My Weekend

I thought I would take a break. I don't want to burn out at this too quickly. I have been sort of busy the past couple of days. I went to my grand daughter, Lexi's 4th birthday party yesterday. It was very nice. The party was held outside and the weather was lovely. There was a breeze but it wasn't windy like it was last year. We had 2 chocolate cakes with white icing, Neapolitan ice cream, several types of chips and drinks. We had games for the children and nice conversation for the adults and of course we were all playing with my other grand baby, Mary, who's 6 months old. We did have one mishap, a small elbow in one of cakes but it made for a good laugh, so it wasn't a problem. There were lots of great gifts for the birthday girl. All children should be so lucky. I have to say, Lexi is so good when it comes to presents, she loves them all and there is nothing that makes you feel as good as seeing genuine appreciation for a gift you've given. By the way, this is my first attempt at posting pictures, so please forgive the look of things until I get all this figured out.

I came home after the party and decide to fix a pan of cornbread for supper. I had heard about using ground flax seed as egg replacer in baking, so I decided to give it a try with the cornbread. I found a recipe on Food.com which was similar to my own cornbread recipe, except it is for a sweet version. I simply left out the sugar, salt and baking powder and used regular 2% milk instead of soy and used self rising cornmeal mix instead of the flour and cornmeal. I used the same amount of flax seed, water and oil. I did not boil the water and simmer the flax as directed. I simply microwaved the water for 2 minutes and stirred the flax in until it was of egg-like consistency. The flax mixture wasn't very appealing to look at but neither is raw egg if you ask me, lol. I mixed the milk with the flax seed mixture to make it easier to combine with the dry ingredients. Sorry, I forgot to get pictures. I also added a 1/2 cup more milk, because the batter was a lot thicker than my normal cornbread batter. I baked the cornbread in my preheated iron skillet, which is exclusively used for cornbread, using the recipe directions. I did need to add a few minutes to the baking time but that's normal with my oven. Let me just say the cornbread turned out perfectly. It didn't rise quite as high as the egg version but it smelled heavenly and tasted just as good. The inside was actually softer and the outside was crispy and delicious. I was very pleased with the results. One thing, I forgot to mention is that I always put the oil into the skillet while preheating it in the oven and then stir the hot oil into the batter prior to putting it into the hot skillet.

If you've never tried the ground flax before, you may have wondered what it is like. It is sort of like powdered nuts. It tastes sort of like pecans or walnuts. It has that little bitterness to it that you get sometimes with pecans but it's not something you really taste when mixed in small amounts with other foods. I sprinkle about a tsp full over my salad or in a bowl of cereal. There is a site called egglesscooking.com that tells a lot about using flax as egg replacement in baking. The recipes there call for less than the cornbread recipe on Food.com but the cornbread recipe was said be a blue ribbon recipe and I agree.

After supper we watched a movie, Iron Man 2. It was a very good movie. We loved the first one and I thought the sequel was just as good as the first, unlike a lot of movie sequels. Usually the sequel is a waste of time and money and even if it is not bad, it's almost never as good as the first. As much as we enjoyed the first Iron Man, I really expected this one to be good. I am so glad I wasn't disappointed. If you like this sort of movie, I do recommend it.

Sunday we went to Mom's for our Sunday dinner. We had a huge meal as usually. I always come away as stuffed as a Thanksgiving turkey. There was cubed steak and barbecued chicken, which I don't eat but everyone else did and there was mashed potatoes, mixed veggies, corn on the cob, salad, biscuits, and apple crisp. I had one of Morning Star Farms', barbecued riblets, which I love. It has the best barbecue sauce and it only takes a minute or two to fix in the microwave. Afterwards Mom and I went shopping a little and then back and had our dessert and a cup of coffee. I really needed the coffee. I have cut out my morning coffee recently and have done well, but today I had a splitting headache and Tylenol was not doing it's job. A nice hot cup of coffee fixed me right up. This has been a very good weekend despite my headache.