Toaster Oven, Bowling, Weather,

Having originally purchased a Black and Decker Toaster oven which went kaput. I ended up in touch with Spectrum Appliances in Ohio who promised to replace my toaster oven. On July 2 they said they would email me when they had dispatched the appliance. I have emailed them once since this time, but at present, nothing appears to have happened and they still say they will email me when they have sent the replacement. I am getting a tad fed up with this. I'm thinking I should start doing some phoning instead of emailing.

Wednesday is bowling league day and as we have missed bowling for two weeks running, we are both looking forward to going. Just keeping my fingers crossed that nothing will prevent us this time.

Having heard so much about flash flooding in North Carolina lately, I have been enquiring of my friends if  they are doing OK. Seems as though they are. Things seem to be pretty bad everywhere, I hear from Viveka that Sweden is "on fire" and that there is such a drought that farmers are unable to feed their cattle and having to slaughter them because of it. And yet, people maintain global warming isn't happening!!!

It seems I have posted this recipe before but I still haven't got round to try it. For some unknown reason I have never cooked Cornish Hens. Odd really, because I enjoy them. The first time I ever had them they were made as a birthday surprise dinner for me by a really good friend in North Carolina - he is no longer with us unfortunately. I never knew exactly how he cooked them which is a pity because they were really delicious and I know he used a bread and milk stuffing, but that is all. This recipe says it is for four but every time I have eaten Cornish Hens I have been served a whole bird. I suppose it depends on the size of  the hen.

Herb-Roasted Cornish Hens with Root Vegetables

2 1- to 1-1/2- pounds Cornish game hens
4 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 2-inch lengths
4 medium parsnips, peeled and cut into 2-inch lengths
2 small turnips, peeled and cut into wedges
1 medium onion, cut into wedges
3 Tbs olive oil or cooking oil
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tsp dried rosemary, crushed
2 tsp dried oregano, crushed
1/2 tsp salt

1. Skewer neck skin of hens to back; tie legs to tail. Twist wings under back. Place hens, breast up, on a rack in a large shallow roasting pan. Place carrots, parsnips, turnips, and onions around hens in pan. Combine oil, garlic, rosemary, oregano, and salt; brush onto hens and vegetables.

2. Roast, uncovered, in a 375° F oven for 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hours or until hens are no longer pink and the drumsticks move easily in their sockets.(Internal temperature should be 180° F with an instant-read thermometer.) During roasting, turn vegetables occasionally. Transfer hens from roasting pan to serving platter. Cover and keep warm. Remove rack from roasting pan. Stir vegetables. Increase oven temperature to 450° F. Continue roasting vegetables for 15 to 20 minutes more or until tender and browned.

3. To serve, using a slotted spoon, spoon vegetables around hens on platter.  .

Servings: 4

Source: Better Homes and Gardens

Have a great day
 

Tuesday Grousing.

Welcome to my Tuesday. I had not long been out of bed, Matt was watching GMA as he likes to do and I was just about turning on my laptop when bang, bang, bang on the door and the superintendent and wife came in. They walked in to our second bathroom; lo and behold the floor was flooded; water, water everywhere. Apparently the tenant in an apartment above us had gone out and meanwhile his toilet had overflowed. He had come back and dealt with it, but didn’t report it  Thank you. In his case the water was in his living room as well apparently. Matt and I started trying to clear it up with towels but the super brought up a shop vac which sucks up water (didn’t know they had one) so then we had some wet towels and an absolutely sopping bathmat, a large one too. Earlier, just before we got up, Matt was in the main bathroom so I was thinking about padding along the corridor to use the second loo. I am so glad I didn’t. Stepping barefoot into a puddle would have shocked the sh*t out of me. LOL. Funnily enough, the day before I had reported a leak from the ceiling down one of our walls but it is actually dried up which is why I saw the stain. They figured it was from when the pipes burst a few months ago. Not going to be fixed just yet awhile as it’s not urgent. Dunno about this, there is a lot of changing happening plus our current super is moving on at the end of the month. Retiring because of ill health.

