B-Movie Star

Yep, I'm doing pretty good with the no gluten, no dairy diet.  I have discovered that I don't care for Hemp Milk, but Coconut and Almond is good . . . My dad even attempted to make me gluten free bread yesterday which was really nice of him. The loaves were a bit flat, but the taste was good. Add a bit of jelly and who cares how little the slice is!

Here's a quick and easy no-bake recipe for you and it's good even if you aren't eating gluten free.  I got it from the Chex website - did you know Chex is gluten free. Yeah, I even tried making meatloaf with it instead of using crackers or oatmeal to hold the meat together. Not too bad, but more experimentation is required before I can give you the recipe.

Ingredients:
6 cups Honey Nut Chex® cereal
1/2 cup honey-roasted peanuts
1/2 cup honey or light corn syrup

1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup dark chocolate chips

Directions:
Butter 9- or 8-inch square pan. In large bowl, mix cereal and peanuts; set aside.

In 3-quart saucepan, heat honey and sugar just to boiling over medium heat, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; stir in peanut butter until smooth. Pour over cereal mixture in bowl; stir gently until evenly coated. Press firmly in pan. Cool 15 minutes.

In small microwavable bowl, microwave chocolate chips uncovered on High 30 to 60 seconds, stirring every 15 seconds, until melted and smooth. Drizzle over top of bars. Let stand at room temperature at least 30 minutes until chocolate is set. For bars, cut into 4 rows by 6 rows. Store loosely covered at room temperature.

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Since it's so hot outside around these parts, it seems crazy to turn on the oven - but what if you just have a craving for cookies? Well, the soulution is NO BAKE cookies!! We made some the other day and they are so easy and so good! I also found a healthier version of these cookies if you want to cut out the butter and some of the sugar! (and they still taste great!) I'm including both recipes so you can make them however you prefer.

Old Standby No Bake Cookies
* 2 cups sugar
* 4 tablespoons cocoa
* 1 stick butter
* 1/2 cup milk
* 1 cup peanut butter
* 1 tablespoon vanilla
* 3 cups oatmeal
* Waxed paper

Directions
In a heavy saucepan bring to a boil, the sugar, cocoa, butter and milk. Let boil for 1 minute

then add peanut butter and stir until it's melted into the mixture

Add vanilla and oatmeal and mix well

On a sheet of waxed paper, drop mixture by the teaspoonfuls, until cooled and hardened.  So easy and delicious, right?!

Here's the updated healthier version too, I found this version on RecipeZaar
Ingredients
* 3 tablespoons skim milk
* 1/3 cup sugar
* 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
* 1/3 cup crunchy peanut butter
* 1/8 cup wheat germ (heaping)
* 1 1/2 teaspoons ground flax seeds (optional)
* 1 cup quick oatmeal

Directions
Heat milk, sugar and cocoa powder over high heat until boiling, stirring constantly.
Take off heat and stir in vanilla and peanut butter; stir until peanut butter has melted completely.
Stir in wheat germ and oatmeal.
Drop by large spoonfuls onto wax paper or eat immediately.

The writer of  this recipe added that this version is " VERY flexible. If you don't have wheat germ or flax seed, just use more oatmeal. The recipe above should work out just perfectly and does most of the time, but if your cookies come out crumbly, use less oatmeal next time. If they never set, use more oatmeal next time."  Others suggested adding more cocoa powder for a more chocolaty cookie - so you can pretty much make this cookie to your personal tastes!  Have fun!

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Lemonade is one of my favorite drinks, it can be made so many different ways, and it's also so easy to make! When making these, remember that you may need to adjust ingredient amounts based on the sweetness of the fruit, or to your personal tastes. I've also found that the best lemonade is made with ultrafine sugar. (It seems to dissolve into the liquid better.) If you don't have ultrafine on hand, you can make some by putting your sugar into a blender and giving it a whirl for a minute or two. Voila! Ultrafine!

Old Fashioned Lemonade
1 cup (6 lemons) fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 cup Granulated Sugar or Ultrafine Baker’s Sugar
4 cups water
1 fresh lemon, unpeeled, cut in cartwheel slices
Ice cubes
In a large pitcher, combine the lemon juice and sugar; stir to dissolve the sugar. Add the
remaining ingredients and blend well.
Makes 6 (8 oz.) servings.
*Pink lemonade variation: Add a few drops of red food coloring or grenadine syrup.

Lemon-Limeade
1 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 cup fresh-squeezed lime juice
3 cups Water
1 cups Granulated Sugar or Ultrafine Baker’s Sugar
3 cups club soda or sparkling water, chilled
4 fresh lemon wedges
4 fresh lime slices,
Combine fresh-squeezed lemon juice, lime juice, water and sugar, and blend well to dissolve sugar.
Chill.
Place ice cubes in tall glass and pour 10 oz. lemon-limeade mixture over ice.
Add 6 oz. chilled club soda and stir. Garnish with 1 lemon wedge and 1 lime slice.
Makes 4 (16 oz.) glasses.

