Archive for the ‘just for fun’ Category

It’s Up To You!

Posted on: by James 8 Comments

So I’ve been working on my blog and I found a theme that I want to use. the one your looking at.  however I have come upon a problem.  None of my other themes that I used in prior times, had a place for a tagline and if it did it looked nasty so I would delete it.  The theme I’m using now does have a good place for a taglines to go that I like, however I don’t know what my tagline should be. So it’s up to you.  I would like you, the readers to create a tagline for my blog.  All you have to do is leave a comment with your best idea or ideas (feel free to leave as many as you want).  I’ll choose a tagline that is well liked by the readers and myself.

Three 3.0+ Earthquakes

Probably my first memory as a kids was an earthquake.  The Loma Prieta Earthquake 10/17/1989,  I was not even 4 years old yet.  My mom was cooking dinner, my Dad was doing some work in a library, and my older sister and I were probably playing.  And it shook hard.  Nothing broke in our house but there was a lot of damage throughout the Bay Area.  Earthquake have always facinated me.  I think it’s quite the sensation to fell the ground quaking beneath you.

Tonight there were three earthquakes magnitude 3.0, 3.8 and 4.0 just some 20 miles from our apartment.  I felt the 3.8 and the 4.0 for sure; the 3.0 followed the 4.0 by only a minute so I may have felt that one too.  It got me excited and I thought I should share with all of you.

Chicken Potato Soup

Thursday night I was in the mood for soup but not wanting to stew something for 3 hours to get it.  I wanted a quick and easy soup. I looked at a couple recipes but nothing fit the bill.  So I got my brain working.   I looked around to see what I had…  I had a large piece of chicken breast, thawed, two baked potatoes (left overs from Tuesday night’s dinner), and a can of corn.  Not a whole lot more.  I figured I could make a soup with that so I tried.  It probably took close to an hour to make, but not 3.

Ingredients:

1 large piece of Chicken breast cut into bite size pieces  (or 2 small ones)

2  Baked Potatoes.  (peeled and sliced) (you can you not baked potatoes it will just take longer)

1 can of corn

1 tea salt

1 tea pepper

1/2 tea garlic powder

2 tbl butter

2 tbl flour (or 1 tbl corn starch)

1 1/2 cup milk

4 cup water

Directions:

Boil all of the chicken in a large skillet with 1 cup of the water.  In a large pot add corn (including the juice from the can, all of it), the potatoes, the remaining 3 cups of water, and the seasoning (if you want add more seasoning I was wanting a soup light on the season, so I didn’t add a lot).  Let it come to a boil, reduce heat some but let it boil for a good 20 or so minutes.  When the chicken is cooked add it to the pot, the water that the chicken cooked in add it too.  Not we will make it creamy.  Melt 2  tbl of butter in a sauce pan, add flour and milk to the butter. keep at medium heat stirring often until it thickens some.  Once thickened, add the cream to the soup, stir in thoroughly, let it cook for another 5 to 10 and then let it cool for 10 to 15 minutes, and enjoy.

Variations:

Onions and carrots are to staples that are in most soup, but I didn’t have in the house so I didn’t put it in the soup. I you don’t want to and the cream that’s fine, or you can use a cream of (whatever) right out of the can in it’s place.  Spice to your heart’s content… enjoy and let me know what you think.

Strawberry Chocolate Pizza

So this last Saturday Renae and I were going to a get together with several other young married couples from our church.  It was going to be a potluck were everyone brought a separate course of the meal.  I was given the responsibility of bringing the dessert.   This is quite the challenge, I make some pretty good desserts if I can say so myself, but there was an expectation given that I was going to bring something amazing.  So I put my thinking cap on and the dessert pizza crossed my mind.  I’ve never made a dessert pizza before and so I went in search of a few recipes.  Many of them looked the same, some added different things or another.  I finally found a simple recipe that had what looked like interesting flavors from Diana’s Desserts: a Strawberry Dessert Pizza.   Here is her recipe:

For Crust:
1/2 pound (2 sticks/1 cup/8 oz/226 g) unsalted butter
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

For Topping:
8 oz. package cream cheese
1/4 cup strawberry puree (about 4 fresh very large strawberries pureed in a blender)
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 pints fresh strawberries (medium to large size strawberries)

Basically what you do is cream the butter with the sugar, (works best if the butter is already at room temperature). Then blend in the other ingredient saving the flour until last, to make the crust; make sure the batter is smooth.  Refrigerate for about 20 minutes to let the batter thicken.  Place the batter on a greased cookie sheet or pizza pan.  Get your hands dirty and make it looks like a pizza crust. Not super thick but not cracker thin either.  Place it in a pre-heated oven at 350 F for about 20 minutes the crust should be golden brownish.  Now you have made a giant sugar cookie for the pizza crust.

Now the filling,put  the cream cheese, pureed strawberries, sugar and honey and blend until smooth.  Don’t spread it on the crust until that has had time to cool off.  Slice the strawberries to get them ready as well.  Once the crust has cooled spread the filling all over the crust (evenly please), then cover with the sliced strawberries.  Now this is were I veered from the reciped

I rarely follow the recipe to the “t”. In fact improvisation in cooking like my favorite pasttime.  I wanted some chocolate on my strawberry pizza so I found a recipe for a chocolate glaze in one of my at home cook books.  It wanted 4 oz. of melted chocolate (melted with 3 tbls of butter), 1 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, and 2 tbls of hot water. Mixed until drizzling consistency. (If necessary add a little bit more hot water.  (do this right before you are ready to use it other wise it will harden and not drizzle correctly).

So I had the pizza all ready to go, snapped a picture and took it to the get together.  We had salad, bread, enchilada, and lasagna.  all of which were amazingly delicious.  After dinner we had a bible study and then it was time for the dessert. There were 10 people there and everyone enjoyed it, There was none left over for me to take home even.  It tasted delicious.  The crust was a little on the hard side as we cut it but we really didn’t notice that once we started to eat it.  It was an an awesome recipe, that I found; and I considering trying other stuff with it too.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

For as long as I can remember I can not stand eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Yes that is right I utterly dislike the classic PB&J.  All of my family including Renae can attest to this.  Growing up, for lunch at school I would just have a jelly sandwhich, until after a few years of that I could not eat it that anymore becuase it was just to bland.  So I back away from jelly all together.  Ham and cheese seemed to suit me much better as long as there was no mayo or mustard on it, but that’s a different story since we are talking about PB&J.  I honestly could not remeber that last time I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, until tonight when I got a suddent urge to eat a PB&J sandwich.  I have no idea what brought it on.  Renae was out hanging out with friends so there was not a need to cook a big meal, I thought about doing grilled cheese but I used the last of the cheese yesterday.  Then the urge hit, “I must have PB&J.”  So I pull out our Peanut Butter (chunky) and Jelly (Strawberry) and made a sandwich.  Honestly it was not that bad, slightly bland which I probably why I disliked it as a kid.  Well Renae just came home and she brought some food back for me, awsome. I Love You, honey.

Oh on a side note my little sister, Ruth, decdied to move away from here wordpress.com site and go self-hosted.  She is still running a wordpress installation.  Her new web address is http://thehonestruth.com Yes, it’s a play on word the honest truth, the honest ruth, pretty clever.  Renae’s cousin Jeremy thought of it.  Make sure you go visited her site and give her some comment love.

-hold nothing back