When I went to the doctor’s recently, they said I should perhaps have an ultrasound on my thyroid. Usually they give me the form, not sure why they didn’t, however I got a call to book an appointment and it was actually for 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday, great, the lab is just up the road, no problem. When I get there it turns out that despite my telling them at the doctor’s office, they had booked me in at the lab in Cambridge (where the doctor is) rather than in Kitchener where we live. Grr. I did emphasise this to the nurse, but whoever booked the appointment hadn’t done what I asked. So, OK, they had a vacancy at 3:30: we sat and waited. I have never had a thyroid ultrasound before and guess what, I will NEVER have another one. I lay on a bed with my middle raised on a pillow and my head and behind on the bed so I was literally bent over backwards. I was in agony, I have a bad back anyway which I mentioned to the technologist. At the end I said I would be taking some Tylenol, she said why and I told her once again because I had a bad back and was now in a lot of pain. She asked how did I sleep. Certainly not bent over backwards like that.  Another Grrr. She told me not to swallow whilst she was doing it, I found that I couldn’t swallow in that position anyway. I forgot, she also told me to relax, ha!! You relax
when you are in pain like that.

Well, sorry about that y’all. had to have my rant. Today we get to go bowling so that makes me a happy camper.

This is definitely something I shouldn’t eat at the moment, but with the mood I’m in, I could gobble it up and not just one serving. Of course you could use real cream instead of Cool Whip.

Peanut Butter-Chocolate Trifle  

Kraft Kitchens

There’s nothing trifling about this dessert that has it all: peanut butter, cookies and creamy chocolate pudding.

12 servings, 2/3 cup each

What You Need

1 pkg.  (3.9 oz.) JELL-O Chocolate Instant Pudding
1 pkg.  (3.4 oz.) JELL-O Vanilla Flavour Instant Pudding
3 cups  cold milk, divided
1/4 cup  PLANTERS Creamy Peanut Butter
1 tub  (8 oz.) COOL WHIP Whipped Topping, thawed, divided
30 chocolate chip cookies (2 inch), chopped
3 Tbsp.  chocolate syrup

Make It

EMPTY pudding mixes into separate medium bowls. Add 1-1/2 cups milk to each; beat with whisk 2 min. Add peanut butter to vanilla pudding; beat until well blended. Stir 1/2 cup COOL WHIP into pudding in each bowl.
SPOON chocolate pudding mixture into 2-qt. serving bowl; cover with layers of half each of the remaining COOL WHIP and chopped cookies. Repeat layers, using vanilla pudding mixture.
DRIZZLE with syrup.

Kraft Kitchens Tips
Sweets can be part of a balanced diet but remember to keep tabs on portions.

Special Extra
Top chocolate pudding layer with 2 sliced bananas before covering with remaining layers as directed.

Make Ahead
Prepare trifle as directed but do not top with syrup. Refrigerate up to 6 hours. Drizzle with syrup just before serving.

Have a great day

Re-gifting, Weather and Books.

Do you re-gift? I suppose it is something everyone has done at some time or another. This morning on GMA, they had tips on re-gifting and the first item was don’t re-gift anything with engraved initials on it – no, really!!! Sometimes I wonder if they think everyone is stupid.

Eastern Canada is having terrible problems with flooding caused by rain and storm surges. What a lovely Christmas present! The weather seems to be playing up all over the place, last night I saw pictures out west showing houses collapsing into the flood waters. I am very glad I live where I do, of course there may be something I haven’t thought of but we live on a hill so flooding should certainly never be a problem. One good thing, it does seem that some of the airports are beginning to move their backlog of passengers although how long this will take is anybody’s guess. So long as Europe doesn’t get any more snow. Even Buffalo is going to have a meeting on why they couldn’t cope with their recent snow problems.

I have just finished The White Lioness by Henning Mankell, it is the third in his Wallander series. This one was set in 1992 and was about a proposed plot by the African boere to assassinate Nelson Mandela. Sweden became involved because they conspirators sent the assassin to Sweden to practise in private before he went to do his job. In some ways it was a pretty horrid story. I was interested to discover, whilst reading, that Sweden uses white as a mourning colour (as do the Chinese). I have the next of his books to read but I am now just about to read Towers of Midnight which is the penultimate book in the Wheel of Time series begun by Robert Jordan and being finished by Brandon Sanderson using Jordan’s notes. I am really looking forward to this although it is a very thick book and I only have a month to read it as I have no doubt there is a long waiting list at the library.

I love smoked salmon and when I saw these from Eating Well, I just had to share them.

Smoked Salmon Bites

From EatingWell: November/December 2007

Wasabi mayonnaise really sets off the smoked salmon in these rice-cracker treats. If desired, you can set out the spread, salmon, ginger and rice crackers separately and let your guests build their own (but have plenty of extra salmon on hand if you do).

