Mothers Day Brownies

Three weeks ago, NPR had, on their Facebook feed, a recipe for Decadent Chocolate Brownies. The recipe contained ingredients I had on hand, meaning no extra trip to the store. That's always a good thing. I did buy ice cream when I first encountered the recipe, in anticipation of making brownies but didn't make them until today.

It was different. First you had to line a loaf pan with parchment paper.

Usually, if you use parchment paper, you also grease the paper. This recipe didn't have you do that. My paper is old. It's been around awhile, but it was still good to use.

I didn't realize this was a loaf pan size amount. That should have been a clue that these weren't your average brownies. I gathered all the ingredients and started baking. Step 2 was to melt semi-sweet chocolate chips and butter.

This is what the directions told you to do. Put a glass bowl over simmering water in a pot. It was nice that they didn't assume everyone has a double boiler. I used to have one but I think Carole took the bottom part of it years ago when she moved west. You wind up adding the rest of the ingredients to the melted chocolate so these directions keep the amount of dishes to a minimum.

It takes a bit to get it going but once the chocolate starts to melt, you need to continually stir it to keep it from burning. Mmmmmm. Melted chocolate.

Once the chocolate is melted, you add the other ingredients, one at a time. The recipe called for white and brown sugar. My brown sugar could have been used to pound nails. A quick internet search and I had soft brown sugar. I've put it in an air tight container but the best thing would be to use it up within a month of purchase. Yeah, well, that's probably not going to happen, so I'll go with the air tight container.

This gets poured into the prepared pan.

It's a lovely glossy brown, which is what it should look like, but it's not very much. The loaf is put in the oven for 35 minutes. The house begins to smell heavenly.

I thought, although my knowledge of brownies told me otherwise, the batter might rise so what I put in the pan might get bigger. It didn't. I have a loaf of brownies. They are cooled for a half-hour and then here it gets weird. You put them in the fridge and chill them further 2 hours. The time at the top of the recipe is not accurate for preparation. It says 45 minutes when that's not even close when you consider 30 minutes to bake and 30 minutes to cool BEFORE sticking them in the fridge. I was beginning to wonder about these.

After 2 hours, I took the loaf out of the fridge and dumped it on the counter, peeling off the paper.

It's a loaf, of baked brownie batter, a loaf. The ends and sides were dry and hard to the touch. I carved off an end piece.

The hunk is soft and gooey on the inside but dry and hard on the sides. I wound up slicing the ends off because I couldn't gnaw through them.

Perhaps raccoons would appreciate these, but I haven't seen a raccoon since last fall so I don't think I want to tempt them back. I was very disappointed by this because it's a half-inch of brownie no one can eat.

How does it taste? Well, if you can overlook the dry, crusty, exceptionally hard ends, they aren't bad. I warmed up a chunk and it went very well with vanilla ice cream. But, the bottom line is this is an awful recipe.

I saved the rest of the loaf and will see how it fares. I put it in a freezer bag and stuck the bag in the fridge. Will it dry out quickly?

I have other brownie recipes with a couple more ingredients or a few more steps that make better brownies and more of them. I am certain you can type "Brownie recipe" into any search engine and get a recipe that even a beginner can make. The ones made with cocoa can be just as rich as melting chocolate and butter together. This was a huge disappointment.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

Comfort Food

It's kind of overused to call this a "brutal" winter. At least we don't have the snow here that we did last year. It's just cold. Cold I can deal with, especially when I can make comfort food.

It was on sale for $1.50 a box. I think that comes very close to the cost of making them from scratch. What could be more comforting than warm brownies on a cold winter night.

Everything gets dumped into one bowl.

As advertised, the mix comes with chocolate pieces. Some were chunks and some were chips. There is a pouch of fudge which is added to the batter. You add an egg, 1/2 cup of oil and 3 tablespoons of water.

I found it humorous that the directions tell you to beat the batter for 50 strokes. Usually, it says "beat until moist". I guess they found that giving people a set number of strokes results in a more consistent product. The bottom of the pan is greased and the batter poured into the prepared pan. You bake the brownies at 350 for 35 to 37 minutes.

