Recipe: Pasta

A few more to try, someday:

Rotini with shrimp and bacon

Tuna pomodoro

Rigatoni with sausage and tomato cream sauce

Yes, one day I'll be a wonderful haus frau -- and a great ballerina! >:)

A happy little hodgepodge

It's been awhile since I've done one of these.

It's been awhile since I've done one of anything.

So let's make it less than* awhile!

Here goes...

10 Great Cheeses You Should Try
Oh, that is SO going on my to-do list. I've already had... camembert, gruyere, mascarpone, danablu, emmental and halloumi. Wow, a fair amount... I think the to-do should be "have such goodness more frequently". But cheese is so expensive here. I guess it's do-able in tiny amounts, though... Okay!

Creamy spinach cheese dip
A recipe I just HAVE to use -- it sounds so delectable! I have the vital ingredients... Anybody up for spinach dip Friday evening? :D

Java Tips: 5 Ways to Upgrade Your Homemade Coffee

Cooking with Beer: 6 Tasty Recipes Using Ale, Lager, or Stout

12 New Ground Beef Recipes

Facial Exercise To Tone The Face Muscles

6 Skills Every Teen Should Learn
My brother and I had an intersting discussion about parenting and the skills parents should pass on to their children. All of the kids in my family know how to clean extremely well, thanks to my mom's high standard of cleanliness and her diligence in passing on that skill. Of course, what we choose to do with that knowledge, as grown adults, is an entirely different matter, heh, but I _have_ noticed that some people don't seem to have received the same "training" we did, which makes one wonder about how skills and standards are passed on... It's interesting... In any case, that's a handy little list of a few vitals every person nearing adulthood should be familiar with... I'd say...

How to fold a pocket square
That one's for the guys...

And... to end on an even happy-er note... here are some extremely useful movie (which I haven't actually seen) quotes... :D

- Linus.
-- Now, Eve... ...let's just not talk any more about it.
-Linus, I'm tellin' you, you don't know your own mind.
--Maybe so, maybe not.


-I wish you Godspeed, Eve. And I ain't said that to anybody for a long time.


-By golly, you're a strong-minded woman. I reckon I seen that varmint for the last time.
The westward course was no smoother than that of true love.

*(Do YOU remember which side "less than" points to, as opposed to "greater than"? I don't remember that sort of thing, in general... When I learned it, I had to make a visual, right-hand/left-hand, association, gah! "Greater than" always points to the right [I think -- now I'm not so sure, since I don't remember, haha] -- and the right is "greater than" the left, because I'm right-handed. :) Same way I remember my Roman numerals... is 50 L or D? Well, D comes before L, but in Roman numerals, it's reversed, so L is 50 and D is 500. Logically. :D And in Chinese numbers, liu is 6 and jiu is 9, reversed, alphabetically. But of course. Okay, yeah, I have a weird/bad brain -- it just doesn't work properly. :D)

Recipe: Italian soda

Okay, my brother (and sister-in-law) totally got me into Italian sodas. I just looove anything tasty that's liquid-y (Pisces, some?)! This is perfectly refreshing and so tasty it can easily substitute alcohol (considering I go for alcohol socially and more for flavor than anything -- in other words: shots? nah; gin and tonic? yes!).

Really simple to make... trick is: must have ingredients. Being in the land of the brave and the free and the always-decently-exposed, one would expect to find ingredients for anything.--And we did. Not so in countries where... well, you can find whatever you need... for a price. I checked all the usual stores for flavored syrup and didn't find anything, not even a cheap-y option. Would've even gone for some concentrate of something, anything! Nothin' doin'. Probably could've found _something_ at Carrefour (or further in Taipei), but that would've involved an additional hour of journeying, minimum, and I needed to quickly grab something locally, to add to the spread... Had the Hartingdons over for the afternoon. Lovely!

Anyway, I resorted to making my own syrup from scratch (1 fresh pineapple, chopping, cooking, sugar-ing), which wasn't perfect, flavor-wise, but it did the trick, for my first attempt at the thing. Since it's so hot and summery right now, I would've chosen a fruit flavor, had I found syrup -- maybe some passion fruit... had coconut in the States... as opposed to hazelnut, vanilla, etc., which are heavier (to me) flavor-wise...

