Choice Morsels

I think everyone in my family loves chocolate. It was a regular feature of our lives. Certainly not all the time, but chocolate cakes  were popular requests for birthdays and there was chocolate pudding cake with oven meals sometimes, but the BIG chocolate event every year was Christmas! Except one Christmas. Mother was watching her weight at TOPS and so declared a "no chocolate" Christmas. (You can read that story here .) What resulted was the most extravagant chocolate year ever!! Everyone thought, "Oh, I'll just buy a little," then there we were with a stack of Russell Stover boxes. Russel Stover also makes theWhitman Sampler. We had one of those, but the beauty of Whitman Samplers is they tell you what you're getting. There's a list in the box identifying every chocolate. Mostly we had big Monopoly-game size boxes of the more enigmatic regular Russell Stover's chocolates, which have no list , so you have to just take your chances. ...

Did you see the recent Mr. Clean ad with a dancing Mr.Clean?  Well, Hubby has a quirky sense of humor. Last week at the Commissary as we strolled down the laundery/cleaning product aisle, he observed a woman studying the selection of Mr. Clean products and said to her,  " I heard he'll dance for you if you buy that stuff. " Then he confessed another one of his "ad humor" hit & runs. He told me one time at the commissary some years ago, he saw a lady studying the various brands of peanut butter and out-loud, randomly said,  "You look like a choosy, Mom. Choosy Mom's choose Jif." Then was another time, a number of years ago, we were sitting in the eye-glasses shop at the BX. The person who worked there was doing something with my glasses order, so she was away from the desk. Hubby was sitting beside me, idly looking at a turning display of glasses frames on the desk top, trying them on and so on. Suddenly, he put on a pair of very mo...

It was in the late 1960's when I tried my first S'More. I think the recipe was in the 4-H Cooking Project book. After that first taste, it was a family favorite whenever we had a wiener roast outside, since classic S'Mores involved toasted marshmallows. The original recipe calls for Hershey bars, but we found Hershey bar pieces weren't that responsive to melting all that fast or well under a single hot marshmallow, so we switched to using Brach's Chocolate Stars, which melt perfectly! We'd used 3 or 4 stars per half a graham, topped with a fat toasted marshmallow and they were perfect! So, with fond memories of S'Mores, today's recipe is a Pinterest recipe for Indoor S'Mores I tried out this week! The recipe is simple, though I used a bag of Chocolate Stars instead of Hershey Bars because they melt better.  The Indoor Recipe didn't mention a pan size, though the picture and ingredient quantities suggest it's a jelly roll pan. T...

This weeks Mama Kat prompt is an interesting one. It's about how my parents met. It was the winter of 1944.  Dad was a young sailor home on leave, his first leave, after having spent the previous 18 months on a Minesweeper in the Pacific. He happened to be on a street car riding back to Minneapolis from roller skating at a rink in St. Paul, when my Mother and her friend, Kathy hopped on.  Mother just remembers being face to face with this cute sailor in his dress blues, Navy pea coat and smoking a pipe with his Navy cap at a jaunty angle. The three of them had a pleasant chat during the 40 minute ride and he said he'd be going back to the South Pacific soon and would they care to write? It was widely regarded as patriotic duty to write the servicemen during World War 2, so both girls quickly agreed and he jotted down their addresses. He had to write first, since he didn't know his ship assignment yet.  Dad/1944 He did write both girls and, for a time, Mo...

I've been making bread about once a week with my relatively new bread-maker and today decided to make some old-fashioned cinnamon & raisin swirl bread. That's basically like making a giant cinnamon roll. It's doing it 2nd rise now, then I'll bake it. Today's Garden Pic is Holly Flowers! This is an Oakland Holly tree and it's going to be loaded with berries! The berries are edible for birds! The tree is about 4 feet high. It's a holly tree of shorter suited to the South, slow-growing, grower, self-pollinating and naturally holds a triangular symmetry without hedging.  All perfect in my book! This week was also Valentine's Day and Hubby got me a HILARIOUS card! I laughed out-loud when I read it. I took pictures and here it is: Outside says, "This Valentine will bring tears to your eyes..." Inside says, "I farted in it! Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day." And he gave me a Mounds bar--my most favorite ...

For Good Eating today, I have another one of my favorite "oven meal" desserts that I mentioned in a Mama Kat prompt a couple Thursdays ago on the topic of "Favorite Meals Growing Up." What's good about this recipe is it just uses bread, eggs, milk, raisins, vanilla and a little sugar & spice. Simple, easy and fairly nutritious. Chilled & cut into bars, it makes a great snack you can pick-up and eat with your fingers. For bread you want day-old bread. My Mother would save bread leftovers in the freezer and when there was enough, she used that for bread pudding. Use whole-grain, wheat, white or a combo of bread---but avoid Rye.  You'll want your bread cubes dry, so cut enough bread to make 4 cups of cubes and spread on cookie tray to dry over-night. Then put in large bowl to prepare. Cinnamon Raisin Bread Pudding       Ingredients: 4 cups Stale Bread, cut or torn into small pieces 4 cups Milk, scalded 1 - 2 cups Raisins 4 Eggs, we...

