Of Biscuit Dough and Calories

In our household, we (for the most part) are trying to watch our calories as we prepare meals and consume snacks. It's not as easy as it would seem, as most foods that are tempting are high in calories. We have found that an awareness of what you are eating is the best way to keep track of calories that you are taking in.

Having said that, I decided today that I would make biscuit turnovers for lunch. My idea was to make biscuit dough, roll it out, cut it into turnover sized pieces, add lots of filling and fold them up. I didn't get too far though....once I calculated calories and realized how many were in 1/8 of the dough (almost 260) I realized that my lunchtime effort was in vain. 1/8 of the dough was not enough to create a reasonable turnover for lunch, let alone a snack.

So...

When life hands you biscuit dough balls, make cinnamon biscuits instead. I rolled each ball of dough in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar and baked them in the oven until they were light and puffy. Now, they are still not calorie free....but they do make a nice snack with coffee. And, I know how many calories are in each little dough ball :)

A Brief Note....

Hello all :)

Craziness continues. In the last 4 weeks:

1. I've become engaged.
2. I've had a horrible stomach flu.
3. I've worked on college classes.
4. I've worked.
5. I've moved.

Yikes.

A Small Break

Hello All :)

I'm taking a short break from regular blogging due to recent events.
1) I've recently become engaged.
2) I'm taking a college class.
3) I'm working full time.

Once things settle down soon I will be back full swing.

Cakespy Cat

Well, do you see the resemblance? Butterbur is posing with my latest acquisition: a beautiful watercolor courtesy of Cakespy's talented artist: Jessie Oleson. If you are interested in checking out all of the fun cupcake themed art, check out Cakespy or the Etsy Store.

Juniper is a little jealous, so I may need to order one for her to pose with.

I Need to go to the Library More

1) Bold those you have read.

2) Put an asterisk next to those you started but didn't finish.

3) Italicize those you intend to read (or have started and intend to finish).

4) Red the books you LOVE

5) Reprint this list in your own blog.

* * * * *

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible *

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger *

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald *

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marque

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte's Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

No TWD Post This Week

It is with a heavy heart that I skip this week's baking adventure with the Tuesdays with Dorie baking group. A heavy heart, and....a very heavy stomach. The month of August has been rather food friendly (or not, depending on my diet-mindset) and has featured 4 (yes, 4) birthday celebrations. Cake, ice cream, special dinners, and I have enjoyed every bite. However, when I realized that this week's recipe fell on my birthday....well...something had to budge, and I'm not giving up my special birthday food :)

Check out the blogroll to see what others whipped up this week.

Corn Massacre 2008

Ah to be an unsuspecting ear of corn, happily nestled in your husk in a sunny field, enjoying the sun, the water, and fresh air. And then one day, when the sky is blue and the birds are singing, you are mercilessly ripped from your home and thrust into the blinding light of day. To add injury to insult, you are callously tossed into a box with many others of your kind and bounced to and fro to an unknown destination.
It is a long journey, and a crowded one. You finally stop and are taken inside a structure that is not as warm as the air of the field. There are strange sounds all around you.

To think, up until this very moment, the only threat you were truly afraid of came in the form of the small corn worms that are so common in the field. You have learned that are greater threats in this world then the squirmy, smooth creatures of the fields.

And now begins the medieval torture chamber. You are boiled in hot water.

And then immersed in freezing water. Just when you think you can't stand any more temperature extremes....

You are nestled on a soft towel and allowed to sit for awhile. The worst is yet to come however....
No words can express.....

Cookie Monster

My Weird Lunch

Today I had an odd assortment for lunch. Here is what was on my plate:

Mashed Potato with Sauerkraut
Boiled Yellow Summer Squash
Banana with Peanut Butter
Cup of Tea

Hmmm...odds and ends. This begs the question...what did you have for lunch today?
On a related topic, I'm desperate for sauerkraut recipes (beyond Reuben's and hot dogs). Does anyone have any good ideas for sauerkraut?

Eat Here Now! The Colonel's Pancake House

I have recently returned from a road trip, and had the fortune of stopping at Colonel's Pancake House in Joplin, Missouri for lunch. This place has the best pancakes, and you can order just about any variety that you can think of. You have to eat here if you are ever in Joplin! The pancake house is located at 842 S Rangeline Road, and is well worth the stop.

The Colonel's Pancake House was built 50 years ago (1958). It started out as a candy store that was in business for 2 years, and then became the pancake house. They have been serving up delicious pancakes for the last 48 years!

The inside of the pancake house is charming and homey. They have booths as well as tables.
This is a picture of blueberry pancakes. As you can see, the pancakes are huge! If you order 3 of them, be prepared to be stuffed!
I ordered the peanut butter pancakes. I requested the addition of chocolate chips, so I ended up with peanut butter and chocolate chip pancakes. I was so excited!
This is the peach fold over. The pancake house has all different varieties of pancakes...pretty much if you can think it, it's there. They also have sandwiches and other breakfast foods.

Meme

Paulawy of 52 Recipes has tagged me to participate in a meme. I've never done this before, but here goes....

The Rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six Random Things About Me:
1. At one time, I had a representative of every major animal group: fish (beta), mammal (cat), amphibian (salamander), reptile (gecko), and bird (parakeet). Now I'm down to only cats, and no, they didn't eat everything else...but it was interesting finding places for everybody.

2. I love peanut butter...on bread, in pancakes or straight out of the jar.

3. Speaking of pancakes....I eat them most Saturdays and I am constantly playing with my ingredient list. I love Swedish pancakes with lingonberries when I have them.

4. I love Target. I could shop there everyday.

5. One of my favorite authors is J.R.R. Tolkien. I love The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Butterbur is named after a character in Tolkien's stories.

6. I enjoy listening to the band "Cake".

Here are the bloggers I have tagged:

Jade of (cup)caketastrophe!

Ruth of Adventures in Amateur Baking and Cooking

Heather B of Randomosity and the Girl

MacDuff of Jon and MacDuff in Boston

Susie Homemaker of She's Becoming DoughMessTic

LikeSprinkles of Like Sprinkles on a Cupcake

Polyvore.com

I just discovered polyvore.com

Between cooking, baking and playing with the website...oye!

A Diet High in Fiber?

Well, the small white cat has been at it again. Juniper found the roll of toilet paper, and you can see the end result. I suppose with all the pastry that has been in the kitchen lately, she felt the need to increase the fiber in her diet? Obviously we need to talk.

Ah, the Power of Coffee

When it comes to choosing a beverage, I will admit that 9 times out of 10 a cup of hot coffee is my choice. It could be 90 degrees or 40 degrees, but a steaming cup of coffee is my favorite way to start the day, begin the afternoon, or wind down the evening. Because of this, I almost always have my travel mug with me when I am at work, and it is always full of strong coffee with milk, and maybe a little sugar depending on what mood I'm in.

My summer school class enjoyed the fact that I had a coffee cup everyday, and they were good about helping me keep track of it. I was always setting it down in the classroom and wandering off, only to discover that my "brain" was not with me. Coffee became a part of our daily conversation, and they enjoyed the banter that ensued. Since I had a class of coffee aware students, our last day became a coffee celebration of sorts.

We began the day by writing a coffee poem on a sheet of paper that featured a large coffee cup with lines in the middle. After this, we created coffee art: the kids drew pictures and traced the outlines with glue, and then we sprinkled the glue with coffee and let it dry before shaking the excess coffee off. The coffee vocabulary featured a discussion (and some artwork) of the words "coffee bean", "biscotti", "mocha" and "latte". Before recess we spent some time decorating Styrofoam coffee cups with stickers.


After recess, we discussed the ingredients for our mocha lattes. As a group, we brainstormed a sequence of steps to create the lattes, and then we set to work. My favorite moment of the celebration was when the coffee pot was brewing in the front of the room. The kids gathered around it and watched as the coffee pot filled with fragrant coffee. Of course, what coffee party would be complete without biscotti? Each of the kids had their own biscotti to dunk in the coffee. It was quite the day of coffee experiences for our class.

Mocha Lattes:
Strong Brewed Coffee
Milk, warmed to take the chill off
Chocolate Syrup
Sugar

Fill cups to about half full with coffee. Fill the cups the rest of the way with milk. Add a spoonful of chocolate syrup. Add sugar as desired.

Daring Bakers!

Once again, I am excited! Butterbur's Bistro has joined the Daring Bakers, so now there will be lots of interesting baked goods popping up on the blog! Be sure to check out the blogroll and see all the fantastic things that the Daring Bakers have been up to!

Butterbur's Bistro has Joined Tuesdays with Dorie

Yay! Butterbur's Bistro is now a member of Tuesdays with Dorie. Check out the site: http://tuesdayswithdorie.wordpress.com/

Juniper Eats Spaghetti

Now, most of you are reading this post with the mental picture of a little white cat enjoying some "fully cooked" pasta in a bowl. This in itself would be an image, as spaghetti can be very unwieldy for a cat to eat, especially for a cat like Juniper who has no patience for anything. However, I'm here to tell you that the spaghetti that Juniper consumed was not cooked....it was the dry form. Yesterday I made some Lime Chicken with Spaghetti (which was wonderful by the way), and evidently a piece of dry spaghetti fell on the floor when I was working. I was amazed this morning when I heard a crunching sound, and found Juniper on the floor with a long strand of dry spaghetti. She had to work for it, but there is no Spaghetti left. Obviously, I need to feed her more...yours humbly, Butterbur.

Butterbur is Now Accepting Posts!

You can now post comments to Butterbur's Bistro! Yay!

Foodie Blogroll

Yay! Butterbur's Bistro is now on the Foodie Blogroll! Check out the link on the menu bar!

Butterbur is the new diet food!

Ah, the Internet! I love to going to "Yahoo!" and "Google" to try searches on different words to see what pops up. When I went to "Yahoo!" and searched for "Butterbur" I pulled up this fascinating link: Calories in Butterbur, Canned. Evidently I am the equivalent of a diet food! If this is confusing, it might be helpful to know that Butterbur is a plant that has medicinal properties. I am not named for this plant though, my name hails from J.R.R. Tolkien's epic masterpiece The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Interesting. You never know what you might learn from the Internet...yours humbly, Butterbur.