My family and I enjoyed this recipe yesterday with our breakfast. I served them with scrambled eggs and deli ham. My two-year-old loved them! He had margarine and grape jelly on his!

Blueberry Muffins

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup light brown sugar
¼ cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
½ cup sour cream
2 tablespoons butter, melted
½ cup buttermilk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract (I added this ingredient to original recipe)
1 pint fresh blueberries

Grease 12 large or 18 smaller muffin pans. (I used a cast-iron muffin pan with six large muffin cups. The recipe still works fine with this size muffin.)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Combine the sugars, eggs, sour cream, butter, buttermilk, and vanilla. Toss the blueberries with the flour mixture. Add the wet mixture into the dry mixture and stir until just combined. Fill the muffin cups two-thirds full. Sprinkle top of muffins with granulated sugar and bake for about 25 minutes, until a cake tester or straw inserted in the center comes out clean or the muffin feels springy when pressed gently with your finger.

Serve warm with butter or margarine and preserves.

Cecelia Dowdy

Many of you know that I blog about books, writing and recipes. Since I like talking about different foods, I thought I’d mention a great restaurant that I recently “discovered.” My hubby and I recently celebrated our anniversary. We went out to dinner at McCormick And Schmick’s restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland.

The seafood was awesome! I had a seafood medley dish in a sherry-based cream sauce and my hubby had salmon. It was simply divine!

I highly recommend this place for a nice meal! It’s a bit pricey, but it’s not too expensive. We’ll probably keep it on our list of eating places to use for special occasions.

Cecelia Dowdy

When I saw this photo, I knew I had to place it on my blog. I’ll probably place it somewhere on my website, also. A cup of coffee and a laptop! This is the way I start my day early every morning. I love a good cup of java and logging onto the internet to check my email and to work on my novels.

Cecelia Dowdy

I never got a chance to make the chocolate gelato this weekend. Time got away from me! Last night I was craving chocolate. I didn’t make the gelato because it would take too long since I’d have to chill it completely before placing into the ice cream maker. I had a cake mix in the cupboard so I made these yummy cookies instead. They are quite tasty!

Munchy Chocolate Cookies

Preheat oven to 350°F
Mix the dry cake mix, oil and eggs in a large bowl with a spoon until dough forms (some dry mix will remain).
Shape the dough into 1″ balls; roll in the sugar. Place about 4cm (2″) apart on an un-greased baking sheet.
Flatten with fork dipped in sugar.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until set. Remove from the baking sheet to a wire rack to cool.

Yummy!

I finished a Love Inspired novel over the weekend entitled Heaven Sent by Jillian Hart. I’ll post about the book tomorrow or later this week.

Cecelia Dowdy

From Wikipedia:
Gelato, or the plural Gelati, is Italian ice cream made from milk and sugar, combined with other flavorings. The gelato ingredients (after an optional pasteurization) are frozen while stirring to break up ice crystals as they form. Like high end ice cream, gelato generally has less than 35% air – resulting in a dense and extremely flavourful product.

Gelato is the generic Italian for ice cream. The same word is commonly used in English speaking countries to refer to ice cream that is prepared in the Italian way. “Gelato” is an Italian word for “frozen” and comes from the Italian gelare, meaning “to freeze.”

Sounds yummy, doesn’t it? I plan on making this tomorrow, or sometime this Labor Day Weekend using my ice cream maker! I’ll be sure to blog about it and let all my readers know how much I like it. Here’s a recipe I found:

Chocolate Gelato
2 eggs, slightly beaten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder .175 ml
3/4 cup sugar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175 ml
1 cup milk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .250 ml
1 1/2 cups whipping cream . . . . . . . .375 ml
In a saucepan combine cocoa and sugar.
Stir until well mixed. Gradually add milk,
making a paste. Whisk in eggs. Place over
medium heat and cook stirring constantly
until steaming, about 8 to 10 minutes. Stir in
cream. Chill thoroughly. Freeze according to ice cream maker’s instructions.
Makes about 1Qt/.9L.

I’ll admit, I’ve never had gelato, that I can remember, so it’ll be a different treat for me and my family to try.

I’ll be attending the ACFW conference soon, and I notice people have mentioned a chocolate party. I also recall from attending RWA conferences that romance writers are always talking about chocolate. What’s the correlation between romance writing and chocolate?

Who knows?

I enjoy it and my family enjoys it. I’ve always liked chocolate, even before I became a writer!

Cecelia Dowdy

This is a great recipe to make for your family. It’s quick and easy, plus it tastes very good! I altered the recipe a bit. The original calls for one teaspoon of seasoned salt. We thought that was too bland. It tastes much better with a tablespoon of seasoned salt. Also, I need to bake it for 45 minutes in my oven. When I bake it for thirty minutes, it comes out too soupy.

Since I’m still working on this novel, trying to get it out the door, I needed a quick and easy recipe to serve to my family tonight!

Enjoy!

