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My dear friend Anita has a very green thumb and has a fantastic garden practically year round, which is a thing here in Arizona. She gave us some beautiful purple eggplant out of it recently.
I don't have a lot of experience with eggplant, but I knew that it pretty much takes of the flavor or whatever it is cooked with.
I thought about using it to replace noodles in lasagna. But, I didn't know if I had to seed it or what! Here are a couple of things I learned about it as I studied it out:
My husband and I watched a couple of YouTube videos about cooking eggplant and I saw a really delicious looking recipe for Eggplant Parmesan. So, that gave me a different perspective about the Lasagna idea and I decided to do a mash-up of Eggplant Parmesan with Lasagna. It worked out very well and tastes wonderful. Here is how I did it. First make the sauce, then work on the eggplant.
Now, here is the real recipe:
If you haven't tried cooking with eggplant, I would highly recommend it! This recipe works great for a low-carb diet. I think you could even do away with the bread crumbs if you would like. Have you ever tried it? Drop us a comment below!
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When we were working on our pie book and developing new recipes, one of my friends asked me if we made Chocolate Pecan Pie. She hadn't seen a recipe for it, but was thinking that the combination of flavors sounded good. I told her that I would give it a try and bring her one if it was successful. So, I started scouring Pinterest for the many versions of Chocolate Pecan Pie available.
Most of the recipes I found simply added chocolate chips to the pie, along with the pecans. So, I tried a version of that idea. It seemed promising. The pie looks really delicious, right? Well, my husband was unimpressed with the flavor. I have to admit that I was as well. I feel like the best part of the Pecan Pie is the custard below the pecans. In this case, the chocolate overpowered that creamy texture and rich flavor. Not to mention that as the chocolate chips cooled and rehardened, it made the pie difficult to slice! So, I checked off the chocolate chip method as a fail.
One of the beauties of Pecan Pie is that it is really super easy to whip up. A lot of the recipes I found made the process so much more difficult, so I gave those a hard pass. One day I was discussing the Chocolate Pecan Pie idea with Maddy and she suggested I toast and candy the pecans with brown sugar and cocoa powder to see if that would give the hint of chocolate that we wanted. I thought, "Genius!" So, I gave it a try. The pecans came out really tasty after I toasted them in a skillet with butter, brown sugar and cocoa powder. And, the crumbs from the toasting left a sort of chocolate swirl through the custard part of the pie. But, when it was baked all together, the flavor of the chocolate really didn't come through at all. I still liked this idea though, and may explore it further.
To make a long story short, the Chocolate Pecan Pie didn't make it into the ebook and my friend hasn't received her pie. A couple of other suggestions I may try are:
But really, I think the moral of this story is that not every really good thing has to be chocolate! I know, I know, unbelievable! But I have tweaked my Pecan Pie recipe over the years until it is a family favorite, with the perfect balance between the amount of pecans and the custard below them. My husband is firmly in the camp of not messing with the Pecan Pie at all! It is his all time favorite! Sometimes you just don't mess with a good thing.
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For those of you who have just joined us here at 3 Winks Design, you may not realize that the reason we started this blog is because of this little creation of ours called Hot Cocoa Bombs! They are the most delicious and excitingly fun way to drink Hot Cocoa! This is the time of year when I get in full Hot Cocoa Bomb mode, making them like crazy for an annual craft show. The craft show has changed this year, but we are still doing one and I have been busy making them again. It never gets old because:
So, for Friday Faves #80 today, I thought I would do a throwback to some of our favorite Hot Coca Bomb posts and ideas! You will notice how our blog has evolved over these past 4 years as well!
If you want to make your own Hot Cocoa Bombs, you can go to the above mentioned tutorial and video. We have also published a Hot Cocoa Bomb Book that will help you with how to make them, the flavors and ways to decorate them!
**I was compensated for this post. This post also contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. All opinions are my own.
I absolutely love being a grandmother. My husband and I have 10 grandchildren and they are the best in the entire universe! My heart nearly explodes when I think of each one of them and there is nothing I want more than for them to grow up happy and healthy and good. They all have good parents to lead and guide them. (My wonderful children and their spouses) But, I feel like as a grandmother, I can be a loving and good influence in their lives. I didn't ever really know my own grandparents. They all passed away when I was very young. I know other people have related to me how important their grandparents have been in their lives. I want to be important to my grandchildren. I want them to know that I am here for them and that I will always love them, no matter what!
For almost a year now, I've thought about writing a little book for my grandchildren called, "What Grandma Wants Me to Know." I considered a board book but I wasn't sure about illustrations. Maddy didn't have time to do them for me. Then, I discovered Mixbook! Their photo books are beautiful and completely customizable! The photos of my grandchildren could be my illustrations! So, I teamed up with Mixbook to make my first photo story book for my grands.
I had already come up with a list of ideas that I wanted to include in the book. Some of them were simple joys, like baking cookies and swinging. Some of them were deeper and more meaningful, like learning to love to read, and realizing that God loves them. When you think about it, you can make a list a mile long that covers the things you want your children and grandchildren to know. You can customize this idea for your own family! Since I had my list, I went through the pictures that I have and started to match them to the topics I wanted to cover. It was so easy to upload them to Mixbook. Then, all I had to do was choose my cover and design of my book. There are a ton of great templates and sizes to choose from. I decided to start mine from scratch and make it a totally custom creation. I easily arranged the pictures and the texts where I wanted them to be. Mixbook would give me a hint if a certain photo needed to be resized for the best appearance in the book. Not only that, but I was unable to finish the book all in one sitting, so it was saved to my account until I could come back and work on it again.
Not every page in my book had photos. I included some text of poetry and "words of wisdom." There are also choices of fonts and stickers available to add interest to your pages. The entire process was a lot of fun.
Now, here are some of the best parts!
I've only had the book for a couple of days. I plan to keep it out at my house where I can read it with my visiting grandchildren whenever possible. There is a possibility of printing one for each family, but right now I love seeing how much they enjoy seeing themselves in the book when I read it to them. I feel like I am sending them a message that they will one day get as we share this book over the years. A message about how special they are and about what marvelous potential they have and that there are cheerleaders all around them, including me! Who knows, there may be multiple editions as they grow and I think of more that their grandma wants them to know!
Here is another great deal:
If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy other ideas for your grandchildren on these posts:
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Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)
Author
Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
April 2024
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