Got So Excited

I lost my mind at Michael’s yesterday. Ok let me back up!

I am preparing for a chocolate creation for the annual fundraiser that our church hosts in connection with the local high school’s art and music program. Every year, members of the church make something chocalatey for participants to sample. The fundraiser billed CHOCOLATE EXTRAVANZA is a chocolate buffet. I have always made truffles. I believe this would be the 5th year of the fundraiser and I am the reigning people’s choice champion in the truffle division (cake, cookie and bark are the other divisions). Because of this, there is more pressure for me to up my game with my chocolate creation.

Last week, I tested my recipe. While it was good, my friend who barely eats anything had three of my “truffles” and she said they were good. I knew they were good, but I felt they lacked some oomph in them. Consulting my husband on the recipe we decided to switch it from all chocolate flavor to lemon flavor (my winning truffle last year was a green tea truffle).

Shopping for ingredients was slated yesterday. Hubs called me at work to make arrangement to meet at Grocery Outlet after work. I came early and texted him that I would be gawking at all the beautiful things at Michael’s which is next door to the grocery store.

I picked up a set of coloring pencils (my first set needs replacement after I’ve colored so many mandalas and zentangles). On a whim I made a beeline to the food decorating section……………… and Oh Em Gee!!!!!!

Who knew there are all these utensils and devices to make chocolate creations easy breezy. The husband went straight to Michael’s and I showed him what he needed to make his creation. We bought a mold. And I had to contain myself from hyperventilating. I was so excited and I am already looking forward to making edibles for Christmas gift giving. I love you Michael’s.

And so......

Okay, I was silent here again.

I was busy, I think.

While I was quiet here I went to the Giants game one Friday night, for the Pancreatic Cancer Society fundraiser.

The Giants lost, big time. They were getting no hit until the late innings. Pathetic.

Also, I've been reading some more. I really really enjoyed the last one that I read from John Grisham.

Good news. My green tea truffle that I entered for our church's Chocolate Extravaganza fundraiser won first place in the candy category! Can you belive that?

I practiced it first. I brought a sample to my co-workers. One of them is a great cook. She makes wonderful chocolate barks and other snacks. She said it was okay. Another co-worker said the flavor was okay, although the green tea flavor was weak. Of course she's Asian and she, like me, craves for the bold green tea flavor. However, my audience was probably not into the bold green tea presence in a chocolate truffle.

So I made my basic chocolate truffle and added chopped up candied ginger then sprinkled it with green tea. I instagrammed it here.

I believed the reason why I was chosen by the tasters was that my entry was a bit different from the usual brownie, or caramel flavor. I'm so happy I tell you. It's ironic that someone who has no kitchen know how gets to win a cooking contest :).

In another news, I finally got to the movies again. Today we saw San Andreas. It's an okay movie. That is all I have to say.

Still here

Another week has gone by and no post.

The past week was busy. Our church's main annual fundraiser was last Saturday and you know that there wouldn't be any posting on Friday, or Saturday, or even Sunday for that matter. The event was big enough to be very exhausting. While I spent most of the Saturday prepping for the event and/or in the event working the tills, Sunday was devoted to Lifetime TV for Women and editing photographs. We don't have the official tally, but I'm not positive we made more money than last year, or even equaled last year's take. Still, we continue to learn as the years go by.

What was really inspiring with this year's fundraiser was how the parents of the kids from the Conservatory of Arts (Music) supported the event, from selling tickets and raffle tickets to helping out in the kitchen during the event. Their presence was big on the night of the event. It was wonderful to be working alongside the parents. Afterall, this fundraiser benefits both the church and the conservatory. With all the budget cuts in schools these days, money for music programs are difficult to come by and so we try to help out these kids as much as possible.

A graduate of the high school from last year's Conservatory of Arts attended the event and even played piano. While people mill about sampling one scrumptious chocolate confection to another, the kids from the music program play beautiful music from jazz to standards.

The weather cooperated somewhat. The days were hot leading to the event, but cooled down a bit, just a bit, for the event. We had fans in four corners of the room and the windows were all open to let the breeze in.

We were afraid the chocolates would melt with the heat, but they didn't, thank heavens!

And so one big job done. What's next?

In a month I'm going to hop on a plane to complete a personal project. I've been toying about blogging about it daily. I'll be gone for about 10 days minimum. I just hope I have free internet where I'm going.

In the meantime, this weekend, we have a date with another couple. Back to Napa we go with a wine tasting in the afternoon and an early dinner at my fave tapas place. Okay so I've only been to this restaurant once before, but I really like the ambiance and the food and the service. It's not the lack of interest that prevented me from coming back again and again to this restaurant, it's the budget that should be blamed. Eating out can make a big dent to one's household budget, so we try not to indulge too much in this activity we love so much - eating out.