Orange Lemonade
1 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
3 cups water
1 cup Granulated Sugar or Ultrafine Baker’s Sugar
2 cups fresh-squeezed orange juice
4 fresh orange slices
4 fresh lemon slices
Combine fresh-squeezed lemon juice, water and sugar, and blend well to dissolve sugar. Add
fresh-squeezed orange juice. Mix well and chill.
Place 1 orange slice and 1 lemon slice with ice cubes in a tall glass. Pour chilled lemonade over ice.
Makes 4 (12 oz.) glasses

Fresh Squeezed Breeze
2/3 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
2/3 cup fresh-squeezed lime juice
1 cup Granulated Sugar or Ultrafine Baker’s Sugar
4 bottles (10 oz. each) sparkling water or club soda, chilled
Cracked ice or cubes
Fresh sliced kiwifruit and strawberries (optional)
In a pitcher, combine lemon juice, lime juice and sugar. Stir until sugar dissolves. Add sparkling
water. Stir gently to blend. Serve over ice and float kiwi and strawberry slices as garnish
(optional).
Makes 1 quarts.

Tropical Lemonade
2 cups fresh-squeezed lemon juice
6 cups water
1 cup Granulated Sugar or Ultrafine Baker’s Sugar
1 tbsp. Ground ginger
16 fresh pineapple pieces, 1” cubes
Combine fresh-squeezed lemon juice, water, sugar, and ginger, and blend well. Chill.
Place ice cubes and 4 pineapple pieces in tall glass and add chilled ginger lemonade.
Makes 4 (16 oz.) glasses.

Minty Strawberry Lemonade
2 cups fresh-squeezed lemon juice
6 cups water
1 cup Granulated Sugar or Ultrafine Baker’s Sugar
16 strawberries, small or sliced, stems removed
16 mint leaves
4 mint sprigs
Combine fresh-squeezed lemon juice, water, and sugar, and blend well to dissolve sugar. Chill.
In a standard 16-compartment ice cube tray, place 1 strawberry and 1 mint leaf in each
compartment.
Pour 1cups chilled lemonade into ice cube tray. Keep remaining lemonade chilled.
Freeze ice cube tray. To serve, place 4 strawberry-mint ice cubes in a glass and pour 12 oz. chilled
lemonade over ice. Garnish with 1 mint sprig.
Makes 4 (12 oz.) glasses.

Strawberry Freeze Breeze
1 pound frozen unsweetened strawberries, slightly thawed
1 cup Granulated Sugar or Ultrafine Baker’s Sugar
2 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lemon juice
16 oz. sparkling water or club soda, chilled
Place half the strawberries, sugar, lemon juice and sparkling water into a blender and mix until
smooth. Empty into pitcher; repeat process with remaining ingredients.
Makes 1 quarts.

Hula Freeze
1 medium size banana, peeled and sliced
1 cup coarsely chopped kiwifruit or sliced strawberries
2 cups lowfat milk
1 cup plain yogurt
1 tablespoon fresh-squeezed lemon juice or lime juice
1/3 cup Granulated Sugar or Ultrafine Baker’s Sugar™
Spread the fruit on a baking sheet and freeze until solid. Place frozen fruit, milk, yogurt, lime
juice and sugar into blender. Mix until smooth and creamy.
Makes 5 cups.

Passionate Lemonade
1 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
3 cups water
1 cup Granulated Sugar or Ultrafine Baker’s Sugar
4 cups passion fruit flavored tea, brewed*
4 fresh lemon twists
4 fresh mint sprigs
Combine fresh-squeezed lemon juice, water and sugar, and blend well to dissolve sugar. Add
Passion Fruit flavored tea and mix well. Chill.
Pour lemonade over ice cubes in tall glass. Garnish with 1 lemon twist and 1 mint sprig.
Makes 4 (16 oz.) glasses.
*If tea is pre-sweetened, amount of sugar may need to be decreased.

Jazzy Raspberry Lemonade
1 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
3 cups water
1 cup Granulated Sugar or Ultrafine Baker’s Sugar
1 cup frozen sweetened raspberries, thawed
1 cup whipped cream, sweetened
2 tsp. fresh lemon zest
Fresh-squeezed lemon juice and Granulated Sugar forlining glasses
Combine fresh-squeezed lemon juice, water and sugar, and blend well to dissolve sugar. Chill.
Take a glass or cup and line rim with lemon juice, then dip in sugar.
Place 1 tablespoon of the raspberries in bottom of glass. Add 6–8 oz. of chilled lemonade.
Top with 1 tablespoon of whipped cream and garnish with 1 teaspoon lemon zest.
Makes 4 (8 oz.) glasses.