Was great!!

Oh, today, at a coffee shop, I discovered they sell syrups, which they also use in their coffee concoctions. It's a more Western-ish type coffee place -- though run by Taiwanese -- so I guess that's why they had syrup options... good to know! So, if you can't find syrup in the regular places (or if not for a fair price), see if a coffee shop with Western-ish coffee offerings has it... for sale.

Okay, so, the recipe, without further ado... found a few versions online, but they seem to agree on these general amounts...

-Cup
-Ice
-Straw

-Plain soda/Carbonated water: 1 cup (e.g. 8 ounces)
-Syrup: 1 shot (e.g. 1 ounce)
-Cream/Half-and-half: 1 shot (e.g. 1 ounce)
-Mix, or don't; insert straw; drink

Notes:
-You can put the ingredients in, in whatever order you like -- you might develop a preference, based on how they mix
-Cream's heavier than half-and-half, if you prefer lighter (I imagine milk could do, too)... or no dairy at all, could be good as well, just changes the experience
-Try mixing and matching syrup flavors :)
-Ice amount depends on preference -- I personally don't like watering stuff down with ice, so much

Yaaay!!!

You're welcome. >:)

Feel like a woman!

Feel like a woman,
Wear a dress!

Okay, the point of that quote on my Skype was that Shelah mentioned it after I wootwooed Crystal for showing up to work in a dress, which she had said she would start doing, after seeing me show up in dresses and skirts these past couple weeks. (It's summer! One should be wearing dresses and skirts!) Shelah said some lady who created the wrap around dress was the one who used to say that (well, she gave some variation of it and I googled it to get the info). It sounds great! If one is in a feeling-like-a-woman mood, haha. Granted, skirts and dresses aren't very practical if one cares for children and/or does more physical work throughout the day (or decides to jump on a pony mid-day), but for sitting at a desk and/or skipping around carefree through the city, they sure do the trick for feeling summer-y enough. :D

Anyway, mostly guys commented on my Skype quote. Only guys, actually. So I just want to point out that the quote was intended for women, NOT you guys, aherm. Please don't try to feel womanly -- stay right in your manly pants, doing your manly things, like...: making girls feel womanly, telling girls how womanly they are, encouraging girls to be womanly, putting up with girls who are womanly (ehe), and all that womanly-jazz.

Selah.

So, due to the unexpected reactions that quote engendered, I figured I'd pause for a moment to celebrate feeling like a woman...

We'll start off with a possibly-appropriate song (Dan, I know you don't read my blog anymore, but if you happen to stumble upon this post, please know that for some reason I can so picture your "chiseled" self as one of her back-up... um, back-up guy-things... ahahaha! but please know that you have WAY MORE personality than all of them put together, for which we are very thankful):



And here's one to make us all feel like extremely natural women, ehe:



To continue on with femininity, someone told me that if I saw this type of article around, I should post it, for general use-full-ness, so here're some links along the "flatter yourself" lines. I'm the least-aware-of-fashion-and-what-looks-good female ever -- off on some other plane, generally -- but I guess useful info is always... uh... useful?

Little Black Dresses for Every Body Type

How to Dress to Flatter a Curvier Figure

Flatter Your Figure

Figure-Flattering Clothes for Women

Flattering Fashion for Any Figure

How to Dress to Flatter a Curvier Figure

Easy figure fixes

Shape Your Style


And here are some random, but totally useful, things:

11 Instant Soothers for High-Stress Times

10 Things That Should Always Be in Your Car

American Pie

The Go-To Dip: 7 Spinach Dip Recipes


To share a bit more enlightenment-from-Shelah-today :D...



And, of course, that leads into this, in keeping with the general woman-ly-ness of this post (er):



(Pa-tree-sha, my dear sister, this post gives you a general idea of how my brain usually works. Since you've always wanted to see. Ahaha!)