Capture the past on your walls! Decorate with cool vintage travel posters you can frame & hang! Here's 3 of my favorites! Chicago Illinois Vintage Travel Poster SS Normandie French Line Vintage Ship Ad Poster Colorful San Francisco Travel Poster I've shown you some fantastic posters, but vintage ad art is available on tons of things, like shirts, mugs, phone cases, cards, stamps & lots more!  Food ads, travel ads, product ads! To see all, go here ! ***** Have a great weekend and see you for Good Eating Monday!

Today's Mama Kat prompt is, no doubt, inspired by Valentines Day, which is all about chocolate & roses.   I, personally, would rather have the chocolate.  At least, I can eat that. Can't eat roses. So, for the love of chocolate, I'm going to feature my ultimate favorite chocolate dessert recipe:  Chocolate Pudding Cake! This decadent mocha-chocolate treat was often part of what our Mother called "oven meals," served during our growing-up years that I talked about last weeks  Mama Kat Thursday . Chocolate Pudding Cake is sometimes also called "Hot Fudge Cake," since it creates it's own rich sauce during baking---but what sets this recipe apart, is the instant coffee you add to the water that deepens the flavor! "Chocolate Pudding Cake" was the Hershey company's name for it, since this was originally a label recipe on Cocoa can label in the 60's. (Photo is from Pinterest) Chocolate Pudding Cake Topping Ingredie...

I noticed this morning two Azalea bushes out front have died and I thought, "Yay, I can plant something else now! Something that doesn't need hedging all the time!" (I'm thinking Hydrangeas.) The yellow Daffs out front are the only ones out. The Hyacinths are still on their way up and the Cheers Daffodils in back are still just buds. But I do have Shamrocks! These are in the Hosta bed on the north edge of the house. They've been actually blooming since autumn, quite happily. I transplanted several there last spring,  so they could eventually fill the Hosta bed and give it color during winter. A wonderful ground cover, but they do spread!

Today's Good Eating is a new Pinterest recipe I tried called, "Mexican Cornbread Casserole." It's delicious casserole of taco-seasoned ground beef sandwiched between layers of cornbread& cheese!  It was very tasty and our dinner guest said it was his "new favorite" meal! I found the original recipe needed a couple tweaks, so what I'm giving you here! This recipe is for a 9 x 13 pan & the photo is my own of this dish. Mexican Cornbread Casserole Ingredients: 2 lbs lean ground beef  (80/90%) 1/2 cup chopped onion 2 packets Taco Seasoning Mix 1/2 cup Salsa 1 14oz can Creamed Corn 1 can of Kernal Corn, drained (or 1 cup frozen corn) 1 4oz can of Chopped Green Chilies 2 Boxes of Jiffy Cornbread Mix 1 1/2 cup shredded Cheese (Mexican or Cheddar) Directions: Grease 9 x 13 pan with cooking spray and pre-heat oven to 350 In skillet, brown ground beef & onion. When starting to brown, stir in 1/2 can creamed corn (...

Today's fun "find" is an aquarium-themed kids treat called, "Shark Tank Jello," for you to try out--especially if you have young kids. Or maybe just for fun for yourself! The recipe comes from a foodie-blogger I follow on G+ called, "Lady Behind the Curtain ," where you can see here progression of  how-to photos. Shark Tank Jello Ingredients: For the Jello : 1 (2 liter) bottle lemon limes soda, flat 4 (1/4 oz) packages unflavored gelatin 2 drops of blue food coloring For the Tanks 26 half pink jars (with lids* ) 13 for the shark tank and 13 for the jello to set up in. Gummy sharks Nerds (about 5 boxes) Directions: Making the Jello: 1) Pour soda into a large bowl and let it sit on counter up to 4 hours to become flat. 2) Once soda is flat; pour 1 cup into a bowl then sprinkle the gelatin over the top and let it stand to soften. About 5 minutes. 3) Dip out 2 more cups of soda from bowl and pour in a small sa...

The Mama Kat blog writing prompt I've selected today is to, "Share my favorite home-cooked meals growing up." My growing up era was the 1960's and early 70's. We lived way out in the country in Indiana. We had a TV antenna, a septic system, a well for water, one rotary-dial phone and one television set. I say that to create the right setting before I explain that my favorite meals were, "oven meals." Mother prepared these "oven meals," because she had a propane gas stove fueled by 2 tall (50-inch) propane tanks sitting outside and if she was going to bake, she was going to make good economical use of that propane doing it! So, for example, if she was going to bake chicken in the oven, she'd also bake potatoes and a dessert, too.  So, my two favorite "oven meals" were her baked chicken & meatloaf meals and the menu's looked something like this: In the oven: Baked chicken ( legs, thighs, wings & br...

I know spring is in the air when the Daffodils start blooming! These daffodils in my front bed are the first to bloom every year!  Blueberries are starting to bloom. Yet, it's only Feb 1 and I'm not sure we're out of the woods for cold blasts, even in Florida. Stop back tomorrow to see what's up for Mama Kat!