Pumpkin Chocolate Chip and Raisin Loaf

I love a good homemade slice of loaf with coffee.  This is a new one I put together today and it is delicious. Very moist and freezable.
I made various loaves today and used my Muffin Top pans.  One loaf recipe makes 12 muffin tops....scooped out batter is 1/4 cup baked at 20 minutes....and Voila!!

The muffin tops are a little more unique than a muffin. The pans are outrageously expensive...kitchen shops...almost 30 buckeroos. Freeze the muffin tops individually in sandwich baggies. Clean and no crumbs.  Makes a nice snack for work, or for kids without thawing out a whole loaf. Easier to microwave if you want it warm with butter. The best thing with these is that they are flat and easier to freeze without taking much room in your freezer. Or freeze them in seperate boxes in the freezer and one day you can have apple, one day pumpkin, next day banana chocolate chip. These are from Brandy's Black Bottomed Banana Bread recipe( September) and I omitted the cocoa powder and just made them light. These are nice quick treats for coworkers too.

Also makes a nice Christmas gift in a nice Christmas box which I didn't have .

Dollar store has these cool thermal bags that I  freeze stuff in to avoid freezer burn.  This bag holds 12 muffin tops.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip and Raisins Loaf

1 ¾ cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon Pumpkin spice

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt

½ cup butter

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 cup pumpkin pie filling(E.D. Smith..540 ml)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/3 cup milk

¾ cup mixed chocolate chips and raisins

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Butter and flour a 9 x 5 1/2 metal loaf pan.  Sift first 5 ingredients into a bowl. In another bowl beat butter, sugar and eggs until smooth.  Beat in pumpkin and vanilla.  The pumpkin pie filling already has spices and sugar, so  I used my sugar sparingly as you don’t want it overly sweet. Beat in dry ingredients alternately with milk.  Stir in chocolate chips and raisins, or nuts if you prefer. You can use ½ cup of chips and ½ cup nuts or raisins if you want more of these in your loaf. Put batter in loaf pan and bake for 55 minutes.  Cool and freeze or dig right in to it with butter.

A 540 ml. Pumpkin pie filling will give you filling for two loaves.  You can use pumpkin puree if you like,,,just bump up the pumpkin pie spice to ½ teaspoons, and sugar from 1 cup to 1 ½ cups.

Best Buy Again at Winners

Well I hate to keep ranting aboout Winners ....one would think I never shopped  anywhere else....but....I got these cute kitchen essentials there.  I keep a metal choreboy under my sink because it is used daily. Because it is metal, it drips rust wherever it sits. With this litte gadget, you just tuck it in the hole and it airdrys and leaves no rust stains.as well as adding a little colour to your otherwise dull sink. Then you fill the bottle up with your favorite dish soap.  And the pink brush was a little glamp necessity.

Birthday Bling

Wow!  Look at these stones for my birthday from the Glampereenos!  They can fill my jewelery box anytime.  I blinded everyone at work today. With my  $1.25 cocktail ring to Swarovski crystals .

I Love Winners and the Giant Dollar Store and Giant Tiger

I love Winners and The Giant Dollar store this season.  Winners had my jewel toned parka for the weather that was colder than Siberia the last few days...with real fur...yipper, real fur died majenta. So warm and fashionable.  Maybe the colour kept me warm.    Hot pink gloves were a real find at Winners and within a day I  had pancake syrup on them.  Then I made a mistake and shovelled snow with them on because they have a cashmere lining and were warm.  Very stupid.  These kind of gloves are for show not snow. Then.....Giant Dollar Store had these great cocktail rings... expandable....for $1.25 each.  A cup of Tim Horton's coffee costs more than this.

And Giant Tiger has these beautiful Red Christmas socks with Diamond encrusted cuffs and 2010 on them for photos of special people for Xmas.....actually faces come in them if you have no special people.

President John F. Kennedy Assasinated 47 Years Ago Today

It's hard to believe it has been 47 years since President John Kennedy was assasinated. I remember being in junior high school when this happened and the school was buzzing in such disbelief for the whole afternoon.  It was the biggest thing on a national stage that we had experienced as well as total disbelief and sadness  for everyone else. I made a scrapbook for myself on upcoming news coverage and kept the Edmonton Journal in tact from that day.

Christmas Bling

How about a little Christmas Bling for your wall??? This one was made for me by my sister with all my old jewelry. Brooches, earrings, braclets and chains.  Sketch out a  Christmas tree on your velvet and decorate to your hearts content.  Anything that glitters and blings is usable. A black velvet background and a Goodwill  frame and you have a little Christmas sparkle on your walls with a story. My star is magnificent.  A diamond necklace with an amber stone inside of it.  Notice I said diamond.  Everything that sparkles is a  diamond to me. I hate throwing out jewelery and this is a creative way to reuse pieces that are broken.

Enlarge to see the best sparkle since I don't have my Nikon 3100 yet.

And how about this?  Canadian Tire has these huge diamond rings for $3.95 to hang on the tree in case someone is hinting or maybe treating themselves to the diamond they always wanted or maybe they just like bling on a tree.  But they are gorgeous.  And for the divas who like diamonds maybe you could even use it as a napkin ring if you entertain with sparkle.

Jamy's New Condo

Well Jamy has moved into her new apartment condo. Very cute and spacious.  Makes one consider downsizing. Nice balcony and impressive building. We broke it in with Japanese Chicken, Caesar salad, rice and 3 bottles vino.

Ooops forgot food pictures.