Recipe: Banana cake

My favorite banana cake, that my mommy used to make, yay! I've tried online recipes for this, but they just haven't been the same... or maybe the ingredients just don't react the same as their Brasilian counterparts (identical ingredients to differ from country to country, you know)... Well, we don't have an oven, but I'll figure out a way to make it (again), someday...

Torta de banana

Recipes to try sometime

So I don't forget (or lose the tabs when Firefox crashes, because I haven't bookmarked them, or somesuch)...

Pepper jack corn muffins

Block island fog

Honey pound cake

Pesto ricotta pie

Chocolate-hazelnut panini

Herbed popovers

Smoked salmon toasts

Coddled eggs with Tunisian flavors

Tomato and camembert tart

Recipe: Brigadeiros

Happy little fudge balls. Or something like that. Don't know how else to relate it to anything outside Brasil. :D

Super simple, as with the mousses...


BRIGADEIRO

Ingredients:
-Condensed milk: 1 can
-Cocoa powder: 3 tablespoons
-Butter: 1 tablespoon

Directions:
-Place all ingredients in pot
-Light fire
-Stir constantly until cooked enough that the mixture, instead of meeting back together quickly when you stir, takes a little while to fall back into place -- I don't know how else to explain that, hrm... (milk will burn quite quickly, so the constant stirring is super important)
-Place on plate and let cool
-Butter hands and roll into balls
-Rolls balls in jimmies
-Place nicely on a pretty dish
-Serve :)

Recipe: Lemon mousse

Had a chance to make that passion fruit variation, with lemon! People wanted pie, but I didn't grow up with pie, so I'm a little wary of tackling such a great feat.--And then "lemon meringue pie" came up, but I haven't had much success with online recipes for that one. So, compromise: lemon mousse. It worked. It was tasty. To me, at least.

Also made brigadeiros. Finally used some of the chocolate jimmies I brought back from Brasil!--And, by the way, chocolate jimmies from Brasil taste muuuch better than the ones from any other country. I'm serious. It's true. All the other ones just taste like... what did Spike say... I forget... but even he said these were better. Amen. :)


LEMON MOUSSE

Ingredients:
-Condensed milk: 1 cup
-Half-and-half (or half cream/half milk): 1 cup
-Freshly squeezed lemon/lime juice: 1/2 cup

Directions:
-Blend all ingredients for a few minutes
-Refrigerate for at least one hour before serving

Recipe: Chewy cookies, oatmeal and chocolate chips

This recipe has been getting a happy reception, recently. I've modified the original recipe, for a few different reasons...

Ingredients --

Butter: 1 cup, softened
Brown sugar: 1 cup
Sugar: 1/2 cup
Eggs: 2
Vanilla: 2 teaspoons

Flour: 2 1/4 cups
Baking powder: 1 teaspoon
Oats: 2 cups
Chocolate chips: 1 cup


Directions --
-Pre-heat oven to 150 Celsius
-Mix wet with dry; mix well, but not too much more than needed
-Drop cookies onto ungreased trays/sheets
-Bake for about 8 minutes; they might be rather soft when you take them out, but will finish baking and cool fine and nicely chewy-like


Modifications --
-Baking powder: Originally, it called for half that amount of baking soda, instead of BP, but I've had some bad experiences with baking soda, so I've been staying away from it and trying to replace :)
-Baking powder: Sometimes baking powder has little lumps, so I like to sift it, to make sure no unsavory clumps end up in the baked goods
-Flour/Oats: Since the recipe called for quick-cook oats, but we just have regular, in order to try to lighten them a bit, I replaced one cup of our heavy oats with an extra cup of flour
-Salt: Called for a teaspoon, but our butter is salted, so I skipped the salt
-Cocoa: In a recent batch, I had actually started making a chocolate cake that called for cocoa, but then was asked to switch plans when I had already mixed the dry ingredients, so it ended up chocolatey, which some people said they liked best; so, if desiring cocoa: add 1/3 cup

Recipe: Oatmeal cookies

Every time I make oatmeal cookies, I tell myself to remember that the recipes usually call for too much sugar in this one. I never remember. Oh well, they were very sweet, but tasty and all eaten...