While they are baking, lick the bowl. It could be argued that one of the reasons I bake is to eat the batter. You wouldn't be completely wrong, but I think the combination of batter and baked good is best.

They look like brownies should look. There is a thin cracked crust and they rose just a bit. My pan is 8.5 by 6.5 so I got thick brownies. If you use a 9x9 pan, which the box says can be used, they would be thin. I guess it's all in how you like your brownies.

I cut the pan into quarters. I discovered that the 37 minutes allotted was not enough. The bottom was still batter. So, I was making fries at the time and stuck the pan back in the 450 oven for another 10 minutes. That cooked them all the way through. If I do this again, I'll go for 40-45 minutes.

They smelled wonderful. The batter tasted good. I can't call it "great" because it did taste somewhat artificial. There is a difference in taste when you make it on your own than when it comes from a box due to food preservation laws. You'd think it would just be chocolate pieces, cocoa, flour and sugar, but there was something else. Probably anti-clumping additives. It wasn't a bad taste, but it didn't taste like brownies composed of flour, sugar and cocoa.

They didn't hold up as well as homemade, however. They aren't the kind you wrap in plastic and send with lunch. By the time you get to lunch, they will be in pieces. The chocolate chips and chunks weren't as many as it appears when I dumped in the pouch. I thought about adding more and I should have. I think these also would have benefitted from the addition of walnuts. The chocolate flavor was consistent but I wonder how much the fudge sauce contributes to the flavor. "Real" brownies don't need that sauce to be chocolate.

I could just eat them plain, but warm, from the oven brownies just scream for ice cream. I was worried I didn't have any. But, I moved a bag of peas and there was a pint of Haagen Das vanilla bean ice cream; the perfect complement to chocolate brownies. This can be supper on a cold, cold winter night.

So, if you're in the market for brownies and don't want to take the hour to make homemade ones, and you see this on sale for $2.50 or less, it's worth it. You don't get a 9x13 pan of them unless you buy two boxes. They won't be as dense as the photo on the box or as you're used to but they are fine for an afternoon or evening treat. They tasted great and warm, with ice cream, it was very satisfying. Don't buy them if you are looking for a heap of chocolate. They aren't that chocolaty. Buy them if you want a quick treat.

Beverage:  Irish Breakfast Tea

Deb

Vacation-What I Ate

One of my friends, half jestingly, asked where the food post was. "You always post about the foods you eat when you go somewhere. It's October and I'm waiting to read about the food you ate on vacation." A wee bit late, here it is.

The way out and back is defined by what's fast, easy to get into and out of to facilitate travel, and what I feel like eating. I have my preferences and I tend to be a creature of habit with regards to those. Therefore, Arby's was my fast food restaurant of choice.

I find that a roast beef or one of their deli sandwiches fills me up and doesn't make me feel like it's same old same old.

A deli sandwich is far messier to eat while moving, unlike the roast beef. Plus, they have Dr Pepper, which puts any restaurant far above the competition.

Once I got to Richmond, we decided to go out on Friday night. Carole's friend, Larry, had never been to a Red Robin Restaurant. We had one in Wheaton for a long time.

Larry was thrilled when he could order a Guinness.

You have no idea. He wasn't going to order a beer in my presence, as he knows I can't have alcohol, but I'm not usually affected anymore by people drinking around me. I really wanted one. Larry did let me sniff it. So many memories.

I ordered a wrapped sandwich.

I believe it contained an Americanize Oriental-sounding mixture. It was good, but that is the sorriest looking fruit salad I have ever seen. It advertised that it had been made, at the very least, at 9 a.m., if not the day before. Diced fruit never keeps well over long hours. I don't pretend to understand how a restaurant can gauge how much of x they need to prepare for a day. Some days, there could be a run on fruit salad. I'm thinking this wasn't one of those days.

Dessert was chocolate, of course.

This is a warm brownie with vanilla ice cream, strawberry compote and hot fudge. It was okay, if not anything new. The strawberries in the compote had a firmer texture than the strawberries in the salad.
 
