Starbucks Mocha Frappacinos from Scratch January 26, 2009

I just saved myself like $50 making these delicious things. I used Christmas Starbucks blend coffee and it just tastes just like the real thing. The texture wasn’t exact because I don’t have a commercial blender (who has one of those at home??), but it tastes so good it doesn’t matter. I was out of syrup and used cocoa powder instead and it still tasted GREAT!! Super YUM!

1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 tbs sugar (or use equivalent in sweetener)
1/3 cup strong coffee
1 cup ice

Directions:

Combine all ingredients, except ice– in blender, whirl until sugar is dissolved– add ice and blend until smooth. If the consistency is too smooth, add some more ice.

Blueberry Cream Cheese Cupcakes, and others January 26, 2009

So blueberry cream cheese cupcakes sounds good, right? Not if you use the recipe from Deceptively Delicious! It looks so disgusting – like a chunk of moldy bread. The taste is super bland and texture alien.

I also tried making the Chicken Nuggets and Mozz Sticks. The chicken nuggets were good and worth it, but they bake faster and better than frying. The Mozz Sticks recipe makes WAY too much breading and doesn’t taste that great. They were difficult to fry as well because they don’t stick together well. Here is a picture.

Mozz sticks on the right. Nuggets on the left.

Birthdays and Christmas and New Years January 1, 2009

Maddox’s 2nd birthday was Dec. 24th.  Here are some photos of him opening his presents.  On Christmas, he spent more time playing with the scotch tape than the large Tonka truck sitting next to him.

On New Years, I tried Alton Brown’s pancake mix one more time without trying to make it healthy with applesauce and junk.  It was the BEST pancake mix EVER.   William ate half of his chocolate chip pancake before I could get in a picture.  Yes, the photo  is only HALF the pancake and there are two stacked on top of each other.  Needless to say, we didn’t have much of a lunch later

My muffin eating his birthday muffin.  He loved the balloons.

We stayed home all day because we were just getting over the flu.  Maddox loved playing with his favorite toy of all time – the spices.

Why play with a big cool tonka truck when you have a whole roll of Scotch tape in your hands?

One of my past times… running around the house like crazy.

“Daaaaat!”

Pancake breakfast on New Years morning.

This is only half the pancake!

More D.D. – Avocado in Chocolate! January 1, 2009

My new favorite chocolate fondue.  It has avocado in it and mixed with the chocolate tastes GREAT.  You wouldn’t even know there was an avocado and some cauliflower mixed in!

I also made the potato soup with added carrots.  She must have used white carrots or something – because the picture looks nothing like what I made.  It tasted okay.  Nothing to write home about.

I also made the Applesauce Muffins.  They were tasty and healthy!  I think next time I’ll try using Apple Cinnamon oatmeal for the topping.