QUICK OATMEAL COOKIES

Measure:
-Sugar: 1 cup

Cream with:
-Butter: 1/2 cup

Combine and beat until smooth:
-Egg: 1
-Vanilla: 1 teaspoon
-Milk: 1 tablespoon

Sift together and add:
-Flour: 1 cup
-Baking powder: 1 teaspoon
-Salt: 1/2 teaspoon

Add:
-Oatmeal: 1 cup

Drop on well-greased cookie sheet; bake until light brown.

Note: I left them undefiled -- e.g. no raisins thrown in, aherm -- but really, you can add whatever you want. May I suggest chocolate chips? I think I even did that, once... :)

Recipe: Nevada

I haven't actually made this one, but I've had it and I saw that it was good. :) Want to try it someday, so archiving...

RECEITA DE NEVADA

Ingredientes

* 1 oz (25ml) de vodka.
* 1 oz (25ml) de leite condensado.
* Raspa de casca limão.

Modo de preparo

* Coloque 4 ou 5 cubos de gelo no liquidificador.
* Adicione a vodka, o leite condensado e uma pitada de raspa de limão.
* Bata até picar todo o gelo.

Dica

* A raspa da casca de limão deve ser ralada em ralador de plástico.
* Rale só a parte verde da casca, sem atingir a parte branca interna da casca.

Recipe: Passion fruit mousse

Suuuper simple recipe. Seemed to be well-received. Brasilian recipes are all extremely sweet -- and so many use condensed milk -- you have been warned.

Passion fruit mousse --

1. Equal parts (e.g. 1 cup of each) of:
-Condensed milk
-Half-and-half
-Passion fruit concentrate

2. Place ingredients in blender; blend for a few minutes straight

3. Refrigerate for at least one hour before serving

4. Serving suggestions:
-Before refrigerating, serve in smaller portions, bowls/cups -- much prettier
-Right before serving, spread a teaspoonful of fresh passion fruit, if available, on top of each serving

5. Notes:
-Condensed milk: I haven't used homemade condensed milk for this recipe, but if it isn't available, you can technically make it at home (see: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Homemade-Condensed-Milk/Detail.aspx, etc.)
-Half-and-half: I discovered this is what Americans call "creme de leite", which is what the recipe calls for; this can be made quite simply by mixing equal parts whole (real/liquid, not powder) milk and cream
-Passion fruit concentrate: If concentrate isn't available, it can be made by emptying the passion fruits into a blender (half a liter of passion fruit with half a cup of water, or a liter of passion fruit with a cup of water and so on), blending on high speed for a couple minutes, then run through a cheesecloth (or a very fine strainer) so you don't get any of the seed bits in it

Enjoy!!

Memo to self: I intend to try this with lemons/limes instead, someday... :)

Marinated Cheese

This looks like it could be taaasty... or at least useful. :)

Marinated Cheese


And the full text, in case that page goes away, in future:

Ingredients:
* 1/2 cup(s) olive oil
* 1/2 cup(s) white wine vinegar
* 3 tablespoon(s) (chopped fresh) parsley
* 3 tablespoon(s) (minced) green onions
* 1 teaspoon(s) sugar
* 3/4 teaspoon(s) (dried) basil
* 1/2 teaspoon(s) salt
* 1/2 teaspoon(s) pepper
* 3 clove(s) garlic, minced
* 1 jar(s) (2-oz.) pimiento, drained
* 1 block(s) (8-oz. sharp) Cheddar cheese
* 1 ounce(s) (8-oz. package) cream cheese

Directions:
1. Combine first 10 ingredients in a jar, cover tightly and shake vigorously to combine. Set marinade aside.
2. Cut block of Cheddar cheesein half lengthwise. Cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick slices; set aside. Using a knife dipped in very hot water and wiped dry in between slices, cut the cream cheese into 1/4-inch-thick slices.
3. Arrange cheese slices alternately in a shallow baking dish, standing slices on edges. Pour the marinade over the cheese slices. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.
4. Transfer cheese slices to a serving platter in the same alternating fashion, reserving marinade. Spoon marinade over cheese slices. Use cheese forks; serve with assorted crackers.