Oh Dear

I want this.

Look how lovely this dress is:  http://grosgrainfabulous.blogspot.com/2010/05/oh-dear-frock-grosgrain-giveaway_10.html

Grosgrain’s entire site is full of beautiful things; it has inspired me to start sewing again.

Current projects I am working on:

• Dolls for Reese (knitted and cloth)
• a clutch for myself and one for Ashley

 

Wish me luck!

Banana Nut Bread

 

Ingredients:

• 1 and 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp of baking soda
• 1/2 tbsp of vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup of granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 3/4 cup of walnuts
• 3 very ripe bananas

Directions:

• In a bowl, mash the bananas, set aside
• In another bowl cream together sugars and butter until smooth
• Mix in eggs and vanilla
• Add baking soda and salt
• Add in the bananas
• Then with a rubber spatula mix in the flour until just incorporated.  You don’t want to over work the batter, otherwise it will get tough.
• Place into a 9×5 greased loaf pan and bake for 55 minutes (or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean) in a 350 degree oven.
• Allow it to cool for a few minutes before turning it out of the pan.  Allow it to cool completely and then wrap in plastic wrap and serve the next day to allow it to develop its flavor.

2010

I have made  5 New Years Resolutions.  Number 4 on my list is:

I want to put more time into cooking and baking so I can do what I love to do better than I am right now.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake.

I suppose that I played up the fact that I love to bake so much to a point where my family wanted me to bake them something.  My Aunt’s birthday fell on Christmas Eve and so everyone wanted me to bake a cake in commemoration of her turning 59.  While it is true that I love to bake, I have never baked under pressure or because someone else asked me too.  I pull out my whisk on my time and when I want to, because I’m so scared of disappointment that I don’t want people to have any expectations of me.  But the masses said bake and I put it off long enough.

Now personally, I don’t like cakes; therefore, I hardly ever make them.  And I don’t know what kind of cake they expected or they wanted, but I found a can of pineapple in the cupboard and I decided to make pineapple upside down cake.  While I know that it’s not a traditional cake for a birthday, I see no fun in a plain vanilla cake (for I am not a fan of frosting).  Plus, it’s much more impressive than regular old chocolate cake anyways.  I looked up techniques online to sort of get an idea and then I kind of just came up with my own recipie to suit whatever I had available.  I think it went okay:

Pineapple Upside Down Cake:

Serves 8

It looks rightside up to me....

Ingredients:

• 6 slices of pineapple from a 14 oz can of pineapple
• 2/3 cup of dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup of butter + 1/3 cup of butter
• 4/3 cups of flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup of milk
• 1 egg
• roughly1/2 tsp of vanilla
• roughly 1/2 tsp of salt
• roughly 3/2 tsp of baking powder

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Melt 1/4 cup of butter in a small saucepan and stir in the brown sugar until it all dissolves.  Pour the mixture into the bottom of an 8×8 pan.  Arrange the pineapple on top of the brown sugar; you can do it anyway you like, I cut mine into halves and wedges and kept some whole.
3. In a medium size bowl cream together 1/3 cup of room temperature butter with the sugar until creamy.  (I do this with a plain old fork…)
4. Add the salt and baking soda (I do it like this so that I know it gets distributed well and doesn’t all clump into one location as it could if added with the flour)
5. Add the egg and vanilla next, making sure to beat in well. 
6. Mix in 1/3 cup of flour now and then add all of the milk making sure to blend well (I do this because if you add the milk directly to the mixture, the butter could start to freeze up.  I suppose if all of your ingredients are at room temperature this wouldn’t happen?).  Add the rest of the flour.
7. Dollap the batter gently over the pineapple so they don’t move out-of-place.  Then pour the rest of the batter over it.
8. Place in oven and bake for 45-55 minutes, it’ll be one when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
9. Remove from oven and place a large heat proof plate over the pan and invert it.  Let it rest for a bit so all of the caramel can drip down.  (When I did this, a few pieces of pineapple remained in the pan, so I had to remove them and place them on the cake… but no one could really tell)
10. We ate it warm, and I don’t know about storing and what not because we ate the whole thing

Diet Coke

At this moment, at 4:07 am, these are the things that make me happy:

• North and South (4 part mini-series)
• Chai
• Diet Coke
• Pandora

Because sometimes, life really is just that simple.

Godiva Hot Chocolate

We went to the Rockefeller center today and bought hot chocolate from Godiva that cost $3.75+ tax: Chocolixir. It’s my sister’s favorite and she had been looking forward to it all day. There are very few things that can give my sister simple pleasure as this hot chocolate can; her smile and enthusiasm is totally worth the price of an 8 oz drink.