Ready for Chocolate Extravaganza Fundraiser

The annual fundraiser at church is this Saturday, June 22. This being its 3rd year in existence, the preparations are less hectic than the first year. You cannot imagine the number of meetings we had planning the fundraiser. We were meeting like weekly starting in January. And the event was June.

Anyway, in addition to the more relaxed atmosphere overall, personally I am more relaxed heading into the fundraiser. I will again be in tandem with Susan manning the cash register. I hope we will be busy all night long.

And so I planned last night to be our "making chocolate" night. So we made our chocolate concoctions last night. I even photographed my finished products. They look good, they even look yummy. They were yummy, we sampled one piece each.

The hubby made some desserts this year. He passed last year, but he made one in year one. Last night he made two kinds, a fudge and a chocolate carrot cake. Mine is a crunchy apricot chocolate delight. I got the recipe online, but made revisions left and right, you wouldn't recognize the original recipe. It might as well be an original Maria recipe.

I wasn't too stressed making the chocolates this year. Unlike last year when I was feeling so overwhelmed. Must be the fact that last year I made my entry on a Friday and the event was Saturday.

That was the main reason why I scheduled making chocolates this year on a Wednesday instead of the eve of the event just so there's plenty of time for the chocolate to chill. In addition, if and when there are chocolate emergencies where the creations are total disasters there will be enough time to fix or make a new batch. I'm glad I learned my lesson last year.

But I thought I would be able to blog last night, after making the chocolates and cleaning up after, but I was too tired to do anything. My back was killing me and so I joined Buster (my orange cat) in the living room and stretched out on the couch. I cannot even remember the tv program I was watching while waiting for hubby to finish baking his masterpiece. When we were finally able to go upstairs in the bedroom, the 11 o'clock news was well underway.

What's been happening?

What's been happening?

Lately I've been feeling overwhelmed. It felt like I've got too many balls up in the air, and I could hardly juggle my way into it. However, I decided to step back and see the situation minus my emotions. It couldn't have been that hectic if I could still sit for a whole hour to watch my favorite tv show (well all of them at different times) or even unwind by playing computer games. I'm glad I took a little breather and stepped back so I could see things clearly.

The past several days I've been dreaming weird dreams. For 3 consecutive nights, I dreamed I was inserted in tv shows/movies. The characters were there and so was I. There was one night that I woke up exhausted because it was one of those slasher movies. I shy away from this type of movies, but I'm familiar with this one. The other 2 nights I dreamed my self was in two different tv shows from Syfy. Weird. And tiring. I really need good sleep.

Organized the first Bingo Night at church over the weekend, which was successful. I don't know when's the next one because Bingo is part of the Monthly Activity Program and Bingo would have to wait in rotation with Movie Night and Game Night.

On my to-do list:
• fix skirts by hemming in new ribbons (still need to buy ribbons at fabric store)
• get jewelry fixed. need my pearl necklace restrung. got two pearl necklaces that need this fix. may be I can do it.
• collect all dust-gathering fiction books in the house and donate them in the library. also must take all magazines to hospital/clinic waiting rooms.
• find an easy chocolate treat to make for our church's fundraiser in June called Chocolate Extravaganza.
• find new pet insurance.
• research about fix our ferals program and/or volunteer to the clinic.
• sign up for swimming lessons.

So far those are my to-do list. I've been travel free the first quarter of this year, which is pretty much the norm around here lately. I've got quite a project this year that might cramp my travel plans but while it's not travel vacation per se, the project requires I board a plane to Mexico, so it can be loosely defined as a travel as well.

Since I'll be mostly here in Northern California this year, I'm looking forward to:
• Lavender Festival in Santa Rosa
• Lavender Festival in Kenwood
• Eat Real Festival in Oakland
• Little get-away in the Central Coast, either Monterey area or Cambria/Morro Rock area.
• Little get-away in the North Coast preferably in Mendocino.
• Visiting Mt. Diablo State Park.
• More day trips to Sonoma and Napa Valleys.

When I lag behind writing posts here, I tend to consider shutting this down, despite the fact that I needed this to document what's been happening. I just really keep this going for me. If you read the posts, thanks. If you don't, that's fine too.

Fundraiser Photos

Event poster


Tickets


Waiting


Underway


Silent Auction


Local high schools art/music program is beneficiary.

And some of the chocolate offerings:










First prize winner


My personal favorite









You already know what I entered in this fundraiser.

