It's Foody Friday with Flavored Coffee!

To me, coffee is not only a food, it is one of the five major food groups (along with chocolate, avocados, red wine, and cheese). And one of my favorite coffees is Pj's Santa's Blend. This is simply the best coffee in the world. When you brew it, the house is filled with the scent of spicy Christmas goodness. It is divine. The taste is only a mild flavor - hint of spice, really - but it is to die for. The only problem is that Santa's Blend is available for a limited time, about November through early days in January. The first weeks of January usually find me feverishly pawing the shelves of various local coffee shops in a search for the last bag or two. I grab as many as I can afford during the Christmas months, then I HORDE them through the summer months. On a steamy, gray, rainy July morning nothing beats retreating into a cloud of Santa's Blend steam.
Then horrors! My supply dwindles! In September, the cupboard is bare and I am crabby. My solution is to imitate the flavor as best as I can. I freely admit that this homemade version is not as good as the real Santa's Blend, but it's pretty close.
Directions:
1/2 lb of medium roast coffee, ground
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking cocoa
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves

Put the coffee into a large glass baking dish. Carefully sprinkle the vanilla over it evenly and rub it through the grounds with the back of a spoon to evenly distribute. Sprinkle the spices on and mix them in well. Put in an airtight container (glass is best; it keeps the clove oil from reacting).
Yum.

Any recipes or food raving you'd like to share today? Share! It's Friday! The day we think about food all day!! (or wait, that's every day for me...)

Make your own dried herbs the lazy way!

Why buy dried herbs and pay $7 for a bottle that only holds like 2 teaspoons, when you can create your own for so much less? My method is proven! Simply buy potted herbs from your local grocery- or do like I did and pay extra for organic ones from Wholefoods - then leave the tiny plastic pots out in the Louisiana sun while you go out of town. Forget all about them, then discover them in a couple of weeks when you notice a mild minty smell near the mailbox. Look how easy that was!

Wednesday is "cheap date" day!

Since we're about halfway to the weekend, I decided Wednesday is a good day to share cheap date ideas so we can all start making plans. Now by date I don't just mean boyfriend and girlfriend. This can be go out with the girls stuff, fun places to go with kids, etc.
So I need all readers' help here. I want to hear your date/event plans that don't break the bank! In fact I think I am going to impose a price limit.
$25 per person. That's not that cheap so I think you can handle it.

I'll go first because actually I have a cheap date TONIGHT!
One of the nice things you can do for free in New Orleans is attend free concerts during the spring and summer months. This Wednesday, it's John Boutte and Trombone Shorty - two great locals. You're supposed to buy food and drink at the event (there are vendors) but I think I'll be packing dinner instead. Doesn't that sound like a great break from studying?
Jazz/soul concert - FREE
Bottle of Yellow Tale - $4.99
Pita Sandwiches - $4.00
Streetcar fare (there and back, 2 people) - $2.50
Total date $5.50 per person. Yay us!

SO what are you doing this week/weekend for less than $25 a person?

Post-work out boost - chocolate milk!

I read an interesting article today that reported that a glass of low fat chocolate milk after exercise resulted in less muscle damage when compared to an energy drink (usually a high carb drink). Now I don't ever really work out to the point that I need to "recover" per se, but sometimes I am hungry after a work out, and a snack that also decreases muscle soreness sounds like a good idea to me. The only problem is I don't really like sweet beverages - maybe regular milk works just as well?

What's your after work out snack?
And do you eat BEFORE you work out, or does that make you feel like you have Stone Henge in your tummy?

My husband's frenemy

My husband has a frenemy. I'll call him Rick (because what I want to call him is in poor taste). This fellow is funny and a good conversationalist, so people put up with him, but the fact of the matter is that Rick takes advantage of all his "friends". Let me give you a few examples:

