Scout for President 2012!

RHCOSC Episode 101

Real Housecats of Stark County

If you're a fan of the Real Housewives on Bravo, or even the Real Housdogs of Wayne County, hold on to your fashionable little house pet: You're in for a real treat!

Meet the Real House Cats of Stark County (#RHCOSC): Monkey, Buttercup, Scout, and Boo Radley!

 

 

Stay tuned....

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Tall Asparagus!

Okay, Jack and his bean stalk has nothing on my asparagus...  They've never grown this tall before!

And just in case it's hard to imagine how tall those asparagus ferns are, here's a little context:

Yes, that asparagus fern is about a foot taller than me.  And just so you all know, if my neighbors thought I was strange before (talking to the plants in the garden, screaming and running away from tomato horn worms, chirping back to the birds...) they certainly are shaking their heads at my little self-portrait session in the back yard this afternoon.

Iced Coffee

Starbucks, I don't need you anymore!  Okay, that's overstating things... Starbucks, I need you slightly less :-)

I love an iced coffee, all frothy and full of caffeine.  But the recipes for the blended coffee drinks all called for cold coffee which I never had on hand in the morning.  So I've been working on creating a supply of coffee ice cubes with the leftover coffee in the morning.  Believe it or not, the ice cube trays cleaned up nicely and weren't stained.

So this morning I experimented with Megan.  I used about a cup of Silk light vanilla soy milk, about a tablespoon of chocolate syrup, and about 2 cups of the coffee ice cubes.

I started out using the frozen dessert setting.  I needed to use the tamper to push the ice cubes into the blades.

Everything was blended very nicely, but I thought it looked a little thick. I added another half cup of soy milk and ran it through the smoothie setting (a slightly shorter blend cycle).

This created the perfect consistency, but it also created a lot more than I really needed!  (Poor Richard isn't home, so I guess I'll have to drink the whole thing all by myself!)

Even though this recipe ended up having a higher ratio of soy milk to coffee, the ice cubes really have a concentrated coffee taste, so it was nicely balanced.  If you're using regular milk I imagine you would need to sweeten the drink in some way, but maybe the hit of chocolate syrup would be enough.

All in all this experiment was a success!  I should be bouncing off the walls any moment now...

Massillon Monkey says...

We will have an early Spring!

Punxsutawney Phil has nothing on Monkey...  For years she has predicted the changes in season with amazing accuracy.  How does she do it?  We believe it has something to do with her little nubby tail.  Unfortunately, she is not good at picking winning lottery numbers.

According to Monkey will will still have two more heavy snows, with one snow day, but then smooth sailing into an early Spring!  And she thinks groundhogs are highly overrated.