Ice Cream and Meringues

    Pecan-Mocha Meringues

 Today I experimented with meringues, the first time I have ever actually made meringues. They were pecan-mocha with crushed up chocolate chips and pecans, and a whole pecan on top. I have yet to see how they turn out, but the uncooked meringue mix itself tasted pretty good. Although it being the first time,  I have confidence that they will taste good. Good thing I had egg whites handy from making the ice cream, and the preparation itself was really easy. 

                      Creme Anglaise Ice Cream

  I also made ice cream with a creme anglaise base, which is made of egg yolks, sugar, and heavy cream (and a few other things). It all went pretty well taste-wise, but I hadn't read the predicted quantity, and if I had, I would have definitely doubled the recipe. It only made two cups of ice cream, unfortunately. It was still really tasty though. 

Meringues are really easy to make, and anyone can make them, but you would need an Ice Cream Maker to make the ice cream (or sorbet or frozen yogurt).

MICCA Festival 2012

A couple of posts ago I might have metioned the MICCA Festival that my group was going to perform in. Well, the competition was last Sunday, and it went great! It was all day, and it was really exciting because it was my first year, and also the group's first time getting the Gold Medal Award, which is the highest award anyone can get in the festival! We have a recording of us playing.


Click on the link to hear the recording:

MICCA Festival 2012 Podcast

It is the first recording. The rest are the adjudicators (judges) comments during the performance!

Here is a picture that my dad took of the medal: (that is my instrument. I am actually holding it up behind the scenes:-])

Hope you enjoy the podcast!
-Stella

Blondie Bars

The other day, I made Blondie Bars. They are sort of like brownies, except without chocolate, and with brown sugar. Click here to see a basic recipe for Blondies. Instead of using chocolate chips, I used M&Ms, and I left out the nuts. They were still a little soft and moist when they came out and cooled, so it you want to have them firmer, than bake for a few more minutes.

Here are some photos. They aren't the best quality, though, but you can still see the main Blondie :-)

-Stella

The Hunger Games- a preview

As most people already know, the new series The Hunger Games, rivaling the Twilight Saga, is soon to come out on movie. Here is the preview:

Trailer #1

Trailer #2

IT PREMIERS THIS FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Hunger Games!

Stella

Happy Belated Pi Day!

Happy Belated Pi Day, everyone1 Pi Day was last Wednesday, 3/14. It started at approximately 1:59 a.m. In my math class, we did many activities that envolved Pi. One of them was memorizing and recording as many digits of Pi as we could. I got to 3.141592653589793238462643383279502883197169. Some people such as Tamar memorized a really large amount of digits!

Random Pi Facts:

• At the 763rd digit of Pi, there are six 9's in a row. This is called the Feynman Point.
• Albert Einstein's birthday is on March 14, Pi day. 
• Pi has well over 5 billion digits, and is would take over 120 years to recite all of them! (this fact was found on www.dreambox.com)

If you have found/ know any more facts, feel free to comment to tell them to be!


Happy Belated Pi Day!
Stella

P.S. If you know any Pi words (Pi words- words that have Pi in them.), such as porcuPIne, or PIne cone, feel free to comment those, two.

February Break!

It has already been a year since last February break, and I find myself again taking a trip down to Washington DC to visit my aunt and sightsee. I will definitely try to post some photos. I still have the photos from last February's trip down to DC! 

Anyhow, I hope everybody had a fantastic Valentine's Day, and they got a lot of candy. I did! Our school does a carnation sale, and on Tuesday, everybody recieved their carnations. I got four from my Mamie, Niamh, and Tamar, and two lollipops from Kristen and Francesca. 

I hope everybody has a FANTASTIC vacation!

Fire Dance

Here is a song that I am going to play with my String Ensemble group. We are going to play three songs in a compeition, and it is a district wide competition and many orchestra groups are performing. There are three medals, Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Whoever gets the Gold gets to play at Symphony Hall!

This song is called Fire Dance:
Our version of Fire Dance is adapted, so this might not be the version that we will play. This is the general song, though. 

Comment with what you think! I personally like it very much. It is actually easier to play than it sounds!!

-Stella

Blogs About Miscellaneous

Books
If any of you blog readers out there are bookaholics-like me-then you will definitely enjoy this blog full of ratings, reviews, summaries, and many, many books. 


