Stick Figure Saturday- Angel of the Morning coloring page

 

Good morning! It's time for a brand new Stick Figure Saturday coloring page!

This one was inspired by my love for coffee obviously.  

I hope you enjoy it. Click the images below for larger images to save, print and color.

Small jpg version of Angel of the Morning coloring page:

Large transparent png version of Angel of the Morning coloring page:

Coffee is Magic coloring page

Originally this was not what was planned. What was planned was something that would be utterly inappropriate for my blog and would have been posted a gift for my Facebook friends who are very used to my sense of humor.

Instead, I drew this, and hopefully you all enjoy it.

You can download, print and color this Coffee is Magic coloring page below.

Small jpg version:

Large transparent png version:

Raspberry White Chocolate Mocha MILKSHAKES!

So the first thing that I thought of when I saw the Ball® Sip and Straw lids is "Those straws are big enough for thick shakes!"

Then discussed with The Turnip Girl the best kind of shake to make. She's wild for frozen coffee drinks, ice cream and as you know, anything chocolate. We talked about the popularity of Raspberry White Chocolate Mochas, so there it was. The perfect shake.

She used a BELLA 13984 Rocket Extract Pro Personal Blender .

You will need:
1 oz of white chocolate- or 7 squares of a Lindt White Chocolate Classic Recipe bar (those are the ones that break into 30 pieces)
3/4 cup cold milk
2 Tbs. instant espresso powder- I like Medaglia D'Oro Instant Espresso Coffee , and keep a jar for adding to baking and other things.

Put those in your blender and blend until the chocolate pieces are completely broken up. If you're using a Rocket Extract Pro, this happens really quickly

Add in 1 cup of vanilla ice cream, 1/4 cup frozen raspberries and blend for a few seconds more to incorporate it.

Pour into a cup and serve.

Soo good! The espresso powder makes the coffee flavor nice and strong, and the frozen raspberries taste so much better than raspberry flavored syrups.

The photo above was taken by the Turnip Girl, the flower in the photo is one that a little girl in the neighborhood gave her, and she decided it should be in the picture. Isn't it pretty?


Like Ball® Canning & Recipes  on Facebook for lots of recipe ideas and links.

Sugar Free Mocha Cafe Pudding using Nectresse™

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Nectresse™ Sweetener for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.
I've tried a lot of  sweetners in making sugar free desserts for loved ones on sugar restricted diets.  This new sweetener by the same people who make Splenda is a new favorite.
NECTRESSE™Sweetener-
It's the only no-sugar, no-calorie 100% natural sweetener made from monk fruit, it's available very reasonably priced at your local supermarket. 1 packet is the equivalent of 2 tsps of sugar in sweetness.
I tried it first in a cup of coffee to see how it tasted. I was pleasantly surprised. There is no bitterness to it, and tastes natural. The rest of my family also tried it, and my husband and daughter both really liked it.
So after talking it over with my daughter, we decided to try making pudding. I asked her if it should be a chocolate or vanilla pudding, then realized what a very silly question that was right after asking. She thinks the world should be chocolate flavored.


Sugar Free Cafe Mocha Pudding-
Ingredients:

• 2 cups milk
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 2 Tbsp instant espress
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 Tbsp corn starch
• 7 packets NECTRESSE™Sweetener

Supplies:

• Large sauce pan
• whisk
• spoon
• bowl

Measure 1 1/2 cups of milk, the espresso, cocoa powder, vanilla and salt into a pan. In a the bowl, mix the half cup of milk, the sweetener and the corn starch, mixing well until the corn starch is dissolved. Set that close by.
Bring the milk and cocoa mix to a simmer over a low heat, whisking as you cook to mix in the cocoa and other flavorings well. When it's bubbling and everything is mixed in, pour in the milk and corn starch mix, whisking constantly. Keep whisking, it will soon come back up to a bubble.
Keep whisking, and it starts to thicken. Homemade cooked puddings are so good. This is the point my daughter told me "It smells good!"
When it's nice, thick and glossy, take it off the heat and put it in the fridge with plastic wrap over it to keep it from forming a skin. Makes 4 half cup servings. Serve after it's chilled.
I recommend topping with whipped cream. Unsweetened and lightly flavored with vanilla.
Click here to try a  FREE sample of NECTRESSE™Sweetener
I liked cooking with this, the pudding turned out good and my family who aren't on sugar restricted diets all enjoyed it. One of the things I liked best about it was that it doesn't foam up like some sweeteners do.
Check out what Lisa Ling has to say about it!

