in a pot, and once those were pretty much cooked we threw in the corned beef.  It was delicious.  I'd never liked cabbage much before (unless it was Indian or Ethiopian cooked with lots of spices) but this was delightfully tasty.  We have a ton left, enough for more meals and also trying our hand at reubens!  The broth has been set aside to get frozen as it is essentially veggie broth (though clearly not vegetarian), and will be perfect to use in soups this winter. 

And while that all boiled I decided to go ahead and try another of my great-grandmother's recipes.  I'm slowly making my way through some (her biscuits are already famous around here), and now with apple season here I thought an apple cake would be nice.  Oh. My. Goodness.  So, so good.  Super moist (had a hard time removing it from the pan), slightly caramelized, and we enjoyed it with some fresh whipped cream and apple cider.

A wonderful end to a productive day.