Happy Saint Patrick's Day

Have a wonderful Saint Patrick's Day

Caramel Meringue

The theme for this weeks Carnival of Recipes is to celebrate Saint Patricks Day. This recipe is not Irish, but I bake it, and I do have some Irish blood in my veins. That is about as close to Irish as it comes. *grin*
This recipe came from my Mother's kitchen. I have had to make adjustments to the original weights and measures, as the original 1960's recipe called for teacup quantities, and used Golden Syrup, which I have found here in USA. Lyles makes Golden syrup, or you can use Steens Cane Syrup. or maybe a dark Karo may work. I prefer the flavor of Lyles syrup.

3 oz butter
1-1/2 tbs. sugar
1 egg
1-1/4 cups flour
1tsp. baking powder
pinch salt


Cream butter and sugar, add egg and beat well. Add sifted flour, baking powder and salt. Roll out on greased parchment paper (about 1/4" thick) Bake 5 minutes at 350F



I actually put the greased parchment paper in a pan, and placed a piece of plastic wrap over the dough and pressed it into place with my fingers. I think this was too much work, so next time I will place it on a cookie sheet and roll it out as the recipe suggests.





FILLING:
1/2 tin sweetened condensed milk
1 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp Golden Syrup (Lyles, Steens cane syrup, or dark karo)
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
2 egg yolks
1-1/2 tbsp. flour,
1 tsp Vanilla




Put condensed milk, butter, syrup, sugar, egg yolks and vanilla into saucepan. Warm mixture just until butter has melted, then add the flour and stir, remove from heat and pour over the baked crust.







Cover the caramel with meringue made with 2 egg whites beaten stiffly, then add 4 tbsp. sugar beating again until incorporated.

The original recipe says Bake about 40 minutes at 350F






I found I had to keep an eye on the meringue as it browned rather quickly, so I removed the Caramel Meringue before it was too dark.

Cut while hot.

Wednesday Chuckle

INDIAN WITH ONE TESTICLE

There once was a Red Indian whose given name was "Onestone". So named because he had only one testicle. He hated that name and asked everyone not to call him Onestone.

After years and years of torment, Onestone finally cracked and said, "If anyone calls me Onestone again I will kill them!" The word got around and nobody called him that any more.

Then one day a young woman named Blue Bird forgot and said, "Good morning, Onestone." He jumped up, grabbed her and took her deep into the forest where he made love to her all day and all night. He made love to her all the next day, until Blue Bird died from exhaustion.

The word got around that Onestone meant what he promised he would do. Years went by and no one dared call him by his given name until a woman named Yellow Bird returned to the village after being away for many years.

Yellow Bird, who was Blue Bird's cousin, was overjoyed when she saw Onestone. She hugged him and said, "Good to see you, Onestone." Onestone grabbed her, took her deep into the forest, then he made love to her all day, made love to her all night, made love to her all the next day, made love to her all the next night, but Yellow Bird wouldn't die.

What is the moral of this story?????
.........................OH, come on....take a guess!

Think about it
(You're going to love this!)
And the moral is...

You can't kill two birds with one stone!

Thanks to Linda

"Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now"

To see all the cherry trees in bloom takes, me back to about 3rd grade when we had to learn this piece of poetry by A.E. Housman, write it, and illustrate it, in our note books.




Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

The sound of windchimes

Today is the perfect day to hear the sounds of my windchime collection. In fact it is really almost too windy, as I found out, when I went outside to snap a few pictures, of the new spring blooms, to post on keewee's Garden.

This Oriental looking chime came as a freebie with something I bought years ago

This one belonged to MrC's Mom

A Dollar store find

Brought all the way back from Juneau Alaska

This windchime I bought at our local fair last year.

I intend on adding to my collection. One windchime I am really wanting, is one of those rather large chimes which are hand tuned and have a very deep melodic sound. They are also rather expensive.

The weather could be better

This is what we have in the way of weather this morning. It is cold and clammy, and of course, it is a day when we will be spending quite a few hours out doors sighhhhhh!!

Today is "Opening Day" for the CWSA shooting season, and we're hoping for a good turn out, even if the weather is not looking good. I hope I can do well even though I have not done much in the way of practice.
Wish me luck.

Chocolate Chews

Or Chocolate Crunch, if you over bake them as I did

I really don't mind that the Chews turned out crunchy, as I am partial to crunchy cookies anyhow.

