Choice Morsels

Today is our Wedding Anniversary! 30 years strong! So, we're having a day of celebration at a local water park! Today's topic is a coffee mug cake recipe. First, I'll give you the  original recipe, followed by suggestions for how I make this quickie dessert a little lower fat:   Chocolate Coffee Mug Cake   Spray the inside of 1 regular mug with oil spray. In a small bowl combine: 4 Tbsp sugar 4 Tbsp all-purpose flour 2 Tbsp cocoa 1 egg 3 Tbsp milk 3 Tbsp oil 3 Tbsop chocolate chips                                                         Dash of Vanilla   Mix the above ingredients together, pour into a regular, oil sprayed mug and cook in a 1000 watt mic...

Greetings. I was hoping to finish mowing the front this morning---but, it was already raining and thundering. It's a steady, pattering rain. Not a down-pour. So much for that idea. Instead, I spent a little time fine-tuning some new electronic skins I loaded into my Zazzle store for readers, phones & MP3's. It was the first time I'd ever used the "bulk creator" and even then, I just did a limited selection. But it was easy enough to use---just needed extra fine-tuning afterwards. If you drop by and "Like" my store , you'll get email updates of anything I add new! They have featured discounts constantly, too! So on to the Mama Kat Prompt of the Day: MY TOP 5 CHOCOLATE CANDY FAV'S #1)  Hershey's Special Dark Kisses         These are my go-to favorites because they're only 20 calories per Kiss, so I'll eat two for a treat after lunch or dinner. I keep them in the freezer.  (I'm not at all tempted to eat the w...

     “ This Christmas,” our Mother firmly and unexpectedly announced, “there will be NO chocolate.”       My sisters and I stared at her incredulously. What, no chocolate? It was inconceivable!       You see, every year, for as long as I could remember, there had been chocolate on Christmas. Not just a little chocolate, but an opulent extravaganza of chocolate that would've made even Willy Wonka blush. Empty decorative bowls would be laid out on Christmas Eve, enough to cover our 7 foot dining table, only to be “magically” filled by morning with Hershey’s Kisses, Hershey's Mini-bars, chocolate peanut clusters, chocolate turtles, chocolate cremes, M&M's of both types, chocolate stars, chocolate-covered cherries, Tootsie rolls and candy bars of every type. It was a veritable chocolate feast the Ghost of Christmas Present would surely admire.       However, this particular...

Yup, time for another tale prompted by Mama Kat. Today's prompt of choice is #5: "What is the one 'vice' you can't give up?"    Quite a number of years ago, in the mid 90's, we visited some friends, who were living in North Carolina at the time and what makes it memorable is the wife declaring that she, "had to give up eating chocolate because it had caffeine in it."  Apparently she was under doctor's orders not to have any sort of caffeine. Why, I don't know, but back then there was a general "caffeine scare" going on. Of course, a lot of scientific back-peddling has occurred since then, as it so often does, and science now declares coffee and chocolate, particularly dark chocolate, as having health benefits. Though those fancy coffee drinks full of sugar and all kinds of high-calorie stuff other then plain coffee are fattening rather then healthy.      I mention this, because if I'm going to call anything I unrepentan...

     The Mama Kat's Writing Prompt of choice this week is #5: Share a story about a sibling .      My growing up years were full of magic and adventure. I remember so much laughter and romping  through sun-dappled woods down to the gurgling creek flowing through the valley below our house, the dog running ahead of us, her tail like a flag in the breeze. My two younger sisters and I could skip agiley over the rocks we placed in the stream for crossing, like little mountain goats, our feet never touching water. There was always adventure to had, flowers to be found, creepy-crawlies to be discovered and I remember our Barbie and Ken dolls enjoyed many a luxurious, stone-lined spa in that stream.       However, the particular sibling story I want to tell happened not by the steam, but near the house out in my Mother's garden. Now we're talking a huge garden, two of them, in fact, arranged one above the...