I had an amusing revelation about my coffee-of-late — frankly it was also kind of gross …. so of course I had to share about it here! And it is cookie related by the way …..
I recently got on a crinkle kick. Growing up, my mom made chocolate crinkles as one of our Xmas cookies, and they were AMAZING! I’m not clear if crinkles are considered strictly-Xmas cookies, however going toward my next recipe book I’ve been developing an assortment of flavours — Lemon Crinkles, Orange Crinkles, Ginger Molasses Crinkles, modifications on the classic Chocolate Crinkle… Only one problem — the powdered sugar keeps cooking into my cookies and disappearing.
Chocolate Crinkles
I made mention of this problem on my personal Facebook profile and received a remark back — that if you mix a little cornstarch into your powdered sugar it won’t melt into the cookies. So the last time I experimented with with a crinkle recipe I gave this cornstarch trick a try — and had No Luck. In fact, it seemed like it melted in MORE. At best I had spots of powered sugar on the cookies. The worse part was that I had made up a cereal bowl size mixture of powdered sugar and cornstarch and had a TON left over!
My cookies kinda looked like this fella and — aside from the blotchy sugar — about as happy!
Not my actual bowl of confectioners sugar, but doesn’t the picture look nice with my blog post?
Lately, to use this bowl of corn-starched powered-sugar up I’ve been putting it in my coffee. Big deal, right — it’s sugar, and the cornstarch won’t hurt me — so what?!?
What happens when you put cornstarch into something hot — like hot water? It clumps, it thickens still but it thickens to itself — I didn’t even think of that! Yeah … if you don’t want dubious coffee-tasting sludge in your coffee …. this is not a way to use up the bowl of corn-starched powdered-sugar.
Trying something new-to-me today — I’m preparing ham and rice slow cooker style!
Not my actual slow cooker … too bad, then it’d match the rest of my appliances!
While I’ve baked plenty of hams, during the past week I thought about how I wanted to prepare the one in my fridge. Lately I’ve been busy up-to-my-ears and I wanted something that would be Low Hassle. Then it occurred to me — I should be able to slow cook a ham (read: DUH!). I posted the idea on my Facebook profile and of course other folks have done this before. Doing it, I’m told, is simple — put the ham in the slow cooker, add about a pint of water, and cook it on low for about 8 hours and then it falls off the bone!
(WARNING – SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION in 3… 2… 1…)
WOW — that’s practically identical to my Slow Cooker Pulled Pork featured in my soon-to-be-published ***FIRST RECIPE BOOK***!
I got started about three hours ago. The ham was big enough I had to cut bits off and fit it between my 2 regular-size cookers. When it’s done I plan to clean the meat — getting rid of the fat, bone, etc. The friend who said she prepares ham this way sounded like she shreds it, too. My original thought was that at this point I would add a glaze for flavour, as I would BBQ sauce to my Pulled Pork, and re-cook it on high for 30-60 minutes — but folks who replied said that wouldn’t be necessary. So I think I’ll keep it simple for this first time around.
As for the rice, I’m doing my mom’s trick in my small cooker — usual 2-1 ratio of water to rice and let it go all day (note that this cooker only cooks on one temp which I believe is high). Believe it or not I think this is the first time I’ve all 3 of my slow cookers going at once!
UPDATE – My mom said she does 1-1 water & rice and cooks for 1 hour. I did 2-1 and cooked for close to 4 hours. It came out sticky but … well, I got lucky. Results may vary, experiment, you’ll find out what works for you.
All that and some french-cut green beans … yeah, I think I’m going to have a nice dinner for the next number of nights — not bad for a single guy! (*Read my follow-up to this experiment here.*)
Lastly, I realized a LOL lately…
Slow Cooker = Easy-Bake Oven for Adults
Geoff Castle’s 2013 Celtic Xmas Concert in Anacortes, WA – photo courtesy of Chris Terrell
Lately I focused some of my time on studying how to build oneself in the business of self-publishing books — in other words, marketing.
When it comes to gaining attention, my knowledge-base was born out of the music industry — promoting bands, representing albums, and selling my services as a solo Highland bagpiper for people’s life events ranging from weddings to retirement parties and of course funerals. I applied this DIY gumption and (albeit subtly) my rock ‘n’ roll marketing approach to period of my business when I was producing baked goods, and I have been continuing this into this new endeavour of writing and self-publishing recipe books.
E-Readers
Thanks Aleta!
As you will recall from my 07Nov2017 blog post, an online friend — Aleta — generously offered to send one of her earlier e-readers to me. She wanted to support my plan to turn my first recipe book into an e-reader edition, and it helps to have a device to view your work as you are converting your book file into an e-reader file. As I have been learning about the conversion process I have also started learning about other authors publishing and marketing their e-books. Much to this voracious reader’s joy I have also learned about free e-books! Among these I have found books and articles on marketing. This morning I read a marketing article that enhanced both thoughts and plans I already had…
How to Turn your Book into 18 STREAMS of Income
by Kary Oberbrunner
Kary Oberbrunner … we haven’t met.