On Sunday, we stopped at Tortilla Coast-Capitol South.

This restaurant is across the street from the Capitol South metro station. They had brunch going when we got there. We started with their freshly made tortilla chips and salsa. I'm not one for salsa but the chips were good, crunchy, with a hint of something, maybe lime, and just the right amount of saltiness.

I tried their Cap'n Crunch covered French Toast.

The slices were large. I couldn't eat all of slice number three. It was an interesting taste combination. Served with maple syrup, I felt that it was borderline too sweet. The fruit was a very nice addition.

On Monday, we met Jon for dinner at Keagan's Restaurant.

It's located in an area of Glen Allen where the streets are brick, approximating an "old towne", with the "e", feel to it.

There's a very large Whole Foods two blocks from Keagan's. I'm not convinced brick streets do anything more than give a fakeness to an area, but that's just me. If the stores lining the street are places I want to go, then sure, it's nice, but if the street construction is an excuse for higher than usual rents and general snobbery, then you can have the noise and the upkeep.

Given what I know about road construction, a brick lined road requires more intense maintenance than brick inscribed asphalt, which is what downtown Wheaton went with. It looks just like the old brick street that used to be in downtown, but survives Illinois winters much better. I suppose that makes me something of a snob, too, in a reverse manner.

The allure of Keagan's is it's Irish/Scottish/Celtic vibe. I saw Black Watch and Royal Stewart kilts, mini-skirts, actually, on all the servers. I wondered, if you were Scottish and had a specific kilt, would you be allowed to wear it? Thankfully, I didn't see the gals wearing sporrans, even in a modified state. A sporran is the pouch that is worn on the front of a man's kilt. It can be considered the Scottish equivalent of a large pocket or even a purse. I have seen women wearing them, but it's not part of the woman's dress.

The food here was good. We started with warm pretzel appetizers.

Technically, this would be a German food, but we won't dither about that. They were soft and chewy and the mustard at the top, the "brown-style", was a great compliment to the pretzels.

I continued with the pretzel idea with my sandwich.

This is a deli thin-sliced ham, turkey and swiss cheese sandwich on a pretzel roll with warm baked apple compote. We were eating outside on the terrace. It was a delightfully warm evening as the rain from Sunday had passed and this just filled the bill. No, I don't eat onions and only rarely add any kind of sauce to my sandwich.

Dessert was a let-down. It sounded interesting in the menu.

These are balls of deep-fried peanut butter cookie dough. Deep-fried anything is a staple of the Iowa and Texas state fairs. You name it, they have deep-fried it. Perhaps the intent was to create something unique. Perhaps the intent was to ride in on the coattails of the deep-fried bandwagon. Whatever the reason, these were not good. The dough inside was tough and chewy. I suppose that exemplifies the "raw" nature of the interior. I'm not sure if I was to dip the spoonful of dough into the ice cream or eat the ice cream as a chaser. I make better peanut butter cookie dough than that contained in these globs. In the end, I wound up eating 3 of them and the ice cream and claiming I was full. They were just not good.

Beyond that, I had Pizza Hut pizza and cooked a meal for Carole. The route home was marked by a lunch stop at an Arby's in West Virginia and, as a pick-me-up, a McDonald's along the Ohio Turnpike.

That's a plain ol' McDonald's hot fudge sundae. At 4 p.m., that was all that I wanted.

In the grand annals of culinary vacations, this wasn't one of them. I ate familiar. Sometimes, consistency in presentation and taste is what you're looking for.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb

Best Spent Dollar

Saturday was the day of errands. I was out of kitty litter and the cat food was getting low. Gotta buy both when they are on sale.

We're getting close to the Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day Telethon. Tie ins asking you to buy something to support MDA are starting to appear in stores. I've crossed paths with them several times already. At Dominicks, they were offering up root beer floats for a buck "donation". These kinds of things strike me as just a bit on the shady side. I'm fairly certain the store employee serving up the float would not give you one if you didn't play a dollar. But, if you are buying the float, they have to charge sales tax which diminishes the return to MDA, which, in reality, isn't as much as this feel good gesture would have you think it is. So, they call it a "donation" even though you have to pay it to get the float. It was a root beer float in an 8 ounce Solo cup.

