Blog Swap: Cookerati

I’m participating in the Ohio Blogger’s Association May blog swap, check out my post at Cookerati!

Mango Mint Cooler

Hi, I’m Diana Hayes proprietor of Cookerati, a food and dining community. Cookerati has been in existence for about 4 1/ 2 years now and I’ve had a really good time with it learning and improving my cooking and creative thought process in the kitchen. Cookerati is about recipes, dining reviews, gadgets, book reviews, and general food talk.

Today, I’m sharing a recipe for a Mango Mint Cooler. I had a few ideas, but this was a refreshing treat. I love mango, plenty of good stuff including vitamin A, Vitamin C, B6 and fiber. I think though the white wine added probably negates some of that. It was a warm day, so I made this treat to share with my husband on the deck when we took a break from our weekend chores.

Recipe:
Ingredients:
1 mango
1 nice big bunch of mint
1 cup full of ice
1 cup of white wine

Directions:

Peel and pit the mango, placing the pulp in a food processor, blender or drink mixer.

Remove the mint leaves from the stem and place into the processor.

Add the ice and wine to the processor.

Whirl until smooth. Mango can be very fibrous and very thick, so you may need to add more ice, or wine to your own tastes in order to thin the cooler a little. I threw some ice in the glass to make it really cold and refreshing.

One of my favorite things to do on the weekend is to take a little time out on the deck with my husband and unwind with a nice drink. You can leave out the alcohol and add some sparkling soda if you wish to go non alcoholic.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Today is Mother’s Day, so I made my mom a card.

I started with a piece of corrugated cardboard I had painted months ago. (Starting to see a procrastination pattern? Look for it later.)

I used my handy dandy method of tracing my computer screen onto a piece of packaging paper. CENTURY GOTHIC. Now I really like that font. Enough to use it for a card for my mommy :o)

Then, I glued it to said piece of procrastinated cardboard.

I painted it gold! Shiny, just like my mommy :D

The brown and the gold look so amazing together.

    

Happy Mother’s Day to the BEST MOMMY IN THE WORLD!! :) :)  I love you, Mom!

Creamy Kale Soup

I’ve always been wondering if you can eat kale stems because I feel bad about throwing them away. After extensive Googling this morning (10 minutes at least), I discerned that they are edible. Many soup recipe sources on the Internets told me that I should use the stems in soups with cauliflower or something, instead of using the kale leaves. That sounded like a lot of work, so I used all the entire kale.

I roughly chopped up approximately 4 leaves of kale.

I also chopped up 1/2 a small onion, 1 clove of garlic, and 1/4 a block of tofu (!) in 2 cups of water and boiled it for approximately 20 minutes. 

Once the stuff had softened up, I Immersion Blended it into a soupy consistency. It doesn’t blend completely, but it does blend mostly. Once it had blended, I added 1/3 cup of milk to up the creamy level and then blended it a tad bit more. Also I added salt+pepper to taste.

I then poured it into my corn-plastic mug I got for donating to 90.3 WCPN and spritzed a little lemon onto it. Then I ate it. Drank it? How exactly do you imbibe soup?

Food is one project you should never procrastinate.

RePlated

Last year (or perhaps even the year before - I’m a hoarder), I was wandering down Larchmere for the annual Larchmere Festival. There used to be a thrift shop there called Thriftique, run by the NCJW, and they were having a moving sale. I found these plates and they let me have 20 of them for one dollar! I know a good craft project when I see one. Like I said, I’m a hoarder. :(

I decided to make one of the plates into an homage to Chicago as a gift for a friend. I cut out a square of map and laid it on top of the plate. Then, I went to town on it with an aspirator. That description sounded dirty. That’s ok, though. Moistening the paper will make it take the form of whatever it’s sitting on. You probably knew that, though.

I cut out the excess and then glued the paper down to the plate (once it was dry, of course).

Once that had been glued down, I waited 3 months to make sure it had been properly glued. Yes, that’s right, 3 months. I procrastinate. It happens. Don’t try to tell me that you’ve never procrastinated. Once it had dried, I painted the border gold, since I’m apparently not super talented at cutting perfect circles. Don’t tell me you’re talented at cutting perfect circles.

With another plate, I covered it in black paint. Then, I started painting silvery dots on the plate. This is another type of circle I’m not super talented at making. Some are blobs and some are even more blobby.

Three levels later, I’m at a completed plate. Yay! :) I only procrastinated on this project for 4 days. I am so proud of myself.

I’m trying this new thing where I don’t procrastinate in my personal life as much. I’ll start that soon.

Bagel Chips

We had a community volunteer day at work recently, and part of this included a breakfast of bagels. As the day was winding down, there were lots of bagels left. I asked my food-organizing coworker if I could steal some for bagel chips, and she said, “Sure, as long as you share them with us!” MUAHAHAHA. All mine.

When I got home, I chopped up all the bagels in 1/4” slices and dipped them in an oil+seasoning salt solution. I suppose you could call these the lazy girl’s bagel chips since most recipes online call for ingredients upon ingredients.

I carefully placed all of the trays into my oven. Turns out, they didn’t fit, so I got a little careless and then started stacking things on top of other things. It doesn’t really look like it in the picture, but you’re probably not looking hard enough. 325F for approximately 20 minutes.

After setting the smoke alarm off 3 times because an errant chip had fallen through the cracks, they are DONE. They look super different than when they had started. JK. They look almost exactly the same.

Crunch crunch crunch.

Toile isn’t short for Toilet

I bought a green suede-y couch off of a coworker once I decided to move into my own apartment a year and a half ago. One of the draws was that it came with its own pillows. The other draw was that it cost practically nothing for a brand new couch.

I happily bought the couch with the full intention of casing the pillows (kind of like casing the joint, only different) as soon as I got settled into my apartment. Freaking plaid. What are we, hipster pillows? I absolutely hate plaid. I suppose you could say that I’m not mad for plaid. Plaid makes me sad. Especially when I’m clad in plaid. Ok, that was pretty bad.

So yesterday (1.5 years later), I was settled into the apartment. I bought toile fabric approximately last September with the full intention of covering them that same day, when I probably spotted some Nutella or something in my kitchen and went off like a rabid dog. I also had a suede-y tan fabric for the back.

I decided to cover these so that if I ever wanted to take them off and wash them, I could. So I designed the back had a flap thing that the pillow can slip in and out of, really similar to this tutorial.

Once the pillow was sewn up, it looked like this. But I thought it looked loose, probably because I’m horrible at measuring squashy things. That’s what she said. Because you don’t measure when it’s squashy usually, right?

 

So, since I’m lazy and didn’t feel like turning the pillow cover back inside out, I decided to sew half a centimeter around the pillow. It looks so much more finished and professional, not at all janky like I was expecting.

 

Also this project took me maybe an hour. I can’t believe I lived with fugly plaid pillows for so long.