Decadent!

This past week at work we have been gearing up for a nationwide shortage on the main isotope, Tc-99m, we use to do cardiac imaging with in nuclear medicine.

For me, this has meant working with “application” people over the phone and writing new program templates for our imaging cameras to use Tl-201, an isotope that we used commonly 15+ years ago when I was starting out in nuclear medicine. My supervisor has also had to change our entire scheduling process for our patients and physicians.  It has been a total team project trying to be innovative with handling this upcoming crisis.

This has left me mentally “wiped out” at the end of the day……all I want to do when I come home is walk the dogs and watch the Olympics.

However, I did manage to make these DECADENT “Nanaimo Bars” earlier this week on Wednesday…..just getting around to posting about it this morning.

dec·a·dent

adj.

 Marked by or providing unrestrained gratification; self-indulgent.

I must admit that since the Olympics have started I’ve been a bit obsessed about finding a few “Canadian” recipes to try….this is one of them that is absolutely fabulous!

“Nanaimo Bars”

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup white sugar

5 Tbs. unsweetened cocoa powder

1 egg, beaten

1 3/4 cups graham cracker crumbs

1 cup flaked coconut

1/2 cup finely chopped almonds (optional)

1/2 cup butter, softened (yes….MORE butter)

3 Tbs heavy cream

2 Tbs. custard powder (I used instant cheesecake pudding mix)

2 cups confectioners sugar

4 (1 ounce) squares semisweet baking chocolate

2 tsp. butter (yes, more butter)

In the top of a double boiler (I just put mine in a saucepan on simmer) combine 1/2 cup butter, white sugar and cocoa powder.   Stir occasionally until melted smooth. Beat in the egg, stirring until thick, 2-3 minutes.  (I’m not sure about this…you might stir some of the hot chocolate mix into the eggs first to temper them….I poured the egg directly into the hot chocolate and while I was stirring it, it resembled chocolate scrambled eggs)Remove from heat and mix in the graham cracker crumbs, coconut and almonds.  Press into the bottom of an ungreased 8x8 pan. (yes, this will all fit in an 8x8 pan….like I said…it’s decadent!)

For the middle layer, cream together 1/2 cup butter, heavy cream and custard powder or instant pudding mix (just the 2 Tbs., not the whole box) until light and fluffy.  Mix in the confectioners sugar until smooth. (hand stir in the confectioners sugar to get it well incorporated before using the mixers…..otherwise you will have confectioners sugar ALL OVER your kitchen).  Spread over the bottom layer in the pan.  Chill to set.

Let your kids (or in my case….the dogs) lick the beaters!  Luckily, I have two dogs…..1 for each beater!

While the second layer is chilling, melt the semisweet chocolate and 2 teaspoons of butter.  (I was using stick butter….don’t know what 2 teaspoons look like, so I used about 1 1/2 tablespoons.) together in the microwave or over low heat. Spread over the chilled bars. Let the chocolate set before cutting into squares.

These are best at room temperature.

I hope you enjoy them as much as we have here at home.

Snapshots

Last night I went “hooking” at Renee’s house.  Renee and I have worked together for years and she was my first hooking student.  We still work together and she sells hand-dyed wool at Skip To My Ewe, the eBay store we started together several years ago. 

We had delicious baked potato soup, wine and cupcakes……ahhhh, to sit around and hook and chat with such good friends.  We talked about hooking, life, the Olympics, “The Bachelor” (can you believe Vienna is still in the running…..oy vay!)

Anyway, here are some of the rugs we were working on last night.

Renee’s rug …..she completed this at the Eureka Springs hooking retreat last month…..I just love the wonky church!  The pattern is from Nola.

Sandy was working on her footstool pattern that she started at Rugs on the Rocks with Kim Nixon…..she ALMOST has the hooking done! Go Sandy Go!

Kelly, the fastest hooker I know, had started another new rug…..this time she is working on a geometric for her new lake house.

I’m still hooking away on the 2nd garden rug….last night I worked a bit on the sunshiny background.

I also worked on more 3-D leaves for the flower above.  I’ve had several people ask how I make these……first you crochet some of your wool strips…..just a simple chain stitch done with your hook.

Then attach them to your hooking….I leave a long tail on the end that attaches up by the bud of the flower that can be hooked over.

This one still has a few loose tails that will be hooked over by background wool.

Then on the other end I stitch those to my hooking, on one leaf I stitched it down in the middle.

