Blue Bison

I almost fell off my chair when I discovered this site a few moments ago!!!! Their drawings are UNBELIEVABLY CUTE!!!! Waaaaaaaaaa!!!! And you can get magnets and mugs and mouse pads and clocks and journals with the drawings on them too!!!! There is always room on the fridge for more cute magnets!!!!

Cream of Mushrooms Soup

Years ago, this recipe was found on some yahoo forum I think. One of the greatest mushroom soups in the galaxy! Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

• 8 ounces mushrooms.
• 4 tablespoons margarine or butter.
• 1 medium onion, chopped.
• 1/4 cup flour.
• 1-1/4 cups water.
• 1 can (10 3/4 ounces) chicken (or vegetable) broth.
• 1 cup half and half (that's the "10-12%" cream found in the grocery store).
• some salt.
• 1 teaspoon white pepper.
• Chopped parsley for garnish

Instructions

• Slice enough mushrooms to measure 1 cup, chop remaing mushrooms finely.
• Cook and stir sliced mushrooms in 2 tablespoons of the butter in a 3-quart sauce pan over low heat until mushrooms are golden brown.
• Remove sliced mushrooms with slotted spoon and put them aside.
• Cook and stir chopped mushrooms and onion in remaining 2 tablespoons of butter until onion is tender.
• Stir in flour, salt, and white pepper.
• Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until mixture is smooth and bubbly.
• remove from heat.
• Stir in water and broth.
• Heat to boiling stirring constantly.
• Boil and stir 1 minute.
• Stir in half and half and sliced mushrooms.
• Heat just until hot (do not boil).
• Sprinkle with parsley.

The original recipe stated: "Yield-- 4 servings; about 1 cup each; 260 calories per serving; Credits-- Recipe shared by: Andrea Rice".

Bon appetit!

Two Chocolate Cakes

One of the best chocolate cakes that I have ever eaten was made by my aunt M. who lives in the middle east. I wish I had that recipe, but I don't. In the mean time, I found this "Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake" recipe in several places online. I tried it twice (with a scale factor of 1.5) and I thought it was great. Not as great as the super chocolate cake that I don't know how to make, but great anyway!

Cake #1:
Ingredients:

• Butter 0.5 cup
• Sugar 0.5 cup
• eggs 2
• Flour 1.75 cup
• Cocoa 0.5 cup
• Baking SODA 1 tsp
• Salt 0.25 tsp
• butter 0.5 cup
• Milk 1 cup
• Vanilla 1 tsp

Instructions:

• In large bowl, cream butter and sugar "until light and fluffy".
• Add eggs, and start beating.
• Sift separately the flour, cocoa, soda, and salt.
• Add half the dry ingredients, and keep beating.
• Add milk and vanilla and keep beating.
• Add the other hald of the dry ingredients, and keep beating.
• Pour batter in a greased pan and bake for 30 minutes at 350F.

A few days ago a friend made me a birthday chocolate cake that also tasted great. Recipe below.

Cake #2:
Ingredients:

• Flour 2 cups
• Sugar 1.5 cups
• Cocoa 0.5 cups
• Salt -- a dash
• Instant coffee 1 tsp
• Baking POWDER 1 tsp
• Baking SODA 1 tsp
• Milk (or orange juice or water) 1.25 cup
• Eggs 3
• Oil (canola) 0.75 cup

Instructions:

• In a processor bowl, process the dry ingredients for 10 seconds.
• Add milk and eggs and start processing.
• Add the oil while processing.
• Process all for 45 seconds (do not overprocess).
• Pour batter in a greased pan and bake for 55-60 minutes at 325F.

Cartoon Bread

Middle-Eastern bread. Indian Bread. French bread. Round, square, and funny shaped bread. Black, brown, and white bread. Multi grain bread. Whole wheat bread. Thin bread. Bread in slices. Bread in buns. Bread in bagels. Do you like bread? I do. As long as it does not contain any dried fruits that is.

When I was a small kid in the middle east, I grew up mostly with what people in North America call "pita bread". This kind of bread is what every family had around the house, and people just called it "bread". There were many other kinds of bread too, but they were more rare and we did *not* call them "bread". They mostly resembled elongated buns and French baguettes.

But when I watched foreign cartoons and/or the muppet sketches on Sesame Street (the muppet sketches were dubbed), the cartoon characters and the muppets always ate bread in slices. *Square* slices!

Then I came to North America. And what do I see in the grocery store? Cartoon bread! A million and one kinds of cartoon bread!

My favorite kinds of cartoon bread these days are the multi grains ones. This "épicerie" article claims that no matter how many exotic grains the bread is made of, at least 80% of the bread is usually made from wheat flour (not necessarily whole wheat flour), and the funny (ground) grains only make the remaining 20%, otherwise the bread would not rise.