Godiva makes a hot chocolate that is wonderfully rich and creamy, complex and sophisticated.  However, when you strip away the company, the fancy name and the polysyllabic adjectives, you’re left with chocolate and cream.  When you strip everything away, you realize that it’s quality not quantity.  Everything may be stripped down to its basics, allowing you to evaluate if something like hot chocolate is worth spending $3.75+ tax on.  Godiva has marketed their hot chocolate as a ‘Chocolixir;’ according to Google dictionary, an elixir is a liquid that is considered to have magical powers.  And I personally think that the happiness my sister can get from something so simple as hot chocolate is pure magic.  She remembers it as being, ‘worth holding out for.’  In the end, it’s about happiness and things that you deem ‘worth holding out for’  and when you find out what those things are, you can find your own little cup of happiness.

Candy Canes

So….

Seasons Greetings!

My room mate and I would like to point out the fact that there are only 10 days left until Christmas (:

Spinach pasta

So, I have final at 8:00 am which I have to get to by 7:45.
That leaves me an hour and fourty-five minutes to study.
And I’m stressing.

When I’m really stressed out there are two things that really help me feel better. One of them is cooking. I love cooking, but being a sophomore in college, I really don’t have the time. Usually I end up eating the food that my mother froze and sent for me. Some times I’ll eat out, but more often then not, I make do with an apple and a bowl of cereal.
Anyways, I don’t have the resouces most of the time to put things together. My mother made sure to have my spice cabinet stocked with the essentials. However, raw materials, such as tomatoes and potatoes are hard to come by. Therefore, I try to make do with what I have. I had three Roma tomatoes left over from my mother’s insistance to have some in the house and a package of frozen spinach from when I made Mushroom and spinach pasta for the boys. I also had some angel hair pasta from when I made pesto pasta as well….

Spinach pasta
Serves 2-3 people

Yum! I love spinach

Ingredients*:
3 roma tomatoes
1 packet frozen spinach
1 table spoon of garlic powder**
1 table spoon of onion power **
Salt and pepper to taste
½ a pound of angel hair pasta

Directions:
a) In a pot, bring water to boil. Salt the water and add some oil to keep it from sticking to itself. Add pasta and cook until el dente.
b) If spinach block is not thawed, place in microwave at medium heat for 10 minutes
c) While all of that stuff is happening, take a non stick skillet and add half a cup of pasta water and let that come to a boil.
d) Chop up the tomatoes as much as you can and then add them to the skillet
e) Add garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper lower heat to a simmer and cover until the tomatoes dissolve.
f) Add spinach, stir and recover and let it simmer again until spinach cooks all the way through
g) Add pasta add cheese (I had pepper jack deli slices so I cut that up and mixed that in; parmesan would go well I think)
h) Eat plain (I ate it with sriracha sauce)

*note: this is just what I had lying around, I’m sure you could add whatever/substitute whatever
**The I’m just guessing that’s how much I put in; I don’t really use measuring cups and what not

Anyways, it turned out okay… but now I REALLY need to go and study…. I get done with my finals on Thursday. And I am just looking to the future… to Thursday.

More cyber cookies

I just downloaded Windows 7, and I’ve had a hard time adjusting to it.

Real updates to come at a later date

Cyber Cookies

Sometimes I do things that make me want to kick myself later. I went shopping on Black Friday, and while I like what I bought, I was unhappy when I got home. I think that when we make splurge purchases, we feel like it’s justified. We somehow rationalize in our head that whatever we bought was something we needed or deserved for whatever reason. However, when you’ve made that purchase and take it home, you have time to step back and get out of your retail high. When you’ve finally cleared your head of the flashing lights and ‘for sale’ signs, you may come to the realization that whatever you purchased wasn’t something you needed or deserved.

Anyways, I ended up buying a pair of jeans that didn’t have a tag on them and so I got charged an extra five dollars. Secondly, I went online to the store’s website and I did the math, apparently whatever my sister and I bought from that particular store equaled about seventy dollars in the store. Online, however, the items were cheaper and there was not tax to take into consideration. Likewise, if we were to buy the things online, the website has free shipping on orders over seventy-five dollars. Therefore, I want to return what I bought from the store to the store and buy those same items online with something for my brother as well. My concern is that the jeans without the tags may not be returnable.

But then again, is it really worth it? Is ten dollars really worth all of that trouble? I think that everyone has to judge that for themselves. I think that I’m feeling really guilty for spending that much money because I hardly spend money in general, and I definitely don’t spend money on clothes. I suppose I’ll consult the parental units and see what they have to say, I hope they agree with me returning the items; for some reason, that five dollars is really eating away at my conscious.