My Yummy Zucchini Bread Recipe

I have created a number of different zucchini bread recipes, but I particularly enjoyed this one this week as it was more cake-like, thus I mightn’t call it my favorite, but rather my favorite cake-like zucchini bread recipe.

Please see below and if you re-make this, please enjoy!

My Yummy Zucchini Bread Recipe

Ingredients

• 3 whole eggs
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
• 3 cups shredded zucchini (I used 2 zucchinis and 1 yellow squash)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease 2 rectangular baking dishes or bread pans.

Mix together all of the wet ingredients. Next, combine the dry ingredients and sift the flour before you put it into the bowl.

Bake 45 minutes in the preheated oven, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

 

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The Last Airbender: If you want to destroy a movie’s potential, ask M. Night Shyamalon how!

The Last Airbender was the worst excuse for a movie I have ever experienced. After watching the anime….every single show…falling in love with the story and the characters….to see it slaughtered this badly was the most unacceptable movie experience ever.

Haven’t we the people been through enough without having our money stolen and the ability to enjoy what could have and should have been an outstanding movie ripped to shreds, destroyed and mutilated by, who else….M. Night Shyamalan???

This was like a made for television movie…..cropped apart….terrible lack of transitioning…the personality of the characters was completely disseminated, stolen, dissolved by the horrible lack of talent that M. Night Shyamalan has once again displayed.

This movie was like a terrorist act….it was horrific….

I didn’t go to this movie to watch it turned into a lame, action-erased, slow dance flick….

M. Night Shyamalan should be stopped….fired…his retirement pension taken away…. The public should be compensated for the suffering he imposed…

This was trickery…. A sham… The saddest excuse for a movie ever….

Where’s the lawsuit filing news that should be happening?!

They didn’t even pronounce the names correctly….Did anyone involved in this movie ever even watch the series??!! How could any self-respecting individual have been a part of this movie, the acting, the production….any part of it?! It is shameful beyond words….

If an author took someone else’s book, xerox copied it…downloaded the pages to their computer….tore the basic story out of the book…and then ripped the personality out of the characters and then put a pretty book cover on it….they’d go out of business…. Why is M. Night Shyamalan allowed to keep putting out movies??!!

Finally…

For the first time she had been recognized for her talents. A quiet, unassuming woman who had been talked down to the majority of her life… She had never known a compliment and when she’d finally received praise, she grasped it tightly within her clutches and would die to protect it’s memory in her heart.

Her work efforts were more intense than ever now.

She painted, painted and painted some more until she developed blisters on her fingers from the stem of the paint brush.

Her love, her passion, her secret work was now driving her more steadily and like a team of bulls pushing a man into a mud pit, she could not stop…

Although her work was no longer entirely secret, it seemed to her that it was only barely exposed to the world, but that tiny bit of exposure was stardom to this woman who had starved for affection, attention and compliments her entire life.

She was not blind, nor was she deaf…. She could see the love displayed from one person to another as she walked down the street and watched other people interact.  She heard the sweet nothings men whispered into the ears of women and the shrills of delight from women experiencing one form of exciting attention or another. She knew there was more to life than was ever directed at her.

Thus, when she had that one moment wherein someone saw her and not only saw her, but appreciated and nearly worshiped her….treated her as an equal or even a superior for the skill of her paintings that they delighted over, she could not help but feast on the moment and later on the memory of what had been so short-lived, but so rapturously provided her.

It was the one meal she would never forget. The meal she would think about when she woke each day….as she worked and as she fell asleep.

Now More Than Ever….

Now more than ever she worried about his sanity. The reflection she was beginning to see was different from any she had ever known of him so truly, but especially was it different from any she had ever imagined could have been directed toward her.

It is difficult to imagine what people who are truly disturbed are capable of when they feel a sense of failure or when they feel a sense of loss.

Although she believed him to be less of a blame spraying sort previously, she now wondered if he didn’t live the majority of his life claiming to himself that others were to blame in one way, shape or form. She began to wonder at every one of the stories he had ever touched upon and how many of those stories were told from a specifically skewed perspective in order to present himself in a different light.

There were many people in the world who lived hidden behind masks and she knew for a fact that in many ways, he was one of them.

She worried diligently about his sanity and his capability for retribution if he felt in any way wronged or harmed, regardless of whether or not there was any truth to his belief system.

Certainly she could see many ways where he might have considered her to be guilty of wronging him, just as she felt toward him, but without malice of any deep sort that would cause her to feel any kind of hatred whatsoever.

She did hate being taken for a fool, but it was okay that she may have because there was much she could learn from the experience and this was a very odd experience indeed that she chose with full knowledge of the risks. She may not have been aware of the risk factors involved in the early stages, but long before the termination finally occurred, she was well aware of the risks involved.

Now she found herself falling briefly into morbid reflection with concern for her safety.

