Hungry Girl Recipe Review: Old Time Rocky Road Fudge

So my wonderful sister-in-law, Jenn, and I have decided we are going to review a recipe from Hungry-Girl.com every month on our blogs. This month we decided to make Old Time Rocky Road Fudge, a recipe that uses only a handful of ingredients: brownie mix, canned pumpkin, light chocolate syrup, marshmallows and slivered almonds. You can find the full recipe here.

I have to say, I was very excited about making this. I am a real chocolate lover, and I was having such a strong craving for chocolate that I decided to make these a day early. (Sorry, I cheated, Jenn!) So I gathered up the ingredients, along with my helpful husband and assistant:
We started by mixing up the batter. We used regular chocolate syrup instead of light chocolate syrup simply because that's what we had in our fridge (and I didn't feel like buying the light kind just for this recipe). This is what we got:


Tony was the first to taste the batter, which was very smooth and quite thick. He said it tasted like "poo." I tried it, and I didn't think it was great, but not terrible either. I started to worry that I had wasted a perfectly good brownie mix. But we went ahead and baked up the batter, as directed. We then removed it from the oven, put the marshmallows and nuts on top, and baked it a while longer.

I was so excited to try this, but after reading the directions I realized the fudge had to chill for "several hours"!!!! I was craving chocolate right then, and so was Tony (to a lesser degree) so we settled for other snacks until our fudge was chilled. I had a make-shift "banana boat" (which turned out to be entirely too sweet (bad idea, me)) and Tony had hot chocolate.


After several hours had passed and the fudge was thoroughly chilled, I tried a piece:

To my surprise, my attempts to satisfy my chocolate craving were thwarted, once again! My expectations for this recipe were very high, and so I was very disappointed. While the texture of this was fudgy (but a little soft... more like pumpkin pie) the pumpkin flavor totally overwhelmed the chocolate. Actually, to me, it doesn't taste like chocolate at all. I had another couple of pieces today before blogging and decided that this recipe doesn't taste bad, but it doesn't taste like chocolate fudge. Tony had another piece today, too, and agreed that the pumpkin overpowered the recipe. I would much rather eat a small amount of real chocolate fudge and deal with all those calories and fat than eat this substitute. And so, for me, this gets a thumbs down. Out of 5 stars, I would give this 1 1/2 or 2.

I like what Hungry Girl is trying to do with her recipes, so I'm looking forward to next month's review!

Two good ideas and a bad one, not in that order.

What a wonderful Labor Day weekend we had!

Good idea #1:

As many probably know, Meredith and I trained for the Bill Seymour half-marathon that was held on Friday, September 5th in Grand Island. We stayed the previous night with a good friend of our's, Jeanne Williams, and got out and ran our little hearts out!

Delayed by a potty break, a burnout-catch-up run and pained knees, I came in at a whopping 2:12 with Meredith finishing at 2:07. But hey, we finished it! I've never finished a Powerade so quickly. We had been sweating so much that the salt was dried and flaky on our faces.

After lunch at La Mexicana, we headed out to North Platte to enjoy a few days with our good friends the Olbrichts. We love them! Calvin, Alyssa and I acted out 1 Nephi 3 for everyone in a hut we made out of blankets, clothespins, with ties as headbands. We all played some serious Worms Armageddon on Saturday and Monday as well.

Bad idea:

Towards the end of our foray with the Olbrichts, Josh had a great idea to have a competition between the two of us: eat two enormous jalapeño peppers whole. It consisted of the following rules:

1. Facial expressions must be emotionless for five minutes from time of first bite.
2. Automatic disqualification for drinking anything or eating anything else before five minutes had passed.

Well... I won. But it was a bad idea.

Good idea #2:

The past couple of weeks had been a serious time of reflection for me about my talents and abilities and how I was using them to the benefit of my family, the Kingdom and others. This led me to the amazing realization (sarcasm) that I had a knack for professionalism, Spanish and creative writing. Creative writing aside, I realized I had a very marketable skill that had been right in front of me all along: my abilities with the Spanish language.