There was a woman behind me which led to the anemic version of a float that I got. Root beer foams when it comes in contact with ice cream. If you do this right, you wait for the foam to die down a bit and then add more root beer so you get, effectively, 5-6 ounces of soda with 2-3 ounces of ice cream. But because the woman behind me started quizzing the guy about how he intended to prepare her float so as not to pass germs from dirty money, he didn't give my float the care she got. She made him take her money and change his latex gloves to scoop the ice cream and, as I was walking away, she demanded he change his gloves again to hold the 2 liter of root beer to pour it into the cup.

Nevertheless, the root beer had been chilled and the cold goodness, even only 4 ounces worth, was delightful on an August Saturday.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

I Thought I Was Out

Nope. There was one jar left on the shelves in the basement. This is, officially, the last jar of chocolate sauce purchased last year for Carole and David's wedding. Once this is gone, I will actually have to buy some from the store.

With the root beer gone, I have extra vanilla ice cream to use up before it gets that crystal stuff on it. I have had some with whipped cream and a cherry, but it's so much better with chocolate sauce. As it's the end of the month, I thought this would have to go on the grocery list. While taking stock of the boxes of pasta, I found this behind the farfalle.

Ever had chocolate covered pear slices? You slice a pear and warm the sauce. Then drizzle the sauce over the pears. Simple. If you get the biggest size pears you can, use an apple corer to remove the core and seeds. Peel the pear. Sit the pear upright on a plate. Put softened ice cream in the center hole and drizzle warmed chocolate sauce over the pear. Serve immediately. You can substitute whipped cream in the center hole too. I remember, a long time ago, Baskin Robbins made a pear flavored ice cream. I made this pear dessert with that ice cream in the center. It was divine. Hmmmm. I haven't been to a Baskin Robbins in ages. Wonder what 31 flavors they have now?

Excuse me. I need some ice cream with chocolate sauce.

Beverage:  Edinburgh's finest tea

Deb

Another Right of Summer

That's right. That's an A&W Root Beer Float. I bought the best vanilla ice cream I could find and let it sit out for about 10 minutes so it was soft on the sides. It was NOT Haagen Das. It wasn't even Oberweis. It was the Dominicks store brand. Just the right amount of vanilla for me and on sale when I got it. It will be perfect when I make cobbler, if I ever get around to doing that. I will have to eat it up because you know ice cream gets funny when it has those crystals on the top of it. But, I digress.

My before the holiday grocery shopping included this soda. It's July 4th. Root beer, in case you don't know, is a distinctly American invention. You will not find it in Great Britain. Well, you might find it in stores catering to an American audience, but the average Englishman or woman has never heard of this, least of all tasted it. The last time we went to England, in 1996, we took along a can of root beer, A&W, to be exact, to be shared with my late pen pal and her family. It was put in the fridge and, a day later, when it was all nicely chilled, we opened the top as you would open a bottle of wine. The can was passed around the table and everyone got a whiff.

"Ewwww."

"Gross."

"Well, that's ... um ... different."

"You actually drink this?"

Then, we poured a swallow or two into glasses for everyone and had them take a taste. I remember the kids trying to hold their noses while drinking it. I think they all swallowed. I don't actually remember. We were thanked for a distinctly American soda and the three of us; my ex, Carole and I, split the rest of the can. My pen pal's family watched in astonishment as we actually drank our share down in one gulp. I think we mentioned that we pour the beverage over ice cream which garnered stares of "Yes, they are mad but she's mum's friend so we'll be polite."

With the power going out July 1st, I didn't get around the the root beer float until yesterday. I don't have a frosty mug. I have these tall glasses I got in college which are distinctly collector's items now. Two scoops of vanilla ice cream and fill the rest of the glass with root beer. Scoop off the foam and let it settle a bit and add more root beer. When you have half ice cream and half  root beer, find the last straw you have in the house, take the glass and go sit in the living room with  a cat sticking her nose into the foam because obviously, what you have is something she has to have. Once she leaves, savor the flavor.