1. During hurricane Katrina, he and his girlfriend evacuated together in the girlfriend's car - Rick doesn't own a car. His girlfriend had just accepted a job in New Orleans over one in another state; upon realization that her new job was history she called the other employer and accepted the job. Rick agreed to drive her to the airport and keep her car temporarily while they sorted out who was going to live where, etc (those were crazy times). However, this entire time Rick was planning on breaking up with her. He waited until they got to the airport though, just so he could keep her car since at that point what else could she do with it!
2. Then when he damaged the car through misuse, he called her to get her to pay for it.
3. He invites you to dinner, then tells you at the end he has no money.
4. He persuades hubby and another one of his friends - who did not know each other - to come with him on vacation. They made big plans to share a condo together; another of Rick's friends was acting as a sort of trip coordinator. Well, day before the trip Rick backs out because he's "broke" leaving three people who do not know each other to go on vacation together! Of course they all broke down and pooled money to pay for him to go - which is disgusting.
5. He pretends he thinks you are doing him a favor and thanks you profusely in front of people so you feel cowed into paying his tab/giving him a ride/doing legal work for him/buying him dinner/hosting him a party.
6. He promised to attend my bro in law's wedding and invited himself to the rehearsal dinner. After bro in law paid for Rick and his date, they never showed - to the rehearsal or wedding - and never called.
7. He is a GOSSIP. He gossips about everyone behind their backs! In fact, he constantly belittles my own husband to me, but he does it in a really clever way that makes it impossible to debate. For example, today I unfortunately ran into him while getting coffee. He asked how hubby was, then sighed, "when is David going to start making any money?" implying that my husband is a failure. Which he's NOT. He's a successful attorney and was recently promoted. But how do I respond? "He's doing great and we're rich" sounds totally pompous. Agreeing is totally disloyal. Instead I gave him a weird look (I hope it was a "why are you asking this" look) and said, "We're doing just fine thank you." Of course I know he just wanted to provoke me into telling him some juicy private details about our finances. What a jerk.

I have made it clear what I think of this despicable advantage taking friend. It's not like David doesn't know he's being taken advantage of - he's just too nice to say no. The most recent affront was Rick asking us to meet him for drinks last week then revealing that it was actually his "engagement party" (at a bar???) and that we were expected to host! As usual he acted confused and said he thought we knew. WHAT-EV.

What do I do with this slime bag? What do you do with your frenemies... or your spouses frenemies...or friends of your sig. oth. that you just don't like?

Gifts for those with everything!

My darling sister in law had a birthday yesterday and I had a hard time finding her a gift. She has a lot of clothes already; she still lives at home so it's hard to get her household items; she's particular about beauty products; and of course she just graduated so she got just got lots of gifts a few weeks ago.
While wandering about Magazine street a few weekends ago, I chanced on a great place to grab a unique gift: an antique store. I browsed for at least an hour and found so many great gift ideas! I ended up getting her the adorable book pictured above. It may fall into the "useless" category, but it's her style and she sort of collects old fashioned pictures and such. She's very artistic so the engravings and poetry should tickle her pink! I hope she loves it!
Thanks to the recession, many antique stores are drastically reducing prices, so now is a great time to find affordable items. This little book was 50% off.
Other antiques that would make fabulous gifts:
1. Silver baby spoons and cups. The antique sets are beautiful shower or christening gifts and are comparably priced to new ones.
2. Antique art, especially local art - this includes framed posters and advertisements as well.
3. A few select pieces of silverware that don't have to match the rest of the service are a lovely wedding gift, and one or two pieces from an incomplete set are quite inexpensive. For example, cake servers or salad tongs; ice pick and ice tongs; punch ladle; nutcrackers.
4. Along the same lines, silver bottle openers or other bar accessories make good fathers day gifts.
5. I found a great quantity of antique (or some of them were just OLD) books that would be perfect for book lovers. An especially good choice is an early edition of a favorite classic.
6. Even if you can't afford large furniture antiques, you can find reasonably priced jewelry cabinets, silverware boxes, serving trays, and bookends.
7. Teapots seem to outlast the teacups and saucers and can be functional pieces or decorative (keep in mind that antique ceramics may have been lead-fired and should not be used with edibles. Silver teapots are safe though as long as they are actually silver and not pewter, which also contains lead. No wonder life spans used to be so short).
8. I found two or three beautiful sets of hand mirrors and combs, two silver and one a very elaborately carved tortoiseshell.
9. Victorians loved pointless decorative items. Tiny hinged painted boxes are nice to "wrap" money or gifts cards in for graduation or birthday gifts.

I'm sorry the pictures look weird today. I don't know why this blog won't format, how annoying.

Did you know I'm from Ghana?

'Cause I didn't. But apparently I am, according to my alma mater. As you recall, I recently graduated from pharmacy school.
And today all the honors graduates were featured on the website, along with our hometown. Turns out mine's Apam, Ghana (see above - looks nice, doesn't it? Wish I was on a boat ride!).
Surface research revealed that one of the area's big industries is casket-making. I think I may have missed my calling.

Anyway, for clarification, the hometown is good ol' NOLA, but I think Apam is totally my second choice.