X's & Heart's for These Fudg-y Black Bean Brownie

Good Tuesday Morning! 

I couldn't resist sharing this awesome brownie recipe I found on Pinterest yesterday;

 Fudgy Black Bean Brownies. 

This recipe comes from Serena Bakes Simply From Scratch .

Yes, I know..Black Bean Brownies! Well eating is believing! 

The awesome picture she shared with her recipe got me right over to her sight and with one 

look-at-this to the Ole Man. I was digging out ingredients. I did have black beans in the cabinet but I have to say I improvised on some of the other ingredients. I was short on brown sugar. I only had about a half a cup of brown sugar, so I made up the difference with regular white sugar a teaspoon of molasses. I didn't enough all-purpose flour so I used self-rising flour which probably made mine a little more of a cake-like brownie. The nuts for ice cream topping isn't the ones I would generally prefer for baking either

 but

 I'll tell you when the pan came out of the oven last night no one shied away. 

While I was basically killing time until the brownies came out of the oven I read further into Serena's blog post and on down into the comments. I was aggravated by some of the comments. While some folks were very nice; some folks I thought were down right rude. I'll also add, if your brownies didn't come out well from this recipe it maybe that you just don't cook a good brownie. 

Everyone in this house went back for a second helping of brownie!

I'm not sure if there's a real nutritional benefit from them or not but it does make for a rich brownie.

Pop over to Serena's Blog   for a wonderful tutorial and the recipe.

Thanks for stopping by for some rambling,

Be Blessed!

Life-Size Board Game Birthday Party

Hey everyone!

Tuesday was Jack's birthday. As usual, we celebrated on the weekend. Birthdays for us is all about family. Well, family, friends, hot dogs, and potato salad. Jack's only request was potato salad. 

You know that's a country kid

Lately, Jack has been into making his own board games. That sparked Jack and his Dad deciding it would be fun to have a life-size board game. 

They cut out game pieces and made a big dice to roll and with some orange marking spray paint, they drew out their board. They called it 4 X 4. Everyone was a truck. It was full of obstacles like Stuck in the Ditch and  the Stump Jump.

I think everyone's favorite was Stump Jump!

Mine, too!

After crossing the finish line you had to holler out,

"Winner, Winner, Hot Dog Dinner!"

Needless to say,  we had a blast and a whole lot of giggles 

Thanks for stopping by for a little

4 x 4, some hotdogs and potato salad 

& 

Letting me share some of the birthday fun.

BE BLESSED!

Too Much Salt

Wow! It's been a long time since I made a post. I'm going to straight up, put the blame on Sodium. There have been a few other reasons that may have gotten in the way but the main problem in our home, as of lately, is Sodium.

On April 4, 2015, our son Jack had a severe reaction to too much sodium. His blood pressure climbed so high that his bodily functions were shutting down. It appeared to me to be a seizure but it was not a seizure by definition. He lost the ability to move or speak. When arriving at the Emergency Room, his blood pressure was Extremely!!! elevated along with his eyes dilated, and a few other observations. 

After 5 days at Brenner's Children's Medical Center and an enormous amount of test; the only diagnoses was that he had a low tolerance to Sodium. Our 45 lb. 4 ft. 2 in., 8 year old has high blood pressure. Definitely, not obese and no other ailment ( no bad heart, kidneys, thyroid, etc.) He just has a low tolerance for  sodium. A low sodium diet and high blood pressure medicine has him back to his energetic full of life kid.

Thank you Lord!

It has made us take a big look at our diet. Something that honestly, I had taken largely for-granted . That's not to say we eat extremely bad; as a matter of fact, I think for a large part we eat better than most but there was still plenty to address for Jack and the rest of the family as well. I really had no intention of turning this blogging experience in to a nutritional diary but I may share thoughts along the way about the subject; there has been many...

Hmm...what about my recipes I would post from time to time??

I really don't know!

Us Southerners are not known for discretion when it comes to salt, sugar, or carbs..
Mostly we are known for our over-indulgence of all things of the like..
You'll have to bare with me or just blog along somewhere else since this has become one of our highest priorities lately and is truly a pretty deep discussion around here.

Thanks for dropping by for a visit.
Be Blessed! 

Oranges and Inspiration

,

What kind of things kick-start you or just get you inspired?

I get inspirations from all kinds of different direction. Today my inspiration came from

Joy McElroy~Yesterfood

She shared her recipe for Clementine Simple Syrup.

I  had an abundance of fruit that had been hanging around since the holidays. Instead of the clemetines she had; I had naval oranges.

I followed her super simple directions and in a few minutes my syrup was done 

and 

cooling in a jar.

But...

I still have quite a few oranges getting very close to being thrown out.

So I thought some Orange Muffins would be quite good especially with the kids home from school.

They came out quite nice and there's still the smell of oranges in the air and the taste of orange on my lips as I set here.

As far as my recipes go, I followed Joy's recipe except I doubled it. I am also in agreement that I like the pulp too. It wasn't much and I didn't strain it.

The Orange Muffins  are my same basic recipe I always use with a cup of freshly juiced oranges and a spice or too thrown in. 

Orange Muffins

Preheat oven: 425 degrees

2 cup Self-Rising Flour

1/1 cup Sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla flavor

1 cup of milk (a little more or less) 

1/2 cup orange juice

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1. Mix dry ingredients

2. Stir in egg, oil, vanilla, milk, and orange juice.

3. Mix well

4. Pour into prepared muffin pans 

5. Bake for 15- 20 minutes or until nicely golden 

Thanks for visiting and allowing me to share my inspirations with you.

Christmas & Cookies

Well around here we officially over The Christmas Holiday Break. I was back to work last night and the kids will be back to school tomorrow.

As much as I enjoy Christmas, I am ready to get back to a somewhat normal routine. When we're all home in this house it seems to be a constant of eating and a constant sink full of dishes. 

The very rainy holiday didn't offer up much else.

I've been pretty absent from the blogging community the past few months but we carried on with most of our usual holiday shenanigans but I just do them all with a camera in my hand.

The one thing I didn't do as much of this year was making cookies. We made a batch sometimes before Christmas but with there being no lack of other desserts I really couldn't bring myself to bother with them.

This morning I was going through a few reminders to get the kids minds back in the perspective places for going back to school when Jack asked, "Don't we need to make those cookies??"

Well of course...Jack we do need to make those cookies.

So we did.

These were a sorta' Gingerbread cheater cookies.

 I had seen a recipe for making cookies from a cake mix, egg, and block of cream cheese.

I made a different variation of the recipe but honestly the quick and easiness of the recipe didn't give me the kind of cookie that I prefer. The cookies were more like cake; not bad to eat but more like eating a really small cake instead of a cookie.

but...

Out of a bit of laziness and lack of preparation, I doctored the recipe a little and came out with a pretty good gingerbread cookie. They were still a bit soft for cutting out but they eat up just fine.

Are you wondering what the moral of this story is?

Well quite simply...

if you are down to the last day of your holiday

make cookies.

Any cookies is good cookies!