Looking for Gold at the End of a Rainbow
It's St. Patrick's day today! Are you wearing green?Today's post is a bit of a mish-mash of holiday related things ...First, here are some shots taken this morning as Nick and I were out for a walk, bright and early. Our “main goal”was to get cat food for you-know-who and our favourite spot to get it these days is in a part of town called Liberty Village. There is a pet supply shop there where the people seem to like cats as much as they do dogs, as opposed to the shop that is closer to our home. We like to go there, plus the bonus is that getting there is a great walk through a very interesting part of the city.
Eddie Gets His Greens
Our boy Ed sure does like his cat grass.
Food Friday : Chocolate Cake and Berries Dessert
I don't bake very often, so am no pro. But, even with my lack of mad skills in the baking department, I made these individual chocolate cakes to have with berries and vanilla ice-cream recently, to serve to company, and was very pleased with the results of my baking efforts. Everyone thought they were great!
Not wanting to make a large batch I set out to find a small recipe on the internet, and found this one from the Dollhouse Bake Shoppe blog. UPDATE : The recipe on the site has been subsequently modified to make a full 12 cupcake recipe, while the one I include below is a smaller recipe that makes 8 to 9 cupcakes.
Made with cocoa, it was easy to do and very delicious. That and it required only items that I already had on hand. It's a perfect chocolate cake recipe for when you just need some plain moist and tasty cake.
It is made extra flavourful by the addition of instant coffee powder and vanilla. (The recipe calls for Espresso powder but I used instant coffee powder instead, which we had because we use it to make dark rye bread, but you could probably omit it, and just add the water or 1/3 cup of brewed coffee instead.)
This is really a cupcake recipe, with a yield of 8 cakes (although I made mine slightly smaller and got 9 cakes.) One would normally add icing/frosting to the cupcakes, but I was looking for plain cake that I could dress up with ice-cream and berries. Next time, I might make this chocolate sauce to drizzle over the dessert, but really this was delicious without that.
Dinner with our Friend Chops at Our Place
Our pal Chops came over for dinner last night and we had fondue. He is one of our best friends and it's always a laugh when we get together. (Although you might not think so based on the looks on the faces in the above photo. Let's just say they are laughing on the inside!)
He is a drummer and the three of us have been playing music together for 7 years now. Aside from one another, Chops is the person that Nick and I have spent the most time with in recent years, and in all that time never has a cross word has ever been spoken among us.
Given that this get together happened after dark, I was working with low light for the pictures. So inspired by the old 1940 movie, Grapes of Wrath, that Nick and I watched the previous evening, I decided to convert them to black and white. I had never seen that movie before and was most taken with the lighting style.
We have only had fondue a couple of times and thought it would be a fun meal to serve to company. And it was. It can be a little drippy so it is the one meal for which we use a plastic table cloth, and damn it is difficult finding a plain one. In fact, that tablecloth is also part of the reason I decided these photos would be better shown in black and white!
To accompany our meal I made this Quinoa Salad. It was a big hit and Nick took the leftovers to work for lunch today! Me, I am having some leftover dessert for lunch. (I mean, it has to get eaten, right?)
A Green Theme
Always one to enjoy taking photos based on a theme, I am jumping onto the fact that it is St. Patrick's Day week, with today's series of shots ...
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