….and it ends up looking like this…..

I hope to share more alternative hooking techniques as I progress on this set of rugs.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Spending the day with the love of my life

Mounting and hanging rugs

I just came across 2 sites about mounting and hanging rugs and textiles. 

Click HERE and HERE to read more.

I'm curious as to what methods most of you use?

My favorite way to hang rugs at the moment is to sew a casing on the back with wool and slide a strip of flat aluminum threshold through the casing and then nail that to the wall....it makes the rug lie really flat against the wall.

Here is the best picture I could find of the threshold....make sure it's flat like this.

I'm also curious about the velcro technique that they talk about in the site that I mentioned.

Fluff

Looks like feathers falling from the sky this morning.

Let the Games Begin!

Tonight is the opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics. I just dearly love the Winter Olympics….the excitement and danger of alpine skiing

 (Lindsey Vonn and Olympe, the matriarch of Vonn’s cow family)

and luge

(Doubles luge team Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin of the USA practice during a training session prior to the Viessmann Luge World Cup on November 19, 2009 in Calgary, Alberta Canada. (Getty Images))

and the grace and beauty of ice dancing (Davis and White in action)

and everything in between!

In honor of opening ceremonies I’m going to try and make a recipe that I’ve never made before….it’s an appetizer and I think it will be both fun and symbolic.

Just like the Olympic Flame coming from Greece…

Pawel Dwulit, Associated Press

(Canadian country music sensation Shania Twain lights the Olympic Cauldron with the Olympic Flame at Hollinger Park in her hometown of Timmins, Ontario on Friday, Jan. 1, 2010. The Olympic flame is passing through more than 1,000 communities on a 106-day journey before arriving in time for the Vancouver Games on Feb. 12.)

I’ve googled several recipes and here is the one I’m going with:

“Olympic Flame Appetizer (Saganaki)”

Ingredients:
1 pound cheese, sliced about 1/4 inch thick, 8 to 10 pieces (says it should be a hard Greek cheese such as Kasseri….I’ve never even heard of this, so we’ll see if I can find some of this when I get off work today)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup tablespoons fresh chopped oregano
OR
2 teaspoons dried oregano (I’ve read that the dried oregano works better)
1 cup plain fresh bread crumbs
3 1/2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup Metaxa Greek brandy, or other brandy (I actually have brandy at home left from fruitcake making, so I’ll be using that)
2 lemons, juice of (I’ll be using the lemons from Kenny’s lemon tree!)
1 cup Greek Kalamata olives for garnish
Baguette slices or pita bread wedges, grilled or plain

Directions:

Beat the egg with milk and pour into a shallow plate. Combine oregano with bread crumbs, salt and freshly ground pepper. Dip slices in egg mixture and then press slices firmly into bread crumbs on both sides. Coating will not be uniform.
Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. (Use two pans to make things go faster.) Place two or three slices of the breaded cheese into the pan(s). Fry about a minute or two until golden brown. Turn and fry another minute until cheese begins to melt.
Be ready with your long-handled match and brandy. With the cheese in the hot pan, pour 2 tablespoons over the top and immediately light. Shout Opa! over the flame, pour lemon juice over, and serve hot with bread and olives. Keep frying and flaming.

Pray that I don’t burn the house down!

Picking up the hook

It’s been a while since I picked up my hook……

I always have good intentions of hooking a bit every day, but it seems like other “stuff” manages to get in the way.  Sometimes I just feel like my mind is all over the place and I just can’t “settle” and get ANYTHING done.

Yesterday I actually left the house on my day off and went shopping…..it was fun….looking for things that might possibly make my husband smile when he unwraps them on his birthday.

I spend a lot of my days off staying completely at home.  No, I don’t have a phobia about leaving my house….I guess I just love my home and feel completely content to stay here when I have time off work.

That “no rush” feeling of getting up, sipping coffee while I read other folks blogs, leisurely having breakfast at say, 9am, instead of the usual grabbing coffee on the way out the door at 6:15 on a work day.   It’s just nice to be at home and let your day unfold.

Last night we were ordering in pizza, so that gave me time to sit and hook.  A lot of my time is taken on making decisions about colors.  With this rug it is also taking more time to think of different ways to embellish as well.

The greens and yellows I worked with last night make me happy.

Creating with a new technique makes me happy as well.