Sort of like an optical illusion

Have you seen that thing going around Facebook that says "I CAN'T SLEEP"?

I love the effect, and kept meaning to do something with it. Yesterday I did, and it got addictive. The method used was to make the base graphic in small pixels, then resize the pixel images to use kind of like a stencil for the two diagonal stripe fills I made.

Then experimented with a different kind of fill.

Sometimes, I'm entirely too easily amused.
I'm on Pinterest if you want to follow me. 

Some new favorite things

Recently, I complained on Facebook about the effect the cold weather + regular water aerobics in a salt water pool was having on my skin. Deb Keller of Thistlewood Manor sent me a couple of lotion bars. It's amazing how much difference they are making. The issue with lotions was they were evaporating too fast so they needed constant reapplication. The lotion bars, straight after showing off the salt water, are wonderful. They are made of good things like olive oil (my Uncle Lamar swore by olive oil for cold weather skin care), coconut oil and beeswax, they are the right size/shape for a lot of travel soap containers, they don't spill or get messy in my gym bag and I'm not all over itchy anymore. Check out her blog (linked above) for a great eggroll recipe, and her shop (hopefully she'll add a couple lotion bars!) on Etsy. I also love her shampoo bars for the gym.

soleRebels shoes- I don't actually own a pair YET. Hopefully soon. They were spotlighted on France24's Green is the New Black. Founder Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu runs an amazing company. The shoes are made ethically using fair trade, artisan materials like hand-loomed organic cotton and small farm- free range leather, the soles are cut by hand from used truck tires. The company employs it's workers at 3 times the normal wage in that area AND pays for schooling for the children of employees. They are shipped in cinch sacks, also made of hand-loomed cotton so they aren't paying for shipping a lot of air in boxes. Since the sacks are re-usable, they don't contribute to waste with cardboard shoe boxes and really, the more I find out about this company, the more I like it. They are also willing to customize colors since the accents are loomed by hand.

Marian Call's song Good Morning Moon. This cheerful track off her most recent album is one of the happiest songs I've ever heard, it's catchy, hopeful and just wonderful. It's refrain includes the phrase "Who's to say we're falling if we miss the ground?". I want to cross stitch that on something.

North Pole Coffee - The Black Gold. Wow. Really, this is one of the best coffees I've ever had. Picked up a bag at the grocery store last week, and I'm savoring it and hoarding it like it was gold. It's low acid, and dark roasted to nearly black, the beans are oily and the coffee tastes *better* that most coffee smells.

Not affiliated! These are all just things that are making me very happy right now.

My husband quit his job a couple of weeks ago, and is currently looking for a new job. So we are budgeting carefully in the meantime. He's been getting more and more burnt out on the hospitality industry and with the added stress of what's been going on in our personal lives (losing my best friend and my uncle, plus before that, a lady he worked with had been killed on the job), he needed a change. So I'm thinking this could be the start of a wonderful new chapter in our lives and in his life professionally.

Quote art and the new FB layout

Lately, since the FB layout change, it seems like some people are posting photos a lot more. Things they find funny, quotes they find meaningful, but since my friends list has a lot of overlap, that means that I get the same photos on my newsfeed sometimes 3 or 4 times in a day.

So rather than reposting things that lots of people are posting, I decided to start making my own illustrated quotes and posting them to my wall. I'm making them all 4x6 inches and decent quality. So if you'd like to print them for mini-posters, locker posters or even postcards, you can.

