Category: (it's all about the) food

Oh, fudge!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, education, friends, Karen's Kitchen, local fun, quest for the best
Lemon Kreme and Dark Chocolate Fudge

I took a fudge making class through Wells Adult Education last night at the high school. There were about 8 of us present and we had mostly all tried to make fudge with varying amounts of success. We were a mixed group: a few men, mostly woman, all determined to (finally) learn how to make good fudge.

We were sure it involved a candy thermometer.

We were wrong.

It involves exactly 5 minutes of continuous stirring with a wooden utensil with a flat edge. I own every kitchen utensil known to womankind for baking but guess what? When my flimsy wooden scraper broke a few years ago, I didn’t replace it.

Guess what I ran out to the kitchen store to buy yesterday?

The secret to great homemade fudge!

It happens that I actually do own a candy thermometer already, which (alas) shall continue to remain in its original packaging.

Anyone else have any secrets (or secret recipes) for great fudge?

Back on the Weight Watchers Wagon

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, health, Midlife Crisis, Turning 50

I decided to go back on Weight Watchers a few weeks ago. My goals were:

  1. Lose 10 pounds.
  2. Learn the new PointsPlus Program.

That’s it. Not lofty goals by any means. I lost weight with WW several years ago and wanted to nip the current weight-trending-upward thing I’d noticed over the past year in the bud. I had my few favorite low points value”go-to” foods when I did WW the first time, but hel-lo? They are MUCH DIFFERENT now–PointsPlus values are just that: plus. So the daily allotment is higher too, yada yada, but it means that I had to find all new PointsPlus (hereafter referred to as PP’s)  “go-to’s” in addition to the zero points fruits and veggies we all know and love.

So, always up for a challenge, I did. Here they are:

DISCLAIMER: I am a layperson, not a Weight Watchers Rep. I am figuring this out for myself online as I go along.

  1. Pistachio nuts, shelled: 16 are 1 PP. Want to live dangerously? 5 are ZERO PP’s.  Space them out over your day–say, 3 occasions of eating 5 pistachio’s each (maybe breakfast, lunch, and dinner?) and you don’t have to count 15 at all. You’re welcome.
  2. Special K Crackers. I like the multigrain ones (have not tried the other kind). 24 are 3 PP‘s; but 18 are only 2 PP‘s.
  3. A zucchini, diced up and microwaved for 2-3 minutes, then salt and pepper it. ZERO PP‘s. It’s quick and it fills you up.
  4. Sriracha Sauce. 4 T are ZERO PP‘s. Great on anything that needs a little pizzazz (eggs, cold cuts).
  5. Salad. A ZERO PP salad can consist of lettuce, shredded cole slaw mix (plain), diced tomato, bell pepper, 3/4 T of Craisins, 3 olives, sliced mushrooms. Maple Groves Cranberry Balsamic Salad Dressing, 1 T. Okay, so it’s not a lot of dressing. If you have points to spare, use 2T for 1 PP, otherwise, it’s a good compromise if you’re hungry but ate up all your points already.
  6. Lipton’s Cup O’Soup, 1 PP…and a truckload of sodium, but hey, sometimes it’s worth the tradeoff.
  7. Three slices of deli turkey are 1 PP. Roll them up in a lettuce leaf and douse them with Sriracha Sauce.
So, there’s some to start.  Hope you find it helpful.

Do any of you have any Weight Watchers low PointsPlus food suggestions?

Great audiobook

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, family, friends, Marriage, Midlife Crisis, relationships, Someone's gotta say it

I just finished this book and I really enjoyed it. Lisa Scottoline,whom I’d never heard of, spoke right to me and many of my issues. Even though she’s twice divorced (nope, not me), she lives with 5 dogs (nope, I live with 3 humans…and chickens!) has 1 child (I have 2), has seen 50 come and go, (nope, I’m currently Staring Down 50), I could see myself in so many of her stories. This book is comprised of just that: many stories from her life. One of my favorites is the one about being a cookbook collector. I, myself, am a Closet Cookbook Collector-well, maybe not so closeted. I love to read them, buy them, share them, compare them. What I rarely do, however, is COOK from them. I have my favorite go-to recipes to which I gravitate toward by default. You know, the ones that I can make without having to think too much? Those. She does the same thing!! I felt so much better after that!! The only reason that I didn’t give this book 5 stars is because I didn’t feel the same way about the chapters that were written by her daughter, Francesca. They weren’t bad; they just weren’t me.