8oz. butter, I used Smart Balance which could have contributed to the Chews being crunchy
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 tbs. cocoa
pinch salt
2 cups coconut, use the unsweetened finely shredded kind.
2 cups rolled oats
2 cups flour

Cream butter and sugar. add vanilla and all other ingredients. Mix well.

Press into greased pan. I used a jelly roll pan and think it is a little too large. Next time I will use a deeper 11 1/2 x 9 1/2 pan. I think the cookies will be softer.
Bake in a moderately slow oven 325-350F for about 20 minutes.

Remove from oven and ice with chocolate icing while still warm. I cheated this time and spread the few chocolate chips over the top which I had left over from a previous recipe.

Spread the icing or chocolate chips, and let cool before cutting into squares. Lick the chocolate off the spreading spatula. ( well this is what I do)

Be Careful What You ask For!!

A few days ago MrC asked our friend Wayne, who owns a landscaping business, if we could have a few pieces of firewood from the trees he was felling.

I was busy sitting at my computer posting an entry to Keewee's garden when I heard a truck pulling into our driveway. I looked out the window and saw a dump truck full of sawn logs.
Knock, knock on the door. I opened it to find Wayne standing there asking where we wanted our load of firewood. OH MY!!
The pieces of wood are very large and I see much work ahead to split and stack it.
The large log in front is probably about 30 inches across by 24 inches deep, and that is not the largest.

This one is not very much smaller than the log in the picture above, I can feel sore muscles coming on already. *grin*

Maxine said it for me

I have been so busy the last few days, that blogging is waaaay down on my list. I hope to catch up real soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow.

Keewee's New Primroses

I have bought more primroses to add to my collection. To see them click HERE

Spanish Rice & Meatballs

6 slices of bacon
1lb. lean ground beef
½ cup soft bread crumbs
1 egg, beaten
½ tsp. Salt
1/8 tsp. Pepper
½ cup chopped onion
½ cup sliced celery
2/3 cup uncooked white rice
1-1/2 cups water
1 can (16oz.) diced tomatoes
1/3 cup Heinz 57 sauce
¼ tsp. Pepper
1/8 tsp. hot pepper sauce
1 green bell pepper cut into chunks

In large skillet, cook bacon until crisp. Remove and crumble, set aside.
Drain all but 1 tbsp. drippings.
In large bowl, combine beef, bread crumbs, egg, salt & pepper. Form into about 20 meatballs.
In skillet brown meatballs; remove. In same skillet saute onion & celery until tender-crisp; drain excess fat.
Add rice, water, tomatoes, 57 sauce, ¼ tsp. pepper and hot pepper sauce.
Cover and simmer 20 minutes. Stir in bacon, meatballs and green pepper.
Cover and simmer 10 minutes, or until rice is tender and liquid is absorbed, stirring occasionally.

INSTALLING HUSBAND

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance --Particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 and then installed undesirable programs such as NFL 5.0, NBA 3.0, and Golf Clubs 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate wife


--------------------------------------------------------

Dear Desperate wife:

First keep in mind; Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System.

Please enter the command: "http: I Thought You Loved Me.HTML" and try to download Tears 6.2 and don't forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1. Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources). Also, do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Food 3.0 and Hot Lingerie 7.7.

Good Luck,
Tech Support

Thanks to Eddie In Ireland

Old Man Winter Is Still Around

We are blanketed with snow. It looks as though we had a little more fall last night while we were sleeping.

Brrrrrr! Today, I think I will stay indoors, and finish painting the hallway.
Old Man Winter sure is taking his sweet time in moving on.

Don't count your chickens ETC.

Today is my day for doing some more painting on the hallway. I was ready for a tea break, had some paint left in the tray, so decided to use the paint on the only wall left, which did not have a bunch of stuff that had to be removed before painting. I chose the wall above staircase leading to the basement. Look at the difference in color, I do not usually care for white, but this dark area needed to be lightened and I really like the reflective quality of the white paint.

The paint tray was now empty, the roller wrapped in a plastic grocery bag until I had taken a break, so I made my way out into the kitchen to brew my tea.

As I entered the kitchen and looked out the window, I was surprised to see that it had started to snow. You can barely see the neighbors house.
Here I have been thinking we were done with snow and spring was on the way. Sheesh!

The snow flakes were dinner plate sized, Ok, they were quarter sized, and quite beautiful as they floated gently to the ground.
So much for wishing for spring, as I said,
Don't count your chickens ETC.

