Showing posts with label Labradoodle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labradoodle. Show all posts

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Ann's Hot Buttered Rum

Guess who's favorite flavor of Lifesaver is buttered rum?  I'll give you three guesses;  first two don't count.  Me?  Did you guess me?  You're RIGHT!  Needless to say, it was a pleasant surprise, becoming an adult (or at least grown) and discovering there really is such a thing as buttered rum.  X's mother made it.  I drank it, discovering pleasurable aspects to being an adult not afforded the child eating Lifesavers of the same flavor.

It's the middle of winter with the Deep South's coldest weather on its way.  I'm not sure when, only that the end of January and February are cold.  You wouldn't know it from all the shorts and yard work in evidence today.  Beaudeux and I had the house wide open while we worked outside and drank sweet tea on the porch. 
Beau doesn't actually like or drink tea.  He'd much rather
have a dark beer on a hot day but it's a dry county and we've not been
in touch with our helicopter pilot to arrange for his beer drop yet.
Labradoodles are notorious sots.

I've been trying to get the buttered rum mix made since before Christmas.  I had everything the week before and a couple of Extra Fellows with Youngest Fellow came in needing bananas foster at midnight.  It took me a while to remember more ice cream at the Pig.  I remembered  last week and, with the surge of false wellness that accompanies a shot of glucocorticosteroid,  accomplished lots of yard work, lots of inside work, managed to make hot buttered rum, and even remembered to take pictures.  

You'll need:
One pound of butter
One pound of light brown sugar 
One pound of confectioner's sugar
Two teaspoons cinnamon
Two teaspoons nutmeg
One quart vanilla ice cream, softened.
Look at the pretty OLD jars I've been riding around all week.
I <3 these!  They're the ones rescued from the old barn
the almost-kinsman had.

Those are Knox, Crown, French's mustard, Kerr, and Atlas
jars.  The Knox, Crown, and mustard jar will not be canned in.
There were seven dozen quart jars and two dozen pint jars.
I'm proud to have them.  Jars are costly!

Combine butter, sugars, and spices until creamy.
Go ahead.  Taste it.  I did.  And I'm not sorry.

Stir in softened ice cream.

If you don't feel like waiting around for the ice cream to soften up,
by all means, cut it out.  Patience is a virtue wasted on  
buttered rum.  Be careful with the knife.  

Use three tablespoons of mix with jigger of rum and boiling water to fill cup.
That's a three pound storage container full.  Is it enough for a winter?
I dunno...  Certainly enough to share (but you've got to bring your own rum).

Time to sit down and figure out what's wrong with the computer while running 
a second quality control on the buttered rum recipe.  The first QC test ran cold...

This is good without the rum, too!  It's good with scotch, kahlua, frangelica, bourbon, but not gin (trust me).  Be mindful imbibers;  this will sneak up on you quickly.  It is good for what ails ya' but too much of it will BE what ails ya...

Y'all enjoy!

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Exactly what IS the Blog on Fire Award???

I'm sorry.  I've not actually procrastinated getting a post done on who to pass the Blog on Fire Award to.  I know who my favorite bloggers are.  It's taken a little bit of time to look at what the award actually means and how it's transferred (or more like snowballed) forward.  It's a cool looking photo award and as quick as I can figure out how to get it on the blog and FB fan page, I'll sure stick it on there:

My friend, Chris, passed the award to me, along with nine other foodies here:   http://cookingwithkick.blogspot.com/2011/07/mud-pie-aka-chocolate-cobbler-and-award.html.  I was tickled!  It was a first.  At my age, a first anything is cause for celebration.

I went looking for Blog on Fire rules.   A google search revealed several thousand hits for the research.   Is it just a foodie award?  Is there an official award clearing house?  Are there other stipulations that go with receiving it?  It seems to be a Facebook Award folks, the excitement of receiving it from a peer (a Southern gurl like me, too!) as great as if I had received it from the President.  Or the pope.  Or even Walter Cronkite.

Some of the google search results showed a revealing "seven things:"  seven previously undisclosed bits of information about the recipient.  Some of those bloggers' information was in question and answer form.  I thought that was a bit odd as I read through them.  I kept expecting to hear Alex Trebek saying "Personal Trivia for 1,000 Mayree."  I also thought the seven things was fun, too, so here are seven little-known facts and photos about yours truly and then I'll pass on the Blog on Fire Awards:

1.  I have a dog.  He's a Labradoodle, five years old now, and his name is Beaudeux.  He's quite a clown and loves having his picture taken.