There were some people who it was difficult to know what they were capable of and when one sees such extreme degrees of bravado and fantastical wondering as she had most certainly recently experienced with her ears from this man, it became apparent that the ledge had been jumped off of a long time before she was aware that the ledge was even close.

Now that he felt her to be an enemy of sorts….now that he had derived all sorts of odd illusions about her capabilities….would he think he needed to strike out at her first and cause her harm?  She was not a danger to him….but so often, people who are the least of threats are considered the easiest of targets.

It had become more and more clear with time that she’d never really known him at all. He was a fabulous actor, although unable to allow himself to act in accord with his acting abilities, but that was, perhaps the trick of it all for him.

To land the prize and prove to oneself that they could do it….to show off that prize just enough for the ego boost and then to mock that prize because he himself could never see what a prize he actually was, but rather felt that he had been downtrodden his whole life and so why would he not take advantage of this one with whom he had the opportunity to make a fool of.

He knew her to be intelligent enough to choose to avoid his tactics if she had really wanted to and so in this matter, he felt justified and like a hero of sorts who could not imagine losing and wouldn’t take a loss. Now that the loss had actually occurred, his anger raged and her fear grew.

She would put it all as a distant memory and hope for the best, only enjoying what life she had left to live and hoping that her fantastical imagination was only half as elaborate as his and that in fact she was in no real danger whatsoever. He was much too busy to be concerned with retribution for her.

She must imagine that he would quickly forget her and that she had been sweet enough to him that some part of his consciousness would prevent him from lashing out at her any further…..  Hadn’t she already paid enough of a price for the bad behaviors of others?

Starbucks Collision

Just saw a woman outside of Starbucks waiting to turn in to the parking lot, but then just put her car in reverse for no apparent reason and back right into the BMW car behind her that was waiting to turn into the Starbucks parking lot.

Interestingly, they all pulled into the Starbucks parking lot and when the girl who hit them went over to talk to them, they must have been really nice about it because first the girl looked really apologetic and then she laughed and walked away, as if they just said something silly and let her off the hook.

Sometimes all people really want is an apology.  Other times they want you to bleed.

Old Writings – 3

Old Writings from 2002

—

The web of lies seemed to cotinually knock at her door.  She would always open it, as though she had nothing to hide.  She would then make more excuses to cover her previous lies.  I watched her doing this repeatedly.  I tried to call her on her decption, but she would only be angered by my confronting her.

She didn’t take my advice when I offered it, instead she plied me with more obvious lies.

I enjoyed her company, yet found myself frustrated with every bit of dishonesty.  We were supposed to be best friends, but how do you keep up a relationship when deception always seems to be an easy option.

Lately, she seemed to only lead me toward trouble. When I met her, she was just a simple girl who I didn’t realize leaned so readily on lies.

Her days and nights were simple, quiet.  She lived a somewhat isolated life with her boyfriend, who she called her “husband.”  However, as soon as she gained her independence from him, he was an alcoholic artist.

She moved out on her own and her lifestyle changed overnight.  Suddenly I was getting calls at all hours of the night.  She’d learned the  joy of drinking.  She had always stayed sober when with her ex-boyfriend.  Now she went clubbing constantly and learned that she could get the attention of all sorts of men.  She was excited and bored.

She wanted to introduce me to all the new sorts of people she was meeting.  To me, they all seemed the same.  When I had been much younger, I’d felt that every new meeting was an adventure.  I believed every new person embodied the possibility of a thousand new things to learn.  I then met a group of people, which I called “the party crowd.”

They were the absolute of dullness.  They had no new ideas and were always looking for new ways to party to overcome their extreme boredness brought on by their complete lack of self.

I kept away from them and continued looked at new people as exciting and wonderful, just as long as they didn’t meet the “party crowd” definition.  Now, an adult, I watch my “best friend” spending her new independent days and nights with another party crowd.  Bad things seem to happen frequently among them and I am always invited to partake in their misadventures which turn out to be visiting the exact same clubs with all the exact same people week after week and so on.

I go along occassionally, just as I did as a young teenager, though not to clubs.  However, I find it all dejavouish. I am so utterly uninterested and wishing I was somewhere else, but never being so rude as to proclaim these feelings on the spot.

They all know I am not one of them and yet I think believe that little by little they can get me to come around into their world.  It is so very opposite though from where I see myself in my ideal life and wanting to be on a path towards my dream.  I keep encouraging myself to stand up and state that I will only do what I want to do….when I want to do it….

Today I learned…

Today I learned that a unidirectional microphone is the most appropriate mic to use if you will be recording only yourself and not interviewing others or having an interest in picking up sounds outside of your own voice.

