Google Buzz Social Networking, is this the new Facebook???

Google has done it again.  If you have a Gmail account, you will automatically have Buzz.  Hooterville tipped me off about it.  They’re rolling it out now, and it will show up when you open your inbox.  Watch for it….

You won’t believe the recipes I found for you…

You all need to hotfoot it over to Jan Can Cook just as fast as your little mouse will point you there.

I posted two cookie recipes, the first one is Copykat Momofuku’s Compost Cookies.  You won’t believe this one, girlfriends, dried coffee grounds, yes, dried coffee grounds, I know it sounds weird, but people are loving this recipe.  Also Fritos, crushed potato chips, pretzels, peanut butter chips and chocolate chips,  just to name a few of the ingredients.  It’s a wannabe recipe from Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar, a  trendy New York City bakery,  where these cookies just fly out the door. 

And the second one is Lucy’s Salty Chocolate  Peanut Butter Cookies.  These have a chunk of bittersweet chocolate on top and a dusting of kosher salt.  Somebody please make these and report back.

Both of them sound wildly, fabulously different.

I know you are all thinking, has she totally lost it.  I’m just sayin’….

Here’s the quick click, you know you have to see what I’m talking about>>>

Sweet little naked baby…

Diner coffee mugs

If you’re of a certain age, you remember these diner coffee mugs.  I have several in my cabinet, I’ve gotten them on eBay thru the years, some of them have a Steak ‘n Shake logo on them, others are from the Original Pantry Cafe in Los Angeles, always a must go to hole-in-the-wall when we visited California.
I never used them that much, instead using my oversized Starbucks Mugs, or my favorite Rain Forest Cafe mug for my morning cuppa, because they were bigger and held more coffee.  I’m such a greedy be-otch, always going for the quantity instead of the quality.

But a few weeks ago, on a whim, I pulled one of these old mugs out of the cabinet, and fell in love.  I had forgotten the substance of them, they are heavy, and so thick that the coffee stays hot til’ the bottom of the mug.  It’s not that much of a hassle to refill them, I wish I would have discovered this long ago.

The older I get, the more nostalgic I am, I seem to be on a quest, going back in time, rediscovering things from my childhood.  Next I guess I’ll be playing with my Terri Lee doll. NO, remember, that’s the only thing my mother ever got rid of was that doll!!!

Maybe I’ll cough up the big bucks and buy one for Abby someday.  Then I can play with hers, and we can have a tea party, and drink tea out of these mugs, instead of china cups, and I’ll tell her boring stories of what life was like when Grammie was a little girl…

I’m trying to eat healthy, I’m trying…

I made hubby an apple pie this afternoon, yeah, I had a really little piece of it.  It’s now 9pm, I’m still hungry, so I go to the fridge, get out the unflavored yogurt, get out the applesauce, spoon about a cup of yogurt in a dessert dish, add a packet of Splenda to the yogurt, stir it up, and there sat that damn pie on the counter, just begging me to eat it, so instead of adding the applesauce, I added a tablespoon, yeah, it was a big tablespoon, okay, it was two tablespoons of apple pie, crust and all, to the yogurt. 

Lord have mercy, I’ve never tasted anything so good in my entire adult life!  It really wasn’t that many calories, honest, it wasn’t!

Oh my goodness, gracious, I’m doin’ the happy dance, here!!!

Here we go again sports fans......

Pepsi Throwback vs. Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry

Lawdee, was I ever a Pepsi drinker back in the day.   In the 50’s, you either drank Pepsi, or you drank Coke, both was not an option.  Kinda like you either drove a Ford or a Chevy.

I loved Pepsi, detested Coke, thought it was too syrupy and sweet, so a few months ago when Nisha told me that they are now recreating the original Pepsi, using sugar instead of corn syrup, and calling it Pepsi Throwback, I knew it was something I just had to try.  I even told Cousin Phyllis about it, because she too, even to this day, is a diehard Pepsi fiend.

But I couldn’t find it, it wasn’t in the stores, I heard rumors of it being in convenience stores, but I kept forgetting about it.

Fast forward to last week in Lexington.  Hubby and Ryan were out and they came home with a case of it.  Well, yours truly couldn’t wait to rip open the carton and pop a can.

