What's cooking?

Halloween is MY...FAVORITE...HOLIDAY...So for my little Halloween craft event I thought I would whip up a few treats. One was a yummy looking guacamole recipe I found on Pinterest.  The Best Guacamole. It was pretty good, but I have had one before that was really good and I don't have the recipe for it. I did add jalapeno so I used gloves to cut half of one up. I have made the mistake of not wearing gloves and taking my contacts out later and being in pain and losing a pair of contacts. That only happens to you once. 3 of us did demolish it pretty quickly, my mom doesn't like guac...sad...

I also made Pumpkin Raisin cookies and Black Forest Brownies. Both of these were in my Taste of Home Baking Cookbook. Now, I am highly critical on food. I will begin with the cookies.

I LOVE Pumpkin Spice Lattes from Starbucks. I look forward to Fall just so I can drink them. I LOVE pumpkin pie. I figure I will love everything pumpkin, but maybe not.
***Note***
This recipe does not call for an egg. I thought this was weird and looked up similar recipes online. They all used eggs. I decided to use 1 egg. All recipes seemed similar (i did not take time to look carefully), so I added the egg.

Carol Preston, Bloomington Indiana
Yield:about 3 dozen (mine must have been bigger because I didn't get many)
1/2cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Dash salt (what the hell is a dash? I added a few pinches)
Frosting: *I omitted the frost to save calories (like Im counting...)
2 tablespoons butter
1-1/2 cups confectioners' sugar (powdered)
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1.In large mixing bowl or stand mixer, creme shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Add pumpkin and vanilla. In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt; then add to the creamed mixture. Fold in raisins (every time I read "fold in" I think of Sleeping Beauty when the Fairy folds in the whole eggs and smashes them).

2. Drop by teaspoonfuls 2 in. apart onto greased cookie sheet. Bake 350 degrees for 12-14 minutes.

3. For frosting, melt butter in a small saucepan. Stir in sugar, milk and vanilla until smooth. Frost over cooled cookies.

These are ok. Hold on, let me go eat one. Very soft. almost like muffins.  Im going to have to freeze them because I'm dieting tomorrow.

Now for the Black Forest Brownies. I LOVE me some Black Forest Cake. Somewhere I have a recipe for it. Message me if you want me to post it. These brownies are also in this cookbook.

Toni Reeves, Medicine Hat, Alberta
Yield:About 3 dozen depending on how you cut them

1-1/3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter (2 sticks unsalted)
1 cup baking cocoa (I used Hershey's)
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract (I omitted because my sister is allergic)
1 cup chopped maraschino cherrys
1/2 cup chopped nuts (I omitted because my sister is allergic, did she even eat any of these? I don't like nuts in my baking anyways)
ICING (I omitted to save calories (really so I could eat more brownies))
1/4cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups confectioners' sugar
6 tablespoons baking cocoa
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup chopped nuts
1 greased 12x9x2 baking dish-i used a glass one

1. First chop up all of your cherries*
2.Combine flour, baking powder and salt, set aside.
3. In a saucepan, melt butter, remove from heat and add in cocoa. I whisked until smooth.
4. Blend in sugar, eggs, and extracts.**
5. Stir in flour mixture, cherries, and nuts.
6. pour into a greased baking dish, bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
ICING: In a bowl, blend butter, vanilla, confectioners sugar, cocoa, and milt until smooth and spread over hot brownies. Sprinkle with nuts. Cool and cut into bars.

*I have read a lot of reviews and stuff on foods with added colorings and how other countries don't let this happen. There was also a recent report on Red#40 and ADHD or something. I heard it also made kids hyper. So I am now reading labels and not buying items with Red#40. We try to limit our processed food anyways. Sometimes we fail though. Anyhoo, while chopping my cherries, I noticed that my fingers and counter were being stained red. Of course I read the label and they added Red#40 in to the cherries. Next time I would get real pitted cherries or frozen ones (if there is no Red#40) and thaw them.