It was 98 outside yesterday afternoon but who cares. I had a root beer float. Quintessential summer. Plus, there's more ice cream and root beer to use up although I'm out of straws.

Beverage:  water

Deb

That's Not Where I Need the Help

Saturday was grocery shopping day. I started making a list two weeks ago. As I would go through the fridge looking for ingredients for suppers, I'd encounter their absence. I want to bake things for friends. I'm out of sugar and chocolate chips. I polished off my last bit of cereal last Wednesday. I was down to, roughly, a pound of hamburger, oatmeal, a can of tomato sauce, 6 eggs and frozen corn. I knew I needed to shop. It wasn't just food. No toilet paper or toothpaste. No laundry detergent or toilet bowl cleaner. No dish soap. It all adds up.

I wound up taking advantage of some sales. The big bag of cat food was on sale. Now, I don't NEED cat food. I wouldn't NEED cat food until probably late July. But, by buying it now, when it's on sale, I won't need to get cat food until Labor Day. Bread. Buy 1, get 1 free. I can freeze bread. A big box of Golden Grahams cereal for $2. I have this recipe for bread that uses this cereal. It's really good. Now I can make it. And with July 4th upcoming, my splurges were nachos, white cheddar popcorn, Root Beer, Dr Pepper and vanilla ice cream to make ice cream floats. It wound up being a lot of stuff.

Would you like help to your car ma'am?

No. Where I need the help is once I get home. I'd like someone to haul it into the house and put it away.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

So You Don't Have To

Wendy's sent me an email about a new item added to their menu this month. I don't remember how I got on their email list but it's interesting to see how they put a spin on fast food to make it "healthy". As June is the time strawberries start showing up in abundance, I expect to see more places with strawberry infused items. I decided I'd try it out on the way home from the book fair. I like strawberries. I like ice cream. I like shortcake. I like Wendy's value menu. It seemed like a decent enough marriage of items.

This is what I got. Now, granted the photo is blurry but it's because it was 89 when I went through the drive through on my way home. I knew that blob of whipped cream spilling out of the top of the container was not going to be intact by the time I drove a half mile home. If I wanted a photo of how it looks when you're handed the parfait, I had to stop and take a photo in the parking lot. Once I did that, I ate the whipped cream.

So, how it is? Wellllll....It's $1.69 and that's what you get. It's Wendy's vanilla ice cream and strawberry syrup with a topping of real diced strawberries, shortcake cut into squares like croutons and topped with whipped cream. In order to keep the price low, there are no strawberries in the layers below the top. Nor are there shortcake croutons in the middle. By the time you eat the top and get to the middle, it's mostly vanilla ice cream.

The strawberry syrup seems poured down the side of the cup more than layered like Dairy Queen would do with their strawberry shortcake sundaes. In the drive to make this reasonably priced, it's not much beyond the top. For a quick snack and for under $2.00, it's adequate. Just don't be expecting much after you eat the topping.

So, there you have it. It's not horrible and, if you wanted one, there really isn't anything to compare with it at this price range. I won't be ordering it again. I think I should make real pound cake and cover it with real strawberries dusted with sugar to make real syrup and cover that with real whipped cream. It would probably cost the same and be ever more satisfying.

Beverage:  Huckleberry tea

Deb

A Yes and A Probably Not

The visit by Carole and David gave me the opportunity to cook a full meal. When you live alone, you cook what you need. The idea of a full meal, with dessert, rarely comes into my radar and I have a bazillion recipes for pies, bars, cookies, cakes, etc, that I've saved over the years which I would love to try. Their visit gave me a chance to try something quick and new in the dessert category.

The criteria was simple. It had to be quick to make. I'm spending an hour with meatloaf and cottage fries. I want a quick, tasty dessert. I stumbled across a recipe for microwave cherry cobbler. 15 minute prep time and 15 minute cooking time.

