Avocado Brownies

 I've seen recipes for brownies made with avocado which kinda made me scratch my head.  So cruising through Pinterest last night I remembered I had saved one of those recipes on my "This is making me hungry" board.  I did have enough ripe avocado's to make "avocado brownies" so I put on my apron preheated the oven and went to work.  Now being the artist I am makes it hard for me to follow a recipe which isn't always a good thing to do especially in baking.  In cooking things it's usually not that big of a deal when you change the recipe a bit but in baking it doesn't always work.  But ... since I didn't have some of the ingredients in the recipe I had saved I had to adjust it ... right!?  Well I must say they turned out awesome and since it has avocado in it I claim them "healthy".  And for those who are wondering just like I was ... can you taste the avocado? ... not at all!  Or at least not in my recipe.      

Avocado Brownies

3 eggs

3 small avocados

3/4 cup light brown sugar

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla liquid

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 cacao powder (sugar free)

Preheat oven to 325.

1. I sprayed a glass pan with Baker's Joy non-stick baking spray.  You can use parchment paper if you like.
2. Mix eggs with the sugar and vanilla liquid
3. I mashed the avocados with a fork until pretty smooth and then mixed it in with the eggs and sugar.
4. In a separate bowl I mixed the cacao powder, the flour, baking powder and the chocolate chips.
5. I then combined the dry ingredients with the wet ones and used a spatula to mix it all together.  Only long enough until combined.  Probably best not to over stir it.  
6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and put in oven.  
7. Since I changed the ingredients from the original recipe I had no idea how long these needed to be in the oven so I checked them after 10 minutes and then every 5 minutes.  All together they were in the oven for 25 minutes.  My pan was pretty big so the batter was only about an inch thick before baking.  If you use a smaller pan then the one I used they will need to bake longer.

I put a bit of confectioner sugar on top just for the looks.  

Now I couldn't wait until they had totally cooled off to give them a try.  I read that if you eat them still warm you would be able to taste the avocado ... well I tried a slice when still warm and couldn't taste the avocado at all ... all I tasted was delicious chocolate brownie!  With the ingredients I used they turned out more cake like compared to the gooey brownies.  Maybe if you use 4 small avocados they would turn out more gooey?  I'm not a professional baker, I'm just an artist putting my own twist on baking these brownies!  

Enjoy!  and please let me know if you end up trying my recipe on how they turned out for you.  

 

 

  

Wire Fairy Timelapse

I love making sculptures.  If you look back at some of my posts from a couple of years ago I was making them with a product called Powertex.   I still have lots of my supplies which has me thinking about making sculptures again.  Especially watching this video which had me in awe!  

Toadstools or Mushrooms or Championnekes

What's a mushroom?  "They describe a variety of gilled fungi, with or without stems, therefore the term is used to describe the fleshy fruiting bodies of some Ascomycota.  These gills produce microscopic spores that help the fungus spread across the ground or its occupant surface".

Mushrooms or toadstools have always caught my interest (see needle felted toadstools earrings I used to make or the baby shoes with needle felted toadstool designs I've created in the past) but never to the point to go foraging for them.  I'm too scared to end up picking a poisonous one.  

While taking these pictures I started thinking about "Toast Champignon" my mom used to make and while I'm not crazy about eating mushrooms that did make my mouth water!  I found a recipe on a Flemish site: https://dagelijksekost.een.be/gerechten/toast-champignon.  My mom used to make it with some kind of Alfredo sauce which toned down the flavor of the mushrooms a bit.

The reason I'm talking about mushrooms is because I found these beauties in my yard a couple of days ago after storm Isaiah came by.  The ones in the backyard I had to get rid of because I have two dogs that love to nibble on grass.  I wouldn't want them accidentally eat one of these since I know some of these are poisonous!  

I think the lighter colored ones are "parasol" and the darker ones

"shaggy parasol" but I might be wrong I'm not a mushroom

expert!

I did find a page that talks about these and if that's what these are they are edible ... 

but trust me I'm not going to try to eat them, better safe then sorry.

Here is the link to the article on how to cook them if that's what they are:

https://gallowaywildfoods.com/parasol-mushroom-edibility-distribution-identification/

I think these are called "Yellow Patches" or Amanita flavoconia

Poisonous

When I went searching on the internet to find out what these were called I ran into this article "15 worlds funkiest fungi"   OMG!!  

Here is the link to it:  https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/89768/15-worlds-funkiest-fungi

Mother nature doing her thing!

So guess what I'll be making for dinner!?  Toast Champignon ... but definitely with store bought championnekes!

Always in my heart

 Since I missed a couple of years out of this blog I thought I'd share some of the things that happened in between then and now.  It might not always be in chronological order.  Things that pop into my head will be popping up as they come to me.  

Today I was thinking about the floral heart arrangement I made for my honey to put on his grave.  Looking at the pictures I want to make another one soon.  This next time I'll share how I go about making it with step by step instructions.  But for now, here are pictures of what the one I made looked like.  

They are all real flowers, greenery and moss.  The base is a grapevine heart shaped wreath that I took apart and used only a few of the grapevines which I then wrapped with chicken wire to get the elongated shape of the heart.  I used oasis inside the chicken wire.  I used rosemary from our garden since that was one of the plants we always had to have in our yard wherever we lived ... it was his favorite herb so I made sure it was part of the arrangement.    

