Georgetown Trails
I have been sick for the last couple of days and really had to get out of the house. I also needed to start exercising again, but didn’t feel like going to Lady Bird Lake in Austin because of all the people. I thought I’d try out the trails out in Georgetown and see how that would be. It turned out to be a great idea. It’s mostly shaded and it’s a really pretty walk. I went about 5 miles total and really enjoyed the change. About every .10 mile they had markers, so even if you didn’t walk with Endomondo, you’d still know how far you went. I really enjoyed the patch on the trail that had markers with random animal tracks going across the cement. They had raccoon, bear, pheasant, deer, horse, dog and many other fun tracks. I think they might have jumped the shark with the golf ball tracks, but that’s just me. There weren’t many people out there so the walk was very pleasant.
The water was really still. There were families on the side fishing, but I never saw anyone catch anything.
The highlight of my walk was seeing this snake. At first it was on the side of the trail and I thought it was dead and wanted to poke it. I turned back to take a picture of it as it was crossing the trail, so it was alive. I really wanted to know what kind it was.
We were going to go to the famous Monument Cafe, but they said it was a 45 minute wait and I’m sorry, there is no breakfast worth waiting 45 minutes. We ended up going to some coffee shop on the square, which had the worst coffee I have ever tasted.
Is There Ever TOO Much Chocolate?
I finished making my strawberries and I had WAY too much chocolate left over. I started grabbing anything I could think of to coat with white chocolate. I even added some sprinkles on the Lay’s Potato Chips. The pretzels were good too. I could have added sprinkles on them, but I was really ready to be done with this whole project. I still want to try chocolate covered bacon, but that will have to hold for another day!
Practicing for the Fourth
Thanks to Pinterest, I’ve started contributing to random parties that I’ve been invited to. Before that, I just graced everyone with my presence. Maybe that is why I’m not invited to a lot of parties…hmmmm…. Well, now that I’m becoming domestic, I’ve been trying to remedy that. Fourth of July is coming up, so I get to test my party etiquette. I looked everywhere for a pretty red, white and blue layered alcoholic punch to bring, but I could only find non-alcoholic ones. So, I decided to make these pretty strawberries instead. They turned out ok, but I think I can do better on the actual day of the party.
Ingredients:
DRY Strawberries
White Chocolate
Blue sprinkles
Vegetable Oil
Put white chocolate and a tiny bit of vegetable oil in a bowl. (I used too much vegetable oil, so I suggest using it sparingly.)
Microwave the chocolate for about a minute. Once it’s hot, stir it up until it’s smooth.
Get a bowl of blue sprinkles. This bowl was too small. I ended up getting a bigger one and filling it up. You’ll use more sprinkles than you would think you’d need.
Dip the strawberry in the white chocolate, then dip it in the blue sprinkles, then wait until the chocolate hardens to eat. YUM! I’m pretty sure these will be a hit at the party!!
Braised Hoisin Beer Short Ribs
Now that I have my crockpot, I had to cook something in it. My first meal had to be short ribs. I think the crockpot was probably invented just to cook short ribs. I found this recipe on Food.com. It was probably the easiest short rib recipe that I found. I prefer the recipes that involve me throwing things in a pot and leaving it. I’ll make one of those next time. I’m going to buy a crockpot cookbook on my iPad, but I’m not really sure which one is the best. If anyone has one that they like, feel free to let me know!
Ingredients:
3 lbs short ribs
salt and freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
10 – 12 garlic gloves, smashed
1 inch piece gingerroot, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch slices
12 ounces good ale
3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1/2 – 1 cup hoisin sauce
Season the ribs with salt and pepper. Brown the short ribs. Remove the ribs and pour off all but a couple tablespoons of the fat.
Sauté the ginger and garlic, once it’s sautéed pour the beer over it to deglaze and then turn the flame off.
Put the browned short ribs in the crockpot
Put the sautéed garlic and ginger on the ribs
Pour beer and vinegar on the ribs until it’s covered.
Cook in the crockpot for about 2 1/2 hours.
Add Hoisin Sauce and put in the pre heated oven (300 degrees) for 30 minutes.
Put on a plate and serve with your favorite vegetables. YUM!!!