Staring down fifty

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, Marriage, Midlife Crisis, Turning 50

I’m going to be 50 this year and have been thinking about what I want to do about it. It seems like a great opportunity for it not to be “just another birthday”. I have had a lot of ideas about how to mark the milestone as well as how to celebrate the day. I started my scrapbook for “My Fiftieth Year” and it’s halfway ready to go. I’ll finish setting it up by or on May 19 (at a scrapbooking event with my friend Susan).

I’m worried though, because as I told my friends (Susan, Deb, Elisabeth) and my daughter yesterday: I’m afraid that I have so many ideas that I won’t commit to one and will end up doing nothing. My friend’s husband celebrated his turning 50 by subscribing to “AARP”. Hmmm…I’ll think about that later.

My friend Deb is also turning 50 this year, and I envy her focus. She wants to take a trip, and even knows where she wants to go. This reminded me that I want to take a trip too! I want to go to Italy, to or near Avellino!  But I think I want to be in my home state for my actual birthday. Plus, my husband wants to go someplace else if we take a trip (like Bermuda).

I want to have an Italian birthday cake from La Cascia’s in Burlington, MA, but no one in my immediate family likes this kind of cake. The idea of 50 mini cupcakes (from Somethin’ Sweet in Sanford) surrounding one normal size cupcake (or 6 inch cheesecake?)  with an inscription of some sort would be really cool. That way, there would be something for everyone (read: no complaints that  “I don’t like chocolate!” or “I don’t like vanilla!”…minis can be ordered in many flavors). This is my Plan B.

Sigh. I’m going in circles. I saw somewhere that some people make a “Bucket List” of things to do in their 50th year. That might work.

How do people celebrate turning 50?

Anyone? Anyone?

Decluttering

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Marriage, my one word, Pantry Project, relationships, shopping

In the March 2012 issue of her magazine, Oprah says, “Identifying the cause of your clutter is the first step to getting it under control,” p.31.

Ya think?

Just in case that’s true…I thought about it in relation to my pantry, because food clutter is one of the areas with which I struggle (read: argue about with my husband). I look in my overflowing pantry and see safety, security, love. My husband looks in and sees clutter, chaos, disarray.

It’s a problem.

He is to the point now where he won’t even look in there to see if we have the can of tomato sauce, box of spaghetti, or whatever he needs to make supper that night. He would rather go to the store and buy what he needs, thereby completely avoiding the pantry and hopefully (but not usually) a fight.

Well, Oprah, let’s see if you and Peter Walsh can help us out. I’ll read the article and see if I can be helped. Peter’s idea in a nutshell is to pare down your belongings to basically nothing so they don’t have to be stored, dusted, arranged, etc.

Don’t think so.

My idea is this: get a bigger pantry. Just sayin’.

Have it your way

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, local fun, Marriage, quest for the best, Someone's gotta say it

I was recently reminded that going to the gym on an empty stomach is (for me) never a good idea. In a subconscious effort to undo any potential good my time at the gym may have afforded me, I headed over to Burger King for the special.
                                         Two Breakfast Sandwiches for $3

This is a special that their rival (McD’s) runs often as well. Here’s the difference: When I went to McD’s with my husband and tried to get one of the breakfast sandwiches without cheese, they said (wait for it….), “No.”. They explained to me how they would have to charge me full price for both sandwiches if I asked them to leave the cheese off one of them.

Really? Really?

Fast forward to today at Burger King. I ordered my 2 sandwiches, asking for the cheese to be left off one of them, and guess what? That’s what they did! And they didn’t charge me extra! And they never batted an eye!

BK: 1, McD’s: 0

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*NOTE: I complained on the McD’s website after that and I got a very nice free meal (and a grudging apology, but I let that slide) of 2 breakfast sandwiches for $3.00, one of which was without cheese, to make up for it.

🙂

Expand your horizons

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, local fun, movies, quest for the best, tweens

Looking for something fun to do with your kids this weekend? How about a movie and a cupcake? That’s what my daughter and I did today and we had a great afternoon.

What to see? That was tricky. There is a dearth of family movies to choose from at the moment.

Do you like movies about nature? Do you like movies about animals? Do you like National Geographic-type programs?  

I don’t, actually. Not much. I usually avoid them at all costs.