Here are the quotes I have so far. Click on the images for larger versions.

"I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people."

-John Lennon

Public FB link if you want to share it on your wall is here.

"The trick is not how much pain you feel - but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses."
-Erica Jong
Public FB link to share this on your own wall is here.

"Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years."
-Simone Signoret
Public FB link to share to your own wall here.

"The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Public FB link to share on your own wall is here.

I hope you enjoy these quotes as much as I do.

Happy Coffee Day - coffee themed mandala

Click on the image for a bigger version.

This site is coffee fueled. Check out these recipes for coffee creamer made with condensed milk from a while back. Coffee Creamer 1 Coffee Creamer 2

How to make sugar cubes or shapes

My darling daughter prefers her coffee with brown sugar. She's also as I've said before, a bit of an Anglophile. Which means occasionally at least, she likes lumps of sugar instead of spoonfuls. Brown sugar cubes are awfully expensive.
So this weekend, we made a batch of sugar shapes for her.

Because the mold we used was fairly detailed, it's a bit hard to see what they are supposed to be. Here's a picture I messed with the contrast a bit and greyscaled. Hopefully it shows a little better. The contrast adjustment made it a bit grainy, but it is a bit clearer.

Because the only thing cooler than brown sugar cubes for my daughter is brown sugar daleks and TARDIS. 

You will need:

Brown sugar- we used an organic brown sugar that she really likes

water

an ice cube tray or small candy molds*

parchment paper lined cookie sheet

a place they can dry out safely

Wash your hands well. You could do this with silicone spatulas but it's a lot easier to do it by hand.

Put a cup of brown sugar into a bowl, and add a half teaspoon full of water. Mix it in well so that it's all just a bit moister than usual. Squeeze a handful and see if it sticks together. If it does, it's ready. If it's not, add in water just a sprinkle at a time until it does stick when you form it with your hands.

Pack your mold well, only 2 or 3 cavities at a time. Turn it out on the parchment paper. Continue until all the sugar is used. If you want to make more than that, do it the same way. If one breaks when you're popping it out of the mold, pick up the sugar the best you can and put it back into your bowl to use again.

After you get as many as you like made, put it some place safe and draft and humidity free to dry. The ones above we let dry for 5 hours. After they were dry, we put them in a tightly sealed container.

I couldn't find my paste coloring, but I think it would be fun to do a bunch of Go Go Dalek Rangers in the right colors!

The same technique works with other sugars, and the less detail there is in the mold, the better. The Cybermen in our ice cube tray had too much subtle detail to work well at all. Raw sugars or white sugars will need a little more water than brown sugar because brown sugar is so moist to begin with.

Hearts would be lovely for Valentine's Day, little roses would be sweet for a princess tea party.

*If you want cubes, I recommend using a mini ice cube tray. Otherwise, use your favorite small candy molds. The tray I used is a Doctor Who ice tray that we were given by a close friend who blames The Turnip for her Doctor Who and Torchwood addiction.

Coffee and family

Above is a photo I took today. 

Today my family and I went out to Palmer, Alaska for a community supported agricultural open house event at the Matanuska Creamery. The Creamery of course sells milk to most of the grocery stores. The other things they make they just don't have in enough quantity to sell to the stores. Like flavored cheese curds, rich ice creams and a lovely not too sweet egg nog. Combined with the open house was a farmer's market with the last of the summer harvest, fresh eggs, and the bakery that makes the cinnamon rolls that the kids and I enjoy on market days during the summer. 

After that, we went into Palmer for their Christmas Colony celebration. Palmer is a small town, about 8-10 thousand people, and the Christmas Colony is a tradition there. There are always lots of things going on, but what I was primarily interested in was the craft fairs. We hit a couple. I had a nice conversation with Kellie of Fish Lips and Birds Teeth Studio. We also stopped and talked to Ember of Silver Bear Sundries. She was selling very pretty hand thrown cups, reasonably priced in lovely colors. We love our mismatched, locally made cups and we each got one. 