With the love and support of my dear wife and friends, I launched my first official business website for my business, Gardner Translations. It's a great feeling.

So there you have it in a nutshell! We were happy to travel and we're happy to be home.

Happy September!

It's September, and I think it's going to be a good one this year. I love it when the weather starts cooling off and the leaves start changing. However, Tony and I have a lot to do before it gets too cold. Here is a short list:

1. Find some cheap lawn tools (a rake or two, some pruning clippers). I'm hoping to have some luck at an estate sale or a garage sale.

2. Go through boxes and tidy up basement storage room.

3. Sweep out and tidy up garage.

4. Wash and vacuum out car. (This might seem like a small task, but we don't do it very often.)

5. Clean living room carpet. (It gets a lot of traffic, and I'd like to get it nice and clean before the winter months.)

That's about one task a week. Now I need to get to it!!! :)

(Thanks, Jenn, for the idea.)

-Meredith

First day of school and other adventures...

Tony went back to school full-time on Monday. He is taking 12 credit hours this semester, but his schedule worked out so that he only has a night class Wednesday night and then he's in class all morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Right now he's in the dual degree program for Spanish and business, so when he's all done he'll have two bachelor's degrees! Here's his first day of school pic:
Notice the lovely new bike that gets him to and from campus with much ease (unless it's raining... then I drive him).

Tony being in school full-time again takes some getting used to for all parties involved. There will be some days when he won't see Ruth for more than a few minutes, and I know that will be difficult. But in the end, the diplomas will be well worth all the sacrifices.

In other news, I am watching a little boy named Jack one or two days per week for a good friend of mine who works nights and needs sleep during the day. Jack is 18 months old. He and Ruthie like to watch a short video together in the morning.
He's a good little boy, and Ruthie gets along with him very well.

Ruthie is so close to walking it's not even funny. She can stand up now without holding on to anything, and every once in a while she takes a few steps without support as she cruises from one piece of furniture to another. It seems like all the other kids we know who are her age are already walking. I have a feeling that when she starts running around the house, I will be glad it took her a while to figure it out!

She's also starting to like putting on grown-up shoes, hats and other objects. Yesterday, she discovered she could crawl around while wearing an oven mitt:



It was super cute. Her hair is getting really long, too. Not quite long enough for a pony tail, but almost too long for just a barrette (not that they do any good, she just takes them out of her hair).

Tony and I are running in the Bill Seymour half-marathon in Grand Island on Saturday. We will try to remember to take pictures. Wish us luck!

-Meredith

Psst... the seeds don't make the pepper hot!

That's right! It's not the seeds that will make a pepper hot!

Inspired with some kind of sick desire for things spicy, I planted two habanero plants in our backyard garden. Coming in at a beautiful golden yellow-orange, the lantern shaped habaneros are almost good enough looking to suffice as eye candy. But, ranking in at a wopping 300,000 on the Scoville rating system (compared to 3-8,000 jalapeños or 10-20,000 serranos), why just look at them?

The chemical that causes the burning reaction in all hot peppers is called capsaicin (cap-sigh-ih-sin). This chemical is concentrated in the internal "ribs" of the pepper. The seeds don't contribute to the heat, they just seem to because they are located on the ribs.

So don't just pick out the seeds of a hot pepper. Core the darn thing. Unless of course you're me. Then you need to mix a whole habanero, chopped, three banana peppers, chopped, 1/3 cup of apple cider vinegar, 1 cup of water, 1 tbsp. cumin and 1 tsp. salt and boil it until the stench curls the carpet and knocks your wife into a disgruntled, nostril-pained frenzy. Then blend, and voila!

Sure makes good hotsauce!

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin)

Sincerely,

Anthony

My favorite websites

I spend a lot of time on the internet during the day. Honestly, I probably spend too much time on the internet. However, all this web surfing has helped me gather a number of sites that are useful to me and probably would be to you, too. Here's a short list:

1. Hungry Girl (www.hungry-girl.com) This website was created by a girl after my own heart: one who loves food but still wants to be healthy. The Hungry Girl offers tons of recipes and tips for anyone who wants to watch his/her figure without feeling cheated. She offers reviews of snacks, dining out tips and healthy remakes of comfort food recipes and restaurant fare. A few days ago we tried the Hungry Girl's recipe remake of blue box macaroni and cheese. It was a good base recipe. (We added a cup of regular cheddar cheese... not the healthiest, but still healthier than the blue box!)