Big Miracle is a such a movie, but because it was the only option (and because we missed Glow Bowling) I decided to take my daughter to see it anyway. I brought my knitting, so the afternoon wouldn’t be a total loss. Well, the surprise is this: the movie was great. I loved it, and so did she. It’s a love story, but on many different levels. There was, of course, the usual man-woman relationship love, but also:

  1. The whale parents’ love for their child
  2. A grandfather’s love for his grandson
  3. Everyone’s (eventual) love for the whales

I liked it so much that I was motivated to write this, to persuade you to go see it.

After that, I was in such a good mood that we went to get a cupcake from Somethin’ Sweet. Jen mentioned that she was working on a new cupcake: Peach Cobbler. Hello? It was totally a day for breaking out of my rut, because I almost always will choose a cupcake that has chocolate of some sort  in it, but this time I went with the Peach.

It was a good decision. 🙂

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So, see a movie that you wouldn’t normally see. Eat a cupcake that isn’t chocolate. Better yet, share both with your tween!

Scrapbooking

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Midlife Crisis, Turning 50

I got an email to attend a Scrapbooking Weekend, and even though I’m a novice scrapbooker, I didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to spend a full day with a friend, so I was so happy when I was able to arrange it so that I could attend one of the sessions.

I started thinking about what I would do during my scrapbooking time. I had an idea to set up a scrapbook entitled:  My Fiftieth Year. Kick it off with birthday month and then make a 2 page spread for each month (if there are that many in the book?) and record how I spend the year (so I start off ahead instead of behind!).

I was inspired by two things:

  1. My local library’s recent workshop that I attended to create a vision board.
  2. Meg’s scrapbook pages she calls  Project Life  on her “Our Misadventures” blog. Hmmm…maybe I should call mine Project MidLife? 🙂

I’m on the fence now about whether I should do “2012” and have it span January through December, or start in in May and have it span May 2012 to April 2013. I am also wondering about whether I should have themes that correspond with the month (for example, Christmas for December) or themes corresponding to my interests (food! writing! books!)…maybe, somehow, both?

What do you think?

Expensive (disposable?) electronics

by Karen, posted in quest for the best, Work from Home, writing
The two most recent offenders

I had a Compaq Presario Desktop computer for more than 15 years, and it never stopped working. Well, except for that one time, when it caught a virus, but it recovered and never failed me again. Its only shortcoming? It was (a phenomenon with which so many of us who are aging are intimately familiar) getting slow, or slower, to be more precise (you know, in comparison to the younger–I mean newer–models).

In our household we’ve had 4 laptops (all different brands) live and die in under 4 years. What’s up with that?? Two of them have been repaired (for a few hundred dollars total) but the trust is now gone, you know what I mean? Like when your car doesn’t start for the first time…it’s hard to rely on it fully after that. You’re always on edge, waiting for it to let you down again.

Do any of you writers and bloggers out there have a computer (either a desktop or a laptop) that: 

  1. has everything you need on it to do everything you want to do
  2. didn’t cost you your first-born child
  3. is reliable and
  4. that you love? or at least like most of the time?

If yes, then please, for the love of God, tell me the name of it!

Wicked good? Not!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, health, local fun, no fear, restaurants, Someone's gotta say it, tweens
Ew. Just...ew.

I recently visited a popular restaurant in Wells, one that I go to frequently. Usually I go with my husband but this time I was with  my daughter. We went there on Saturday. My twelve-year-old picked the restaurant and was excited to be going out for lunch with her mom.

My preference is always to sit in a booth, but they were all filled, so we agreed to take one of three small, two-seater tables in the center aisle. Before we ordered a booth opened up to our right, and we asked our server if we could move there. “Sure, if it’s not spoken for already,” she said. “I’ll go check.” We watched her talk to a woman in a Wicked Good! sweatshirt who was making the judgment calls at the door in terms of who sat where.

After a few moments, our waitress returned, apologetic. “A larger party is waiting to sit there,” she said. Really? There was no one at the door.  This is an establishment that does not take reservations. I say again, “Really?”

Okay, so we stay put. We order. The table sits vacant. Two more parties of two (women) come in, ask for the booth, and are given the same story by the girl at the door in the Wicked Good! sweatshirt. They take small tables like my daughter and I did.

But then….a party of two (wait for it….) men come in. At first, the Wicked Good! girl gives them the same story that the rest of us (women) got…but then she says, “Well, all right,” to them, and proceeds to sit this party of two (men) in the booth that my daughter and I couldn’t have (not to mention the other 4 women that asked for it).

Did I mention that it was two men who got the booth? I guess the Wicked Good! girl can’t do math. Hello? A party of two is not larger than a party of two.

To add insult to injury, when my fried seafood came, it was on a dirty plate.