Browned Butter Frosting:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
In a medium saucepan over low heat, melt butter.
Cook 6 to 8 minutes, or until butter is lightly browned.
Whisk in confectioners’ sugar until smooth.
This is great on carrot cake.
Do you remember S&H Green Stamps or maybe the blue ones (blue chips?) that you used to get every time you bought groceries?
I’ll always remember them because my grandmother collected them religiously and I used to help her by licking the stamps and pasting them in the book. -I’m still trying to get the taste out of my mouth.
And do you remember how you would get a stack of filled books and then spend hours going through the catalog looking for things to trade them in on?
Well, Abertson’s has revived the tradition on a much smaller scale with their “cookware for a penny” campaign.
(I was going to post a picture of the stamps but being a typical guy I automatically threw away the two I got yesterday. Hey what can I say? I don’t do coupons either.)
At any rate, when you shop at Albertson’s you receive one stamp for every $10 you spend and you paste them in this book. When you collect 110 of the little buggers you can trade the book plus one penny for a small pot.
♪ Everything old is new again ♪
These people aren’t dying from the usual cause: picking and cooking the wrong fungi. But from slipping and falling while hunting on wet steep mountainsides.
According to Reuters:
At least 18 mushroom-lovers have been killed in accidents while hunting for their favorite fungi in the mountains and forests of northern Italy.
Competition for the best sites is fierce and many fungaiolo are so secretive that they start out while it’s still dark, traveling alone and dressing in hard to spot gray or brown.
They do this without telling anyone exactly where they are going and without cellphones or any other way to call for help, causing even a minor accident to become life threatening. Add thunderstorms and heat into the mix and you get not only a bumper crop of the tasty fungi, but the wet, slippery conditions that have led to so many of this year’s fatal falls.
According to Alpine rescuers some people are so consumed by their obsession with mushrooms that they take unnecessary risks. One 58 year old man died because he left the path he and his friends were following and took off up a steep incline after spotting a particularly nice porcini mushroom. He slipped and fell almost a hundred meters
Black and Decker has a product called PlantSense that is designed to tell you about the conditions in your garden.
The EasyBloom Plant Sensor can help the expert gardener understand exactly what’s going on in their garden with its precision monitoring of sun, soil moisture, soil fertility (with subscription) and temperature.
You just stick it in your garden for about 24 hours and it tells you everything you need to grow beautiful plants…… And for this you need the internet.
This internet obsession is getting out of hand.
The other day when I was shopping for a new refrigerator I found one that was “internet ready.” Then I discovered that the same company makes a microwave that connects to the internet so you can download recipes.
If this keeps up my microwave will start texting me saying I forgot my coffee, my fridge will be texting that the milk has gone sour, my gardenias will be tweeting that the pansies are fighting with the geraniums again, and I’ll be the only thing in my entire house that’s not on Facebook.
Social networking is all the rage, but it puts your life out there for the entire world to see. And if you are concerned about privacy or your personal safety you need to read this article in the Guardian UK on stalking a woman via Four Square.
Louise has straight, auburn hair and, judging by the only photograph I have of her, she’s in her 30s. She works in recruitment. I also know which train station she uses regularly, what supermarket she shopped at last night and where she met her friends for a meal in her home town last week. At this moment, she is somewhere inside the pub in front of me meeting with colleagues after work.
Louise is a complete stranger. Until 10 minutes ago when I discovered she was located within a mile of me, I didn’t even know of her existence.
Location based services are popular enough that bastion of privacy, Facebook, has started something called Places. –And you can bet the farm on this: Places will not only be bigger than all their competitors combined; Facebook’s implementation of this location based game will inevitably show those amateurs at Four Square and Gowalla how to properly use your personal data to make beaucoup bucks. (If you didn’t notice the sarcasm, I think you’re the perfect Facebook user.)
It’s bad enough that companies we should be able to trust buy, sell, trade and give away every detail of our lives. –Now they expect us to tell the world exactly where we are and what we are doing, not only to the benefit of the company’s bottom line, but to the benefit of all the stalkers, axe murderers and ex-lovers who no longer have to wait outside our homes to know what we’re doing and when and where we’re doing it.
Times are rough here in Las Vegas
Unemployment is rising (14.8%), foreclosures are climbing (12%) and Forbes magazine just voted us the most stressful metropolitan area in the country.