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If you know us, you know that my family eats a LOT of salsa, really, a LOT.  I made salsa last year and my husband was hoarding jars of it in his closet . . . I kid you not. He wouldn't let just anyone eat "the good stuff" he ran out in mid winter and all I've hear about recently is that we need to make more salsa! What can I say? He's a spicy guy!

I did run across some incredible and intriguing salsa recipes - the first one that I'm going to try is Fresh Fruit Salsa with Cinnamon Chips. Okay, so this isn't my husband's idea of salsa, but it sounds like a wonderful refreshing treat on a hot summer day!

Recipe and photo from Chef Mommy

Isn't that just delightful?!

Ingredients

Fresh Fruit Salsa
1 pint fresh strawberries, stems removed and berries chopped
1 banana, peeled and chopped
2 kiwifruit, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup blueberries
2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

In a medium bowl, combine all the fruit. In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Drizzle, the lemon sugar over the fruit and stir gently to coat all the fruit. *I actually only used 3/4 of the lemon sugar*
Cover with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Cinnamon Crisps
Flour tortillas
vegetable cooking spray
2 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Stir together the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Firmly press cookie cutters into the tortillas and place the tortilla cut-outs onto an ungreased baking sheet. Lightly spray with the cooking spray, then sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the tortilla cut-outs. Bake for 6-8 min or until lightly browned. Cool and serve with the fruit salsa.

Over at Tip Nut she has a whole slew of salsa recipes - if you love salsa in all it's variations, I suggest you get on over there and check some of them out!

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Remember making Kool-Aid Popsicle as a kid in the summer? Yeah, we did that. We would pour kool-aid into ice trays, cover them with plastic wrap and poke in toothpicks for the handles. Good times.  Now that I'm slightly older,  the thought of a Kool-aid Popsicle is not the most appealing thing . . . while iced coffee is. This got me to thinking, "hmm if we take the iced coffee and pour it into a mold and alter it's molecular structure from a liquid into a solid form (yeah, this is the way I talk to myself) we could produce a frozen item that would be appealing to adults."

Then I found this recipe and voila! Thank God for the internet folks! This is a pretty complicated recipe, print it out if you need to:

Easy coffee-cicles! Combine cold coffee and your favorite creamer (about 2/3 coffee and 1/3 creamer) Pour into ice pop molds and freeze until firm, about 2 hours.

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This has been the month to celebrate at our house! Okay so we've had um . . . three birthdays (one turned 18!),  mother's day, a high school graduation, a House Party, a Project Grad party,  and now school and this crazy month is over which is a reason to celebrate!

For Gabby's graduation, she wanted the theme to be "colorful" and if you know Gabby, you know she lives her life full of color, so it was completely appropriate. It also made decorating pretty easy - since everything went!

We got this great idea to make a rainbow cake. I would give you the link to the blog where I originally got my idea, but yesterday my computer had a hiccup and wiped my profile off the computer, which erased all my bookmarks and favorites and shortcuts and all those things you come to rely on daily . . . sigh.  I have the technology, I will re-build, but it's going to take a few days, so I apologize to the originator of this idea for not giving credit.

First we made white cake batter (which turned yellowish because we used the egg yolks because we figured we're dying it anyway who cares!)

and then we separated it into seven different bowls. One by one we added food coloring. There is no set amount of coloring to use - just add slowly until you get the color you want.

We used the gel type of food coloring that is supposed to be used for icing, but it makes deeper and brighter colors than the liquid kind.

Stir the color up well

You can make your rainbow cake with as many or as few colors as you want. We pretty stayed with the standard ROY G BIV palette.

Next we oiled our pans and cut out wax paper to fit the bottom of the pan.  After that, you spoon in the batter, but don't stir it up.

There is no right or wrong way to put the colors in. You can try to make a pattern if you like - we just randomly put the batter in like a crazy quilt of colors. We made a three layer cake and no layer looked the same.

When the cakes were done baking, we frosted them with white and decorated them with colored M&Ms. Gabby thought chocolate went better with cake than skittles, although you could use those, or lifesavers, or necco wafers, or fondant or whatever the heck you want. You must forgive the blurry photo. Seriously, in all the celebration craziness there were no photos taken of the finished cake that looked decent. If it makes you feel any better I have one photo of myself with my daughter on her graduation day and it's of her and I in the kitchen behind the cabinet fixing food for the party. Um yeah. That really sucks.  So anyway - note to self - take time to remember to take the photographs!!!

Ours looked pretty much like this - and it tasted wonderful and everyone loved it! The end!!!

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Summer to me, means being outside late, cooking over fires and what better to make over a fire than s'mores!!! The traditional s'more is made by toasting a marshmallow then layering it on top of a square of chocolate between two graham crackers - simple delight!  But, if you're looking to shake things up a bit as summer goes on, there's no end to the s'more variations!