So out came the ice, I poured it, the fizz was like the original Pepsi, the smell was just

like I remembered, I took a drink, and then another, and it was exactly like the Pepsi of my childhood.  And I hated it, I did, I absolutely detested the taste of it.  It was so sweet that it actually  made me nauseous.  I’ve drank too many Diet Cokes and just can’t handle the real stuff anymore.   So Phyl, I have a case of this stuff in the garage, I’ll bring it to you when I visit, maybe you will like it better than I do.

But, I do have a new drink of choice to report.  Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry.  Oh my, this stuff is full of cherry flavor, it’s absolutely delightful. Don’t confuse this with the Dr. Pepper Vanilla Cherry, that stuff is nasty, but this is awesome~

Dr. Pepper also makes a a Cherry Chocolate, but I haven’t found it yet.  So that’s my new mission, to see if I can find it!

Too bad about that Pepsi Throwback.  Just another case of not being able to go home again.  A time and a place for everything.  Kinda sad, isn’t it?

More winter forecasted for Heavensville....

Like all the rest of you, I'm sick of winter.  I'm longing for fields of green as the spring wheat makes it's appearance, I'm berating myself for once again not planting those damn tulip bulbs last fall, I feel isolated, confined, restless, and more snow is forecasted for tonight.

I'm a soup/stew/chili girl when we have this kind of weather.  Hubby has wanted beef stew for a few weeks now, so I'm going to make it tomorrow.  I was out this morning, in the rain, running a few errands, and needed a bottle of red wine to put in the stew.  I ran into Aldi's, bought a bottle of cabernet sauvignon for $2.99.  Yes, that's right, $2.99.  Will it be good, who knows, all I know is it had a cork!  Imagine that, a bottle of wine with a cork, for $2.99.  No screw caps for me, nosiree, it may taste like rotgut, but it has a cork!

Guess who gave Abby this bib?????

I know, I know, I’m always talking about how cute she is, but she is totally, adorably precious!  We’ve been visiting her for the past three days, and she has changed so much in the last three weeks.

She’s all smiles now.  She laughs and wiggles, grabs her toys and blows bubbles and goos, oh the goos, they are the best!  And she stands on her little legs, and marches on your lap.  Oh my, what fun I had.

So now I have my Abby fix, it will last for another 3 weeks or so, then I will need another.  It’s really hard to stay away at this age…

Aren’t they adorable…

I snagged this picture from Lindsay’s Facebook page.  This was taken Friday  night when they were getting ready for Abby’s first dinner party.  And I get to see her tomorrow.  Life is good….

Bathroom Scales that plug into Google Health

Well, this definitely screams A MAN THOUGHT THIS UP!!!!  Now they have scales that are wi-fi, they connect to Google Health so that your weight is posted online.

Is that the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard?  What woman would ever want her weight posted anywhere.  Women never tell what they actually weigh unless they have not an ounce of extra fat on them.  Have you ever heard a woman step on the scale, and yell out, OMG, I WEIGH 185 LBS?  Of course you haven’t.

If you want to read the article, even though I don’t know why you would, here’s the click!

And how are things in your world today?  We had snow last night, a lovely, fluffy pile of 4-5 inches of white sparkly snow.  Well that will be fun for about a day until it gets all tracked and dirty.

Maybe I’ll post a picture if I can get my nose out of this stupid windows rebuild long enough to do it.  I haven’t come up for air in days!!!!

I'm still kickin...

I've had computer problems all week.  Windows had to be reinstalled, and it's never simple.  I've messed with this for days, trying to reconstruct everything.  What a pain in the patootie.

Nothing is going right, I just need to give it up today.  It started bad this morning when I burnt my one, lonely pancake and made weak coffee, and it's been pretty much downhill since then.  I'll get it together and be back soon, hopefully tomorrow.

Hang in there with me, it will get better.  In the meantime, if you're really bored, there is a lot of new content on Jan Can Cook, new stuff on Eating Right, too and a new Abby section in the family area of Milly Scraps.  Access in the right sidebar.