Then we hit Indian Valley Meats concession van for lunch. Reindeer stew, buffalo steak sandwiches, and reindeer sausage! Yum yum! 

At all our stops, various people were selling coffee from the Coffee Roastery but not the specific coffee I wanted. I love trying new coffees, but for every day drinking, I want one that I know and love. The Coffee Roastery makes one of my favorites. The Arctic Wolf blend. It's a dark roast and a very unlikely blend of beans but it's a bright, flavorful dark coffee that's very smooth and very good.

So on the way home, we stopped by the Roastery.

If you're EVER in Palmer, or even in Anchorage and have a rental car, I think it's worth the trip.

We got there, and it looked all closed for the day. There was a man putting garbage into his truck. I stopped and told him the truth "I'm desperate to buy a couple lbs of Arctic Wolf." and he said "Come on in."

So we pulled up next to the main building, and I got out of the car and went in. In there, freezers lined the room, and the smell of coffee hit and covered me. I could taste it, breathe it, it was heaven.

While he put my coffee together, he told me the story of how that particular blend had come to be. I could tell you here, but I think it's more fun to hear it from Ron himself.

Then Ron said "Would you like to see the Roastery?" Oh.. would I? I love my coffee. Learning more about it? So after getting the rest of the family out of the car, we went into the Roastery.

His roastery is built out of railroad generator car with an addition built to it. He has 3 roasters, including a small one for a custom roasting experience. That's something I'd love to try, to make up a special roast for my friends.  

As we were leaving, he told us we could take some of the burlap bags. So you will see coffee bag crafts soonish in here since we have a surplus of bags now! Yay!

I'm home, enjoying a cup of my favorite coffee. It was simply a wonderful way to spend a day with my family.

Coffee box and coloring page

My husband and I are starting a new blog together. It's going to be a review site for local coffees and beers, including descriptions of some of the places to get locally roasted coffee and locally brewed beer. It's called AKBrewReview. In celebration of that, here's a couple coffee themed printables!
Click on the images for the full sized version.

When I give friends coffee, instead of giving them little vacuum packed bags of ground coffee, I usually just put some beans I'm really enjoying in a sandwich bag. So the box is my 3x3x1 inch box which will fit enough beans in a bag to make a pot.  

Sugar Free Chocolate Orange Cake Treats

One of my newer family traditions is to come up with a new recipe every year on my birthday for my Uncle Lamar. He was diagnosed a few years ago with diabetes.  Last year it was Banana Chocolate Bread which he doled out to himself a sliver at a time. 

This year, it's chocolate orange cake filled with a coffee cream cheese icing. If you want to substitute sugar you can. 

I made the cake in my sandwich maker because my oven still isn't fixed. Mike's just started a new job a couple weeks ago and just hasn't had the time. 

Baking cake in a sandwich maker? It's like Easy Bake but for grown-ups. 

For the cake:

Chocolate Orange Cake-

Dust off the sandwich maker you never use. Wipe it out very clean. Make sure the non-stick surface is intact.

Dry ingredients- 

1 cup Splenda or similar measures like sugar sweetener

1 cup flour- I used my usual whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

Mix dry ingredients well

Wet ingredients-

1 egg or equivalent egg substitute

1/4 cup melted butter (you could use oil, but I like the richness butter gives sugar free recipes), I used salted so didn't add salt to the dry ingredients

1 cup buttermilk

1 tsp. orange peel or orange zest. Adjust to taste. I used dried orange peel because it's convenient

1 tsp vanilla (everything is better with vanilla)

Mix wet ingredients well

Make a well in the dry ingredients, and pour in the wet ingredients. Mix well. The batter is fluffier with Splenda. it's sort of weird to work with. Just trust it will all work out okay.

Heat up your sandwich maker and put a 1/4 cup of batter in each well. Close it. Because it's non-stick it doesn't need to be buttered or greased.

