CHOCOLATE IS GOOOD FOR YOU!

Any time I can find a study that tells me chocolate is healthy food I love it.  According to scientists at Cornell University and Seoul National University cocoa has nearly double the antioxidants of red wine and four to five times more than tea.  Bring on the hot chocolate!!  Below is a recipe for Mexican Spiced Hot Cocoa that I love.  You can tell I like it by how wrinkled the paper is from use.

To make it even more fun we received a Back to Basics Cocoa Latte machine.  We just pour in the milk and while the machine stirs and heats, I add the cocoa and other ingredients.  When the beverage is ready I just plop my cup under the spout and out comes hot n' foamy--yuumy.
 

CHEERS to the New Year and no designated driver needed.

HAPPY 2012!!

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

Not too long ago I commented on someone’s blog that what we need in Idaho are shorter winters.  Normally our weather during the last week of December…

…looks like this.  Snow dumping on us like a thick, cold, wet blanket; 

forcing us outside to get our morning exercise like it or not.

We invest in snow throwers, snow shovels, snow tires, 

snow suits, snow mobiles, snow boards, snow skis, etc.

We roll with it, drive in it, enjoy it, even revel in the white stuff that will eventually fill our lakes and rivers with water.  Okay, after a few weeks of those drifts on the road we start checking the calendar for June when we might see green grass again.

Not this year.  What the heck?  

We’ve got NO SNOW and record-breaking warmness.

Is this weird weather the warming of the planet which, according to the Mayan calendar, will result in total destruction in 2012?  Is it all that sludge China is blasting into their air, heating up temps all the way over on this side of the Pacific?  Has Russia finally found a way to control weather and is sending drought to the United States? 

Personally I think some Canadians up in Alberta finally realized all the arctic air was escaping from their hockey rink and closed the door. 

AWESOME--in a very scary way

I’ll admit it.  I’m easily distracted.  The part of my brain that’s supposed to focus and keep lists was probably trashed when I fell on my head while trying to walk along the roof of the machine shop when I was seven.  Or the time I fell in the unfinished basement when I was twelve, or when I fell off the horse…anyway I’ll blame it on one of those.

I like to think I’m creative, not a dufus, but a lot of others seem to have different opinions.  I’ll confess I’ve gotten so caught up in studying light and shades of color in clouds that I’ve nearly driven into a ditch.  I can become so fascinated by a pattern on a person’s shirt that I will zone out entirely on what they’re saying.

On Christmas day our family was preparing for a big dinner.  We were waiting for a few guests who would arrive any minute.  New gifts pulled everyone into the living room while I finished up and then went to my computer to, you know, check on things.  I could smell a smoldering smell and blamed it on spillage from the turkey in the oven.  Then it slowly dawned on me that I’d already taken the turkey out of the oven. 

I said one of those words I shouldn’t say and ran to the kitchen.  Black smoke was rolling across the ceiling.  At that moment the fire alarm went off and everyone came to see me pull a small pan of chopped walnuts out from under the broiler.  I’d set them there to “toast” before using them as topping on a dessert.  Now they were ablaze and on their way to becoming charcoal.

I grabbed hot pads and carried the pan to the door like a waiter bringing a flaming dessert to diners at a fine restaurant.  The outside breezes snuffed out the fire.  I set the pan and its charred contents beside the barbecue grill and returned to the scene of the inferno.

Everyone opened windows and turned on fans to chase out the smoke just as the final visitors arrived. No one was harmed in the making of this disaster.  The hot pads are toast—literally.  The pan is probably beyond salvage.  Now the smoky smell has somewhat cleared out of the kitchen I can set the oven to self-clean--and stink it up again.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2011

To all my Bloggy Friends

Hope you got something super cool.