Go-getters, movers and shakers, creative people, and artist have at least two things in common — we all have great ideas to work from and we all make mistakes. When we learn from our mistakes or learn about mistakes to avoid and-how we all grow!
Kary Oberbrunner’s article “How to Turn your Book into 18 STREAMS of Income” points out marketing mistakes for writers to avoid (like thinking of books as business cards) along with options and opportunities that they may have not realized. Some of what Mr. Oberbrunner presents in his article I am already familiar with and is parallel to my direction — other elements have shown me new ideas or ways to think differently about things I already know.
His main focus in this article is for writers to turn their books into an income stream. One morsel — section 2 on ebooks, suggesting why most (every?) author should turn their printed book into an e-book — particularly resounded with my plans and I had an AH-HA! moment. The gist of the writing was …
“Ebooks are as close as your smartphone. You can read an ebook while standing on a subway, sitting in a doctor’s office, or waiting in line at the grocery store.”
Relative to my recipe book everything before ‘grocery store’ made sense once I read ‘grocery store‘.
Recipe Books — JOY JOY JOY!
Folks haul their phones everywhere, and often folks with e-readers haul them everywhere, too. They might have 100+ books on their e-reader but they don’t haul 100 books everywhere. Most of the books I have put on my phone duplicate to my e-reader and vice versa.
While I have queried and found that most people prefer to NOT cook or bake working from recipes on an e-screen, it could still be beneficial to have your recipes — or preferably My Recipes (<– I am not above shameless self promotion) — on your phone or e-reader. Folks don’t haul all their recipe books to work where they think about what they are going to make for dinner, and then haul those books to the grocery store where they double check ingredients they are going to buy.
The big AH-HA! I had was…
I had already planned to convert my book to an e-book, but now I am thinking — PLEASE put my recipe book on your electronic device. If you don’t want to work in the kitchen from an electronic screen, I understand — to each their own — but bring it with you when you shop, or when you are going to be thinking about what you’re going to make for your friends or family. Or what you might make for the hottie in the accounting department at work whom you just landed a date with!
Does it make sense for me to convert my recipe book to an e-book?
If you’re like me, right now you are grinning from ear-to-ear having seen the latest Star Wars installment “The Last Jedi“! In anticipation of the film, I looked on my library’s website for what material from the cannon they had available. As it turned out, they had LOADS!
Star Wars films, soundtracks, books, audio books, William Shakespeare‘s StarWars books — AND THIS — The Star Wars Cookbook II -Darth Malt and More Galactic Recipes by Frankie Frankeny & Wesley Martin.
Being into sci-fi, and soon to publish my own first baking/cooking book, I’ve started to look at recipe books with a different eye. When it came to this Star Wars cookbook … I Simply Had To Check This Out!
Clever recipe titles!
Attributes
Geared toward kids, over the course of its 60 wipe-clean pages it features hilarious photographs and fun Star Wars themed recipes. This second installment of The Star Wars Cookbook series even includes a washable plastic stencil of Darth Maul’s iconic face to help decorate culinary creations. While kid-cooks might think they’re getting it play with their food, it instead teaches to get creative with cooking. Bring your kids into the kitchen to learn to cook without the use of Jedi mind-control tricks! Adults as well as kids will have a great time with this book.
NOTE – “Star Wars” and all other names, references, images, et cetera are the property of their respective copyright owners. If I have somehow violated copyright, please instruct as to how to correct this ….. in other words, Disney, please don’t sue me … besides, I don’t have anything.
Cling wrap — ever have problems getting it to stay on your food?
Here’s a pro-tip — don’t put plastic wrap on your food, put your food on your cling wrap!
Yep — all sorts of problems can follow when cling wrap gets pulled out of the box, put over food, torn off … but instead, try this…
On a clean surface clear of other items, put your box of plastic wrap down with the opening pointing away from you. Pull a large section out (+/- 2 times the size of the plate you look to cover) and lay it down on the surface, the box will ‘hold’ the other end straight for you. Next, place the plate you wish to wrap *on* the cling wrap and bring the lose end up & over the plate to start covering your food. Rip the other end of the plastic wrap off of the box and fold it over the plate & cling wrap. Repeat as necessary to get everything covered.
Done right and you will have a good seal on your food that can also help to prevent leaks.
A box of cling wrap with a slide cutter makes this easier over those with the saw blade, but with some careful attention those will work just as well.
As for the rice, I’m doing my mom’s trick in my small cooker — usual 2-1 ratio of water to rice and let it go all day (note that this cooker only cooks on one temp which I believe is high). Believe it or not I think this is the first time I’ve all 3 of my slow cookers going at once!
