Summertime Sadness

Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey keeps buzzing in my head. Personally I think it has to do with it being too hot outside, and no rain in sight. Sigh. Even Mia and Dutch, the two dogs don’t want to stay outside. And JJ the cat wants in as soon as he gets out. Usually Mia and JJ will run everyone over trying to get outside. Even the cicadas have stopped their noise.

I would suggest a road trip, but I have to save for the major road trip in September. We’ll be travelling to see a number of people we work with in several different states.  We’ll be visiting in Tennessee, Mississippi, Virginia, Ohio, Iowa and Kansas. We’ll probably stop off in Minnesota to visit my folks as we pass by. So, expenses on hold, too hot to play, guess that calls for a new recipe I found on Facebook.

Cinnamon Roll Cake

Cake Ingredients:

3 cups flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup sugar

4 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 cup milk

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup butter, melted

Topping

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp flour

1 tbsp cinnamon

Directions:

Mix everything together except for the butter. Slowly stir in the melted butter and pour into a greased 9X13 pan. For the topping, mix all the ingredients together until well combined. Drop evenly over the batter and swirl with a knife. Bake at 350 for 28 to 32 minutes.

Glaze:

2 cups powdered sugar

5 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla

While warm, drizzle the glaze over the cake

http://www.facebook.com/ladytexas.key.1?ref=tn_tnm

www.evsecondincome.com/concept

Heating Up Over Summer

Heat, hot, sizzle, cooking. It’s summer-time. The temperatures of summer are depressing enough. Then you start to find out if your favorite television shows are coming back for another season, or worse, not coming back, or they’ve been changed.

Yesterday I find out that Warehouse 13 is only coming back for a six season final half season. SYFY channel wants us to have closure. Say what? The show has been one of their best show for four seasons, now they decide to cancel it. The hint is that they put out too much money for their new show Defiance and needed to find the revenue to afford season two. Now don’t get me wrong, Defiance is a good show, but not better than Warehouse 13. Errrrr. Then today I find out that Cote de Pablo aka Ziva is leaving NCIS. Again, say what?

NCIS is another favorite show. It survived loosing Sasha Alexander aka Kate. But Kate was only around for two seasons. Ziva’s been entertaining us with mangled English for eight seasons. I’m afraid NCIS will not be nearly as good after Ziva departs. The only thing worse was watching everyone get killed off in Game of Thrones.

I guess a good recipe might help ease the pain of idiot’s with the television stations who decide to axe good shows.

Bacon-wrapped Chicken with Herbs

Ingredients

8 pieces of chicken

4 cloves of garlic, minced

2 tablespoons of rosemary, finely chopped

2 tablespoons of thyme, finely chopped

Sea salt and coarsely ground pepper

¼ cup EVOO – Extra Virgin Olive Oil

8 fresh bay leaves

8 slices of good quality bacon

Preparation

Preheat oven to 375 °F

Place chicken in a dish with garlic, rosemary and thyme. Season lightly with sea salt and more heavily with pepper. Drizzle EVOO over the chichen then toss evenly to coat the chicken pieces with the herbs and garlic. Use right away or marinate overnight.

Place a bay leaf on top of each piece of chicken. Wrap a bacon slice around each piece of chicken so that the bay leaves peek out.

Arrange a wire cooling rack on a baking sheet and place the chicken on the rack. Bake for about 45 minutes, until bacon is crisp and the chicken is cooked through.

Enjoy.

www.evhealthyliving.com/concept

Beat the Heat

It’s summer. It’s been hot all over the place, but Northeast Oklahoma has finally cooled down to below average with temperatures in the mid to low eighties. Of course the weatherman had to put a damper on things by stating that temperatures were going back to the low nineties.

Well over the past few days we’ve driven to Bartlesville, OK and Wellington, KS and to Tulsa meeting some great people that we work with. We’re planning on going to Mississippi and Virginia in September. Most of these trips have been to share information about the company we work with, and one of the trips was to celebrate people who have advanced their business.

But all this travelling can be thirsty work, or hungry. So what better than a snack that can help with both your hunger and your thirst. Check out this recipe that I found.

Watermelon Pico de Gallo aka Watermelon Salsa

Ingredients:

1/2 whole small seedless watermelon, diced

1/2 whole red onion, diced

1 whole red bell pepper, seeded and diced

1 whole green bell pepper, seeded and diced

1 whole yellow bell pepper, seeded and diced

1 whole bunch of cilantro, chopped

Juice from 1 or 2 limes

1/2 teaspoon of salt

(I left out the jalapenos, seeded and finely diced)

Preparation Instructions:

Take the seedless watermelon and slice the rind off in long strips, going all the way around until it's totally nekkid. Next, cut the watermelon into large slices. Then stack up a couple of slices and dice them up. (You can save some of the watermelon lor later if you like).

Throw the watermelon into a large bowl. Next, add chopped onion and diced yellow, green and red bell peppers.

Next add the chopped cilantro, a little salt and a good squeeze of lime juice.

The give it all a good toss.

Serve with chips or with grilled chicken or fish, or even as a side salad.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2013/06/watermelon-pico-de-gallo/

www.evgetfit.com/concept