 

Life Goes On

 I know it’s been a long time since I posted, but here I am.  So much has happened since my last post.  My dear husband ended up passing away December 31, 2017.  54 is just too young to die.  He put up a long hard fight with his kidney cancer but finally lost his battle.  I miss him dearly but I’m ready to move on and look forward to make the best of the next chapter of my life.  Kinda strange to think it will basically be my last chapter.  I don’t have any plans to leave this earth any time soon.  I’m hoping for at least another 20 years!  

I started working part time a couple of years back but I’m happy to say I’m planning on retiring come January 2021.  I must say I’m really looking forward to doing so.  Ready to work in my garden, ready to bring all those art projects to fruition, ready to keep the cat toy business going, ready to relax a bit and ready to catch your interest with the things I’ll be posting.  

Wow, time flies

Yes, it's been a long time since I posted.  So much has been happening.  My mom passed away from a stroke shortly after I did my last post in July.   The good thing is she didn't suffer very long, the sad thing is that I didn't make it back to Belgium in time to say goodbye.  She passed away a couple hours before my plane landed.   On the other hand I'm okay with the fact she didn't hang on and I got to see her and say goodbye to her earlier in the year after she had her first stroke.  I kinda had a feeling back then I wasn't going to see her again.  My brother, who lives in Belgium with his family was amazing in regards to taking care of all the stuff that needed to get done.   I can't believe we were able to put mom's house up for sale and basically sold it in a matter of a couple weeks!  Anyways, my mom was 80.   She had a good life I think and she really wanted to be with dad who passed away 6 years ago. It's not easy having to say goodbye to your parents that's for sure.

As far as my husband is concerned, he's one strong man!  I've lost track of the amount of radiations he's now had done for the spread of the RCC (renal cell carcinoma).  We also discovered (while I was in Belgium and he stayed here in Virginia) he has a big tumor in his humerus (also a met from the RCC).   He had surgery where they inserted a rod through the humerus and through the darn tumor so his upper arm will stop falling apart since the tumor has eaten away a lot of the bone.  I hate cancer!  Did I tell you yet how much I hate cancer!  Anyways, besides that he's had more radiation for two mets in his brain and also on the arm before they did the arm surgery.  Another radiation for a met on his T11 and we just found out he has more mets on his T8 and his femur!  But the good news today was that all the tumors he's had radiation for are either stable or getting smaller.   We know it's not going to go away but his life is being extended which we are thankful for.   Can you believe he's still going to work!  The cancer meds he's taking causing issues with a bad cough which is also enhanced by having pneumonitis which is an inflammation inside his lung around the tumor due to the radiation. He's been on prednisone for that for weeks now and we're hoping him coming off the prednisone might make a few other side effects go away.  I took him to the hospital a couple weekends ago when he was having severe stomach pains and a blood pressure of 237/135!!!  I don't know how his body and heart can withstand all of this but he's a trooper and presses on that's for sure.  Watching a loved one having to go through this sucks but together we try to make the best of what we got and we'll fight till we have nothing left to fight for.

Enough about sad stuff!  I finished a couple of sock dolls these past couple of weeks.   These are so much fun to make.   Both of them are listed in my BitsOfFiber shop on Etsy so if you like what you see don't wait to get them since I usually make things without a pattern they are all unique and OOAK.

Here are the links and some pictures of them.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/496377908/sleepy-bunny-doll-soft-sock-doll-plushie?ref=shop_home_active_1

https://www.etsy.com/listing/507804447/sweet-soft-doll-sock-doll?ref=shop_home_active_3

Live goes on!

Yep, life goes on if we like it or not.  Lately it's been a bit crazy to say the least.  My dear husband who's been battling kidney cancer that has spread to different parts of his body has now been going through radiation this past week.   At first it was only for a treatment of one of his vertebra's but while that was getting set up he started coughing up blood coming from the bigger tumor in one of his lungs which really really sucks.   So he's been getting radiation to stop the tumor from bleeding and also radiation to the vertebrae to hopefully stop growing.   He's a very busy person and is always on the go even with having the metastasis from the kidney cancer he's kept on working and doing all the things he's always done but this darn radiation really got him down and on the couch this past week.   He has two more days of treatment and hopefully he will get some of his energy back soon so he can focus on some other things again.  We're trying to stay positive which hasn't been an easy task this past year that's for sure.  

Anyways, I keep myself busy with making stuff for my Bits Of Fiber shop as well as our MauveMoose shop on Etsy.   I've decided to try a different site for my Bits Of Fiber shop called TicTail.com.   If you haven't checked it out yet do so now!  Here is the link to my shop on Tictail.com:   http://bitsoffiber.tictail.com/  I don't have lots of things listed yet but will be adding more of them as time moves on I'll be moving things from my Etsy shop into this one.   I'll be keeping my shop on Etsy as well but will be focusing on adding different kind of stuff in that shop.

These are the two items I just listed this past week:

Alright, time to do some laundry.   Thanks for stopping by and I'll try to post more often again.

Cheers,