2 dozen appetizers

Ingredients

1/4 cup reduced-fat mayonnaise

2 teaspoons wasabi paste, or 2 teaspoons wasabi powder mixed with 1 tablespoon water (see Tip)

24 mini rice crackers

4-6 ounces smoked salmon, cut into 24 1-inch pieces

24 small pieces pickled ginger, (see Tip)

1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest

Preparation

1. Mix mayonnaise and wasabi paste (or reconstituted wasabi powder) in a small bowl.
2. Top each cracker with 1 piece salmon, 1/2 teaspoon wasabi mayonnaise, 1 piece pickled ginger and a sprinkling of lemon zest.

Nutrition

Per appetizer : 52 Calories; 1 g Fat; 0 g Sat; 0 g Mono; 2 mg Cholesterol; 8 g Carbohydrates; 1 g Protein; 0 g Fiber; 77 mg Sodium; 9 mg Potassium

1/2 Carbohydrate Serving

Exchanges: 1/2 starch

Tips & Notes

• Make Ahead Tip: Prepare the wasabi mayonnaise (Step 1), cover and refrigerate for up to 3 days.

• Tip: Wasabi paste, wasabi powder and pickled ginger can be found in the Asian-foods section of most supermarkets.

Have a great day

Weekend Stories, Floods,

Cute New Year story, twin babies born one minute to and one minute past midnight so they will celebrate their birthdays on different days and, of course, different years. Another story on the news yesterday, a young boy in BC came face to face with a cougar in his back yard and was saved by the family dog, a golden retriever called Angel. The dog was in fact saved by the RCMP who shot the cougar. One of the officers happened to be in the neighbourhood and close to the home. If you would like to read the article it is here: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/01/03/bc-boston-bar-cougar-attack.html a pretty brave dog and it was not too badly hurt apparently. My blogging buddies have been listing the books they have been reading during 2009, I am thinking maybe I should make such a list as I don't recall what I have read - or at least not enough to rmake a list. As you may have gathered, I am a somewhat voracious reader - at the moment I am anxiously awaiting Glenda Larke's sequel to The Last Rainlord which I believe will be published in Australia in two or three month's time. Another book I am looking for is Witches Inc. by Karen Miller, I am not sure when that is due for publication in the US. I know of two people suffering from flooded basements at the moment, one a friend's son and another a friend. My heart goes out to them. I remember being flooded very well. It happened in England in Ivy House - we had a rainstorm and it caused the little tiny stream at the side of the house to flood and the whole street was knee deep in fast flowing water, so was our back yard, our living room, hall, dining room and kitchen. When we opened the front door the pieces of parquet flooring floated out with the current. I will never forget my husband (first one) wading through the living room to check on our insurance coverage. We ended up abandoning ship, as it were, and going to the family business (which included a yacht club) until things calmed down. We sure couldn't cook at home - we could have just sat upstairs, but..... it was lunchtime. Over the weekend the east coast of Canada, the Maritimes, was pummelled by fierce snow storms (30 cm of snow or approximately 1 ft.) and in some places they too had flooding from abnormally high tides which were not helped by the high winds. Even fairly close to us in London, ON they have had some pretty bad snow during the weekend. We are about an hour's drive away and our skies are totally clear. The picture shows a man clearing his drive in New Brunswick. Several houses in various provinces have been badly damaged by the storms. In fact it has been quite a start to the New Year for some people. I haven't mentioned that for some reason Firefox is no longer working on my PC, it crashes when I try to do anything, with the result that I have been using IE to do my blogs lately. The only trouble with that is it seems to have its own ideas about spacing and it is not so easy to put pictures exactly where I want them. So, if things seem a little odd these days, my apologies. This recipe is from Mushrooms Canada. Bearing in mind the popularity of wraps nowadays it seems like a good one. I like tilapia and we use it a fair bit. It is quite a delicate tasting fish. I also happen to like sushi rice, which we have, and nori, which we don't have. Japanese Tilapia And Mushroom Handrolls Mushrooms Canada 1 tbsp vegetable oil 15 mL 4 oz Fresh Shiitake Mushrooms, sliced 125 g 1 clove garlic, minced 1 2 green onions thinly sliced 2 1 tsp toasted sesame seeds 5 mL 4 sheets toasted nori, halved crosswise 4 2 Bluewater Breaded Tilapia Fillets, cooked* 2 1½ cups cooked, cooled sushi rice* 375 mL 1 small carrot cut matchstick-sized 1 1/2 avocado, peeled and cut into 8 slices 1/2 sodium reduced soy sauce, wasabi and pickled ginger (optional) 1. Heat the vegetable oil in a nonstick skillet set over medium heat. Add the mushrooms and garlic. Cook, stirring often, for 5 minutes or until tender. Remove from ehat and stir in the green onions and sesame seeds. Cool to room temperature. 2. Cover the nori with a damp kitchen towl for 30 seconds to make the sheets pliable. Meanwhile, cut each tilapia fillet into 4 equal strips. 3. Hold a piece of the nori in one hand so that they sheet overhangs to the side. Use wet fingers to spread 1/8th of the rice in the side cupped in the palm. Make a finger-sized indent in the centre of the rice. Nestle 1/8th each of mushroom mixture, carrot and avocado in the indent. Top with a piece of fish. 4. Fold the bottom edge of the nori over the filliong. Roll from one side to make a cone. Repeat with the remaining ingredients to make 8 hand rolls. Serve with soy sauce, wasabi, and ginger (if using). *Prepare the tilapia and the sushi rice according to the package directions Have a great day