**My friend just posted on Pineterst about a women who experimented with cooking brownies different ways to figure which was the best. Here is the post. The Ultimate Brownie Guide. Long story short, she found that she liked beating the eggs and sugar together. Everyone is different with how they like their brownies, but I thought I would give it a go. I added the cooled butter and cocoa mix to it.

As you can see, we liked them...do brownies freeze well? Im going to have to try. This is only the second time I have made brownies from scratch. They were good. The first time was recently. They were Paleo brownies and were AWESOME! Lets see if I can find the recipe. Paleo Fudgy Brownies. These are a bit expensive to make but were probably the best brownies I have ever eaten. Maybe I should add cherries to that recipe.

Looking at some pictures now, here is a very quick recipe if you need some chocolate. Paleo almond bark. So my pinterest pin no longer shows this recipe, but here is a similar one. Paleo almond bark

Freeze it and get a bit when you need some chocolate. Okay, I gotta go now and hang with the family.

Been a while...how about some driveway sealing!

So yeah...it's been a while since I have blogged...I have lots to post too. We always get little postcards in the mail on cheap driveway sealing. I always wanted to have it done since they are always quoting under $200. I looked up driveway sealers on Home Depot's website and read reviews on the latex-ite Ultra-Shield for $33. These were very good reviews. I actually got excited on doing the geometry to figure out how many buckets we needed. I came up with 1800 sq ft, and since it hasn't been done in a while I figured 1 bucket would cover 300 sq ft (300-400sq ft for unsealed, and 400-500sq ft for previously sealed). So I estimated that it would be about $200 to do it ourselves. So I bet the "professionals" would probably double that price (I also read some reviews where the quotes were a lot higher than their post cards they received in the mail.

***NOTE*** There are temperature requirements for this product. It should be above 55 degrees. It did get below 55 during the night but I am hoping we are fine (the postcard said "only 5 weeks left in the season", so if they are still doing it, I figured we could.

So after 4 years of living here we decided (okay, I decided) to seal our driveway so I spent a weeks worth of nap times pulling a billion weeds out of all the cracks in the driveway to ready it for sealing. Yes, a BILLION!  I counted... Then, while I hosted a small Halloween themed craft event at our house (me being the only one with Halloween crafts), my DG (dearest gamer) and his GM (gamer friend) put on the sealer. That looked WAY more fun than pulling the weeds. I wanted to do it but needed a babysitter, and alas, there was no one...Here is a before the sealing pic, after I weeded. I would be embarrassed if you saw how bad I let the weeds get.

The second pic is when they are just about done. I will give you some facts about what we did. I looked up driveway sealers on Home Depot's website and read reviews on the latex-ite Ultra-Shield for $33. These were very good reviews. I actually got excited on doing the geometry to figure out how many buckets we needed. I came up with 1800 sq ft, and since it hasn't been done in a while I figured 1 bucket would cover 300 sq ft (300-400sq ft for unsealed, and 400-500sq ft for previously sealed).

Upon going to the store, we decided to purchase the $23 latex-ite Airport Grade to save on the $$$. It comes with a 4 year warranty and since I am (desperately?) hoping to move in less than 4 years, we went with this product. We purchased 6 buckets, 2 squeegees, the $5 drill attachment to stir the 5 gallon bucket found in the painter aisle (the men had to run back before starting because the attachment wouldnt fit into the drill, so they needed an attachment for the attachment, and then duck-taped it...i don't know), a cheap pack of gloves, and a bottle of white caulk (that's for another project).

Now, I had read a LOT of reviews from the Ultra Shield, and I decided not to fill any of our cracks or holes. However, if you want to be a good DIYer, those items were near the buckets.  While weeding at the bottom of the driveway where the cars are always parked, I began pulling chunks of the old asphalt out. There is a large area that should be dug out and filled, however, since I want to move soon, not our problem. We purchased everything the day before and set the buckets upside down like other reviews said. But we mixed each buckets as we opened them.

I had a lot of people tell me how messy this was and they would ruin their shoes and such. It took 2 men about 2 hours to finish and they barely got messy. Maybe a small spot or two on the shoes. Worth the money and my time pulling weeds (never...again...)