Best Berry Cumble

My mom and I picked a ton of blueberries a week or so ago, and they've just been sitting in my freezer so I decided to try a new recipe. I found it through The Daily Green newsletter I've been getting sent to my email. Since I don't have a computer or Internet at my new apartment yet, I couldn't upload any pictures of the final product, but it was delicious. The recipe calls for blackberries but they were pretty pricey at the store so I just substituted more blueberries. I scooped it on top of vanilla ice cream while it was still warm and it was so good. Ross even ate it! He ate a lot of it! He's pretty much a chocolate guy, so for him to like this is saying a lot. Here's the recipe and a photo from the website. The pie looking thing in the right background is what it looks like.



BEST BERRY CRUMBLE

Crumbles are great sprinkled on your favorite ice cream. They're also good when mixed into hot cereals.


SERVINGS 4

COOK TIME 15

TOTAL TIME 45


INGREDIENTS
2 cups blueberries
1 cup blackberries
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2/3 cup flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
6 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
whipped cream or vanilla ice cream


PREPARATION
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Adjust oven rack to upper third.
Toss blueberries and blackberries with sugar, lemon juice, and 2 tsp. flour. Turn into 9" pie plate.
2. In medium bowl, mix remaining flour, brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, and oats with fingers until crumbly. Sprinkle topping over berries.
3. Bake 30 to 35 minutes until fruit is bubbly and top is browned.
Serve warm with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I finally got my camera to connect to my computer!!! So I'm back online with the photo blogging, now I have no excuse not to continue posting my thing-a-day projects.

With Ross being unemployed we decided not to do anything big for Valentine's Day this year. I decided to make him a chocolate chip pie that I found here. My parents and Ross and I went to Jack's located in our local Holiday Inn for their famous perch dinner. And it was as good as ever. Then we came home and had this delicious pie.


Ross had two interviews today. One was for his internship and he got it! Yay!! Getting so close to that diploma! The interview is with a woman who makes her own jewelry right here in Spring Lake. She is working on opening a new studio and she wants Ross to help her with that and several other computer related things. She was generous enough to give Ross a pair of earings to give to me for Valentine's day and I love them. I will post more on this later, I haven't photographed them yet, but I will because they are beautiful. I will also post her website and other store information. Her work is really beautiful! I told Ross to get me an in with her so I can do something I really enjoy with my time. He did say she will be looking for an assistant in the near future!! I'm ready!

Hope you all had a great Valentine's day! I have a photography class this Saturday so hopefully I will have some interesting photos to post!

New Cookies

I recently purchased a new cook book for JoAnn Fabrics. It was in with the $5.00 books. I got Cool Girls Guide To Knitting and JoAnns for $5.00 and it was a great buy. Pretty basic patterns but perfect for a beginner. So based on that good find I thought this cook book would be decent too. It is all for baking, I love baking, not just desserts but all kinds of food, and this book features a variety of dishes. It's called Greatest Ever Baking or something. I decided to try a recipe and chose a basic cook it was called Vanilla Cookies. The recipe wasn't very detailed, I think the butter needed to be a little melted, softened was not soft enough, and all the instructions said were 2/3 cup butter diced. So when I decided my dough was never going to hold together I put it all in the microwave, all of it, and then tried to get it to stick together, it finally worked and I was able to roll it out and cut cookies out of it. This is what they looked like right out of the oven.


I tried one, not very good, so I found some frosting in the fridge and raided the pantry for decorations and Ross and I decorated cookies, Mike even got in on it as well. And this is what they looked like decorated. Much prettier, but still not too tasty.


I don't know what my problem has been lately, but nothing is turning out very well. My last 3 attempts were failures. I made a couple pumpkin pies...forgot the sugar...yup, eww. Next endeavor, we got a new cookie press from Pampered Chef, so I decided to try it out and found a recipe online that involved jello to make the cookies a little fruity...not good. We threw away almost the whole batch.

I started on Weight Watchers again and made some brownies that are only 2 points each. Those actually turned out, so that's good. The recipe is scary but easy. It is a box of low-fat brownie mix and a can of black beans. You put the entire contents of the can of beans in a blender and grind them up, add the puree to the dry brownie mix and that's it. I put mine in muffin tins and cupcake papers to get the suggested serving size on the box of brownies and baked them for 26 minutes. Amazing really, that a combination like that would even be thought up, but it's genius really at how good the brownies are!