Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Stuck in Traffic Jello?

I spent several hours in a seminar on rewiring your brain on Saturday. 

Fascinating. 

The speaker gave a word picture. At birth our brains are grassy, pristine, beautiful parks. Just glorious sunshine, blue skies and perky green grass ruffled by the gentle breeze. 

Our first experience causes us to walk across the grass. But if it's a one time stroll, the grass pops back up and all is well. But let's say it's a repeated experience like being picked up when we cry, or a smiling face talking baby talk to us, or emptiness when our cries are ignored. We travel that scenario more than once and we create a path. By the time we are adults we have a "park" that looks like a map of mega-sized city streets. 

The main streets and super highways represent the thought paths we most travel. 

Everything we experience through our senses and every thought we have creates the potential for a street, avenue or highway. 

The good news is that we can change our maps by the beauty of neuroplasticity. (Our brains keep regenerating and making new pathways). We can create new roads and change the way we travel and avoid the roads we no longer want to drive the car of our life on. 

I can create a new series of main streets I want to travel on. Repetition makes the roads we use stronger. 

For example. I've been telling myself I don't get violin. Oh, I'm still working on it. But every time I say that I don't have rhythm and I can't do the fingering, the reading of music and the timing of the notes at the same time I am telling my brain to make that a truth, a pathway for me to travel on. Therefore, my brain makes it so that I don't get it because I'm telling it that that's a truth, that I don't get it. I'm basically ordering my brain to make sure I don't get it. Really???? Augh!!!! This totally resonates with me because I do travel "I don't get this" boulevard. I want to get it, I get so frustrated, and I'm doing the time. I don't want to calculate how much energy and money I've put into this goal because that's going to depress me. All the while I'm plugging away, I'm telling my brain to avoid turning on the musical/math section of my gray matter. 

My mom told me she saw a video about a guy who took a decent blow to the head and got a concussion. A few days later he was at a friend's house and they had a piano and he sat down and played for hours. Not Chopsticks, but real, complex music. And he wasn't musical before his accident. If a whack in the head can turn on his music center then I'm not going to tell my brain to keep my music center quiet. "Hey, Kelly's brain, yeah you, ramp up the math/music section of my brain. I have some music I want to play. Got it?!? Good." 

My brain is moldable and is making new pathways all the time. And I can and will get this. My brain is going to click and this reading of music, timing of notes and finger placement is going to become second nature and I will be a musician and I will play the violin so well that I can play with other musicians.  

How about you? What are you telling yourself you can't do? Can't or won't? Quit ordering your brain to keep you stuck. 

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Punny, Very Punny

Scraps and Snippets ~ Sweetheart Mousse Cups (Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Peanut Butter or Raspberry

Chocolate Cups

¾ Cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips

½ to 1 TBSP of coconut oil or Earth Balance

20-24 small foil mini-muffin or candy cups or silicone mini cupcake liners

or 1 dozen large (don’t try it with paper or greased muffin tins. Trust me, I tried the muffin tin thing. (I didn’t try the paper but I’m pretty sure that would be real bad.)  You can remelt the chocolate like I did if you don’t take my word for it on the muffin tin thing.)

Or you could use a base of crushed Oreos/coconut oil or Earth Balance... NOTE: these fillings would also work as pie or bars with a cookie crust. I'd suggest making the filling/pie a full day before planning to serve as the coconut cream will stiffen the longer it is refrigerated.

Melt oil over a double boiler, add chips and stir until all melted. Dollop some of the chocolate mixture into each cup and swirl until it covers the sides and bottom of the cup. (Fill about ½ to ¾ full) Place these into the freezer for 20 minutes and then put into the refrigerator.

Then get creative on your fillings.

1 can of full fat coconut milk for starters. (see below)

To make the coconut cream is kind of fun and easy and if you are a coconut fan. This stuff is mildly coconut flavored and decadent. You have to plan ahead or live near a Trader Joe’s. Full fat coconut milk comes in cans. Thai Kitchen makes one as does Geisha, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. You have to chill the can in the refrigerator for three days for the fat part of the milk to separate and harden. (Trader Joe’s usually is so much cream that you don’t have to chill for long.) You will open the can, scrape the white creamy goodness into a mixing bowl. Save the liquid portion for any Thai dishes you might like to cook or smoothies.

You will use the whipper attachment on your mixer and whip the cream into just that, whipped cream. Don’t add sugar yet, that comes next. (If you want to serve plain coconut cream chocolate cups you can add a few tablespoons of powdered sugar and a splash of vanilla at this point and be done.)

Otherwise you can divide the whipped cream into three different containers if you want to tackle all three (I’m giving the ⅓ recipes below but will do the math and do a whole batch or half batch, too)

Peanut Butter Mousse  

⅓ of the coconut cream

1 and ½ TBSP of peanut butter

2 teaspoons of maple syrup or agave

Mix

(whole batch)

Whole can of prepared coconut cream

Rounded ¼ cup peanut butter

2 TBSP maple syrup or agave

(half batch)

Half batch of prepared coconut cream

1 TBSP maple syrup or agave

⅛ Cup peanut butter

Berry or Fruity Mousse

⅓ batch of prepared coconut cream

3 TBSP favorite jam or jelly ( I used seedless raspberry)

Mix well

(whole batch)

Heaped ½ cup favorite jam or jelly

Whole batch prepared coconut cream

(half batch)

