Pairing your chocolate dessert to your wine is no easy task. We’ve tried to break it down for you so you know what pairs the best.
The dark chocolate can go with any of the heavier red wines such as our Alicante Bouchet, Cabernet Sauvignon, Barbera, Sangiovese. Milk chocolate can go with a lighter red such as: Nero D’Avola and white chocolate pairs well with many whites or our rose, such as: Grenache Rose, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, or Muscat.
Looking for a lower in sugar coconut macaroon recipe, here it is!
2/3 cup all purpose Gluten Free Flour, such as White Gold Brand
14 oz package unsweetened flaked coconut (if you use sweetened coconut, you will be adding 5 grams of sugar)
1/4 teaspoon salt
14 oz fat free sweetened condensed milk (contains 24 grams sugar)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Optional: 6-8oz chocolate chips such as Lily’s milk chocolate style baking chips, with 32% cocoa, stevia sweetened.
Preheat the oven to 350°F and place cupcake liners in a cupcake pan. You may also use silicone cupcake liners. If lining a baking sheet use parchment paper or cooking spray.
In a large bowl, mix together gluten-free flour, coconut and salt until the coconut is coated in the other ingredients
Stir in condensed milk, vanilla extract. Keep stirring until well combined. Next, add chocolate chips.
Using a cookie scoop, place in mounds of the coconut chocolate chip mixture in the cupcake tin liners or on the prepared baking sheets.
For large (3 Tablespoon) cookies, bake in a preheated oven for 18-20 minutes or until the tops are golden. For smaller (1 1/2 tablespoons) cookies, bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown the tops.
Cool for five minutes and enjoy. Makes about 1 ½ dozen medium sized macaroons.
Perusing through my Mrs. Fields cookbook I came across a Peanut Butter Cream-Filled Cookie. I came up with a dairy free, gluten free version, it was a little bit crumbly but tasty nevertheless.
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1 1/2 cups of coconut flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1 cup of oats, not instant
1 cup of light brown sugar
2 tablespoons of almond milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 cup of brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup of softened salted butter
Directions: Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a mixer, add peanut butter, butter, egg, almond milk, vanilla extract, and light brown sugar, and oats and mix on low speed. Next, add flour, & baking soda and mix the ingredients, if needed, add a little more almond milk in teaspoonfuls. Roll each peanut butter ball and placed on a lightly greased cookie sheet. With a fork, gently criss cross the ball and flatten with cross look for the peanut butter balls. Bake for 11 minutes or until golden brown. Yields/makes 2 dozen medium sized oatmeal peanut butter balls.
So your youngest is going off to college. Congratulations. What I have found in my 25+ years of being a married and now for the past 11 years of being a single mom is that it is essential to take care of yourself and your newly formed empty nest, fill it with exciting possibilities and adventures. For me, a month before the pandemic hit, I became a homeschool mom to my teenager who was in the second half of his Sophomore year. We didn't have time to mess around, and I also lost my full-time job in customer relationships at the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Drug and Alcohol Recovery Center. Which in all honesty was a blessing in disguise because after we went to orientation for homeschooling, we found out that a parent (usually married people homeschool) had to stay at home and oversee the homeschooling. It also was great because my son got the best of all world's whereby he got to take online live classes with a teacher, I hired tutors to assist for his classes that were textbook/workbooks. We had such an adventure thinking out of the box and being creative. Think positively about all of the new and exciting possibilities on the horizon for yourself and your young adult. This is the time to take that dance class you've always wanted to do, or to hone in on your work life balance, maybe even working on a 2nd career. It's also important to help prepare your child for college life. I'm not an expert in child psychology but I have read books, consulted with professionals, and have done my homework in a lot of areas. As an author and entrepeurner I would definitely consider myself an audiodidac.
So here are a few essential questions that would be helpful in rebranding yourself as your children grow and emerge into their own persons.
How has my identity been set-up in my child's mind?
How has my identity been set-up in my own mind?
How has my identity been set-up in the community?
Who identifies with me?
What problems can I solve for other people?
What skills do I have that are marketable?
How am I perceived by my children?
How am I perceived in the community?
