Christmas

Dec 26 2011

Christmas Morning Breakfast Tradition

It is no secret I like to cook. I could do it all day if I had a good idea of what I was doing. So I have my own Christmas tradition, and that is to cook Christmas morning breakfast for the family. It has gone on now for about 4 years and I don’t plan on stopping unless I’m not here. Each year and I get fancier and fancier and try to improve.

Last year I had come up with the brilliant idea of Eggnog French Toast and it was good. So this year I wanted to hit it out of the park – which I didn’t – and found a recipe on AllRecipes.com.

Eggnog French Toast

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/eggnog-french-toast-2/

I’ll spare you the details of how to make it and just let you know, using the proper bread is essential. I didn’t, instead used fresh normal sliced toast and that failed. They came out to soggy and didn’t cook well. The trick is to use french bread that is stale or semi-stale, so it still holds it form when it the egg is cooking. Nevertheless though they still tasted great.

Creamy Cheese Scrambled Eggs

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/creamy-cheesy-scrambled-eggs-with-basil/

Scrambled Eggs are easy to make, a little milk in with the eggs, salt, pepper and done. They are hard to screw up unless you cook them too long. I wanted something different though, something unique. So again I hit up AllRecipes.com and found these. I had never made them with Sour Cream before, but I thought it as it still was a dairy product, the eggs would be fine, and they was. They turned out fine and tasted good, although the texture was different from regular scrambled eggs. These seemed to crumble more and I believe that is due to the Sour Cream. Good though.

The Meat

Of course no meal with KyleWith would be complete without meat. This is nothing special though. In a fry pan I just cooked up 1lb 1/2 of bacon and some breakfast sausages.

That is my Christmas morning tradition, after the family gathers to exchange gifts of course. What Christmas Day traditions do you have?

Dec 25 2011

Merry Christmas to you all

Here we are Christmas Morning and I do hope you are spending time with your Family or Friends instead of reading this. If you don’t have either or are without this year, I hope this post brings to you comfort.

At publishing time I’m sure my brother will have woken the house and got us all ready to share time together and exchange gifts.

I do hope Santa was good to you. I ran into him on the streets of Yellowknife last night, but forgot to ask about you, but judging by the size of his sack of presents, we should all be good.

I hope this message find you well. Merry Christmas to you and yours from KyleWith

Dec 24 2011

The Best Chocolate Christmas Balls

Well here we are, Christmas Eve of 2011. My did it come fast; it came so fast I think I lost some of my Christmas spirit somewhere. Nevertheless I will find it by tomorrow morning, as the family is gathered around to celebrate a great day.

One of the great things about coming home to my parents for the holidays is the baking. My mom bakes a lot and sells it at the annual craft sales that take place in November and early December and par for the course we get to eat what doesn’t sell. As I’m now older and have found I rather enjoy cooking I thought I would try my had at a – very easy – recipe. Chocolate Balls, as my brother and I would call them. They are easy and quick to make and don’t actually require any baking.

Here is what you need:

3 Squares Chocolate
2 1/4 Cups Crushed Graham Crackers
3 Cups Icing Sugar
3 Eggs
1 1/2 Cups Butter
Handful of Sprinkles – up to you

The first thing you are going to want to do is crush the Graham Crackers, if you were like me and didn’t buy the pre-crushed ones. Simply put them in a zip-lock bag and use a rolling pin to crush the heck out of them. Try and get them as fine as possible so they don’t clump together in the balls.

Next you want to get yourself a good size mixing bowl for all this stuff that will need to be mixed. Throw in the graham cracker crumbs, icing sugar, eggs and soft butter. Mix that together for a minute or two.

Meanwhile you should put your 2 Chocolate Squares into a separate bowl of such and melt the chocolate in the Microwave. If you do not have a microwave, in a pot on the stove will work as well. The chocolate doesn’t have to be bubbling, but soft enough to mix.

I’m sure you guessed the next part of this little recipe. Add the melted chocolate to the mixture you already have going on. Mix it together good and snug.