I also learned that a USB microphone will usually provide the best sound when you use a USB mixer to edit the audio on the way to your computer, if you are using a microphone with your computer in order to digitally record the sound of your voice.  I learned that there are various levels of quality in USB mixers and that it might be worth the investment to some who are very interested in producing truly quality sounding voice recordings to spend a bit more on the better, more capable USB mixer.

Additionally, I learned that it is relatively cheap to get a pop guard to prevent those popping sounds that can be so irritating when people use hard consonants, such as the letter “p.”  I remember when I was doing a bit of recording for the radio station commercials that I had trouble with the P’s at times and would re-record over and over again in an attempt to not have the bad “p” sound.  At the time, I found that if I turned my head a certain way, and kept it in basically the same position, that I had the best results when recording, however I love the idea of the pop guard…

I probably learned a few other things today, but this is what is fresh on my mind at the moment….

Amazing Soup – Vegetarian Recipe

Amazing Soup – Vegetarian Recipe

I grew up cooking for the entire family and have always enjoyed the process of combining a number of ingredients and enjoying the delicious results. Now that I am a busy career woman, I haven’t always taken the time that I should for cooking, but when I do cook, it is always fun and a nice adventure.

Since I spend the majority of my days and nights inventing ideas to write about, reading books and studying, etc…. it is all mental work. Cooking is a sort of mental work, but it feels like a different kind of creativity and it is more of a working with one’s hands than merely in one’s head and with the fingers typing. Cooking is not working with one’s hands like building a bridge or stud welding or hammering nails or working in a garden, but it is still an enjoyable handy work that won’t get you so messy as many different types of working with one’s hands….depending upon your method of cooking, of course!

I most definitely did not grow up in a vegetarian household, nor am I a vegetarian today. However, I do love eating vegetarian foods on a regular basis and perhaps one day I will completely convert. It does feel much better to me than eating meat. I feel better physically and enjoy the fact that no actual animal had to die for me to enjoy my meal.

About a year ago, I entered into a relationship with a wonderful man who is also a vegetarian. He lives by his value system in more ways than most people I have ever known. He has been a vegetarian for more than 20 years and I consider it to be just another one of the lovely ways in which he behaves in manners that connect with his belief system.

Naturally, I wanted to be supportive of that which I respected in this man and although he never once encouraged me to cook or asked me to cook, cooking for someone else is a great joy and pleasure for me. I was not the sort of woman who typically cooked for a man, however, as I have not always held men in the highest of regard as a general gender. However, I was moved to cook for this man immediately and it was so very enjoyable.

It was great fun discovering ways in which to cook vegetarian foods, experimenting with ideas in my head and changing up old recipes that I knew by heart to meet with vegetarian standards. As this year has progressed, it has been so much fun to watch the development and the progress of the times that I occasionally get to cook for him and the many different unique foods that I was able to prepare.

Last week he was sick with a terrible cold. I wanted to make him a sort of “miracle soup.” Perhaps I aim for the moon when only the lowest branches of the trees are real possibilities, but I believe that much of our physical reactions are directly connected to our thoughts and emotions. Therefore, it seemed to me to not be an impossible task, to create a healing vegetarian soup for my beloved man.

First, I will say that it did not heal him entirely, but he did get steadily better with each following day. There was noticeable improvement, even that day after his first bowl of this amazing soup. I do not feel that of all things that we should not brag about, that a wonderfully delicious recipe is included in that lot.

A recipe that results in a delectable sensation for the taste buds speaks for itself and brags of it’s creator all on its own, however, only for those who eat it and taste it. For all others and to encourage others to create such a work of art in food themselves, a bit of what might be called “bragging” is in order.

Here now I am going to attempt to share this recipe for this soup that I believe is the amazing miracle soup, a completely vegetarian recipe, that even carnivores can enjoy thoroughly.

Growing up and the majority of my life, I always thought that you must use a beef bouillon or a chicken bouillon to create a good soup base. During this past year, I have learned to create delicious soup without using any meat products whatsoever.

Recipe for Amazing Vegetarian Soup:

Take a big soup dish that you will be cooking on the stove top and at a later point in the cooking, you will be placing in the oven. Make sure that it is safe for stove tops and for putting in the oven, of course.

Fill this pot a quarter of the way full with water. (You will be adding water to your soup later on when it cooks down. Use your own judgement on this because it will not be mentioned again in this recipe.) You might want to use bottled/distilled water if you want to start with the purist water that you can. The things I have recently learned about our water supply in America are quite frightening. Of course, we have always known about the problems with international water supplies, but have been living under a false security blanket of beliefs that our water supply here was clean and pure, but this is simply not so. The EPA has recently had no choice but to admit the serious issues that are going on all around our country with regard to the water supply. The water treatment facilities have not been meeting the standards that are legally required for treatment of the sewage water and that water has been joining, unpurified, into our mainstream water supply. Not only this, but be careful with your bottled water as well, which is why I used the word “distilled.” About a quarter of the bottled water companies have been discovered providing absolutely no additional purification process to the water that they are bottling and selling. You can be certain that when you see a bottle labeled “spring water” that it is likely nothing more than tap water put into a bottle.