Disasters and Hips, Heart Healthy Food,

Travelling to Cambridge yesterday, we crossed a couple of small river tributaries and noticed that they are somewhat swollen, in fact a few people had water covering a large part of their yards. There has been a heck of a lot of snow melt in the last day or two together with some rain which doesn't help when it comes to flooding. There are large puddles in the fields as well as at the local airport. Hopefully it won't get any worse. Cambridge itself is right on the Grand river which has been known to flood a few times. Like I said in the comments yesterday, humans are the ones who are daft enough to build their homes in the wrong spots, be it flood planes or the sides of volcanoes. A friend of mine has a house on the edge of the Intercontinental Waterway in NC which gets flooded regularly when hurricanes drop by. Luckily her house is on stilts so her main living area is fine. Have you heard about the plane which apparently dropped out of the sky last night in the Buffalo area? One minute Traffic Control were talking to them and the next, silence. 49 passengers and crew were killed together with one person on the ground in the house the plane dived into. Thank God the plane came down vertically and didn't plough through several houses. There is a lot on the news today, but at the moment they have no idea what happened. The picture shows the burning at the crash site. Incredibly two people escaped from the house. My sympathies to all the families. Yesterday I went to see the surgeon about my hip and he says the situation hasn't got any worse since last time he saw me. He has sent me for a bone scan which will be in March. I had to go for an X-ray first and took the CD of the X-ray results in to the surgeon. He then gave me the CD which I looked at on my PC and lo and behold I can look at my hip bones. Ain't technology wonderful? I asked him whether he preferred the old or the new system, he said in one respect it made it a lot easier for him as the labs could just email him the scans. Also it is cheaper for labs to make a CD which costs 1¢ as opposed to making films which cost more. On the other hand, he figured the clarity of the films is much better. Anyway, unless the bone scan shows anything different, I don't need to go for surgery at the moment unless the pain becomes unbearable. The hip bone is connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone is................... I made myself a salad yesterday for lunch which was so good for me I should be the healthiest person in the world. It had some avocado which is recommended for many things including heart health, a few walnuts, good for lowering cholesterol, some fresh ginger thought to be good for heart health amongst other things such as the knitting of bones, not to mention the usual salad ingredients. They believe turmeric may have some heart benefits too but its not yet proven so I left that out. Cinnamon is supposed to be good for lowering blood sugar, but I took the recommended amount of that every day for months and it didn't seem to do anything for me at all. They are now saying avocados are good for weight loss whereas at one time, the opposite was said. Difficult to keep up isn't it? I love avocados anyway, so it doesn't take a lot to persuade me to eat them. Funnily enough I have never made Guacamole which is the way so many people over here eat avocado. I enjoy it too so not sure why I have never made it. Mind you, we don't really eat Mexican food so that is probably why. Having said that, I had to find a recipe for Guacamole didn't I? Guacamole Source: Cooking Nook.com

This is a wonderful, easy guacamole recipe. I have added garlic, because I find it really zings up the flavor.

Guacamole is a very healthy recipe. Although we tend to think of avocados as high calorie, they are extremely healthy for us. The garlic and citrus juice are also very healthy foods. This recipe is so delicious and so easy to make. It's not only a great dip recipe on it's own, but is also perfect served alongside many other Mexican dishes like Nachos or Quesadillas. 4 ripe avocados, peeled and seeded 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 tomato, seeded and diced 2 serrano chilies, seeded and minced (optional) ¼ cup chopped cilantro leaves 4 tablespoons fresh lime juice 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped hot pepper sauce (optional) salt and pepper to taste

Cut avocado into large chunks and mash coarsely in a bowl with a fork.

Add remaining ingredients and blend gently. The guacamole does not have to be absolutely smooth. Leaving a few small chunks is fine and some people prefer it that way.

Taste and adjust the seasoning by adding more pepper sauce if you wish. Have a great day and don't forget Valentine's tomorrow.