Tag: egg

No Flour Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Cookies

On By Michel McDonaldIn Food, HealthLeave a comment

gluten free no flour peanut butter cookies

Did you know you could make peanut butter cookies with just 3 ingredients?  1 cup of peanut butter, 1 cup of sugar and 1 egg.  That’s it.  My mother taught me how to make homemade peanut butter cookies when I was a teenager, but I don’t even remember what the recipe was, but it did involve a lot of ingredients.  They were really good, but these are better.  And the fact that they are gluten-free is even better.

So here is the recipe.  Combine 1 cup of peanut butter, 1 cup of sugar and 1 egg and mix until it’s like a dough and the peanut butter isn’t sticking to the bowl.  Make 36 balls and smash them with a fork and bake them at 375F for 9 minutes each.  That’s it.  No muss no fuss.  They are 67.9 calories per cookie.

But… if you want them to be healthier, make your own peanut butter.

If you have a food processor (if not a blender would work), add 1 cup of unsalted peanuts and grind it until it’s chunky.  Add 1 tbsp of peanut oil, 1 tbsp of packed brown sugar (or any sweetener that you prefer) and 1 tsp of salt and blend it until it’s as smooth as peanut butter.  Then add 1 cup of sugar and 1 egg and blend it some more until it’s like a dough.  The calories go down to 62 calories per cookie.  That’s not a lot, but it’s something, and at least you know what went into your peanut butter because you made it.

Look at your store bought peanut butter, look at the list of ingredients.  It has high fructose corn syrup and more corn syrup.  That is what you aren’t putting into your peanut butter cookies and that makes it healthy.

Want your cookies to have even less calories?  Replace the peanuts with pecans and your cookies go down to 52 calories per cookie.  I created this recipe for the SparkPeople website for No Flour Pecan Butter Cookies because we have a pecan tree that drops a lot of pecans.  Instead of wasting them, I’m going to make pecan butter and pecan butter cookies out of them.  I’m not sure how they will taste because I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m looking forward to trying it this week.  I will blog about it with a picture.  If it doesn’t work out then I will blog about my failure LOL.

Dark Shadows (2012) with Johnny Depp

On By Michel McDonaldIn Movies1 Comment

I have been waiting for Dark Shadows for a few months and I couldn’t wait to go see it.  I never had the chance to see the original Dark Shadows because I wasn’t born when it first began and I was only a baby when it ended, so I never got the full experience.

I actually didn’t even know about it until I saw an episode of King and Queens when it was brought up because there was a convention that Spence (Patton Oswalt) was going to go to but his girlfriend wouldn’t let him go only because Carrie (Leah Remini) told her to stand up for herself which turned her into a crazy control freak.

Darrin told me when we were leaving the theater that this movie had gotten a few bad reviews.  Well guess what, they can suck an egg because this was a good movie.  Anything with Johnny Depp is going to be awesome and I really don’t listen to those reviews anyway.

Netflix has the original series, I don’t know how many episodes they have, but it says they have all 4 seasons.  I looked it up on IMDB and it doesn’t say that it has more than 1 season, it just shows 1966 – 1971.  I tried to watch it on the internet but I could only find 12 episodes which were dated in 1966.  It was a 5 day a week show so there are going to be a ton of episodes to watch, 1225 episodes to be exact since that is how many episodes IMDB says there are, luckily they were only 30 minutes long.  Then go check it out on Hulu because there was a remake of only 12 episodes from the 90’s.  So that should be quite interesting to watch.

I saw an interview on TV where they said that Johnny Depp was in the original series as the little boy.  Well, he was born in 1963 and the show first began in 1966 so it was possible, but he would’ve only been 3 years old.  Well, I scrolled through the list of cast members and his name was nowhere to be seen.  I then went to his IMDB page and his career began in 1984 with a Nightmare on Elm Street.  I know this is not even worth mentioning since it’s not even true, but you know, it’s something they said on TV and well, there you have it.

At any rate, go see this movie because it was very good and it was fun to watch.  Since I never saw the original, I didn’t get any inside jokes if there were any from the original series.  If you never saw the original then you won’t get it either, but it doesn’t matter because the movie was funny enough on it’s own.