Now you may not feel a need to be concerned about this because you will be boiling your water as you cook it in this soup. This is merely a commentary for educational purposes and to help you decide what you want to do when you make this amazing vegetarian soup.

The first thing that you will want to do after you put your soup on the stove top fire or electrical coils, as the case may be, is to begin to add the seasoning. Have you ever heard of “seasoned salt?” If you haven’t heard of it, or you do not have it, it works wonders in many different recipes and I encourage you to go to your local grocery store and get some right away!

Add a generous amount of seasoned salt, about a fourth as much black pepper and about half as much garlic powder. Please note…I did not say “garlic salt” – I said Garlic Powder. The reason being that garlic salt will take your dish over the edge of the acceptable saltiness meter. If you use garlic salt, instead of garlic powder, then do not add the seasoned salt and do not expect the best tasting result, unless you just prefer all of your food to taste like a salt lick.

Now that you have added those seasonings, get some louisiana hot sauce or mccormick hot sauce and dash about 6 times into your soup base mix. Stir all of this up and let it simmer while you begin washing and peeling your veggies.

Wash and scrape your carrots first. Carrots and potatoes are the two veggies that will take the longest time to cook through to softness, so you should add them to the mix before anything else. Now slice your carrots very thin, perhaps to make sure that they are only about 1/8th or 1/4 inch in thickness. You could make them big chunks too if that is what your palate prefers.

If you are using baby carrots you could use about ten of these and you probably wouldn’t have to scrape them. If you are using full, adult carrots, then go ahead and use about 3-4, depending upon their size.

Now take only 2 potatoes. This is not to be a potato soup. The potatoes are only for an added substance and a part of the whole package. After washing and peeling your potatoes, cut them up into tiny cubes. Again, your preference is the deciding factor here.

Once you have put these veggies into your soup, make sure that you stir it well and that it continues at a good, even simmer. Now that you have stirred all of these together and it is simmering well, add about a cup of milk to your soup base. Stir that in and then add about 1/8 or 1/4 stick of butter or margarine. Of course, butter makes everything better, but if you are a cheapskate like me then you might just have margarine and that will work just fine. I may be committing a mortal sin by saying that and it may be healthier in some natural food perspectives to use butter, but what if you just don’t want to? Use either or.

Stir the soup and pull out your bag of fresh or frozen chopped spinach. I absolutely love spinach and this soup would not be half as amazing without the spinach in it. DO NOT USE CANNED SPINACH. Come on people! Canned spinach is just plain gross! Put about half a bag of spinach into the soup mix. I used the frozen chopped spinach myself and it worked wonderfully.

Stir well and keep it simmering while you now chop up a few stalks of celery. Again, the size of the celery bits is preference-related. It doesn’t change the flavor, only the texture, etc.  I recommend small 1/4 inch pieces.

After adding the celery to the soup and stirring again, (make sure to stir frequently enough to keep the bottom of the pan from any burn/stick, etc.) you will then need to clean and chop up two zucchini into small pieces.

Add your zucchini to the mix and check the flavor of the soup at this point now that the seasonings will have blended a bit to see if you need to add any more garlic powder, seasoned salt or hot sauce. Stir your soup well.

Now add about a cup and a half of shredded colby-jack cheese to the soup. Stir this well and go back to veggie cutting.

The last of the veggies that you will be cutting and adding is red onion. Take one medium sized red onion, wash it thoroughly and then dispose of the outer layer of the onion. Chop this onion into very large pieces and add it to the soup mix. Then chop a few green onions into very small pieces and add these to the soup as well.

Stir the soup mix well and put it into your oven (350 degrees fahrenheit)

Cook the soup in the oven for about 30-45 minutes and you will have an exquisite dinner. I used garlic bread as a side and served it with the soup. Milk is a good, hearty drink to have while eating your soup and garlic bread.

Voila! The Amazing Vegetarian Soup – Enjoy!

Ingredients List:

Seasoning Salt

Hot Sauce

Black Pepper

Red Onion

Green Onions

Zucchini

Colby-Jack Cheese

Milk

Water

Potato

Spinach

Celery

Butter

Carrots

Web Content provided by Alicia Crowder (Recipe Creator)

Strange Fiction Book – Collection of Short Stories – Very Short

Strange Fiction Book – Collection of Short Stories – Very Short

Don’t wait for the good books to come out. Go ahead and buy this book now! Then when the great books start coming out from the big publishing houses you will have proof that you knew this author when….

Click here to buy the strange fiction book.

The Alicia Crowder Web Content Success

The Alicia Crowder web content success story can be found here: http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200907/1248226351.html