Valentine rugs

This morning I was rummaging through my wool room looking for a tree rug that I had hooked and ran across these two rugs that were rolled up….guess I’d better get them out and display them somewhere….at least during February!

How many of you hook rugs specifically for the holidays?

I don’t have one for Groundhog Day, but I think I have rugs for most every holiday there is!

Snow on branches….cookies

(Winter tree picture from ThomasN2010’s photostream)

I made dough for these chocolate krinkle cookies on Sunday….how fitting that when I baked them tonight we were getting another dusting of snow.  They remind me of barren trees with just a hint of snow on their branches.  I think that when I make them again I might shape them in little logs and rename them “snow on branches” cookies.

(get the recipe HERE.  Thanks Kim for heading me in the direction of yet another great recipe!)

After work, we walked the dogs in an older neighborhood…..

very peaceful….

snow falling,

the sounds of our footsteps on the wet sidewalks,

  an occasional jangling of dog tags as the dogs shook the fine snow off of their coats.

An easy evening.

Once we were home we decided to have left-overs from Sunday night’s dinner of taco salad and then kick back for the rest of the evening.

The dogs settled in quickly once the fire was lit….there is really nothing more peaceful to me than to have a dog draped across your lap gently snoring while you watch tv or read a book.

Soothing.

Balance vs. Surge

I woke up this morning and coffee actually sounded good to me again….YAY!

As Kenny says, he can tell when I’m sick when food doesn’t sound good and I’m too sick to get on the internet :)

Of course the up-side of having food-poisoning is that I think I’ve lost about 7 pounds since Tuesday night…..always looking for those hidden blessings.  Perhaps on Monday I’ll start back to the gym in earnest and start whittling away at the winter fat.  A few years ago I was at a point where I actually liked to go to the gym, (okay, I never liked cardio…..I wish there was something to get me to love that, but I just don’t…..lifting weights however….I love) but maybe I just got burnt out on it.  I’ve talked to Dulcy about yoga and I might give that a try…..it’s just always trying to prioritize what I want to do.  I guess I go in “fits and spurts” with everything I do.

I might be in a home-remodeling craze and then go into a cooking craze and then a reading craze and then hooking again.  Rather than fighting it, I guess I should just learn to be “in the moment” with whatever I feel passionate about at the time.

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time you know that I’m always searching for more BALANCE in my life…..maybe I’m just not wired for balance….maybe my wiring is a little more conducive to surges.  I’ve decided not to fight it and just go with it.

I’ve been following the blog of Deanne Fitzpatrick and I love/hate how her blog has so much writing and so few pictures……but, now I think I get it.  Having to have pictures (or feeling like I need to have pictures)  TOTALLY gets in the way of just sitting down and writing, so from time to time you may not see as many pictures, but I’ll try to always sit down and jot down a little bit about my day, my life, my thoughts.

We are expecting snow again tonight……..LOVE!

It’s Spring Indoors

 

My wonderful husband made this arrangement for me to have when my hooking group gathered the other night. It was a highlight for me because the rest of the night was a bust.

I came home from work early on Tuesday, we walked the dogs and as we were walking I just knew I wasn’t feeling good. About the time the girls were to arrive, I realized that I had food poisoning and it was not going to be good. Luckily, the women I hook with are GOOD friends and they cut the buffalo pizza, served themselves and hooked while I laid on the couch and listened to their chatter.  It was soothing to have the chatter of women in the background when you’re not feeling too hot.

Having true friends is a good thing.

Still not feeling 100%, but definitely on the mend.

Seed beads

Now is when I wish I had more experience with photography…..photographing the beading is difficult.  I wish you could see the way they shimmer against the wool…..

When I bought the beads, I had no idea just how TINY they were….sewing on was TEED-E-US to say the least.

Funny, in the pictures it reminds me of caviar.

Pictures from around the park

What a beautiful afternoon. Sunshine, not too cold, not windy.  The dogs have been cooped up in the house for a few days now and they were really wanting to get outside and stretch their legs and do some sniffing about. We took them to Phelps Grove Park and took a few pictures while we were there.

Someone was building this snowman while we were there.  If you look close you can see angel wings sticking out from behind.  It’s at the “Victim’s Memorial Garden” and they built the snowman over the statue of an angel.  Pretty creative huh?

I love big old trees like this….beautiful!

More snowmen….this one had glasses.

This one has marble eyes, but it’s nose has fallen off.