2. Hey, it's free! (www.heyitsfree.net) I became intrigued with the idea of getting free goodies online a few months ago. I found this website, and it is by far the best (and the only one I use at this point). They post freebies daily, as well as news about coupons and in-store deals. My favorite freebies so far: free subscriptions to Oprah and Popular Science magazines, a full-sized roll of toilet paper, and coupons for free chocolate.

3. Mint (www.mint.com) We don't use this site as often as we used to, but I still like it. Mint.com is free financial tracking software. It allows you to get a simple look at your income and categorize your expenses. I recommend trying it. It's not perfect, but it's helpful in many ways. (And it's free!)

4. Hulu (www.hulu.com) If you do not yet know the joys of watching free television (and some movies) via the internet, you should check out Hulu. It is a completely site that compiles full episodes and clips of television shows and makes them available for your viewing pleasure. I love it because we don't have cable, nor do we have a converter box. I love watching Intervention and my guilty pleasure, America's Got Talent.

While I am a Facebook junkie of sorts, I am trying to get more use out of Twitter. I know a lot of people (my husband included) say they just "don't get" Twitter. Twitter is like a very simplified version of Facebook and seems to be more useful when it comes to integrating a cell phone with social networking. I just don't have many friends who post on there very frequently, so it's difficult for me to justify the use.

I'm also currently experimenting with Google Reader. It's a tool in Google that compiles the updates from all the websites you like to visit frequently into one site. I like it so far, but I'm not convinced that it is of more use to me than simply visiting each site individually.

Anyhow, let me know if you have any favorite sites, or what you think of these.

-Meredith

Keepin' up with the times

Apparently I'm not very good at blogging! Sorry it's taken so long for me to update. I actually forgot I had a blog. :P

Anyway, lots of things have transpired over the past few months.

1. Ruth's first birthday:

















We had a fun first birthday party at my parents' house. It will probably be the only time we have a party like it. Lots of relatives came and there was tons of food. Unfortunately, it was one of the few days she decided to be in a bad mood. Cake and a bath made everything better, though. :)

2. Vacation in Minnesota:



















My grandparents once owned a fishing resort in Minnesota, so it's a family tradition to go up to northern Minnesota every few years for vacation. This year, we stayed at a place called Moore's Lodge on Leech Lake. It was probably the nicest resort we've ever visited, and we had a great time. Tony, Ruth and I went with my parents, my little brother and my nephew. (We all had a bad hair day in this photo. :-) )

3. Camping in Ogallala:















We went camping with some good family friends at Lake McConaughy in Ogallala, Neb., which is about 4 hours west of Omaha. We camped on the beach (I am still cleaning up after it, too!), spent hours digging out a van that got stuck in the sand, and endured five thunderstorms, all in about 36 hours. However, we did catch a large catfish, ate some delicious campfire cooking and had a great time swimming. The company definitely made it all worthwhile.

4. Saying goodbye to car #2:














We needed a more reliable car, so before we went on vacation in June, we sold my 2001 Ford ZX2 to purchase a 2003 Ford Taurus. After returning from vacation, we seriously contemplated selling our 1996 Dodge Intrepid (shown above). We bought the Intrepid 2 years ago, and it has been a true workhorse for us. We loved it more than we expected we would. With 170,000 miles on it, however, it had a whole host of mechanical problems we couldn't afford to fix. So we decided to sell it, and, as of Friday, we are a one-car family. We think with good communication and planning, we can make this work until we save up enough money for a new car. We bought Tony a new bike over the weekend so he can continue biking to school (about a 10-minute ride). Tony will take the bus to work on days I need the car.

Well, that's my summer update. Who can tell me where exactly summer went, by the way?

I'll try to update this more regularly!

-Meredith