Peeking

Heidi did this and said she tagged anyone with a camera and a blog and some time. I had a camera and a blog, so I did it anyway.

I think the idea is giving you a peek into my life today.

Fridge (needs filling) and Sink (all the dirties are on the counter to the right)


Closet (my favorite) and Bathroom (Guest/Lanse's)


My favorite shoes (all sandals) and a self-portrait (by webcam)


My favorite room
I worked on this a lot trying to get the whole room in. It's a large room and with the window, taking the picture in sections screwed up the lighting a lot. I have another set of three pix that I patched together that gives a better idea of the room, but it looks horrible because the lighting and color was so different in each picture. So this is what you get.

Yes, we sleep in the library. We love it. No, it's not finished yet. The cabinet bit under the window will become a window seat when we find somewhere to get a cushion for it. We'll also add a small cafe table to the farthest left.


I don't tag people, but I'm curious about what you'll do if you do it...

Mupcake Update

I have now eaten a Thin Mint Mupcake. I have two notes to make:

3 cookies was not enough. You get the smell of the mint, but not much taste. Either up the number of cookies, or add some mint flavoring.

20 minutes in my oven made the top crust exactly like brownies, but the inside of the Mupcake was sort of slightly undercooked cake. The rack in my oven is on the top, which I keep forgetting about when it's cool enough to move down again, so that might be part of the problem. But I'm personally more into brownies than cake, so I'm contemplating trying the batter in a thin layer in a square dish instead of Mupcakes and see what happens.

Another day though.

More-carb Mupcakes

This post is for Heidi, so if it's the end of the world, she has more chocolate.

I discovered a recipe for low-carb cupcakes in the Bon Appetite magazine about a year ago now. The recipe is for Sunken Orange-Chocolate Muffins, or something like that. You make them in a muffin tin, and the first time I made them was with a friend, and I kept getting confused and asked for the Cup... no... muffin... no MUPCAKE tin. Thus the Mupcake was born.

These weren't published to be low-carb, but they're flourless and I made them with Splenda as well, and at one point did all the math to discover they now have approximately 8g of carbs per regular-size cupcake. This is lovely, if you compare them to hostess. Plus, they're tasty!

Well, I ran out of Splenda this time, and instead of using orange rind to go with the chocolate, I ground up some Thin Mints that I hid in the back of my freezer last year.

Holy. Freaking. Cow. The batter was so tasty I'm confident that my lunch will not be responsible today.

So without further ado, here's the recipe:

Preheat oven to 350 and put liners (or spray butter) in a 12 cupcake/muffin tin.

Step 1. Melt 8 oz chocolate chips with 1 stick of butter and stir it up really well to make a lovely chocolate sauce. Set it aside.

Step 2. In a food processor (I have a Cuisinart for this), pulverize 1c. of a nut of some kind. The original recipe says slivered almonds, but I had chopped walnuts, which taste just as good. This creates a nut flour. Yay! This is also where I threw in three Thin Mint cookies and pulverized them with the nuts. If you choose to add something else instead, like orange rind (2 tsps.) or instant coffee or whatever else goes well with chocolate, now's the time.

Step 3. Separate 4 eggs, in two medium-large size bowls.

Step 4. In the yolks, stir in 3/4 c. of sugar. Then stir in the chocolate and the nut mixture.

Step 5. In the whites, power-mixer in 1/4 c. You're making a merengue, so whip it up until it makes stiff or kinda stiff peaks. I've run out of patience most times and it works fine if the peaks are droopy. I also used REAL sugar for this step today cuz I ran out of Splenda.

Step 6. Fold the merengue into the rest of the stuff by thirds until well blended but not smooshed.

Step 7. Scoop it into your prepared muffin tin and bake for 17 - 22 minutes depending on how cakey you like them.

Step 8. Wait until the timer goes off; take them out of the oven. Try desperately to wait before eating one.

Step 9. Get a cup of tea, and put your favorite version of whip cream on the mupcake.

Step 10. EAT IT.

Notes:
They're called "Sunken" whatever, because when they cool, the tops cave in. This is supposed to happen. I don't know the chemistry for it. With the chocolate-orange version, they recommend filling this dent with orange preserves or something like that. I think mine will just have more whipped cream.

Don't forget to take them out of the tin and put them on a cooling rack. As we all know, no one likes a soggy bottom.

Analoged Confusion

For some odd reason I was so incredibly exhausted this morning. I slept until I got up, which is how I normally do things. My normal 'getting up' is typically instigated by the cats around 8:00 or, as a last resort, the 10:00 beepings of the coffee pot shutting off. So this morning I got up and carried out my normal routine. Happened to notice that Lanse had cleaned the coffee machine this morning, leaving the rest of the coffee for me to go cold. While getting that cold coffee, I discovered it was right around 11:00. Apparently neither the cats nor the coffee pot were helpful today!

I had breakfast, got online, and I've been waiting for Lanse to go to lunch. My stomach's starting to rumble, and I've been thinking my internal clock says it's been about long enough for me to start thinking about doing schoolwork, and thinking about lunch. But really, it's only got to be around noon.

It's quarter after 2:00. Lanse will be HOME in two and a half hours. Apparently the mail's already come, which is another of my audible time tellers.

So now I'm annoyed because I've wasted too much school time, and if I have a full lunch now (which I'm really hungry for), our dinner plans will be all messed up. Dagnabbit!