Chilly Day Update

Hello on this chilly day my friends,

Since you can tell from the lack of post Friday, I really have nothing to write about lately, I also really don't have anything for to day so I'm gonna take a page from Julie Wunder at Running in a Skirt and tell you about what things are going on in my life right now and the stuff I'm into.

Weather: We got really spoiled with some beautiful weather, I ventured outside for pictures, sadly still was too muddy to do much.  Then last night the temps started to drop and we got a light dusting of snow.  Thankfully it wasn't enough to cause issue on the infamous hill road and freeze it. See our road is mostly a hill and there's one section that barely gets any sun during the winter, so it tends to stay iced up bad after a snow.
I also want to extend my condolences to the families affected by the tornadoes yesterday, I pray God sends you the help you need and strength.

What Am I Watching?: Apart from my regular shows my TV has been going from the Cooking Channel and Food Network to the Destination America channel I think the latter shows a lot reruns of Travel Channel stuff, and maybe other things in that family of channels. Online I've been watching Critical Roll I'm still making my way through the first campaign. I love watching this group play D & D.

Gaming: On the computer I've been playing Dungeon Lords, which is proving difficult, not because of technical difficulties, but mostly cause there's a function where you can resurrect yourself, but it costs. Each time you do it it'll take a stat like strength or intelligence, well I did it one to many time now my strength is low and I'm having to build it back up.
On my tablet I'm playing Guild of Heroes, it's a nice little game to play when I'm feeling bored, and I seem to be having better luck than the other one. Well I was not doing so hot right now.

Misadventures in Cooking:  Besides some crock pot cooking, I've really been enjoying a new way of eating my noodles. I was sitting at my computer wondering what I could eat, and then it hit me wonder how Ranch would taste with them. So I did a web search, of course Hidden Valley® as did Mr. Food® and Myrecipies.com. I just cooked the noodle tossed and instead of seasoning added a little butter and ranch.

Books: Besides my Bible and quarterly I'm not really reading anything right now, I have four books I'm waiting for at the library but each is a long wait time, I may have to clean out in front of my bookshelf where I have a bunch of yet to reads and read something from there.

What are you guys up to? Hope it's warmer where you are. I hope you all have a good week, don't cause too much trouble, and may God bless you!

Ninja <[0000]---------------[0000]> Writer, Vampire >vv< Kitty, and Mousey~C>

St. Patrick's Day 2018

 Happy frozen Thursday friends,

This past Saturday was St. Patrick's Day. As I promised I was gonna give you the skinny on the holiday so here it is.

Artsy Fartsy Time: Shamrock Card
I didn't get too artsy with my St. Patrick's giftings. I got some St. Patrick's Day Necklaces from Dollar Tree® and decided to make Shamrock cards. I got a pack of Hot Neon Colors construction paper, it's apparently the only paper I could find with green in it. I cut out a shamrock pattern then followed it on the green. I folded it in half, then I used the Irish toasts and blessings I found on Sassy Cat's St. Patrick's Day Page on the inside, I kinda miss the days of these old webpages,  and a special message for whoever I was making it for. I decorated the front of the card using some St. Patrick's Day Stickers from Dollar Tree®.

 Misadventures in Cooking: St. Patrick's Day Supper

Besides watching Disney Channel's Luck of the Irish, we made a Irish inspired meal. While I don't know how Irish this meal actually is in recent years I try to spearhead a St. Patrick's Day meal for my family. First up my Mom did most the work in the Colcannon, which was inspired by Diane's Colcannon recipe,  we never put cabbage in it, and we didn't have bacon, but we we did have bacon grease to cook the onions in.

Onions cooking on the stove is heavenly

Colcannon!

Mom decided we needed some green for out meal so we cooked some beans:

Our meat was a simple  Bristol Brand cooked ham we microwaved:

This makes my third year attempting Brennan's Irish Soda Bread. This year I not only cut back the cooking time, but split the dough into two loaves. this year I can say I was successful, little crusty on the outside, but it wasn't complete over or under cooked.
 

A beautiful meal!

Can't forget Momma's Cake!

I hope those you that celebrate had a good St. Patrick's Day, keep warm, and may God bless you!
Ninja <[0000]---------------[0000]> Writer

A Summer Gathering and Momma's Cooking

Hello friends if your in the summer climate as I am right now, I hope you're keeping cool. Earlier this month in the States we had the Fourth of July (Independence Day), yes way overdue writing this. We celebrated with a cookout, an event that usually is just involved Fangirl coming up, the Folk, and me, but this year my sister and I'll call her June Bug decided to bring their brood, making it a total of 8 people.