Visit Emily's Crammed Bookshelf at http://emilyscrammedbookshelf.blogspot.com/
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Nails
If any of you are into nail polish, then visit this blog!

Josie's Nails has tons of polishes and fun manicures to try. Visit http://josiesnails.blogspot.com/
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Art/Creating
If you are into drawing and/or any type of Art, then this blog, by Maryellen, is for you.

Full of art secrets, creativity and drawings, check out it's cool2create at http://cool2create.blogspot.com/
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Please comment on what you think, and be sure to check them out!

Updated pages- Recipes

Please be sure to keep checking my other pages for any updated material.

Happy New Year

    Welcome, 2012! I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season/winter break! As for me, I went to Los Angeles for Christmas. The time difference in between Boston and LA is three hours, so I was waking up every morning at 5:30 because my automatic body alarm is around 8:00-8:30. That took some getting use too. The weather when we stepped out of the airport was seventy degrees. The whole week was in the seventies. My uncle has a pool, but it was too cold to swim in, although he did go in once.
    The highlight of my vacation was visiting with my uncle's two new dogs, whom we haven't seen before. They were so cute, and they were so little. Here's a picture:

The one one the left is Bugsy, the male, and the other one is Pinky, the female. 

They were really small, so we got used to their size, and Zeiss look extra huge when we got back. We also saw the movie Mission Impossible; Ghost Protocol in the theater, on Sunday and it was really good! I liked it.

    Right now, I am up in Maine, and my brother's thirteenth birthday is today, so we are celebrating that. This weekend, we have seen School of Rock, The King;'s Speech, and tonight we are going to see Super 8. I forgot my disc of Pretty Little Liars two hours away at home (I still can't believe that I forgot it!) so we couldn't watch that this weekend.

Have a Happy New Year!
Stella

Happy Holiday Season!

Things to do to get in the holiday mood:

• Go to see 'The Nutcracker'
• Go to see 'A Christmas Carol' (both movie/play)
• Drink some Egg Nog/Hot Cocoa/Hot beverage
• Buy/decorate the Christmas Tree
• Decorate for Hanukkah/Kwanzaa (if you celebrate either)
• Make snowmen/snow angels when it snows
• Play in the snow
• Type in 'Let it snow' on Google to see it snow on your screen
• Make paper snowflakes and hang them in your house
• Decorate your yard/bushes with lights
• Write a letter to 'Mr. C'
• Go to the mall to have your picture taken with a snowy background
• Hang up some holly/mistletoe/wreaths
• Decorate with ribbons
• Sing Christmas Carols
• Wrap some presents
• Buy/make some presents
• Listen to Christmas/Hanukkah music
• Dress up in holiday colors
• Send out colorful Christmas cards
• Visit family
• Dress in layers
• Catch snowflakes in your hand/on your tongue

The list could go on, and if you have any more, feel free to comment so I can add them to my list!

Happy Holiday Season!

-Stella

Really cute/funny Dog Photos!

I was looking for some photos of cute dogs on Google, and I happened across this blog, http://themusicinferno.blogspot.com/
which has a lot of cute/funny dog/cat photos. Here are a few:

SO CUTE OMGOMG!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

I can believe that another year has come around and Thanksgiving is here! I also can't believe that last year at this time, I didn't have my dog yet (It has been a great year with Zeiss=]).

Anyway, yesterday was the eighth annual Turkey Trot up here in Maine, and it is a three-mile fun run! I did it last year, too.

I am finally catching up on PLL (pretty little liars) first season, and I am hooked! Last night I saw Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides, and it was really good. The mermaids were creepy, though.

In the process of drinking Egg Nog, listening to Christmas music, and watching mom make Danish pastries (Raspberry and Lemon Curd). YUM!

Space Battleship Yamato

-This post will go in the Books/Movies section-

SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO
(This movie was actually a japanese anime cartoon when my dad was growing up. It used to be called Star Blazers)
This movie has English subtitles, because it is originally in Japanese, but the English version is avalible.
The year is 2199 and the Earth is under attack by extraterrestrials called Gamilas. They are polluting the Earth with doses of radiation, and the surviving population has moved underground. The last hope is Space Battleship Yamato, to set off on a voyage to planet Iskandar, to take a machine that eliminates radiation. They have one year, or else the surviving population will be  eliminated forever, and Earth will never be green again. Will this work? Or will it be the end for Earth?

Space Battleship Yamato movie  poster

Pages

Check out all of my new pages! Some will be updated soon.

