Month: November 2008

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Do you like healthy muffins?

I love muffins but they can be fattening.  I have found a recipe for healthy muffins that aren’t too bad.  The best part is you make them one at a time right in a coffee cup in your microwave oven.  If you’re used to eating a big muffin for breakfast then you can make two of them.  One is enough for me.  It’s made with Flax seed meal.  Flax seed is good at lowering your bad cholesterol and raising your good cholesterol so they’re healthy.  Here’s the recipe just in case you’re interested.  Oh you can buy Flax seed meal in some grocery stores but if not, check your local health food store.

1/4 cup    Flax seed Meal

1/2 tsp    Baking Powder

1/2 tsp    Ground Cinnamon

1 tbsp      Splenda

1 egg

You can add raisins or other fruit like blueberries if you like. Mix well and put in a coffee cup that has been sprayed with cooking spray.

Microwave for 1 minute on high.  It’s that simple to have a fresh muffin in the morning that’s good for you too.

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Bad Day for Turkeys

Today is the worst day for turkeys. Most American households will be having a cooked turkey for their dinner to celebrate our Thanksgiving. I wonder how many turkeys are consumed today, nationwide?

I love roast turkey and would have it every month if I could handle that much in leftovers. I’m not a big fan of leftover turkey, but I’m learning some new recipes, like pot pie and white chili. Everything else left after a couple of days goes to the dogs. They love turkey, too.

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I hate this part

They are putting Christmas trees and decorations out before Halloween even now.  I hate that.  Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all run together.  What gets me is about the day after new years, they start putting out the Valentines stuff.  I don’t want any Valentines candy that was bought on January 2nd.  That’s over a month before Valentines Day.  I’m sure the candy is probably the same candy you would buy the day before but it’s the thought that it has sat there all that time.

I don’t know what I’m complaining about.  I don’t like candy.  I’m not a chocolate person.  I know, I know, I’m weird.  I’m the only female I know that isn’t nuts about chocolate.  Now I do love Reese’s Cups but they are more peanut butter than chocolate.  Oh I like the Hershey Krackle bars too.  That’s chocolate but I don’t want one very often.  I’m more of a vanilla type of girl.  I love French Vanilla Cappuccino but don’t like coffee.  I’m a tea drinker most of the time.

Well now you know what kind of nuts blog you are reading, huh?  Well every one’s different, thank goodness, because it sure would be a boring place if we were all the same or similar, don’t you think?  I sure do.

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Went to Mom’s for dinner

Mom likes to have all of us over at least once a month for dinner.  We thought since Thanksgiving is around the corner and going to be at her house, she might want to count that as our monthly dinner.  Well she would not hear of that.  She said she looks very forward to our Sunday dinner and isn’t going to let Thanksgiving take the place of it.  I think she just loves to cook for us and always makes our favorite dinner too.  She’s where I got my love of cooking from.  I can remember standing in a chair beside her ‘helping’ her cook by watching the pots.  My job was to let her know when the pots needed to be stirred.

My mother makes the best beef roast you have ever put in your mouth.  With that, she makes mashed potatoes with cream cheese and of course there has to be a wonderful salad to go with it.  Salad is not just lettuce to Mom.  It’s tomatoes, broccoli flowerets, radishes, carrots, and just about anything else you put in salad.   She makes her own croutons too and they are wonderful.

She makes the best homemade sourdough bread too.  We always leave with a loaf that she has made for each of us.  She won’t give me that recipe but promises it’s mine when she’s gone.

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Making fruit cakes

I have a recipe for fruit cake that came from my grandmother.  I’m the one that loves to cook out of all of us girls and I’m also the only one that doesn’t like fruit cake.  Since I love to cook, I get to make the fruit cakes that everyone else loves.  Kind of ironic wouldn’t you say that I like to cook and yet don’t even like what I’m cooking.  Oh well, it’s something that everyone looks forward to getting from me.  It’s kind of bittersweet every time I make them because Daddy is the one that absolutely loved them and yet, he’s no longer with us to enjoy them.

