TheSnackHound

A friend of mine is relocating to Canada and is having a difficult time wading through the real estate market to find Calgary apartments for rent. She couldn’t just hop over the bridge to Windsor, but she decided that she needs to practically be in  Alaska, or at least just north of Montana, instead. Guess she won’t be getting any chocolate mousse cakes in the mail. They’d be mush by the time they traveled over 2,000 miles. Maybe I’ll rent a motor home and bake it on the way.

She wants to rent first, and then spend about a year before she looks to buy. She actually found more luck with RentCalgary.com over Craigslist and some of the data-feed real estate sites for some reason. It has a mix of private landlords, property managers and real estate agents advertising. The site is not slathered with ads or irrelevant articles, and is pretty much bare bones straight forward listings.

When I relocated across the country years ago, I grabbed an out of state edition of the local paper at Barnes & Noble, but of course not all of the listings are there nowadays. It was frustrated to go through the ads and find half were already rented. On the other hand, it was a little less ADD, because there is no YouTube in the local paper. I wish her luck on sticking to the task.

This post brought to you by GravyMaster. All opinions are 100% mine.

What’s vegetarian, certified Kosher, vegan, preservative-free, makes a mean Bloody Mary, shared an ingredient with rock candy and carmelizes a chicken breast? The “all things to all people” claim is pretty substantial. Could we be talking about WD40 or Duct Tape? Maybe its Mickey D’s soft serve ice cream.

Believe it or not, GravyMaster, which has been around since the Great Depression is all of those things. Its not a drippy barbecue sauce, but rather a combination of dried vegetables, herbs and other spices that makes a base for a sauce, or acts as a dry rub on its own. The only apparent ingredient change since 1935 is the switch from using leftover candy rock salt to pure cane sugar.

The GravyMaster website urges you to “Master the meal” with traditional and unexpected ways to enjoy the product this season. Try this cheese and nut spread instead of cracking open the Swiss Colony or Hickory Farms catalog.

1 cup walnut halves

3 teaspoons vegetable oil
3 teaspoons GravyMaster®
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon dill weed
1 round (8 oz.) Brie or Camembert cheese, chilled

Crisp crackers, baguette slices or sliced tart apples or pears

Directions

1. Spread walnut halves in a single layer in a glass pie plate. Cook on HIGH 4 minutes, stirring once
2. Combine oil and GravyMaster®; drizzle on walnuts. Sprinkle with garlic salt and dill weed. Stir well.
3. Cook on HIGH 1 minute to brown walnuts. Cool.
4. Place cheese on glass plate. Heat in microwave 20 to 25 seconds, just until soft but not runny. Sprinkle walnuts over and around cheese. Spread on crackers, bread slices or fruit. Makes 4 appetizer servings.

And voila!

What are you going to make with GravyMaster? Some sprinkles in seltzer water to make a spicy gargle? Or an old fashioned barbecue?

Guest post from: Natalie Walter

Mom and I had always talked about starting a cake shop but to be honest, we were just scared to. There’s nothing like making a huge mistake when it comes to investing thousands of dollars and since we’d both been housewives for so long we were going to have to ask my husband and dad for the money to get us off the ground. But last year we did it and I’m pleased to say that business is better than I imagined it would be!

I love doing all the inside stuff like marketing and dealing with vendors and looking into small business xo and mom’s all about the actual baking. She’s the best cook I know and she’s taught me a thing or two about using fondant and stuff like that so I know that together we make a pretty fierce team. We’re gearing up for the winter wedding season and I’m happy to say that one day business will be where we need it to be to make a profit, I think!

This post brought to you by Zenni Optical. All opinions are 100% mine.

I am the proud owner of a turkey made out of broom bristles and a turkey hat, but turkey eyeglasses….really????  (Yes, depending on the size of your head and monitor, this may be ACTUAL SIZE.)

What exactly is all that behind the turkey. I see a pumpkin, some form of native American headdress, perhaps, but what is that blue or black thing at the top? Is it a pilgrim hat, or is it a ghost looking out? Maybe I need to lay off the sugar. And turkeys don’t have hooked beaks, do they? It could be my fault. Pheasants were probably a more likely unwilling participate of the big feast, and I am so accustomed to thinking about a turkey.

For a joke, $9.99 is not too bad for cheap eyeglasses for a gag, but you can get these with actual prescription lenses for that price over at Zenni under their holiday section. I guess you won’t be flipping the bird when you trip into the sunken living room with the platter. Heck, for that price, I bet a lot of folks wouldn’t care if their face was in a constant state of Thanksgiving. Well, maybe not.

If one compares it to optician store prices, one could also snag an everyday pair and a turkey dinner for the whole family. So many are proclaiming things are so hard in this economy, so saving money wherever one can counts big.

Do you have any holiday eyewear or fashion traditions that its not Thanksgiving or Christmas without, or do your traditions revolve around trotting them out one time only?

Here’s a recipe from archives, reprinted by popular demand. Halloween is a little more than half a hot potato toss away, but around here, pumpkins have petered out. Some are just stunted and are maturing at a shrunken size. Oh well, there will be more Golden Snitch pumpkins and less Herman Munsters. One thing you can do with leftover pumpkin guts is to make pumpkin muffins.

You will need:

The innards of your pumpkin
4 eggs
1 2/3 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 cup oil
1 (16 oz) can pumpkin
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Combine baking powder, flour, salt, and baking soda in a mixing bowl. Take another mixing bowl and combine and beat egg, canned pumpkin, sugar and oil until fully mixed and when it starts to get a little fluffy. What does fluffy mean? When it is not a big gloppy heavy mess. Then, you combine all together. Put the combination in muffin tins. This is the same recipe for pumpkin bars, but you are making it in muffin tins so people will think it is a whole new recipe.

Now, it comes time for the the pumpkin guts. First, clean your spatula and whisks thorughly. Then, take some pumpkin innards and spread it on the spatula and the beaters. Leave on the counter or return to a dry sink. Put a few little pumpkin innard droplets here and there on a cutting board or a little on the oven. Throw the rest away. Afterall, the pumpkins we carve are not good pumpkins for pies or desserts. It is pretty flavorless. The smaller pumpkin varieties are the most flavorful and are what are used for pies and recipes.

Take the muffins out to cool after you have baked them on 350 degrees. Optionally, you can put frosting on them if you like.

Invite people over and make sure they come through the kitchen. Make a big deal out of forgetting to wash out your spatulas, etc. Make sure they see them and comment on how valiantly you wrestled that Jack-o-Lantern and how proud Martha would have been that you used up all the pumpkin innards. The muffins came out perfect. They weren’t spongey or mushy at all!