When you go, get your picture taken on one of the displays for Dark Shadows like I did…

Gay Pride in Bakersfield

On By Michel McDonaldIn gay prideLeave a comment

I had no idea that Bakersfield ever participated in Gay Pride until a week ago when I received an email from the Human Rights Campaign asking me if I wanted to volunteer.

“Of course I want to volunteer” was my first thought.

I got on AIM and told our good friend Venda that I would volunteer if she would volunteer, of course I was going to do it anyway, I just wanted to see if she would do it too lol.

She agreed that she would do it so I sent her the email from HRC so she could sign up.

You know it’s funny, I haven’t been to a gay pride in years.  The first and last time I ever went to gay pride was when I was 23 years old and that was in West Hollywood.  They had a parade and then they had like this fair afterwards with these booths where you walk around from booth to booth getting free stickers and what not.

The reason it has taken me this long is because when I lived in Hollywood, we just never had the money to go anywhere and then we moved here and we just figured that Bakersfield would never have a gay pride.  Well, they do now.

I’ve never volunteered for this kind of thing so I can’t wait for tomorrow.  It’s like Disneyland but the only mice you will find are really bears.

At first I thought I should be worried about protesters but it doesn’t matter, they can suck an egg for all I care.  I’m not even going to waste my time thinking about them or waste any of the fun I’m going to have when I’m handing out whatever it is I will be handing out.

If you are in Bakersfield Saturday October 15th, come see me at Stramler Park between 1-4pm.  I’ll be the bald guy with the glasses.

Denny’s, Harry Potter, Sack Boy and DQ

On By Michel McDonaldIn Computer, Food, PSP, TechLeave a comment

I’m writing this late at night, past midnight so when you read this it will probably be Friday. Oh who am I kidding, you’ll probably be reading it 6 months down the road. At any rate, we had a pretty good and long day. It all started with going to Denny’s for breakfast. I had the Grand Slam Slugger for $8 which was 2 pancakes, 2 sausage, 2 bacon, 2 scrambled eggs, hash browns and it came with coffee or juice, I chose coffee.

The scrambled eggs were the best thing about that meal. Normally I’m saying how wonderful the pancakes and hash browns are but I gotta give huge props to the eggs. They were smooth as silk. I don’t know what their secret is but I haven’t had scrambled eggs that felt that good on my tongue in my entire life. And I’m an egg lover too so it’s strange to hear me say that I’ve never had eggs that tasted that good before. They were just so awesome.

After breakfast we came home and were just going to go about our day but Darrin decided he wanted to go to the movies so I printed the schedule from Fandango. I kept telling him the only movie that was playing was Harry Potter but he just didn’t believe me. I showed him the list and he agreed that we could go see Harry Potter. YAY for me!

So we got in the car and drove to the mall, got tickets and a soda then went in. The movie was about 2 hours and 27 minutes. I really don’t like buying drinks when you go see a movie that lasts longer than 90 minute but we got one anyway. I held it for as long as I could and when a scene came up where I assumed it wouldn’t be too dramatic I shot out of my chair and ran to the mens room. I was able to enjoy the rest of the movie pain-free which is how it should be.

I think they should install a bathroom in every theater right near the stairs with tv’s above the urinals or above the toilets for the ladies so you don’t miss a thing, especially when movies are 2.5 – 3 hours long or longer. It’s not fair to sell so much drink and then make us miss a few minutes of our movie or suffer the pain.

I thought it was a pretty good movie considering they usually don’t match the movies with the books. I was just expecting some of the basics but they were pretty good with this one. I loved the movie but I don’t think my movie companion wasn’t into it. He didn’t read the books so he doesn’t really care. It’s a futile effort to have to explain it to him when he probably isn’t listening anyway.

I really wanted to see it and knew I wouldn’t get another chance until it came out on DVD and I hate being the last one to see a Harry Potter movie.

When we left the movies we went into the mall and I bought a new PSP game with my $25 gift card for Game Stop from doing surveys at E-Rewards. They moved all of the PSP games so it took me several minutes to find them. Considering that store is about the size of our living room, you’d think that I would’ve found them right away but I didn’t. I did eventually find them right near the cash registers.

