Karen Sandler

Tag: chocolate

  • Desert Island Necessities (What does an author really need?)

    Ferry-2A sImagine, if you will, that your cruise ship hit an iceberg, encountered a hurricane or wandered into the Bermuda Triangle. You’ve managed to escape unscathed and have landed on a desert island all by your lonesome. Abundant food is everywhere, just waiting for you to pluck it from a tree or bush, but what will ease your loneliness? And if you happen to be an author like me, how will you get your work done (sorry, no slackers, even for the shipwrecked).

    While you sit on a beautiful sandy beach bemoaning the loss of that gorgeous sequined dress (or killer tux) that you’d planned to wear to the captain’s dinner, ten crates from the wreckage float up on shore. You check the labels and are delighted to discover that these boxes hold exactly what you would most want, both to soothe you personally, and to keep you on track writing your novel, all while trapped on a desert island awaiting rescue.

    So, what’s in the first five boxes?  Here’s my list, everything I need for personal comfort:

    1) Chocolate (preferably dark)

    2) An assortment of novels (science fiction, mystery, romance)

    3) An mp3 player loaded with music (classical, country, soft rock)

    4) A house-sized tent, complete with plush air mattress (a girl needs her comfort)

    5) A flare gun (a girl can also be practical)

    And for my author side:

    1) Chocolate (a necessity for all occasions)

    2) A solar-powered, water-proof, sand-proof laptop

    3) Word processor, dictionary & thesaurus software

    4) At least a dozen ideas (Mmm, probably won’t get those from a box)

    hp photosmart 7205) A cat to keep me company (and that one definitely shouldn’t come floating up in a box)

    So what lands on your white sand beach?  What would be impossible to live without on an isolated island? If you’re an author, what would you desperately need? Let me know in the comments.

  • Something Yummy for Those Holiday Potlucks

    Total cheat on my blog today. My schedule is stacked high with “to-do’s” so I haven’t the time for a thoughtful post. So here are a couple of my favorite recipes you might want to make for that upcoming Christmas or New Year’s Eve/Day potlucks. The first is a cobbler recipe that was given to me by my late neighbor, Connie. She was an accomplished cook.

    Fruit Cobbler

    Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

    filling:
    6 cups berries or pared, cut up fruit such as apples or peaches
    ¾ cup sugar
    1/3 cup flour

    Combine berries or other fruit with sugar and flour. Mix well and pour into 8×8 inch pan. Note: If strawberries are used, add ¼ cup of tapioca. Note: chopped up crystallized ginger goes well with peach cobbler.

    topping:
    1 cup flour
    1 cup sugar
    1 teaspoon baking powder
    ½ teaspoon salt
    1 egg, beaten
    ½ cup butter (1 stick)

    Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt and mix well. Add beaten egg to dry ingredients and stir until mixture is moistened but still crumbly. Spread topping evenly over berries/fruit in baking pan. Melt butter and drizzle over the topping. Bake 40 minutes or until topping is golden and fruit is bubbling.

    This is a Finnish recipe that I got from a fellow student in a chocolate class I took a few years ago. Very unique and marvelously good. She translated it from a Finnish Chocolate book, hence the metric measurements.

    Chocolate Cake with Graham Crackers

    200 g (7.055 oz.) dark or semisweet chocolate
    250 g (8.82 oz.) coconut butter (or regular butter)
    2 eggs (or pasturized egg equivalent)
    3 dl (about 1.5 c.) powdered sugar
    graham crackers
    milk (you can use Kahlua or Creme de Cacao instead)

    Melt chocolate and coconut butter (or plain butter) in double boiler hot water bath. Let cool down. (I melted the butter in microwave and added chocolate into the warm butter which melted the chocolate. Be sure to mix well to a smooth mixture).

    Beat eggs and powdered sugar until light in another bowl. Beat chocolate/coconut butter mix slowly into egg/sugar mix.

    Line a meat loaf pan with parchment cooking paper. Spread about .5 inch layer of chocolate mixture on the bottom. Set a layer of graham crackers (any other type of sweet cracker that you prefer) on the chocolate mix. Brush with milk (or any liquor). Cover with another layer of chocolate mix. Repeat layering 3 to 4 times ending with chocolate layer.

    Chill 2 or more hours. Remove from pan and remove the parchment paper. Dust with cocoa powder. The cake is ready to eat.

    The cake keeps well in the refrigerator and ages well. Because of the raw eggs it is safer to keep the leftovers refrigerated unless you use the pasteurized eggs.

    Enjoy & Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Felicitous Kwanzaa!

  • Koln and Shopping

    We left our somewhat sketchy B&B in Consdorf on Tuesday to head for Germany for a day in Cologne (Koln). As I said before, although the accommodations were substandard (the first night’s bed sagged, the second night’s bed had springs that nearly pierced me), the breakfasts were quite good. Here’s an example.

    Once we got to Koln and got the car parked, we headed over to the beautiful “dom” or cathedral. As you can see from the photos, there was quite a lot to see around and in the cathedral.

    We followed up our visit to the cathedral with lunch at a brewhouse, then walked along the river and made our way to the Lindt Chocolate Museum. More walking (I swear we averaged 4-5km per day), then headed back to Utrecht. Along the way, we stopped for dinner in a Portuguese restaurant.

    Wednesday, we shopped in downtown Utrecht to get those last few gifts for family. Some nice shots here.

  • Galactic Sweet Tooth

    I love sweets. Candy is number one, rich dense stuff like dark chocolate, nut-free fudge, See’s bordeaux chocolates (love those sprinkles). I adore Junior Mints and Peppermint Patties, Kit Kat bars, 3 Musketeers (which used to come as three bars, chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla) and Milky Way.

    Next on the treat food chain is ice cream, any chocolate or caramel-type variety (again sans nuts, although pecans in pralines & cream and walnuts in rocky road are acceptable). The ice cream must be topped with lots of gooey topping (chocolate, caramel or butterscotch). A little whipped topping and a cherry are okay, but not required.

    Then come fudge brownies and chocolate fudge cake, preferably frosted with a nice ganache. I also adore lemon bars and lemon cake and just about any kind of pudding. I’m a bit ambivalent about cookies, although a chewy, fresh-baked chocolate chip is pretty yummy.

    Yeah, kind of ridiculous. Luckily I have some self-control, which keeps me from eating a Halloween bag’s worth every day as I might like. I eat a piece of chocolate here, a bowl of ice cream there, then exercise like crazy to keep the sweets from jumping directly on my hips. I really try hard not to gobble up everything in sight.

    Not so the Milky Way (the galaxy, not the candy bar). Apparently, that monstrously big collection of stars has been gobbling up other galaxies in the neighborhood. Astronomers have discovered stars within the Milky Way that all have similar speeds and chemical compositions, which indicates they originally came from a common source. This Science News article describes how the Aquarius star stream within the Milky Way is fairly compactly grouped, which indicates the stars were gulped down by Milky Way somewhat recently. They haven’t yet had time to stretch out, although the Milky Way’s gravity is stretching Aquarius like taffy. There are other star streams that astronomers have identified as well, which were consumed by greedy Milky Way billions of years ago.

    So maybe I don’t feel so bad about my sweet tooth. At least I’m not munching up galaxies like the Milky Way does. I’ve got way more self-control than that.

    Of course, if the galaxies were made of chocolate, it might be a different story entirely.