Shopping blog
I haven’t done a shopping blog lately. It’s not that I haven’t shopped, because believe me, that never ends with me. I’ve been on my death bed for the last couple days, so since I could stay awake for more than 2 hours straight, I decided it was time to pamper myself a little bit. I went to two Marshall’s and found lots of cute stuff. Since it’s summer, I need lots of cute sundresses and I was in need of a swim suit since Cooper decided that the one I bought for this summer would taste really good and eat it. I also bought some shoes and flip flops, but they’re kind of boring, so I won’t share those in this blog.
This little garden gnome was just funny, so I went ahead and bought him. I think I’ll name him Josh after my favorite player.
BBQ chicken
I love making stuff in the crockpot. It’s so easy to throw everything in there and then forget about it. I’m really not the type of cook that wants to make a fuss. I saw this recipe and really wanted to try it because it involved coke in the ingredients. I rushed out to the store and bought all the ingredients, came home and started preparations to cook the chicken. The only thing I didn’t factor in is that I have a really small crockpot. I couldn’t get the chicken to fit in, so I had to have Mike cut off the legs and wings to make it fit. Then, since the chicken took up all the room, the other ingredients didn’t really fit either and it ended up overflowing. After I got the majority of the ingredients finally in the crockpot, I turned it on and left it for a couple hours. I’m not sure what possessed me to go look at the progress, since that is a little more work than I was planning to do, but when I checked I noticed that the crockpot wasn’t even working!!! OMG!! It was all just sitting there marinading I guess. I moved the crockpot to another plug and changed the setting to high and it miraculously started working, so it all worked out in the end!
Ingredients:
Onions
Lemon
BBQ Sauce
Coke
Whole chicken – (or one with no legs or wings works too!)
Cut up the lemons and onions
Put the lemons, onions and chicken in the crockpot
Add BBQ sauce and coke
Cook until the chicken is ready. Probably about 4 – 6 hours.
This looks pretty pitiful, but it’s really tasty!
Mike said he made the best bbq sauce ever by using all the stuff the chicken was cooking in and adding a bunch of other stuff, but I have no idea what he added.
Crock pot
I’ve been having fun making crock pot recipes, but mine is really small. I went to amazon.com and bought a bigger one. I can’t wait to get it! Pinterest is getting expensive with me trying to cook and all! If you click on the amazon widget below, you can see which one I bought.
Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting!!
Last night we went to Kung Fu to meet some friends. This is one of my favorite places because there is so much to do. My favorite is to play skee ball. I thought I was pretty good at it until someone in my group scored over 300. Every time I’ve been to Kung Fu, the skee ball has been free, so it’s a great place to go and practice your skills for all the skee ball tournaments that you may run across.
Another thing I like about Kung Fu is that they have all the old school video games. You can play Ms. Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Shooting Gallery, and so many more games. If you go there on Sunday, the games are free.
They also have a full service bar that is really reasonably priced. They have a lot of choices of beer on tap, I think I saw about 25 different kinds. This is a great place for just about anyone that likes to have fun!
I was told that Kung Fu’s has opened in Uptown Dallas and will be opening soon in Houston too. I’m pretty sure I’ll at least get to go to the one in Dallas at some point!!
Quick dip
Today I had the opposite problem than I had the other day. I have chips, but I have very little cheese. When I make nachos, I have to use A LOT of cheese. I still had some sour cream left over from the bean dip, so I made my favorite easy to make dip:
Ingredients:
Sour Cream
Pace Picante Sauce
Shredded cheese
You can use whatever amounts you like.
Put Sour Cream in a bowl.
Add Picante Sauce, I like Pace Medium.
Add shredded Cheese and mix it up good.
Dip chip and eat. YUM! I like this dip with my nachos too. Sometimes I don’t add the cheese to the dip.
Pay ATTENTION!!!!
I’m getting much better at the Couch to 5K running. I skipped a couple of runs last week, so I’m still at Week 5 day 2. Today we ran for 10 minutes, walked 3, Ran 6 minutes, walked 3, Ran 5 minutes, walked 5 for cool down. I usually continue walking until I finish my 4.25 mile loop. Today the total for me was 5 miles. For some reason, the app didn’t register Week 5 Day 1, so after I finished day 2, I was messing with my phone to get it fixed and I wasn’t paying attention. I walked straight in to a car that had parked over the side walk!! I swear that is one of the things that bothers me most about having a front garage. People just park anywhere they want. Now, I know I should be paying attention, but cars really shouldn’t be parked over the sidewalk!! I’m probably going to live, but I did hurt my shin.
Fabulous after FIFTY 