They had them on a display instead of on the wall and so I had to crouch carefully so I didn’t fall and also so I could let people look at the video games on the wall behind me. It’s not an easy thing to do in such small spaces but I managed to find a game that I wanted which was Little Big Planet.

I’ve actually wanted Little Big Planet since it came out but it was too expensive and I didn’t have a gift card for it so I went without. Poor me lol. I did download the demo and thought it was fun. A friend of mine brags to me every chance that she gets that she has it for her PS3 because she knew I didn’t have it for my PSP. I have it now Sue so what are you gonna say now? Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah :p.

I played it for a few hours on my HDTV instead of the tiny PSP screen only because my eyes are getting worse every day. I had a little trouble adjusting to the way the game is played but once you figure things out it becomes easy.

I went to look in the online section and it said I needed a system update first before I could access anything online and they added something new to the PSP but they haven’t really given us the ability to use it yet. It’s called Qriocity in the music section. All it says is coming soon. I looked at the video section (on their website) for it and I think that will only work on the PS3 but it appears to be a streaming video rental service like Netflix. So I can only assume the music one is the same thing but… you know… music. Meh, if that’s a monthly service then I’m not interested. I can just as easily turn my radio on to listen to new music.

When we left Game Stop we went to the Dairy Queen and got 2 medium Blizzards because I had an anniversary BOGO coupon. I ordered the new peppermint one but then changed my mind because I figured if it has hard candy in it I might not enjoy it as much so I got Pumpkin Pie. Darrin got the same but after a few bites he realized he didn’t really like it that much. I loved it so I ate his lol. I had 2 blizzards. No wonder I can’t lose weight LOL.

I think that we had a wonderful day, although at times boring for him but fun for me. Tomorrow (or today if you are reading this on Friday, or in 6 months then 6 months ago) I will start putting the tree up. My back has been really killing me but I really want to do it. Christmas is my favorite time of year even though I’m not a Christian. People have told me I have no right celebrating it but you know what I say to those people. Shush and mind your own beeswax.

I’m not celebrating the birth of Jesus, I’m celebrating the giving and receiving of presents. Mainly giving because I’m embroidering those Christmas stockings as a gift for the children. Plus I like the look of the trees and the lights and the ornaments on the tree. I celebrated Christmas my entire life since I was a baby so I think I have every right to continue celebrating it until the day I die if I wish to do so. Just because my religious beliefs change doesn’t mean I have to change my mind about the holidays. So to those who say I have no right to celebrate it, you can suck it because it’s a free country, I can celebrate it any way I want to. When you pay my bills then you can tell me what I can and can’t do with my life. Until then, shush.

Wow is it after 3am? Ok well I gotta get up at like 8 so goodnight all or if you are just waking up then Good morning. And if this is 6 months into the future and you are reading it with your brain implants well, I don’t know what greetings you future cyborg people so good 0101011010100101101 to you.

Prop-8 Decision Today

On By Michel McDonaldIn Gay Rights, NOH8, Political, Prop 81 Comment

Image via Wikipedia

The NOH8 Campaign twittered this just a few minutes ago:

“: Chicagoans Plan Rally in Response to #PROP8 Ruling   http://tinyurl.com/32q3jrq #NOH8 #LGBT Be heard!”

So I went over to that website and read it. I think that the National Organization for [Straight] Marriage is being just a little melodramatic with this statement.

““We want supporters of marriage all across the country to have a clear understanding of the threat this federal judge poses to the very survival of marriage in America.”

Tell me one straight married couple whose marriage is going to be threatened by gays getting married. Not one! How is gays getting married going to threaten your way of life? It’s not. The whole point of gays wanting to get married is number 1 equal rights and number 2 health care benefits.

I think it sucks that straight married couples who have health care benefits through their employer can pass those benefits over to their spouse but a gay couple is out of luck in that department. Is that what is going to threaten their marriage? The fact that the gays will be able to give their dying partners a chance at life with health insurance?