~ jan

If I knew you were coming I'd've baked a cake

Talk about a blast from the past!  Daddy always sang this to me when I was a little girl.  Oh, this is just the cutest song I've heard in a long time.  If you're under fifty-five, you might not want to click on this.  You will just roll your eyes.  ~ jan

message-in-a-cookie-cutters from williams-sonoma

Isn't this just the best idea ever?  This was in my Williams Sonoma Catalog for the month of February.  I looked at these online, and they show this picture, but they say,  New, Exclusive, but not available. If you are interested I would call them direct, maybe they are available only through the catalog or in the stores.  I know, you want the number, here it is - 877.812.6235

  The item number is #28-1401132, and they're $19.95. 

I love the idea that you can customize them to say anything you want.  Does this look like something that bebe Abby and Grammie needs?  That's what I'm thinkin'...
 
~ Jan

Create personalized cookies for Valentine’s Day, birthdays and other notable occasions using our cutters in scalloped-rectangle, heart and star shapes. Customize the cutters by sliding in letters or premade words to form a name or message. When you press the cutter into the dough, your lettering is imprinted on the cookie. The set includes three cutters, seven premade words (Welcome, Happy, Birthday, Holidays, Thank You, From, I Love You), three sets of alphabet letters (plus extras of vowels and other commonly used letters) and a dishwasher-safe mesh bag for easy cleaning and storing. Hand-wash. 3 3/4"–4 1/4" wide. A Williams-Sonoma exclusive.

Ivana Trump in her underwear....

Lord have mercy, why would this woman do this at sixty years old?  OMG, is that Spanx high rise panties we're seeing.  And panty hose?  And I'm not even going to talk about the camel toe.  OMG, is anybody else as appalled as me?

Cast Iron Cookware

I was on another blogsite yesterday, they were talking about the Lodge 5 quart cast iron dutch oven.  You can buy it on Amazon for $26.99 with free shipping.  Great reviews on it, except it's preseasoned, and some people think they didn't do it well, but that's no biggie, you can always reseason it.  Here's the link, if anybody is interested.

I'm a huge fan of anything cast iron, and Lodge products are really good...

It’s a narsty day, and I’m in a narsty mood….

And how is your day going????  It’s raining in Heavensville, more rain predicted through the weekend, so that’s not helping Miss Merry Sunshine here.

I was making breakfast, reached up in the pantry for my sugar free syrup, dropped a bottle of dark Karo Syrup, splat on the stone floor.  Yep, they still make the bottles out of glass, did you know that?  Hell yes, it broke.  And it was a full bottle, too.  There was gooey syrup everywhere.

Thank goodness for hubby.  It took him forever to get that sticky mess up.  And just now, I’m drinking my morning coffee, yep, spilled it on my desktop.

And Mollie had to be dried with a towel after her morning foray into the wilds of the soggy yard, she was one wet little pooch!

And it’s only 11am.  Oh joy, can’t wait for the rest of the day to unfold…

Let’s take a little vacation today…

Thanks to Seana for this adorable video….

Sunday Dinners….

In our family we have breakfast, lunch and dinner, except  on Sunday when the noon meal becomes dinner.  I’ve always loved it, too.  Just something about Sunday morning in the kitchen.  But now hubby works on Sunday, there is no family at home, so my “dinner”  is a soup and a salad “lunch.”  And even that is scaled back because I took a walk on the wild side and had a sesame seed bagel at with my coffee at Donut Bank this morning. Grrrr!  And all the time I was eating that damn bagel, I was watching all the other people scarfing down donuts, cinnamon rolls, long johns, muffins, all the good stuff. ROARRRRRRRR

But I remember when Sunday dinner was a big production, fried chicken, meat loaf,  roast beef, wonderful veggies in butter sauce, hot bread, killer desserts.  Oh, those were the days.  We just ate and enjoyed it.  Didn’t really think about the fat or the cholesterol, just enjoyed the meal.

Now that my brain is always conscious of what I’m eating, even when it’s bad, I don’t have that freedom that I once did, and I miss it. 

So tonight, I’m having Sunday “supper.”  I got some scallops at the store for hubby, salmon for me, a little garlic whole wheat pasta, a big salad, and voila, Sunday supper.  Not quite the same as pork chops, mashed potatoes, gravy and biscuits, along with a warm piece of pie. :o(

Is it worth it?  All this healthy eating?  Sometimes, I wonder, girlfriends, sometimes I seriously do. 

~ jan, feeling deprived ~