¼ cup of favorite jelly or jam

½ a batch of prepared coconut cream

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Mousse

⅓ batch of coconut cream

1 TBSP flour

1 ½ TBSP brown sugar

⅛ tsp of salt

¼ tsp of vanilla

1-2 TBSP chocolate chips

Mix well

(whole batch)

1 whole batch of coconut whipped cream

3 TBSP flour

rounded ¼ cup of brown sugar

rounded ¼ teaspoon salt

¾ teaspoon of vanilla

¼ cup of chocolate chips

(half batch)

Half a batch of prepared coconut cream

1 ½ TBSP flour

⅛ cup of brown sugar

rounded ⅛ teaspoon of salt

⅓ teaspoon vanilla

⅛ cup of chocolate chips

A full batch will make enough to fill all the chocolate cups with a tiny bit left over. Depending on how many different flavors you choose, use quart size or 1 gallon sized zipper top bag and fill them with your flavors. Make a few days ahead if you want. When ready snip the corner off the bag (big enough that a chocolate chip can slip through but not much bigger). Squirt the mousse filling into the chocolate cups.

Scraps and Snippets ~ Easy Thai Dressing

I was in a creative mood yesterday and had lots of veggies hanging out wanting to be eaten. The snow was falling and I have a column coming up soon that will require some recipes. So. I went for it. One recipe (which I won't be able to share til after March 10th or so) required Coconut Whipped Cream. I love Trader Joe's brand. It's almost fully coconut cream and little to no water so it doesn't require days of chilling to separate. However, I didn't have TJ's on hand and had another brand in my fridge where it had been for months. No issues with separation there. But there was probably four ounces of water in the can. 

I hate to waste it, I gave half to the dogs. They totally love it. And I made a dressing for a gourmet salad blend. 

Easy Thai Dressing

2 ounces of coconut water or light coconut milk

1 TBSP peanut butter

1/2 to 1 tsp siracha sauce or hot pepper sauce of choice

1/2 to 1 tsp of lemon juice

1/8 tsp garlic powder

Nice and flavorful. 

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Yes, No ?

I follow a blog called Lil Blue Boo. Ashley, the blog owner started out as we bloggers do, with an idea. She crafted herself into a huge following. Then she got cancer. 

She will sometimes post about the recovery process, she's in that wonderful phase. Her Friday post left me a weeping mess on Saturday. But it's a beautiful post and proof that who we are, how we treat people, the little glimpses of light that we beam around us in the smallest of ways matters. 

It hurts to love, but I think it hurts even more not to. Feel like an uplifting cry? Here's the link.  

Life is so messy and complicated and short. But, this time, this place, this now, this life is ours to either embrace or give away. To choose to follow light, or succumb to darkness.  To say yes, or to say no. 

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Connectivity and Stuff...

The connectivity of social media and the ability to reach out and touch just about any one in the world is freaking me out a bit. 

I bought a tiny kitchen appliance to make my life easier with some Amazon sweet deals and gift cards and etc. The darn thing worked twice, half worked twice and then, well, didn't. Color me annoyed! Are you like me? When something needs to be shipped back do you do anything you can to avoid that process? I'm so cheap. I use Amazon for loads of things because I can get free shipping most of the time. But I don't know how their return policy works. So, I contacted the manufacturing company asking if there was a local place I could trade this sucker in. I mean, the cost of the item was $30.00. If I have to spend $8.00 to ship it somewhere I'm just going to be really crabby. (Imagine that if you dare!)

I did this customer service request via email because that's an option. (Oh, bunny trail, I also did this with a company recently that shorted me on an order...one I had placed with a Groupon and got way more than I wanted to get free shipping....do you see a common theme? They answered back and mailed me the missing items plus a few more. Uh. Okay. I'm good with that.) Back to the appliance snafu... the customer service people asked a few questions. I provided answers. They then had me cut the cord (ha,ha I love this, they did tell me to unplug it from the wall first) off the unit, take a picture of the disabled unit and email it to them. Then they will ship out a replacement. 

SWEET! I'll reveal the company name when the replacement comes and works consistently. (Also, did you guess that I ordered this one because it's red?  Ding, ding, ding, what do we have for them, Johnny?) 

The one that shorted me items and made good on that was Go Picnic. I can honestly recommend them. They run sales frequently and the stuff I've had of theirs is great. They have vegan and gluten free options and I've begun taking one or two any time I travel because they are easy to pack and way tastier than an iceberg lettuce salad with a slice of cucumber and a mealy tomato. Yo. They sell them at Target, too. 

The other random connectivity issue is over the past week two people have told me or someone else that they read my blog regularly. 

Weird. 

I know I put it out there for the whole world to see, but honestly, writing it feels anonymous to me on some level. And it's one of my resources to find my recipes when I need them. And to get up on a soap box now and again, or just play around and have a good laugh, ya know? 

So. If you read my blog and you know me, a big hi, and a sorry for not knowing you hang out with me in cyberspace. I also hope I've never used you as an example ever. Ha. Ha. Just kidding, I don't ever use real people in my stories and examples. :  )  To my friends, coworkers, former coworkers and ???,  thanks for reading my thoughts about life and stuff. (Bonus take away...your vocabulary word for the day, stuff, use it at least four times to impress those around you. It will, trust me.) 

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Furry Fun

Cute Animal Alert