I usually end up making about 10 small fruit cakes.  I like making them for gifts because I think everyone should give something of themselves and not just something they bought for Christmas.  With this recipe, you have to make them about 4 weeks before Christmas because you have to let them soak in either grape juice, wine or brandy if you want to give them a kick.  I have tried them soaked in all of the above and still don’t care for it.  They are kind of expensive to make too but they are made with my hands and given with my love so that makes them extra special to the ones that get them.  I like that.

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Great gifts

Are you like me and look for things that you just don’t see every day?  Well I love to get presents that people just don’t expect.  One of the best places I have found to do that is at abcdistrubuting.com.  They have some of the cutest, coolest, and unusual items on there that you have ever seen.  The prices are great too.  A friend of mine at work told me about them and I am so glad they did.

I do a lot of my gift giving from their books.  You can go to their web site and sign up to receive their catalogs or you can shop online.  I like to shop online instead of ordering from the catalog because it gets here faster.  I’m one of those ‘I want what I want when I want it, not later’.  Are you like that too?  I hate to be that way but I can’t help it.  I got it honest because both of my sisters are like that and we got it from Mom.

Oh trust me, Mom denys it everytime one of us tells her it’s her fault.  Daddy used to tell us that we were all just a little too much like her but it must have been okay because he sure loved her and loved us too.

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Pumpkin Pie

The Kroger had Sara Lee frozen pies on sale this week so I bought two. The obvious first choice was the pumpkin pie, but then I had to decide what flavor to get for the second pie. I absolutely love peach pie, but I also like apple, and I was thinking that maybe apple would fit in better with the current fall menu items, like pork roast and even corned beef brisket. So I ended up buying an apple pie, too.

The Sara Lee brand of pumpkin pie is the closest taste to my homemade pumpkin pie. I just haven’t felt like doing that much baking lately. But now that the weather is cooler and the days are shorter, I suspect I will be drawn to the kitchen a little more often.

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I always plan ahead, usually

Well I have already started my Christmas shopping list.  Have you?  I try really hard to get all of my Christmas shopping done or mostly done by Thanksgiving.  That means I have to plan ahead.  Since there’s only one little fella in our family, he’s easy to buy for.  He loves Mater from the movie ‘Cars’.  Well I have seen an alarm clock with Mater on it and it says some of the cutest things to wake a kid up.  I know he’s going to love that.

My mother really needs a new camera.  She still has a 35 mm Kodak that she’s had for as long as I can remember.  Well I have thought about getting her a new digital camera.  I’m not sure if she’s ready for a digital video recorder or not.  She’s not technologically advanced at all.  In fact, she’s technologically challenged to put it gently.  Don’t even mention computer to her either.

My sisters aren’t hard to buy for.  We all have similar tastes so if I like something, they usually do too.  Even with that, I’m going to have to do some thinking about what to get them.  Daddy left each of us enough money to get what we needed and that doesn’t leave much room for others to get much for us.  I’ll come up with something more than a gift card.

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The Eagles

One of my favorite all time groups is The Eagles. I have always loved their music, even when they split off into their solo acts. I was glad to hear that they had gotten together for a renaissance album and I bought it recently while at Wal-Mart. The new album sounds great. I heard a couple songs that I knew immediately would get radio airplay, but I have a couple that I really like that I doubt will make it to the top 40. But that’s OK – I have never been all that mainstream in my musical taste.

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Afterglow

Last night was so nice. We had small groups of trick or treaters for a few hours and then we watched a scary movie on DVD to add to the holiday flavor. I hadn’t seen Poltergist for years and years, but it is a really scary movie. It touches on every human fear, from monsters under the bed to zombies. What a great movie and a great way to spend Halloween. We even have a couple handfuls of candy left over to munch on for the next week or so.