There are way more benefits than I just spoke about such as being able to bury your partner, being able to make medical decisions in the hospital as well as after death when they have passed on.  Many more which I can’t think of so if you can enlighten me with a comment.

Go lay an egg.

Rick Jacobs, founder of the pro-LGBT unions Courage Campaign said in this article . “I can only say that based on the evidence in the trial, it is absolutely clear that allowing gays and lesbians to marry will strengthen families and the nation,” and “No matter how the judge rules … we’ve already won a significant victory because the other side admitted they have no argument.”

See that? No argument. They have to prove that gays getting married is going to threaten marriage and they can’t prove it because it’s not going to threaten marriage. How can it? I just don’t see the logic in their argument.

The religious people don’t want gays getting married because “the bible says it’s wrong” boo hoo. They say being gay is a sin so they shouldn’t be allowed to get married because being gay is a choice. Ok well if being gay were a choice then I can choose to be straight right? … … … yeah, not gonna happen. It’s not that easy because I have news for you, I was born this way. I didn’t have a choice in the matter, it just happened to me.

Believe me, if I had a choice I wouldn’t choose to have eggs thrown at me, punches thrown at my face by my stepdad and the other kids in school who made fun of me and called me faggot everyday. I didn’t choose that, I wouldn’t choose that. So their argument has no merit since it’s a BS argument.

The ruling will be in some time this afternoon.  This whole prop-8 BS campaign is never going to end because both sides are just going to keep appealing it.

Dunkin’ Cruelty?

On By Michel McDonaldIn NewsLeave a comment

I just read an update on Facebook by someone who is a comedian Carol Leifer and she is asking people to support this.  It’s called Dunkin’ Cruelty.  It’s a website that someone has created, most likely someone from PETA, to urge people to beg Dunkin’ Donuts to stop using eggs and dairy in their donuts.

You know, I am all for helping animals from animal cruelty and all but how exactly is this going to impact the egg and dairy industry?  First of all they are urging them to stop using eggs AND dairy yet they only talk about how cruel the chickens are treated, not about the cows.  And 2nd of all, what the hell do you think they serve at EVERY restaurant in the world?  Eggs and Dairy.  So why is it that out of all the restaurants in the whole world you are pickin’ on Dunkin’ Donuts?

How horrible are their donuts going to taste with no eggs in them?  I mean seriously.  Why not just boycott Dunkin’ Donuts and get it over with instead of begging them to bland up their donuts?  How exactly do you make a donut without eggs?

I guess I don’t see the point in this.  Human beings need eggs for protein and they need dairy to build strong bones.  Eggs are not fertile, they aren’t going to be a future chicken since they are not fertilized by a male and the milk is produced by cows daily anyway so why can’t all the carnivores enjoy their eggs and milk and leave us alone?

Neat Breakfast Ideas

On By Michel McDonaldIn FoodLeave a comment

I was just thinking of something.  Why go to McDonald’s for a breakfast sandwich when you have the Big City Sliders Station?  All you have to do is buy some ground up sausage meat then roll it into balls and press them with this thing but don’t cook it in there.  Just pop them out and cook them on the skillet (or BBQ).

Then beat some eggs and pour them into the 5 spaces and of course, as per instructions cook on low heat for 4 minutes.  Obviously since it’s eggs you can’t press them and you can’t use that top press piece to put on top of the eggs, it’s too heavy and the eggs will come out and get all over the place.  So what I think is let them cook for a few minutes.  Since they are small spaces they won’t take that long to cook then you can just add the lid when it’s pretty solid.  It says that you can flip them so that’s a good idea I guess if you can.  Make sure you use Pam.

Then once you are done cooking the eggs and the sausage take some English muffins or better yet, make some fresh baked biscuits.  Preferably from the recipe from the Bisquick mix instead of the ones that are in a tube.  Those are never right.  But when those are done just slice it then place the sausage on the bottom, a piece of cheese (optional) on top of the sausage then add the egg on top.

I’m sure this will be such a good sandwich.  And since they are so tiny you could enjoy a few of them.  I can’t wait to try this.  When I do I’m going to take some pictures and add it to the recipes page heh.