Now that you mixture is all together, you may want to let it sit for a bit to harden up before rolling. Once you have done that though, I like to roll of the chocolate before I put on the sprinkles. Generally the balls be about 1″ in diameter or small if desired. Honestly, this part is up to you.

Once you have you balls rolled…. errr…. Once your chocolate is formed, it is time for the sprinklies! yay. For me this is actually the most annoying part, so it is best if the chocolate balls are still room temperature. I have found there are two ways of doing this. The first is to lay down some wax paper and them pour sprinkles on top of it and roll the balls in that. Or a new method I came up with it pouring all the sprinkles into a zip-lock bag and putting in one ball at a time. I like the zip-lock method because it is also makes less mess.

Then boom-badda-bing you are done. I like to change up the sprinkles I use, some Christmas themed, some plain, etc. Also if you want to get adventurous and like coconut, unlike me, you can also roll the balls in coconut.

Best to store them in an air tight container in the fridge and eaten cold. They are good trust me.

Let me know what you think. I’m curious to see if anyone has done something similar before.

Dec 19 2011

Where I have been without my teeth

At first I was all like, omg I haven’t blogged in almost a week, my fans must be missing me! Then of course I remembered, no one actually cares about my blog. I don’t have widely crazed reader that go crazy if I don’t post for a while, nor do I have a lot of subscribers who only check their inboxes at 5am to read my latest post.

That being said I’ll catch you up anyways. We’ll start with the wisdom teeth. A lot of us have been there, the jaw striking pain jolting through your mouth. Surprise! It is a tooth you don’t really need anymore. Yes, that is what happened to me, but not really. Rewind about a year, both my bottom wisdom teeth broke through my gums into my mouth. Praise the lord, they appeared to be coming in straight, or so I thought. They ever so slowly grew into my mouth and all the while I was thinking I was getting an extra pair of chompers to gnaw on food, they had other plans though.

Back to present day or December 2, 2011. Hello pain! What I once thought was straight was actually forward. My two lower wisdom teeth were moving forward, pushing on my other teeth and cause horrid pain in my jaw bone when I would chew and close my mouth. Time to see the dentist it was. The call was made, an exam setup for the following Wednesday.

While at the dentist for the exam, I dreaded the bill. 21 years old, live on my own and have no dental coverage, but it had to be done. So I got the $99 exam done, which is when I found out the teeth were not growing up, they were growing forward. Another appointment is set, this time for the extraction.

December 12, 2011, 5 days before I’m set to fly home for the Christmas season. After 6, yes 6, injections to freeze my mouth it is frozen. Then the pulling the prodding begins. I can’t feel a darn thing other than the pressure, which is fine. After digging around on the left side of my mouth for about 7 minutes, the dentist and his assistant switch to the other side. Which they then dig and prod for another 7ish minutes and finally pull the tools out of my mouth. I hadn’t realized it, but they were done. The teeth were gone, I had holes in my mouth.

I commend my dentist, he did a quick clean job. I was literally only in the chair for 30mins, which is good from what I hear. After waiting for my ride I was back at work by 9:30am. Yes, to work. I went to work right after, frozen mouth and all. I could walk, kind of talk, so I figured I could sit at a desk and work as well. No point going home and doing nothing.

Over the next work week I was well enough to work but I was drained. I had very little energy to do anything else. I would work, get food from somewhere – this was a challenge not really being able to chew, so I had a lot of soup and pasta – and sleep. That would explain why I wasn’t checking Twitter much or writing my normal weekly rambles.

Many people would tell me I had nothing to worry about in the healing process and other would tell me horror story and to be extremely careful. Needless to say I sat in the middle. I was very cautious about what I ate. I would still eat pastas, salads and such, but very slowly with lots of water and no straw. My stomach seemed to feel a lot better as I had cut out all carbonated drinks and only ate what I absolutely could. I truly hope this trait continues in my diet.

Today I’m feeling good, I didn’t take need to take any pain killers and I actually ate a burger. It was good.

So that is where I am at. I’m about 70% on Christmas Holidays and have a stock pile of blog posts to write, not like you really care.

Merry Christmas.