UPDATE 4pm

By 4pm we had about 2inches of snow.

The bird feeders were empty, so I went out and refilled them.
The birds were sitting in the trees just waiting for me to go back indoors. I am sure as soon as I entered the house they were at the feeders.

Carnival Of Recipes

Bill Austin of Slow Cooker Recipes has been working fast to make sure we all have great new crockpot recipes (my favorite!) to try this week, and the Carnival of the Recipes is now up for your viewing pleasure:

A Wild Ride!

Growing up in Palmerston North New Zealand, I was always very nervous about travelling to Hawkes Bay on the road through the very narrow Manawatu Gorge. There have been accidents involving huge rocks coming down the steep sides of the gorge crushing cars below killing the pasengers. All this was many, many years ago, and it looks as though nothing much has changed in the Gorge.

The Eketahuna Express travels through the Manawatu Gorge on the way to Palmerston North.
WARWICK SMITH/Manawatu Standard

The Maori people named the Manawatu Gorge, Te Apiti (the narrow passage) and the river, Te Au-Rere-a-Te-Tonga (the rushing current of the south).

You can see how narrow the road is

The Oscars

My choice for the best dress. This is a dress I would wear, it is very elegant.

HELEN MIRREN is in a Christian Lacroix gown with Chopard jewels. Husband TAYLOR HACKFORD wears a Spencer Hart tuxedo

Why God Made Moms

Answers given by 2nd grade school children to the following questions:

Why did God make mothers?
1. She's the only one who knows where the scotch tape is..
2. Mostly to clean the house.
3. To help us out of there when we were getting born.

How did God make mothers?
1. He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.
2. Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring.
3. God made my Mom just the same like he made me. He just used bigger parts.

What ingredients are mothers made of?
1. God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world and one dab of mean.
2. They had to get their start from men's bones. Then they mostly use string, I think.

Why did God give you your mother & not some other mom?
1. We're related.
2. God knew she likes me a lot more than other people's moms like me.


What kind of little girl was your mom?
1. My Mom has always been my Mom and none of that other stuff.
2. I don't know because I wasn't there, but my guess would be pretty bossy.
3. They say she used to be nice.

What did Mom need to know about dad before she married him?
1. His last name.
2. She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he get drunk on beer?
3. Does he make at least $800 a year? Did he say NO to drugs and YES to chores?
Why did your Mom marry your dad?
1. My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. And my Mom eats a lot.
2. She got too old to do anything else with him.
3. My grandma says that Mom didn't have her thinking cap on.

Who's the boss at your house?
1. Mom doesn't want to be boss, but she has to because dad's such a goof ball.
2. Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.
3. I guess Mom is, but only because she has a lot more to do than dad.

What's the difference between Moms & dads?
1 . Moms work at work and work at home & dads just go to work at work.
2. Moms know how to talk to teachers without scaring them.
3. Dads are taller & stronger, but Moms have all the real power 'cause that's who you got to ask if you want to sleep over at your friend's.
4. Moms have magic, they make you feel better without medicine.

What does your Mom do in her spare time?
1. Mothers don't do spare time.
2. To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.

What would it take to make your Mom perfect?
1. On the inside she's already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.
2. Diet. You know, her hair. I'd diet, maybe blue.

If you could change one thing about your Mom, what would it be?
1. She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I'd get rid of that.
2. I'd make my Mom smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who did it and not me.
3. I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on the back of her head.

Kowloon Chicken

3 to 3-1/2 lbs. chicken pieces
1 tsp. grated gingerroot
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup chicken broth
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1 mango, peeled and diced
1 (4-oz.) can sliced water chestnuts, drained
4 green onions, diagonally sliced
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup soy sauce
cooked rice or noodles

Place chicken in cooker. ( I like to brown mine in a little oil first)
In a small bowl, combine gingerroot, garlic, broth, salt, and pepper. pour over chicken.
Cover and cook on low 41/2 - 5 hours, or until chicken is tender.
Turn control to high. Add mango, water chestnuts, and green onions.
In a small bowl, dissolve cornstarch in soy sauce; stir into cooking juices. Cover and cook on high 15-20 minutes or until slightly thickened.
Serve over rice or noodles.

My Valentine's gift has arrived!

MrC found this great gift for Valentines day.

I can hardly wait to *flaunt* it.

Click on THIS button to see what it is.