It went together quickly as it's a can of cherry pie filling topped with a streusel topping. That's brown sugar, oatmeal, butter and cinnamon. Into the microwave it went to cook for the 15 minutes stated in the recipe. The smell of cooking meatloaf and cooking cobbler was heavenly.

I wasn't all that impressed when I pulled it out of the microwave. Maybe it's the nature of this that the fruit filling will bubble up over the top. Maybe I didn't spread the topping out around the edges evenly. It smelled good, however, even if it didn't look quite right.

We didn't have dessert for several hours. I bought vanilla Oberweis ice cream as you just can't serve cobbler naked. Well, you can, but it's so much better with a dollop of vanilla ice cream on top. The streusel topping was hard to cut through to scoop out a serving. We had to let the ice cream melt a bit into the topping in order to cut through it. I looked back at the recipe and I did everything exactly as it said but the topping, while edible, was very hard. The only thing going for this recipe is that it's quick to prepare. I'm not going to save it as I can make any number of good cobblers the old-fashioned way, by preparing fresh fruit and baking it. It only makes 4 servings so I had cobbler for lunch the next week, minus the ice cream since I can't seem to keep ice cream solid in my lunch box. Warmed, it was okay.

I was going to make a snack cake for the kids to take with them on their trip back. That didn't get done. I baked that last night. This is an old standby that I used to make a lot of when Carole was in school.

It's called "Grape Applesauce Cake". It's got grape juice and applesauce in it. The batter is delicious and, once baked, it creates a moist, solid cake ideal for taking along on lunches. Cover warm cake with vanilla ice cream and, yeah, I should have made this instead.

I cut the 9x13 pan of cake into pieces, put the pieces in bags and tossed the bags into the freezer. I have cake for at least 2 weeks, although I will be out of ice cream in another week. The horror!

So, I won't make the microwave cobbler ever again and, if I'm craving cake, I just need to have grape juice and applesauce in the cupboard to whip this up.

Beverage:  Edinburgh's Finest tea

Deb

Sold

It's funny the attachment we have to things. It's been so hard to divorce myself from the emotions I have when I look at those two rings. They reminded me of a happier time, a time when even if life was difficult, there was someone who shared the natural ups and downs. Perhaps the inability to let go of these reflected my wish that life would be like that again. I am lonely, sometimes oppressively so, and wish I came home to "Hi, how was your day?" instead of meows.

So, in spite of gold being in the sky-high neighborhood and the proximity of someone who will pay me a very good price for it, it's been very, very, extremely hard to walk into the store, hand them these rings and say, "I'd like to sell them." There's so much emotion tied up in two small rings.

Saturday, I did it. It was number one on my list of things to do. I had to get more Terro because the ants were back after a week's hiatus, not in the same thousands but 3 or 4 running around the counter mean there are hundreds waiting back at the nest for a report. I told myself that I couldn't go to the hardware store to get Terro until I had sold the rings. I have more than enough money for Terro but this way, I forced myself to pull into the lot, get out of the car and walk into the jeweler.

It was quite hard to do, actually. I got involved in a video upload project to YouTube. I have all these movies of my WOW guild's events that I want to get up on our guild web site. Then, I can burn the originals to CD/DvD and erase them from my computer, freeing up a lot of memory. Some of the videos are quite long so I get one started uploading and I go off and do something else.

Dragging my feet? Sure. Of course I was and I knew it. I acknowledge this is hard. This is getting rid of a part of my life. Never mind that it will make my current life better, I am selling a part of myself. But, eventually, I reached a point where I had to go out. I also had emailed an incorrect time sheet and needed to go to the office to correct it. I told myself I couldn't correct it until I'd sold my rings.

It was a painless process. I also brought in a couple of rings I've had but I don't wear. They took the bottom one but not the top one. The gal said that although the top ring is stamped 10k gold, it is not. She recommended that, if I wanted to get rid of it, a pawn shop is a good place. "You won't get a lot for it, but if you don't wear it at all, something is better than it sitting around in a drawer. It's a pretty ring and someone might like it. Or, you could try Ebay."