When Baba's away the Mice will play

Well when I was off doing my little babysitting stint.....someone decided to vacation at my house.  Yup he had the whole run of the house.  Just like a kid on vacation when the parents are gone.   All that remains is evidence that something was going on.  Well I'm no fan of Mickey and the traps with the fake cheese came out and were strategically placed with a "Bon Voyage" smear of peanut butter.  This morning.... 

Snap!!!!

So off to the garbage can he went with his trap.

  I loaded up a new trap with some more

 " gourmet la peanut bootyay" in case he had a friend over that wanted a nibble.

 Bloody little furballs!!!

Then off to Home Depot to buy the ultrasound device that is at a frequency too high for the human ear.... supposed to work in a 40 metre area and make it too agitating for mice to come to visit. I plugged in 4 of them so hopefully they will avoid my house.  With ultrasound plugins, warfarin and peanut butter traps.....glampingbaba's house is no place to visit.

Last day with Baba

Diners, Digs and Dives...

6 Chicken Wings and Peas and bread

 and 

 half a $4.00 super duper cupcake

This deserves a TOAST

Bye Pookie.....it's been a wonderful 10 days.

Time for Baba to go home.

Adam`s Hockey Game

The Hockey Player

and Little Bashful

Lukee and Glamour Girl and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yup ....that boy has an owie....he fell down

Full night, full diaper....home again...noodle supper and baloney, happy boy  and lights out.

Boy watches Hockey Brooks versus Calgary

A Day Out with the Boy

Oh Wow!!!  Sprinkled  Doughnuts!!!

A little ketchup with my fries

Nah, maybe I'll try some honey mustard

Hey what's goin on over there?

Life is good!

Ooops..... I feel something coming in my diaper.

I might be sittin' on this one cuz' I don't remember Baba bringing a diaper bag

Hmmmmm...

Happy Birthday YaYa

On Board

Off to catch my first plane...

Spiderman and Ironman are packed and ready to fly.

Babysitting isn't that bad.....

Garlic Chicken with Orange-Lime Juice and Zupa

I'm craving for a piece of roast chicken with a different flavour. Trying to find chicken pieces today with their skin still on is as frustrating as finding your cupboards full of expired seasonings. Who decided to rip off the skin? People were frying chicken with skin for centuries and some health nut decided to set a new standard. I say "Leave the skins on the chickens, but debone them properly". Let the health nuts remove their own skin.  And when did they stop selling oranges individually? I just went to Safeway.  Mind you I am in Calgary,  I just wanted one orange.  Nope had to buy a whole bag.  Mind you they are South African oranges and they are delicious. So this was a good ending.

2 chicken breasts with skin on and backs attached.
4 thighs with skin on
1 orange
2 limes
1/2 cup canola oil
4 cloves garlic
salt and pepper

1 onion
2 carrots
2 potatoes
1 cup cooked noodle spirals or macaroni
1 tsp. chicken broth powder(Knorr's)
salt and pepper to taste
2 stalks celery with leaves
6 cups water


Debone chicken and save backs and uneeded bones leaving a bit of meat on them.
Put bones in a pot with 6 cups water, chicken broth powder and salt and pepper.
Simmer for an hour. Remove chicken bones and meat. Set aside and cool. I left enough meat on the bones that I had about 3/4 cup meat pieces. Cook macaroni in seperate pot and set aside drained. Cook veggies in chicken broth until tender about 30 minues.  Salt and pepper to taste and when ready to eat add chicken pieces and desired macaroni.

While bones are cookin' grate the zest of 2 limes and 1 orange.  Put in a bowl and add juice from the orange and 1 lime. Smash or dice 3 cloves garlic into 1/2 cup canola oil and just before marinating, mix the oil and citrus parts.  Marinate your chicken pieces for 30 minutes. Lay chicken piecs on a wire rack in a foiled oven pan and drizzle some marinade over top.  I grated a little more garlic from 1 clove over each piece of chicken.  Set oven at 350 degrees and roast for 60 minutes.

I suppose a rice or pasta dish would compliment this more but  I had mashed potatoes, green salad and cream corn.

The soup is for tomorrow.  Great idea? No bones wasted and some zupa.

Teaching Remenbrance Day

I  just spent the last part of the hour explaining why we wear a red poppy once a year.  I took Jacob to the battle of  Monte Cassino where his great grandfather fought. We climbed the mountain where the Benedictine Abbey sat on top giving the enemy, the Nazi soldiers, full view of the Polish soldiers who would be the first to courageously  take the hill in May of 1944.  So after showing him pictures of his JoJo(Dziadziu)in army uniform, with his gun, Jacob decided he wanted to fight as well.  He wasn't going to fight with just anything.  He had to go down into the basement and get his sword and helmut. So all be it in our pj's at 8:00 in the morning we reinacted the battle. When the soldiers stopped to rest after a days fighting they relaxed under cover ( a crocheted afghan) and sang "Pija Kuba:...a Polish drinking song....with milk...well in our battle that's what they did anyway. During the song, Lukee danced. Jacob never rested very long because he said we have to keep fighting until all the enemy are gone.  His last fight was when he did a backflip and during the flip his shoe cracked the enemy square in the eyeballs. So with all the bad guys gone, with the help of transformers,  we had to celebrate with breakfast.

There's nothing more rewarding for breakfast after  a victorious fight  than a sprinkled doughnut and a glass of milk.

 What a pair of good soldiers these boys are.

Bathtime is closer to Bedtime....yeah....