Book/Movies page is updated, check for more info on The Year Of Secret Assignments

BAKER'S Brownies

One of my favorite things to bake is good-old-fashioned brownies. The recipe that my mother and I use is a Baker's Chocolate recipe:

BAKER'S ONE BOWL BROWNIES
(exact recipe)

Prep: 15 min.  Total: 50 min.
4 squares Baker's unsweetened baking chocolate
3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter or margarine
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1 cup coarsely chopped Pecans (optional)


Preheat oven to 350°F 
Microwave unsweetened chocolate and butter in large microwavable bowl on high for two minutes or until butter is melted. Stir until chocolate is melted. Stir in sugar, eggs and vanilla. Add flour and nuts; mix well. Spread into prepared pan. Make sure to spread pan with butter or Pam's cooking spray so batter doesn't stick.
Bake 30-35 min. or until toothpick inserted into center comes out with crumbs. (Do not overbake.) Cool in pan in wire rack. Remove brownies from pan. Cut into squares. Store in tightly covered container.
Makes 24 servings. 


Stella

New and Improved!

As you may have noticed already, I have re-booted my blog into a newer, improved version. I hope everyone enjoys the new version and more posts will coming soon!

How My Dog, Zeiss, Reacts To Basketball

Here is a super silly video that my dad caught of my dog playing keep away from us. This is my dog's usual reaction to basketball...it is hilarious.

That also isn't his normal bark. My dad looked up high barks on Google and it says when a dog makes a high pitched bark, it usually wants a toy or something.

Anyway, I hope you find this amusing!

That is how he has managed to pop every basketball of ours. At home, we have a bucket full of popped, deflated basketballs. Zeiss LOVES basketball.

Stella

Adventures

So after I had gone to String Camp, I had to take a visit to my grandparents because I had sailing camp. It was so much fun! It was on an island, so every camper has to take a boat out to the island and back to the mainland from the island, so I had sea legs every day. It was awesome! (sea legs is wen you still feel like you're on a boat.)!

I couldn't write from my grandparents house anyway because 1) The power went out because of a thunderstorm and 2) I couldn't blog because I don't know the password anyway, dad does.

So after I went to sailing camp, I went down to Virginia Beach to visit my aunt and uncle. Unfortunately, the famous restaurant named The Purple Cow has closed, so we couldn't go there, but we went to some other places called Eat (this was good) and Catch 31 (which I didn't like).

Ivy and I got these really awesome tattoos called Henna Tattoos. I got a very detailed dolphin and Ivy got (surprise!) the jump man logo. It's a Michael Jordan thing. Ivy and mom went into the Nightmare Mansion and they said it was to dark that they couldn't see where they were going and that there were mirrors everywhere and it was eerie.

The actual boardwalk itself is 3.5 miles long, so biking there and back (which I did with my uncle and Ivy) would be seven miles. When we did that, it took about twenty minutes to get to the actual end of the boardwalk. That was so hard because we were heading into the wind, so we had to use extra force.

Riding back from the boardwalk was practically ten times easier! The wind was helping us glide along, so we didn't have to pedal long distances, which was good because w had lost most of our energy biking to the end.

The Boardwalk:

That is where I biked!

So we saw tons and tons of oil barges and cargo ships out on the edge of the horizon. That was cool. And we went to the beach every night and we took my aunt's tiny dog to the beach with a glow stick.

One morning, mom Ivy and I went to the beach for an early swim, and we saw probably 20 dolphins everywhere. Mom wasn't looking but Ivy and I both witnessed a dolphin that leaped out of the water in a big arc. Then we saw to more dolphins jump out together. They were playing.

Now I am up in Maine and I am going home tonight. I have been finishing up my math packet and I only have three pages of FRACTIONS left. Grrr.

Here a picture of Zeiss with another german shepherd named Iris. They are from the same breeder, but they have different parents.

Zeiss^                                    Iris^                

I'm in the blue shorts.

Tomorrow I have to go buy cleats and shin guards for soccer. Then we have to buy school supplies and new clothes for the fall. 

<3 Stella.

Dunder the German Sheperd!!!

This is a really cute video of a German Shepherd growing in forty seconds!! It isn't my dog, although they look exactly the same!!!! The dog's name is Dunder.


SO CUTE!

/\_/\
(oo)
( || )\ dog sitting.

Stella