Who do I identify with?
How can you enhance or change your reputation?
I've been bowling for about two weeks everyday 3 games. I'm trying to get better and so each time I go, ironically enough there is an expert bowler a few lanes down that wants to teach me a couple tricks of the trade. I don't ask, they usually just request their teaching/sports skills of wisdom to me. Today, a gentleman who appeared to be in his mid-seventies who told me he had been bowling for forty years showed me what he termed the "Old school way of bowling." Initially he asked me very politely if I was a beginner bowler. I guess he didn't want to assume that I'd been playing for forty years, lol.
He explained if you watch you tube, the professional bowlers are doing a new way of bowling which is in his opinion not the "right way to bowl.". A couple of days earlier another expert bowler taught me a few other tips, but what he taught wasn't important, today's lesson was from Mr. 40 Years of Bowling.
This gentleman related to me in ways I would understand. Bowling is like ballet he said and he showed me how to hold the ball, how to move my feet, how to throw the ball (palms up), how to hold my left arm out for balance, etc. He also gave me a few other tips, at one point I got a strike and I wanted to tell him and thank him for the strike.
At another point when I only got a few pins down he gave me additional pointers, he said something really profound, "at least you are willing to learn."
After my multiples games of bowling yesterday, I went to the Goodwill, across the way from the bowling alley. I heard it was teacher discount day while I was there and I got 25% off (side note: as a writer I rarely get discounts except for Barnes & Noble, oh come to think of it that's a teacher discount too, oops). Anyway, while perusing the discounted books, a woman got really excited, she exclaimed to me and another Goodwill patron, "hey will either of you or both of you listen to me for just a minute." I walked over to her and listened, "my aunt wrote this children's book." She showed us the cover. I had seen the book before so I asked if the author was a teacher and if she'd autographed it. The gal said in so many words that her aunt had been a teacher and that yes, it was autographed inside. She placed the book back on the shelf and turned to me and the guy that was looking at the other discounted books and she said, "I just had to tell someone, it isn't everyday that you find a book written by someone you know." The guy told her, "pretty cool." Because I hadn't showered and had just finished six (yes, usually three) rounds of bowling and because I don't want my cookbooks or books on the Goodwill shelves, I didn't divulge my authorship status of 86 plus books. (About the same number as my bowling score, lol.)
But while at the Goodwill, I picked up "Who Moved My Cheese?" and read it voraciously half of the book last night.
I called my son and told him that I am reading, "Who moved my cheese?" He said it, "sounded naughty." I told him in all seriousness that he's reading it next. Salacious and all.
In the book, "Who Moved My Cheese?" it tells a lesson about the two "little human people" and the "two mice". The lesson is about change and our ability to adapt. (Side note: I believe the book written long before Covid helps us with the additional challenges of life and living through a pandemic.)
So far the gist of the book is that the little human people can't accept inevitable change that the cheese has been moved and they keep going back and waiting, wondering, and wanting to eat the cheese, not cut it. LOL.
The mice have moved on once they realized that the cheese had been moved and they are looking to find more cheese, not dwelling on the change that has just transpired, rather springing into mouse action.
I can keep bowling the way I think I am supposed to bowl, or I can take tips from bowlers who have bowled for years. To me it relates to life. I can think I know everything or I can be willing to change and adapt, like today I created multiple versions of my cookbooks into new formats, "e-books, pdf's, audio books." I am changing with the times.
After our bowling lesson, he wanted to share a bible lesson. What church do you go to? I told him the names of two churches. He then harped quite a bit on the being catholic bit but he had another interesting point. He said, "if you are headed to Hawaii on an airplane or on a boat, doesn't matter, but if you are off by 10 degrees will you get to Hawaii? I said, "no." He was using it for an analogy about coming to Christ. A lot of people think Catholics worship Mary and what not. We revere Mary ask Mary to put in a good word for us to her son, but evangelical Christians think otherwise. That's a whole other lesson for later.
I wasn't about to teach him a lesson. But I learned a valuable lesson--if you listen to others and take what you like and leave the rest, you can learn to be a better bowler, and believer.
Now I think I'll make a cheesecake!