Easter

On By Michel McDonaldIn HolidaysLeave a comment

It’s that time of year again where all the kids of America gorge themselves on hard-boiled eggs and chocolate rabbits.  For Christians, Easter is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ but for children it’s the celebration of the Easter Bunny coming to bring them baskets filled with cavities and egg farts.

It’s a joyous occasion for all, whether they be christians, pagans, atheists and children because no matter what you believe, you still get to eat junk food for the day then ham for dinner and then ham sandwiches for the next few days afterwards.

I’ve been enjoying Easter for the last 2 months since the stores took down the Valentine’s day goodies and started putting the Easter candy in.  My dentist loves the business that I give him.

Cell Phone Popcorn

On By Michel McDonaldIn HumorLeave a comment

I was just sent this video that shows these people with cell phones sitting in a circle on a table with about 5 or 6 pieces of pre-popped popcorn and they each call their perspective cell phones and all of a sudden these pieces of corn just start popping.  Then they show another group doing it then another group doing it all getting the same results, popcorn.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pXg0TifZpQ

However, I went to YouTube so I can get the video so I can embed it in here much easier than just putting in a link and I found this one instead.  It’s from a radio show called “The Regular Guys” on 100.5 FM in Atlanta, Georgia.  They try the same thing but get no results.  I don’t know if it’s because one of the cell phones was vibrating away from the corn or not but the corn did not pop thus debunking this myth.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC4eeB2M7hk

There is a spoof video of these guys trying it with a steak.  Check it out it’s so funny.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=przkFZJSkOc

I went to Snopes.com to get the whole truth about this and it’s false.  The snopes page that I actually went to was about cooking an egg with a cell phone but towards the bottom of the page they showed these videos about popcorn.  They show a CNN news story where they talk to the guy who created these videos for a blue tooth company who basically made this up to sell his product and these stunts are all for a commercial.  Not meant to scare people but meant as a joke and to sell their product.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOZZ6dJiIgo

Update 2011-02-09: Apparently it seems that 2 out of 4 of the videos in this post have become private.  I’m assuming because the people who put the first video up knew that it was fake so they made it private because they were probably getting negative messages.  The last video at the bottom (above this update) is private and I don’t know why.  I do know that this was a hilarious stunt and it should be back up for all to enjoy.

White Castle Burgers

On By Michel McDonaldIn FoodLeave a comment

No we don’t have a White Castle here where I live in Bakersfield, CA but they do sell the little mini burgers in the frozen foods section of our grocery store.  I didn’t buy those because I wanted to make them my own way.

I’ve been seeing these commercials a lot lately for Big City Slider thing that you take this measuring spoon and scoop up the hamburger meat and put the balls into this thing, it has 5 slots and when you filled them all you press them down with the lid.  You then cook the mini burgers directly on your stove top and keep the lid on it and it cooks them from both sides, top and bottom.  It cooks them all the way through to the middle much faster than if you have to flip them.

Well, I don’t have the $25 to shell out for one of those ($20 plus shipping) so instead I just went to the store and bought 1 1/2lb of ground beef (80% fat-free) and I had an egg and I bought some bread crumbs and mixed the meat with the egg and bread crumbs and Darrin added some BBQ spices to the mixture.  I then rolled them by hand and smashed them by hand and cooked them on the skillet.  I then sliced the entire package of Hawaiian rolls and spread mayo on tops and bottoms then put the little mini burgers on the rolls.

The commercial makes you look so incompetent like you can’t make white castle burgers without making a complete mess of things and without the burgers breaking apart lol.  I didn’t have any problems and I also saved $25 so there Billy Maye’s hehe :p.

Since the package of rolls had 12 I had 6 and Darrin had 6.  Luckily there was enough meat.  I thought I was going to be forced to eat 2 rolls without meat hehe.  I love those rolls.  The Hawaiian rolls were so much better than regular plain old rolls too.  I recommend those when making white castle burgers.

Oh, why you ask did I use 1 egg?  My mom taught me when I was a kid that the egg will keep the burgers from falling apart and she’s right.  They don’t fall apart.