I also like reading the names of the grains on the packages. Example: for the "Bon Matin 14 grain bread" the first ingredient is "whole wheat flour", and the second ingredient is the "14 grain mix". The mix includes: Wheat (blé), Barley (orge commun), Corn (maïs), Buckwheat (sarrasin), Oat (avoine), Sorghum (sorgho commun), Rice (riz), Rye (seigle), Millet (millet commun), Triticale (triticale), Sunflower seeds (graines de tournesol), Flax seeds (lin), Poppy seeds (graines de pavot), and Sesame seeds (grained de sésame). I had to google a whole bunch of those because the words were unfamiliar. But it was fun.

Clocky Runs and Hides

They've now created an alarm clock that runs and hides so you won't be able to hit the snooze button!

Cute Animation

Check out this reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaally cute animation (link updated) that I found while surfing blogs!! It's called "Le plus gros président du monde", and it's made by someone named Benjamin Renner, an animator from France.

A Good Wednesday

Lots of good things happened to me today (Wednesday):

** Little Peter Chum has arrived!!!! I was soooo worried about him. The package he was in was a week late. Peter Chum is a 5-cm tall amigurumi character =o).

** I had a very very very very satisfying kickboxing class. Too bad it was the second to last class of the semester. I am definitely taking it again in January.

** I had a full "knot" of "twisted" cheese, with tons of good bread and brown apple juice. I was in food heaven for the second day in a row (yesterday I was at restaurant "Aleppo").

Note: I just looked out the window and it's all white outside!! First snow storm of the season (not counting the watery flurries we had yesterday). Clean white snow is very pretty, but I'll sure miss going to school while wearing my comfy running shoes.

Chili

I'm not vegetarian. But here's the recipe I use for vegetatrian chili:

Ingredients, part 1:
* 2 lobes of garlic (finely chopped).
* 1 medium onion (chopped).
* N hot peppers (finely chopped. If jalapeños, I use 4 or 5).

Ingredients, part 2:
* 1 large can of crushed tomatos.
* 1 tomato (chopped).
* 4 cans of beans (crush the content of one of the cans).
* 1 can of corn.
* 8 Oz of mushrooms (chopped).

Ingredients, part 3:
* 1 green pepper (chopped).
* A few chopped green onions (optional).

Spices and such:
* 1 teaspoon of vegetable broth.
* 1 pinch of salt.
* 1 pinch of oregano.
* 1 pinch of chili powder.
* 1/2 teaspoon of molasses (controversial).

Extras:
* Grated cheese.

Instructions:

• Fry part 1 of the ingredients in Olive oil.
• In a thick-bottomed big pot over "medium" heat, toss in parts 1 and 2 of the ingredients and all the spices. Stir.
• When the mixture starts to bubble, lower the heat to "low", and let the mixture bubble for 1.5 hours, stirring occasionally (play board game during this time!).
• Add part 3 of the ingredients and wait 3 minutes.
• Serve.
• Sprinkle cheese on servings as needed.

The 2014 FIFA Worldcup

In the news: It has been decided that the 2014 FIFA worldcup will be held in Brazil! Imagine the football fever in Brazil! It would be awesome to go watch a game there! But I bet the tickets are already sold out ;).

Giant Lego Man

I found this in August and I thought it was funny! I have always liked Lego.

Long Live my Cell Phone!

I got my cell phone (Nokia 3390) on January (16?/17?) 2003. We now are October 12, 2007 (Friday). Meaning I've had my phone for almost 5 years. The phone claims that in the past 5 years, I have talked for 108 hours, 58 minutes, and 46 seconds... But my phone has been slowly dying in the past few months, and it completely expired a couple of days ago.

After several days of thorough research about the different kinds of Nokia phones available on the market, and after a lot of looking-up of Nokia handsets, I have decided to buy... a new battery!

So I found an e-bay store that sells compatible batteries. I bought 2 batteries for $4 plus shipping (a new phone would have cost me $100 or more). I put one of the new batteries in the cell phone and put it to charge. It finished charging on Wednesday morning. We are now Friday night and the battery is only 25% empty. I think my phone is back to life!!

My phone has no camera, no web browser, no radio, no mp3 player, no video capture, no multi-bands reception, and no colours. But it allowes me to make and receive phone calls (with cool ringtones), to send and receive text messages (with comfortable buttons), and to play 4 games. And that's all I need from a cell phone!

Spiders and Harvestmen

In the class "arachnida" there are many orders.

Only the members of the order "araneae" are "true spiders".

This cute monster isn't a true spider. He's a member of the order "opiliones" which makes him a "harvestman"!