2.  Green is my favorite color.  I love it.

3.  I play the piano.  I began taking lessons when I was six years old and continued through three years of college.  I canNOT play worth a flip by ear but put a piece of music in front of me and I'll make a pretty decent show of playing/faking/getting to the end of it.


4.  I play the piano for Sunday Morning Worship Service at the church that's been a part of my life ever since I was born.  Yep.  You read right, was BORN:  Leakesville Presbyterian Church PCA.

5.  I'm an NRA certified pistol instructor (this is not a pistol, by the way). The Fellows and I participated in sport shooting for many years through the 4H Field and Stream program.  This was many years ago. I'm VERY good.  Not just for a woman, either.  This was enjoyable stuff, being able to compete in a historically male sport and best them at it.  It comes from growing up with those four brothers and doing (almost) everything they did.

6.  Most of the cheek bone and upper mandible in the left side of my face is missing, a result of the removal of several lesions caused by the rare orphan disease called Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis.  When I tell you I'm warped I'm serious.  I am.  Literally...

7.  One of my favorite sounds in the whole wide world is the rain coming down on the tin roof of this old house.  I don't like rain for days and days on end the way it is in the spring but I love these afternoon summer showers.. 



Blog on Fire Awards.  I've not checked to see if these folks have been tagged with it yet or not.  If you don't know these bloggers, they're all very different from each other and entirely enjoyable in their own right.  Y'all go check them out:

Ohhhh yeah!  It's Sue Ann Gleason's Chocolate for Breakfast blog.  Are you surprised?  You shouldn't have been.  Ohhhh my!  The photos she posts!  The recipes!!!  And I actually read the articles, too!    http://www.chocolateforbreakfast.com/madeleines-au-chocolat/

Picky Palate.  I can't remember what recipe I first found on her blog, using a google search but I bookmarked the blog and keep going back to it.  This is a favorite recipe of hers that I like:

Rich and Sweet.  When I started the FB fan page hers was one of the first I visited.  I fell in love with the elegant but simple packaging of her food stuffs and the recipes???  She's a gourmet cook but makes it easy for even a Southern gurl like me to make, bake, and enjoy:

She's not a food blogger, but neither am I and I love her just the same.  Some of the things she gets into makes me feel like she might be a long lost twin. Go check out the often misadventures of Chris at the MN Farm Woman:

Krysta cracks me up ALL the time.  I pulled an awesome recipe off her site a couple of years ago.  I can't remember if it was the miniature oreo cookie cheesecakes or the chocolate chip cookie dough dip but it was one of those two.  

If you went here you might not know her:
But if you try Deep South dish, you'd recognize the 'nother Mary of the REAL Mississippi Gulf Coast (not the  almost Gulf Coast, like me).  Her blog about being 50 and more is amusing and fun, especially when her neighbors are burning leaves, but her FOOD blog is all Mississippi all the time -- even when the Cajun's influence comes in like THIS recipe, which is one of my favorites from her:

Christy Jordan doesn't need my Blog on Fire Award, won't know I was in the first two dozen 'likes' on Facebook, or even remember I brought her fried pickles when she was in Mobile signing her cookbook.  I'm proud of her and the way she's representing the South.  Along with the Deep South Dish, hers was the ONLY food blog I followed for several years.  This IS my all-time favorite of hers (and it's her mom's!):

You'll love Aimee at Shugary Sweets. I think she gets in the kitchen like I do lots of times, sees ALMOST all the stuff to make a single dish with but not ALL of it -- and comes up with something entirely different and tasty every day.  I've not made this yet but I know it's going to be awesome when I do:

I'm enjoying living and eating vicariously with Chef in Disguise.  Who knew an orthodontist could cook so frazzling well?  

ANNNND lastly, but certainly not the least, Syrup and Biscuits, another Southern gurl that doesn't need another award for kitchen skills passed down from one generation of good cooks to another.  But I do love her and when she comes home for a visit, I hope she'll give a call and we'll get together in person.  

I can't help that most of the recipes here tonight are chocolate, that's just the way it is.  Peruse their websites, check out the recipes and stories.  I know you're going to enjoy them!