They took the rings, stones and all. I walked out with a very nice check. One 10k ring and 2 14k rings yielded more than I was expecting. I told myself I would be happy with enough for a tank of gas. This was much more than a tank of gas.

I have a pair of earrings and a necklace with blue topaz stones in them. They are probably 10k gold but I do occasionally wear earrings and necklaces. Rings just won't fit on my fingers anymore.

So, it's done. It wasn't as painful as I thought it would be. They were very nice in the jewelry store. I put the check they gave me straight into the bank, went to Dominicks and got myself some Dr Pepper and vanilla ice cream. I figured I could treat myself to a Dr Pepper float.

Beverage:  Huckleberry tea

Deb

Of Course I Would Celebrate

Today is National Ice Cream Day.

Oberweis Vanilla Ice Cream. Ghirardelli Chocolate Sauce, walnuts, whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles and maraschino cherries. 

Beverage:  None

Deb

Apple Banana Cake

This is so good warm with Oberweise vanilla ice cream.

Shredded apples and mashed bananas create a very dense, moist cake with a wonderful flavor. I found the recipe online. 

This starts another theme, just so you know. 

Beverage:  Scottish Blend tea

Deb

A remnant of summer

Over Labor Day weekend, I finally made the Southern Blackberry Cobbler recipe I've had stuck to the fridge since seeing it in the paper in July. Blackberries were still available. It calls for a single crust pastry for the top. Rather than make pie crust myself, I thought I'd just buy the pie crust sticks I remember being available in the freezer at the grocery.

I couldn't find them. So, I bought a pie crust, thawed it and tried to get it to fit across the top of the pan. You can see the result was less than smooth. Do they make pie crust sticks anymore?

The end result, warmed in the microwave and topped with french vanilla ice cream was heavenly. This recipe is definitely a "keeper". I finished the last bit last night, for supper, instead of eating the hamburger and cottage fries I'd made on Tuesday. We're so busy and I'm so tired, I'm choosing convenience over cooking.

I still have some ice cream. Guess I need to look into apple crisp or cobbler to use that up.

Beverage: Water

Deb

Sunday baking

April and Perry are coming this weekend! I think it's been a year since we were last together. Perry was getting some training and was in Downers Grove and we got together with he and his friend, Richard, for food and games.

April has a convention in Lincolnshire and Perry gets to tag along.

On Saturday, Jon, April, Perry, Richard and his wife, Lifcha, will come to my house for games and food or food and games or food and food. I'm excited. I haven't had a reason to cook more than tuna melts. The menu is slated to be hobo suppers, raspberry applesauce salad, cole slaw, potato salad, chips and warm blueberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream. We'll have soda and Perry is bringing bottles of his homemade mead.

I got started on Sunday with chocolate chip orange muffins. I had a bag of mini chocolate chips. The recipe was an old one I had never made and, as I really need a grocery visit, one for which I had all the ingredients on hand. They are good but they need more orange for my tastes.

I also made Fresh Strawberry Muffins. This recipe is, essentially, coarsely chopped strawberries held together with batter. There is a hint of nutmeg in them which makes them so good.

April is allergic to chocolate so I think, once I finish washing the muffin tins tonight, I'll make some Cinnamon Topped Muffins for Saturday.

I love muffins. I love to have lots in the freezer. They make excellent breakfasts and two is plenty to have with your morning juice or milk. And they freeze so well.

Now if someone would answer me this, why is it that when I make muffins, I always get more than the recipe says it makes? I stir just until moistened. The batter is still lumpy. Yet, invariably, the amount of muffin batter can be 1/2 to 2 times greater than what the recipe says it makes. The chocolate chip recipe said it made 18. I got 30. The strawberry one made the dozen listed only because I made sure the cups were filled to the brink.

Technically, I'm not complaining because it means I have more muffins than expressed in the recipe. It's just that on days when I go on a muffin baking binge, I run out of muffin tins before I run out of batter.

MMMMMMMMMMMM. I think couple of warmed muffins with butter would be good tonight.

Beverage: Pepsi

Deb