Just Say No to the Cloves

Yesterday I was looking through my recipes for something to make and ran across No Bake Flax Snacks, and thought, 'Cool. I like flax, I always wanted to make these' blah blah blah. As you can see from the photo, the recipe called for ingredients most people would have in their home. There's one thing missing from that photo, and one thing added.   It called for 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of cloves, plus cinnamon. Now, if there's anything most people know who bake a lot, it's that cloves are very strong. Strong enough to over power just about anything. (think Christmas candles, ornaments, etc). Cloves are even stronger than nutmeg.

Anyway, so I followed the recipe, hesitating over the amount of cloves, and in the end just cut it down to one teaspoon.  MISTAKE. I should have left all of it out. So I made another batch, this time leaving out the cloves and adding a couple tablespoons of cocoa. Much better. Jake and NoBo took some in their lunches today.

Here is the recipe with my changes:

No Bake Flax Snacks

3\4 cup ground flaxseed
3 Tbl whole wheat flour
1 -1/2 cinnamon
2 Tbl cocoa (approximate)
2 Tbl peanut butter
1/4 cup honey (approximate; probably a tiny bit more)

Combine first for ingredients in a small mixing bowl. Addd peanut butter and honey and knead thoroughly by hand. Tear off bits and roll into small balls. Store in refrigerator.

--from April 97 Prevention magazine



And the moral of the story is: always trust your gut, even when you're cooking.

Can I just say..

Wow. That's all there is to say today, the first full day of school. This morning was sheer chaos--not so much when I had to get the boys ready, but when K and E and Dyno Dad were up. This was even with having lunches fixed the night before (except for Dyno Dad's; my fault).  I was downstairs printing off notes for their lunchboxes and kinda lost track of time. Oops. But all's well that end's well, right? And everyone got out the door with ironed pants and lunches and backpacks.

Now Foo-Foo and I have the house to ourselves, and it's strangely quiet......

What happened to that list of books?

Image via Wikipedia

I do this every year. January rolls around and I get this cute idea that I'm going to keep track of all the books I read for the whole year, because I know I read a lot of books, and I'd like to know how many to to satisfy my own curiosity. So I did well the first few months, and then around March, I began forgetting to write them down, and hence they didn't get into my book log on writing.com. I haven't updated that thing since May--and it wasn't complete.

Some people have asked me where I find the time to read, since I have so many kids and dogs to take care of. The thing is, we all make time for what's important to us. In my case, it's reading and to a lesser extent, writing. Reading a book is my escape; it always has been. Before I had kids I'd lose myself totally inside the story--so much so that I couldn't hear people talking to me. I can't do that any more, for obvious reasons, at least not to the extent I once did.

So I'm kind of bummed about the book list thing. Maybe some day I'll be able to stick with it. I doubt it, though.

Before and After

Sans makeup

The full workup

Glamorous, no?  My skin felt nice from all the skin care products sampled. Mary Kay has some really nice products, especially the mascara! My eyelashes need all the help they can get.

What To Write

I'm wondering just how much of myself I should put in this blog. I have a journal on Writing.com, but I haven't posted anything in that since the end of May. I might start a new one, fresh start and all that. Should this blog (I really do loathe that word) be just kids and family junk, or should there be some of Mighty Mom in here? This is a true dilemma to quote Pirate Bob.

So today I had a Mary Kay makeover--it was sorta fun, and sorta not. I'm not a big fan of 'glamour', which is what it's all about. Don't get me wrong, I looked pretty good (for me) with all that concealer and moisturizer and foundation and eyeshadow and mascara and---you get the idea. That's an awful lot of stuff to make one look good. I'm more of a natural girl. I don't like putting a bunch of chemicals on my face. The Mary Kay gal talked a lot about retinol-A, and I'm not sure exactly what that is, and if it's a good thing to put on your skin. (I appear to be having difficulty with spelling tonight, pls excuse me)  The gal will be sending my 'before' and 'after' glamour (yeah, right) photo and I'll post it.