Check after 3 minutes with a toothpick, if the tooth pick comes out clean, it's done. Otherwise check about every minute. It doesn't take long at all to bake cake in a sandwich maker.

Keep making cakes until you've used all the batter.

Frosting/filling

1 8 oz package of cream cheese

1 cup Splenda

1/3 cup of coffee

The Splenda might foam a bit. Mine did. This stuff is so weird to work with. 

Beat well until it's fairly smooth and fluffy. 

Cut each triangle cake in half, spoon in some frosting to make a sandwich. Wrap in plastic wrap individually and chill.

My daughter and husband both tried it and declared it a success, and in fact didn't hesitate to lick the frosting beaters.

I'll let you know what my Uncle Lamar thinks of them!

Homemade Coffee Creamer - part 2

After the first batch of creamer was gone, I picked up a bunch of extracts from the grocery store since they are on sale now for holiday baking.
This one tastes almost like a Nutty Irishman. To make it..
In a blender mix
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 can of non-fat milk (fill the sweetened condensed milk can with regular milk)
1/4 cup instant dry milk
1 tsp. almond extract
2 tsp. vanilla/butternut extract (it's an imitation extract)
3 Tbs. powdered cocoa (I used Dagoba)
Sugar to taste- brown sugar in our case. My daughter loves brown sugar in her coffee.
Blend.
Pour into a jar.
-------



The picture has 2 Tbs. of creamer in my normal coffee.
If you don't know me and coffee, well, it's sort of essential. I'm addicted to it. I brew my coffee very strong with dark beans and I'm very choosy about the beans. I buy local roasted coffee that's dark and oily. A good French roast should be shiny with all the happy oils in coffee. A non-shiny bean is usually a bit burnt and bitter. The end result is something my husband says is "Illegal experiments in dark matter."  My coffee laughs at the attempt of milk alone to lighten it. So 2 Tbs. of this creamer in a normal cup of coffee would probably turn it a bit lighter.
I saw E lick her finger off after adding some homemade creamer to her coffee recently. I don't know if she did that with the full of oil and odd chemical names store bought stuff or not. I do know that it made me really very glad that I knew all the ingredients in this and how much of each were in it.

Homemade coffee creamer

My daughter loves those flavored coffee creamers. You know the ones. Full of goodness like Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil or Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate. Um.. yum?

I wanted to come up with an alternative that didn't make me feel like I might be poisoning her morning cup of coffee.

I wanted no corn syrup, natural flavoring and low fat.

This "recipe" or method is highly adaptable.

So I talked to her, and we decided to try a chocolate creamer.
Evaporated milk is milk with 60% of the liquid removed. Sweetened condensed milk is similar, it's milk that's had a lot of the water removed, and in the case of Eagle Brand, it's sweetened with sugar.

In a blender, I mixed
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
1 can of full of non-fat milk
1/4 cup of instant non-fat dry milk.

 A couple tablespoons has a lot of calcium in it, but if you are allergic to cow milk, you can try it with condensed goat's milk. To that I added
 1/4 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup of a good organic cocoa powder
 2 Tablespoons of vanilla extract

 Blend for a minute to get everything mixed and pour into a jar.

Both my eldest and E tried it in their next cups of coffee and both loved it. Since it's a very thick milk, it whitens the coffee nicely. The fat came from the condensed milk, but it's pretty low-fat and you can buy low fat condensed milks that have even less fat.

I used brown sugar because it's what my daughter prefers in her coffee, you can omit the sugar completely if it's sweet enough with just sugar in the condensed milk. If you use evaporated milk and the non-sugar sweetener of your choice you can make a coffee creamer that's sugar-free.

If you want fancier flavors, you can use extracts or candy flavors.

Works fine in hot or cold coffee. Probably not an issue for most people, but the only time my family drinks hot coffee is if it's just finished brewing. Mostly we all prefer it cold.

Today we are roasting chestnuts! Yum yum! Other than that, I'm working on a pendant, and still working on a scarf for my son for the holidays.