ROBINSON CRUSOES: Spread 1 tablespoon of peanut butter onto 2 graham crackers, then sandwich 1 toasted marshmallow between them - these can be made with or without the chocolate.

DOUBLE CHOCOLATE: Sandwich a toasted marshmallow between 4 thin squares of chocolate and 2 chocolate-covered graham crackers. (consider drizzling chocolate sauce over the whole thing!)

THIN MINT SMORES: Chocolate mints tend to be thin, so they melt exceptionally well. Toast the marshmallow, then sandwich it between 2 thin chocolate mints and 2 graham crackers.

DOWN AND DIRTY SMORE: Place a toasted marshmallow between 2 chocolate-covered cookies (like  Fudge striped Shortbread, Chocolate covered Mint Cookies, Chocolate covered peanut butter Cookies).

OREO S'MORES: Separate the two side of the cookie, having no concern whether or not the white filling  is on one side or the other.  Place a toasted marhmallow between the cookies along with a half of a miniature size Mr. Goodbar.

Feeling a sugar rush? How about a fruity s'more?

TRACEY’S CARAMEL APPLE S’MORE*

1 marshmallow
2 chewy caramels
2 green apple slices, about 1/2-inch thick
Skewer the marshmallow followed by the two caramels on the same roasting stick. Roast until golden. Slide concoction onto one of the apple slices, top with remaining slice.

* (This recipe came from Lisa Adams Book, "S'mores: Gourmet Treats for Every Occasion")

Speaking of Gourmet S'mores, head over here and find even more recipes for highbrow versions of this campfire classic!

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Do the waiting for spring blues got you down? Well, here's a great idea that will cheer you up, it doesn't cost much, it's fun for the whole family and animals love to participate. What is it? BLOWING BUBBLES!

I guess blowing bubbles is like one of the first things humans did to entertain themselves, well right after they invented soap and bathing. Good for humans - they know how to have a good time!

Sorry - that's just too cute not to add to this post.

If you don't have any store bought bubbles at home ( I always keep a few bottles on hand - I have my priorites straight) you can easily make some of your own with stuff you've probably got already.

Easy Bubble Recipe:  6 parts water, 2 parts Joy dishwashing liquid (they say this brand works the best), and 3/4 part corn syrup. After you make it, store in a covered container. Use pipe cleaners or bent wire hangers for bubble wands.  Experiment with what you find at home to see what kind of bubbles you can blow.

The secret ingredient for sturdy, colorful bubbles is Glycerine (available at most pharmacies). Soft water is good for bubbles. Any water containing high levels of iron is bad for bubbles. To get the best mixture, try using distilled water. But first try it with the tap water at your house (and you may be one of those lucky people who have a built in bubble water faucet…)

Cats and dogs and little kids love to chase bubbles - it's such a blast to just run around and have a good time! You must try this. On a nice day, maybe pack some sanwiches and lemonade and make a quick picnic to the park and take your bubble solution with you - a fun family outing that costs so little! Don't forget to take your camera and capture some of those great moments!  Even if you don't have kids, take some friends or your honey - get out of the house, you've been cooped up too long. Blow some bubbles and feel young and free! Please don't wear this hairstyle though. Only this guy can pull it off, and he's struggling with it.

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On a cold day there's nothing more comforting than a pot of stew cooking in the kitchen. I usually make stew the old fashioned way - I just throw in whatever we have, and it usually turns out great.  I often start with a beef base -when I cook a pot roast I save the pan drippings and freeze them to make a stew base. If you don't want to go to that trouble,  you can use canned soup or packaged broth.  Really, it's hard to go wrong with old fashioned stew.  Make some cornbread to go on the side, and you're set!  In fact, I think I'm going to go make some right now!

* 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 pound beef stew meat, cut into 1-inch cubes
* 1 small onion, chopped
* 1 tablespoon canola oil
* 1-1/2 cups water
* 1 can (10-1/2 ounces) condensed beef consomme, undiluted
* 1/2 cup sherry or reduced-sodium beef broth
* 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
* 1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
* 1/8 teaspoon pepper
* 2 medium carrots, chopped

* 1 large potato, peeled and chopped

Directions

* Place flour in a large resealable plastic bag; add beef, a few pieces at a time, and shake to coat.
* In a large saucepan coated with cooking spray, cook beef and onion in oil over medium-high heat until beef is browned on all sides. Stir in the water, consomme, sherry or broth, Worcestershire sauce and seasonings. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 1 hour.
* Stir in the carrots,  potato, and whatever other veggies you want to add.  Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 30-45 minutes or until meat and vegetables are tender.

*Feel free to add whatever veggies your family likes - corn, peas, turnips - every time I make stew it's different!

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