This caused my Mother to have to conjure up an alternative dessert plan. She off the bat created a new cake recipe that I call: Mom's Improv 4th of July Cake. Though don't let the title fool you it'd be great at any time. I don't have any pictures, it's a pretty simple cake, but I will share the recipe I originally posted on Gilded Wings:


Mom's Improv 4th of July Cake

Ingredients:

Berry Mix:
1 Cup Sugar
1 to 1 1/2 cup of Blueberries
1 to 1 1/2 cup of Strawberries (crushed)

Cake Mix:
2 Cups of flour
1 Cup of Sugar
1 Teaspoon of Vanilla
2 Eggs
1/2 cup of cooking oil
1/2 cup of evaporated milk (mixed with 1/2 cup of water)

Also:
Whip Cream
Cooking Spray
Preheat oven to 350

Instructions:

Preparing Your Berry Mix

Add your blue berries and strawberries to a bowl. Pour in the sugar and stir it all up. Let it set for an hour to two hours, stirring every 30 minutes till it forms a juice.

Preparing Your Cake Mix

First add the dry ingredients (the flour and sugar), then add the wet ingredients (everything else). Then stir till you get a smooth, well mixed batter.

Let's Mix These Two Mixes

Once your juice has formed strain out the berries into the cake batter. SAVE THE JUICE!
Mix the berries into your batter.

Bake Creation Bake!

Spray a 9 X 13 cake pan, and pour in the batter. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Test doneness with a toothpick.

After Baking
Once the cake is out of the oven, and still hot take spoonfuls of the berry juice you saved and spoon it all over the cake. MAKE SURE YOU SAVE AT LEAST HALF OF THE JUICE! Now let it cool down.

Nom Nom

Cut up the cake however you wish. Serve your cake piece topped with whipped cream. Finish by drizzling some of your remaining juice over it.

Enjoy!


After our feasting, we all went outside to enjoy the fireworks. My sister's brood had brought some glow sticks and a balls. June Bug made her a crown out of glowing periwinkle ring. She was like queen of the rave! Ok not really, but maybe the glow queen of the cookout.

There was one point I was sitting on the porch edge in the dying day watching my sister play catch with the boys as lighting bug, or you may call them fire flies (I think both names are beautiful), an I was like this was definantly almost like the quenticenal american Summer/Fourth of July. If it wasn't already cliche enough we later roasted marshmellows for s'mores over the grill's charcoal that was still burning.

I'm also going to remember it as the Forth we had watermelon out our ears. See as part of our usual Fourth menu we have watermelon, so my parents bought one. Well her comes my sister with one, which we used for out cookout, then my Grandparents up the road called saying they was gonna have to send the rest of their melon to us cause some rencent dental work was making it hard for them to eat it. So my sister and me had to get it. There was a half plus about 3/4's of another half we carried back along with bags of onions, yes there was qoting of Dirty Dancing after this. Needless to say our guests went home with Melon, cause our was untouched in the fridge. Actually I was eating that melon, when I wrote this back on the 11thm we still had half of it at that time.

I guess before I go I'll post this one summery type craft thing I fell in love with. I mean this post is summer related. It's a tutorial for Solar Color Changing Ombre Converse Sneakers from the Dream A Little Bigger Blog, props to Epbot's post for me finding it. I think that would be cool, or heck even getting regular paint and coloring up some shoes ombre style would be awesome. Though I don't know about this particular brand of flats, I know certain flat bottom tennis shoes are not the best protect on our gravel/rock drive way, and if you step on a single piece of sharp gravel in them, it's about as bad as if you did it barefooted.

Well I hope you have a good weekend friends and enjoy the summertime. God Bless You Guys!

Misadventures in Cooking: St Patrick's Day 2017

Ok so last month there was a day called St. Patrick's day and I don't know what happened, but It's like I just brain farted and zombied out about getting any posting on the blog done, plus I had to move blog hosts. So let's time travel back to last month for a couple posts.

I of course did some gift making and a dinner. I'll do an Artsy Fartsy Time post with my gift. But today's post is about the food. This year Mom and I tag teamed, only cause I took forever last year and having a Dad who's not only diabetic and has to go to bed when he has to go to bed things gotta be done quicker. Actually due to sleep schedules we did the meal and gifts the day after St. Patrick's Day, but that's fine I mean celebrating the Irish and your possible Irishness shouldn't be limited to one day.

So for the meat I didn't go all out I just decided canned ham. Yeah probably not the most Irish, but the only meat dish I could find online that wasn't corned beef was something similar to meatloaf, I thought that's what we had for Easter, next month, and I didn't wanna ruin Easter meal.

For the side dish I went with Diane's Colcannon again. My Mom actually did this dish, I cooked the bacon, yes this year it was more of a Colcannon, just no cabbage that was a purposeful omitting cause yeah not to keen on cabbage in the potatoes.

For the bread I did Brennan's Irish Soda Bread again. This year I took the suggestion from the recipe comments and did a less cooking time:

Bake my creation!!!!!

So pulled this large loaf out and it wasn't over cooked, but had a doughy section, even after I did the doneness test with my Mother watching to make sure I did it right! >< Yes I have so mediocre cooking skills that at 32 I still need adult supervision. -.- We're gonna make some more adjustments to this bread recipe. I mean the parts that turn out taste great. I just can't get it all to turn out.

Finished off with a homemade Mom cake, she makes one for pretty much every holiday and birthday.

So that's another Misadventures in Cooking. Next is an Artzy Fartsy Time segment feature this year's little St. Patrick crafted gift. God Bless You all!