It is Springtime...

The winter season is over as the spring season began. But it is not happen in my hometown where it is still wintertime with all of those strange weather. I cannot wait for the spring to come when the weather is so nice and beautiful. Some day, we do have really nice weather but then next day it complete change. I cannot wait for warm day.

I came to this idea when I looked through my recipe book. I was really in mood for berry. I found one in my recipe book. It is called Blueberry bread. But since the blueberry is too expensive right now so I cannot wait until summer when it is cheaper and plus when they are in season. I looked around to find right price. I really want to use fresh, not frozen because I am really in mood for fresh. However, I found good price for one specific berry. It is blackberry. They are about right in season but little too early. But the price was reasonable. So I changed the name to called "Blackberry Bread". I cooked it up and it came out look really good and plus it tasted really good.

Blackberry Bread

- 1/3 cup melted butter

- 1 cup sugar

- 3 TBS lemon juice

- 2 eggs

- 1 1/2 cups flour

- 1 tsp baking powder

- 1 tsp salt

- 1/2 cup milk

- 1 cup blackberry (fresh or frozen)

Direction

1. Preheat oven to 350 degree, lightly grease an 8x4 inch loaf pan. (I suggest to lightly flour so it won't stick to the bottom)
2. In a mixing bowl, beat together butter, sugar, juice, and eggs. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt; stir into egg mixture with milk. Fold in blackberries. Pour batter into pan. (You can cut blackberries in half to make it more reasonable bite size)
3. Bake in oven for 60 to 70 minutes until toothpick come out clean. Cool bread for 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Cross-stitch Part 8

Back to Cross-stitch that I have been doing since. This time, I finished part 8 and still a lot of parts to go. I spend a lot of time on cross-stitch more than anything. Someday, I just cannot stop and some day, I do stop because I need to finish my errands and also look for job. So I had limited myself to do 2 to 3 hours of cross-stitch. Because it is take a lot of focus on it. Sometime, I forgot to drink to keep myself hydrated. So it is kind of hard to do those things, I might think that I might have to take a break for a while and find other things to do.

I have another hobby that I do as well. I do the scrapbook. Right now, I have this huge project that I have been doing since last January. It was my Ireland trip scrapbook. The reason why this project is huge because I have 40 pages to do. Mostly, the scrapbook are 20 pages, but it is 10 page but if you use both side so it is more. So it is huge project and it will take a while because I need to print pictures, get supplies to decorated around it, and also have to make the plan by where to put the pictures in the scrapbook. But someday, I will share with you with all of the scrapbook that I have created.

I am sure you remember about the part 7 in other blog, that I told you that it was unfinished because I was not able to find the floss that I need. However, it was done as well. Here is finished Part 7

Here is the cross-stitch part 8

Here is the Part 1 to 8 as all together...



There will be more to come...

Mood for Fish, Bean and Rice...

It had been a while since the last time I wrote on blog. It was about the cross-stitch, but this time it is different. I am here to write about my cooking. I have cooked a lot but kept forget to take picture and share with people. So now it is time for me to take advantage of it. I cooked today and it came really good. I cooked salmon the first time in oven and it came out perfectly. It was really simple. Then I looked at the cupboard and tried to think what to cook for the side. I saw that I had can of red kidney bean. It came to my mind is that I was planning to cook bean and rice together. It must be good. The only thing, I cannot decided how to cook all together to make it much easier. I found this recipe from this Chef named Robert Irvine. His recipe is called Red Beans and Rice, here is the website of it: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/robert-irvine/red-beans-and-rice-recipe/index.html .

So in results, I decided to change it up a little bit to make it a lot easier and delicious at same time. Here is my recipe that I fix it around...

Items
1 TBS olive oil
garlic cloves or minced garlic
1 large red onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 cans of red beans
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1 Tbs hot sauce (any kind)
2 cup Chicken stock or Chicken broth
1 cup white rice (suggest you to use 5 minutes quick rice)
1 TBS Butter

Direction
1. Heat olive oil over medium heat in a large saucepan. Saute garlic, onion and bell pepper until tender. Stir in kidney bean, onion powder, salt, pepper, and hot sauce. Stir and add one cup of chicken stock and let it boil. Then drain but leave liquid behind a little bit. Reduce heat to low and let it simmer.
2. While it simmer, add one cup of chicken stock, and one cup of express white rice. Cook in microwave or stove. It should take 5 minutes. When it done, add it into the saucepan. Stir together gently and let it simmer little more until there is no liquid left.