Old-Time Tuna Bake

4 cups uncooked wide egg noodles

1 1/2 cups frozen sweet peas

1 can (10 3/4 ounce) condensed cream of celery soup

1 can (12 ounces) evaporated milk or 1 1/2 cups half-and-half

1 tablespoon instant minced onion

1 tablespoon seasoned salt

2 cans (6 ounces each) tuna in water, drained, flaked

1 can (2.8 ounces) french fried onions

Cook noodles as directed on package, adding peas during last minute of cooking time; drain.

Meanwhile, heat oven to 350 degrees. In ungreased 2 quart casserole, mix soup, milk, instant minced onion and salt.

Stir cooked noodles and tuna into soup mixture; cover. Bake 45 minutes.

Remove from oven. Uncover; stir mixture well. Sprinkle with french fried onions. Return to oven; bake uncovered about 5 minutes longer or until onions are golden brown.

Makes 6 servings (1 1/4 cups each)

I know I usually focus on books and writing, however, occasionally, I’ll post a recipe that I’ve tried. My hubby and I made corn on the grill last weekend and it was yummy! We used white sweet corn. For all of you summer barbeque fans, this is a recipe you might want to try!

EASY CORN ON THE GRILL

2 ears of corn for each person
1 tablespoon butter for each ear of corn
3 tablespoons crushed ice for each ear of corn
aluminum foil or foil pockets
salt, to taste

Husk corn and rinse. Heat grill to 350F.
Cut a rectangle of aluminum foil large enough to wrap each corn cob twice. Place each corn in the center of foil with the shiny side in. Add 3 tablespoons crushed ice and 1 tablespoon butter.

It’s important to wrap the corn with the aluminum foil so that the edges of the foil are crimped and sealed securely so that as the ice melts, the liquid will be retained in the foil pocket. Make an envelope with the foil and double fold the edges, then place the seams on the top.

Place the corn pockets on the hot grill and cook for 30 minutes or so, turning over half way through cooking time. (Length of cooking time will vary depending on the tenderness, variety and age of the corn – some types of corn may be done in half the time).

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ICE CREAM!!! Today I had my toddler son outside and the ice cream man appeared in his musical truck! My son had never purchased anything from the ice cream man before, so we hurried inside and got some money to purchase a cool tasty treat.

Now, I haven’t purchased ice cream from the ice cream man in many years! The first thing I noticed was the prices!! What a hike! The cheapest was $1.50 and the most expensive was $4.00!!! The ice cream man suggested I purchase the cheapest item for my son since it was popular for kids his age! It was a small container of popsicle pellets in a rainbow of fruit flavors. He ate them all, and as we were sitting outside, and he was eating his fruity treat, I couldn’t help but recall the fond memories I’d had as a child when I purchased fare from the ice cream man!

We’d hear that bell ringing throughout the neighborhood, and we’d yell, “Mom, it’s the ice cream man!!” We’d jump around, get excited, want to get our money to go out there and get a popsicle or an ice cream bar. I remember that I loved the Good Humor Chocolate Eclairs, Strawberry Shortcakes, and Toasted Almonds. I also loved to get a plain vanilla or a plain chocolate ice cream bar enrobed in a chocolate shell! Yum! I always preferred ice cream over popsicles, though. I remember a popular treat with some of my friends was a Bomb Pop. It was red white and blue! Also, I recall another popsicle-like treat that my friends enjoyed that was shaped like a cone, and there was a ball of bubble gum at the bottom of the cone!

Just going out to the ice cream truck with my son tapped into some nostalgic memories for me! These are the kind of wonderful, sweet emotions we need to tap into and then translate into the stories we create!

Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com

I’m haphazardly trying to get my manuscript together for my July 1 deadline. I was off from work today, and my son was at home with me. It’s hard to get any work done with an almost-two-year-old around. When he settled in for his nap, I felt like I wanted a nap, too. However, my work beckoned to me, so I made an iced coffee to stay awake. Since I was impatient, I didn’t allow my coffee to cool properly, so it wasn’t as good as the iced coffees I’d gotten at restaurants and coffee places. My coffee ended up tasting lukewarm, even after I’d added the ice cubes, but I drank it anyway since I needed to stay awake.

I got a fair amount of work done, and I’m glad about that.

Also, I’ve started reading Michelle McKinney Hammond’s book The Last Ten Percent. I’ll post a full review about it once I’m finished with the novel.

Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com

For several years I’ve been hearing about how great fresh Krispy Kreme donuts taste. But, alas, I’ve never had one fresh from a Krispy Kreme shop. I’ve only had them when purchased from the grocery store.

Grocery store Krispy Kremes do NOT do justice to the Krispy Kreme reputation! My family and I had breakfast at Krispy Kreme this morning in Matthews, NC, near Charlotte, NC. We enjoyed the glazed, lemon-filled, and custard filled donuts! My hubby enjoyed one of the berry-flavored chiller drinks and I enjoyed a tasty cup of freshly-brewed coffee!

I did manage to pop into the Family Christian Store for a hot minute! They have a fairly good Christian fiction section, but I did not purchase any books since I was in a hurry.

Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com