A Tale of Two Truffles

I've planned on drafting a post about the "winning" recipe from my church's fundraiser. However, with work and preparation for the coming trip - only 10 days to go - free time was difficult to come by. So I was happy that Princessa Musang also asked about them.

No big deal about these recipes. I entered two types of chocolate truffles at the fundraiser on its second year. One was crème de menthe cookie truffle, the recipe of which came from a blog that I follow. The other was from Nestle, almond truffle, who can go wrong with Nestle, right?

As I said before no big deal. But this is me. I don't cook. I don't bake. The kitchen and I are practically strangers. My mother told my husband right after we got married, "My daughter doesn't know where the kitchen is." Thankfully, my husband loves to cook and turn to cooking for relaxation and meditation. God knows what we need and supplies it/he, before we even know it for ourselves.

And so when a group of strangers, people who buy tickets to pig out on chocolates vote my creation as one of the best 4 out of the many chocolate offerings in a fundraiser billed as CHOCOLATE EXTRAVAGANZA, that is a big deal.

This "win" comes at the heels of very little preparation. The crème de menthe truffle didn't need any test run before the affair. I've made it before. In fact I gave it away as Christmas gifts to family. They seem to like it. Who doesn't like chocolates anyway.

The almond truffle however is a new find. I was cleaning out the boxes in the garage one day when I found these postcard recipes in one of my boxes labeled "personal items". It's perplexing how they got there. The box contained old resumes, certificates from classes I've attended, some antiquated job hunt paraphernalias and a handful of Nestle recipes. Can you believe that? I didn't even cook in those days, during my single lady days.

It must have been foresight on my part that made me tack these recipes on the side of refrigerator. They stood there for a few months before the planning of the event. When the church was soliciting people/members for chocolate offerings, I gladly signed me up for the crème de menthe truffle. Out of nowhere and without forethought, I found myself putting down almond truffle as well.

Now my work is cut out for me. I knew this was my project and whatever role my husband would play in these truffles would be as supporting parts. He would not be the main baker/cook or whatchamacallit.

Despite the tight schedule - was at the same time busy with physical preparations for the event + working full-time - I managed to test run the recipe. I followed the recipe to a T, without the mister's help. It turned out well.

Now listen to this, on the truffles that we offered at the fundraiser, we didn't follow the recipe to a T. We substituted half of the milk required with half and half, we thought it would make it more rich and dense (almond truffle). We also added a little bit of butter for that shiny texture (crème de menthe). In addition, we jazzed it up with a little cognac, which was what was available in the house that day (creme de menthe). I brought some left-overs to my co-workers the next day and one lady called me up - we work in 2 different buildings - and says she's all boozed up and happy because she tasted cognac. I was surprised she even tasted it, I couldn't. In fact no body mentioned they tasted the booze. Almond truffle also had some cayenne pepper that wasn't in the original recipe.

Here are the recipes:

CREME DE MENTHE TRUFFLE



Ingredients:
15 Oreo cookies
2-3 oz softened cream cheese
1 pkg Andes mint candies (unwrapped about 28 total)
1/4 cup white or semi sweet chocolate chips (I skipped this ingredient.)

Put cookies in food processor and pulse till you get very fine crumbs. Add creme cheese and process till dough forms. Using a small cookie scoop, form into small balls. Place on a pan lined with parchment paper.

Microwave the Andes candies, stirring every 15-30 seconds until melted. Cool slightly. Dip truffles in chocolate; place onto pan. Let stand 5 minutes or until the chocolate is set.

Microwave chocolate chips on HIGH 30-60 seconds until melted. Drizzle chocolate over truffles. Let stand 10 minutes or until chocolate is set. Store truffles in an airtight container in the fridge.

This made 24 truffles, depends on the size of the truffles you make.

....Please note the last ingredient we skipped because we thought there was enough chocolate presence without drizzling more chocolate.

ALMOND TRUFFLE



Ingredients:

1/2 cup evaporated milk
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 3/4 cup Nestle Toll House Milk Chocolate Morsels
1/2 to 1 tsp almond or vanilla extract
1 cup finely chopped almonds, toasted.

Combine evaporated milk and sugar in small heavy-duty saucepan. Bring to a full rolling boil over medium-low heat, stirring constantly. Boil, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes. Remove from heat.

Stir in morsels. Stir vigorously until mixture is smooth. Stir in almond extract. Refrigerate for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Shape into 1 inch balls. Cover. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

....Please see the tweaking we made on this recipe above. Likewise, I did not toast the almonds and I did not use milk chocolate morsels (chips), we used semi-sweet chips.

Enjoy!!!!