Tips: I did not use butter to add rice but you can if you like to. The only difference with the recipe with website is that I did not use celery. Plus to cook rice will take 20  minutes, so I decided to use quick 5 minutes rice, if you want it quick and simple.

Enjoy!

I know it is not a lot, I just forgot to take picture so I hurried to take picture of it.

Cross-stitch Part 7

I know it had been long time since I posted other one. I have been busy doing things around the house, but not always. I took break on cross-stitch for a while because I have been involve volunteer at Sundance Film Festival for the last 10 days. I have been really busy for 10 days with different schedules.

Now, I am finished with the Sundance Film Festival. I do really enjoyed it a lot. I would like to go back next year if I could.

So here is my cross-stitch part 7, it is not finished because I am missing four colors to this. I did went to store last Friday and they were out but I am able to buy rest of it. Then again I decided to go back on Sunday because I am expecting this store to restock, but again, it is not there. So I just decided to go ahead to do part 8 because I have no patience. But I will go to other different stores to find those color thread to complete part 7. So you will see the picture that it is kind of complete. So now, I am going to start my part 8 of cross-stitch.

This is part 7.

This is the whole section of part 1 to 7 of cross-stitch.



By the way, I started my cross-stitch part 7 on Jan 15th and half finish on today Feb 12th.  So Enjoy!

Master at Cake Decorating

I have become the master of cake decorating. Well, not really because I just learned how to do it. A week ago, my sister had ask me to make birthday cake for Samuel. All of suddenly, I had so many different idea to make cake for Samuel's birthday. At first, I was like I could make Car out of cake, but I realized it will take a lot of work. Then I decided to do really simple cake.

At first, I started to draw the cake before I started to make one. I showed the picture to my sister and she had agree it. Then I bought the frosting, food color, and the decoration supplies. My sister bought the cake mix of the flavor. I just know that my nephew love chocolate, but it is better to balance with vanilla and chocolate.

On Saturday, I went out shopping to get decoration supplies at Hobby Lobby, I was surprised that they were good price and lucky they were on sale. So I figured it out everything and I bought it. I went home and I started to bake the cake. I remember that we live on high altitude so I add the flours. 35 minutes later, the cake looked really great. Then I started my process for the decoration and I realized that I missed one important thing. It was the ring coupler. That thing to hold the bag and the tip together. While the cake was cooling down and I quickly ran to nearby store to get one specific thing. I got it.

Then I started to decorated the cake. It took me forever but really it only took me 30 minutes to decorate the cake and it look really great. Also I did borrow my nephew's car to decorate the cake. I did use plastic wrap to protect the cake and the toys. I am really proud of myself that I make this really cool cake.

The cake decoration is simple but it came be complicated. That four shape is that I used chocolate frosting to represent for the road. I had food color to add to the vanilla frosting in three separate as one for green, yellow, and red. I start the yellow outline to make it into a road. Also trying to frosting the chocolate to stay in yellow is not quite easy but it come out great. Also I used the green to make it into grass. So overall, it does look great to me...

Just Little part six of cross-stitch

Hello again, I am sure you are wondering why I had worked so quick. Really, this part six is really short. It is just how the system work for the pattern of cross-stitch. So the part six is really short and it is easy to work on it because it is part of the sky and cloud.

I have finished the top part, it seem it took me three months as from October to January. I am just say that I am proud that I was able to do this challenge cross-stitch. Here is the finished of top part...

The image of the first top part so that you can get the idea of what it look like.

Cross-stitch Part Five

Coming again with cross-stitch, it is part 5, this one is a lot easier, because it only required few color on it. I was focus on the sky and clouds. One thing about the cross-stitch, I realized that I did not have any room to make more part. So I bought new material and cross-stitch the part five.

The photo is the part five of cross-stitch...

Then I sew to rejoin together. It was not the easy thing to sew together at this moment but I did it well.

So that is the finished result of it. But there are still more to go with it. I will fix it to make it look good.

More will come soon.