I have a steady job and my house is paid off, but the regular bills and the unexpected expenses continue, and I no longer have an exit strategy.
The people who were trying to hire me two years ago are being laid off or having their hours cut, and are now asking if I know anyone who’s hiring.
–I guess this means I have to be nice to the boss.–
A quote from @pioneerpawn on Twitter:
“Unemployment is 14.8% in #Vegas. -That makes every day Boss’ day.”
I took this with my iPhone on the way in to the grocery store.
The kid in red is in cuffs, but the person I spoke to from the store had no idea why the young man was being arrested or why the paramedics were there.
I guess it’s just another of life’s little mysteries.
Goya has an ongoing voluntary recall because of Salmonella and now there is a direct link to Typhoid Fever.
Goya brand frozen Mamey juice linked to Typhoid outbreak. – Saturday August 14 7:32am
Goya brand Mamey juice recalled due to discovery of Salmonella. – August 12th, 2010 7:45 pm
Isn’t it odd that the Goya website makes no mention of recalls?
I’m one of those odd gringos that likes Mamey, but I think I’ll pass on Goya products.
The person I got this from says it’s an Uzbek style soup.
Noodles:
1 1/2 cups Hard Flour (bread flour) – sifted
1/3 cup boiling water
1 tsp butter
1 egg well beaten
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
Bring the water to a boil take off the heat and add the butter. Once the butter has melted and it’s cool enough not to cook the egg, add the egg, oil, and salt. Mix well, then stir in the flour and put it on a lightly floured counter and knead well, adding more flour if necessary.
Put the dough in a lightly floured bowl, cover it with a damp towel and let it rest for about 40min. Then roll the dough to about 1/2 inch thick then fold it over a few times and slice it into thin strips.
Cook it in salted boiling water until the noodles are al dente then drain and keep warm.
Soup:
3 or 4 oz lard (original recipe called for mutton suet)
1lb lamb – cut into bite sized pieces
1 large tomato – peeled and diced
2 or 3 green onions – coarsely chopped for garnish
2 cloves garlic – minced
1/2 medium carrot – julienne
2 green bell peppers – cut into thin strips
2 large dried red peppers – chopped
1/2 large onion – thinly sliced
4 cups beef bouillon
1 Tbs soy sauce
1/2 cup tomato puree
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper to taste
In a heavy stock pot heat the lard and saute the lamb and garlic. Making sure to brown the lamb on all sides.
Add the vegetables -reserving the diced tomatoes and green onions until the soup is almost done.
Brown the vegetables slightly then add the bouillon, tomato puree, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and cook until the lamb is tender, then remove from heat, taste for seasoning and add the diced tomatoes.
In deep bowl place noodles and pour a portion of soup over them. Top with green onions.
The same day my a/c burned up, my 30+ year old refrigerator started to fail in a major way. (It had belonged to my grandparents, then my parents, and then me. –let’s see this new unit last that long.)
So after giving it careful consideration and deciding that I really don’t like warm beer, I went down to Lowes and wandered around trying to figure out what made one refrigerator $1000 better than the one next to it. Having failed at that, even with the help of the salesman, I settled on a stainless, double door, side by side.
I was going to go with french doors with the freezer down below, but I ran into two problems.
The first problem is that I would have to dig through it to find anything, and previous experience with a chest type freezer has taught me that I tend to get lazy and whatever is on the bottom, stays on the bottom.
And the second, and even more important problem, is that I would have to bend over to get to anything. And no matter how hard I try to deceive myself, my back insists on reminding me that I’m just not as young and flexible as I used to be.
At any rate, I’m happy with my choice. I have more freezer room and I can see what’s in it instead of relying on a questionable memory, and I’ve always liked the look of stainless steel appliances. But let me warn you, if you have kids -or a picky wife- don’t buy stainless. It shows every mark.
Something else I learned the hard way is that when the manufacturer says to wait 24hrs before putting food in your new refrigerator or it might spoil, they are not joking. It takes at least that long for it to get completely cold. (especially if it’s 100° in your kitchen.)
The upside to this whole mess is that I had the cash in the bank to deal with it, and my house is now cool and I have a lot more freezer room.
The downside is that I have more cash in my change jar than I do in my bank account. –So much for that long vacation.
Now all I need is a place to put this beast in my itty bitty kitchen.
