Mini Lava Cake

Monday night I was fixing some air fried carrot chips when all of a sudden my air fryer just shut off. I checked the receptacle to make sure I did not blow a fuse or something and there was nothing wrong there. It was confirmed,“time of death, 4:52pm”. My air fryer bit the dust. It just died. I was upset as this has been my favorite kitchen appliance since I got it in May a year ago as a gift. I use it almost every day.

I immediately jumped online and searched for new one. On Tuesday, Nick and I took a ride across town to check some out. The first store we visited was Target. They had a few different brands. The one that caught my eye was the Ninja 5.5qt air fryer but it was out of stock. They said they could have one for us by Friday. We denied it and went to Best Buy. They had the same air fryer at the same price. Unfortunately they were out of stock too but said they could have one to my door on Thursday......Sold! 

I made supper with it tonight and it worked great. We had chicken breast and corn on the cob. It turned out delicious. I did not stop there. I wanted to play a little more and found a recipe for mini lava cakes. Oh my goodness, let me tell you, “ they were awesome!”

I tweaked the recipe a little and made two mini lava cakes. My remkins were a little large so they did not get as thick as I thought they would. Next time, I will use my smaller remkins. The size did not take away from the rich flavor of these gooey chocolatey desserts. 

The recipe was simple and made with ingredients you probably have in your pantry right now. Be careful, this is not a diet friendly dessert. Each little cake is 483 calories and 43 Carbs. 

Want the recipe? Here ya go.....

Air Fryer Mini Lava Cakes

3 Tbs. Butter

1/2 Cup Chocolate Chips

1 Egg

1 1/2 Tbs. Sugar

3/4 Tbs. Self Rising Flour

-Melt Chocolate chips and butter in microwave (30 seconds at a time).

-Mix until smooth.

-In another bowl, Whisk Egg and Sugar together until smooth.

-Pour in the Chocolate mixture and mix well.

-Add flour and continue to mix until smooth.

Pour into two remkins or mugs and place in air fryer for 10 minutes at 370 degrees. 

Let cool for a few minutes and dump onto a plate and top with ice cream or whip topping. 

(Center will be moist and gooey).

Enjoy.

Job Search

I want to talk about my job search. Many of you know I was let go from my office manager job in October, 2019. It has almost been a year now and I still have not been able to land a job. I’m frustrated. I feel let down, I feel bitterness from my past job. You see, I worked there for 26 years, I took pride in my work and gave it my best. I was the only female on the payroll. I felt important. I was dedicated. I was there every day unless I was on vacation in which I would still have to log in and work as no one else could keep it together. I even came in before and after family funerals. Then the day came when the Boss came in and told me he had sold half the business, assured me that I was his favorite employee (BS), gave the other employees a raise, said he can no longer afford to pay me and just like that, I was unemployed relying on a two week severance pay and 12 weeks of unemployment checks.

Fast forward to now. 

I am struggling to find work. I was making really good money for years and now I have to accept a job making less than half what I made before. I am willing to accept that. I can do it. I want to work. I have never been without a job since the day I turned 16. I am now 51. I am getting really sore sitting around the house all the time except for our couple of beach trips. We do not have the money to do home repairs, or take fun outings like I would like to do while I have all this time together. 

I am getting tired of people questioning why I haven't found a job yet. It’s quiet embarrassing too and I feel like hiding under a rock. 

Finding a job is like winning the lottery. Without any education or training, I get beat out of every position. No one will give me a chance. I have learned that to get a job, you have to personally know someone who is hiring. Now this pandemic has hit and it seems everyone is on a hiring freeze. I have visited my community college but I learned quickly that I can not afford it and can’t get financial help due to the amount of money I made last year. 

I have applied to at least 211 jobs and that does not count the many I applied for before I started keeping track. Out of those jobs I have gotten 5 live interviews and 2 phone interviews. That’s as far as I can get. I do not hear back from most and the others send an email denying me. I am turned down mostly due to not having the education, training or that I am not bilingual. 

I did land one job as a phlebotomist at a plasma center. I was so excited, but within one week, they lost my file with all my personal info, there was poor leadership, I saw a lot of unprofessional things and the clientele that came in to donate plasma were mostly the kind of people my daddy always warned me about. I found it best to quit and not waste any more of their time. I decided to let my phlebotomy certification expire and stick to office work. I can always renew it if I change my mind. I would still love to be a phlebotomist. 

Friends try to help me and give me advice but none that I have not already tried. Nick wants me to keep my job search kept within a 10 mile radius and that puts a burden on my search. He looks at the milage I would take to and from work, the wear and tear on my car and my over all safety. I refuse to work in a restaurant or grocery store. Those are both great jobs and I did both when I was younger but I want a job I will enjoy with regular day time hours. 

My last resort will be to check with a temp service but I am putting that off as long as I can. Nicks says we are ok on monies right now to survive but I am getting desperate to find work. I hope something will come along. I have been praying about it but sometimes I feel like God ain't listening. I have cried a lot and I feel like I’m loosing communication and social skills. I have days where I feel useless and worthless but as an optimist, I can usually pull myself out of the funk. If you pray, please keep me in your prayers that something will come along and I can get back into the working world. I need it. 

Pancake Cereal

I love breakfast. That is one meal I do not like to skip. I love all kinds of breakfast from just a muffin or bagel to a full course of eggs, bacon and gravy. I even like breakfast for supper. One of my favorite things to eat for breakfast is French toast, waffles or pancakes. You know, the sweet stuff.

Speaking of pancakes, have you ever eaten pancakes with a spoon? Well, let me introduce you to this little breakfast bowl I created this morning. 

It is called pancake cereal because it consist of a bowl of tiny pancakes. Yes, thats right, teeny tiny little pancakes. They were easy to make but took a lot of patience. Nick laughed at me every time he passed by the stove. 

I got rid of my usual pancake mix because I have had to go on a low sodium diet. Aunt Jemima Pancake mix is the best but too high in sodium for my diet. I scoped out the pantry for something to make pancakes and found a box of Bisquick. I followed the instructions on the back and created a thin pancake batter.

Making tiny pancakes like this requires some sort of squirt bottle or tiny pour. I had a squeeze bottle with a spout that worked perfect. I lined the pan with small drops of mix and carefully flipped each one. You have to do this pretty quick as they will easily over cook. In fact, you do not even have to flip them as they will cook through in just a few seconds. I just wanted mine to be evenly brown. (Nick was still laughing).

Add your favorite toppings and enjoy. 

Pancakes

1 Cup Bisquick

1 Egg

1/2 Cup Milk (I used almond milk)

Mix and pour into a hot greased pan.

Flip when the tops start to become dry (no need to flip for the tiny pancakes).

A Toad and a Storm

Nick went out for a walk and I decided to stay in and clean the camper a little. Well, really, I simply did not feel like putting on shoes. We hung around the camper the rest of the morning and headed out to the ocean after lunch. We decided not to take the umbrella and use our old chairs today. We could see a storm brewing in the distance and it would be easier to make a run for it if we had too. Our camper is sitting about 100 feet from the beach.

We grabbed our old chairs that had been sitting out all night and our beach bag and headed out. 

Once we got to the spot on the sand that we wanted to spend the day, we flung open our chairs and plopped them down. When I opened my chair, a big toad fell out. He looked up at me with a grumpy look on his face. I just messed up his day. 

I grabbed the little fella and took him back over the dunes to a grassy area and let him go. The anxiety of carrying a toad was high as I have not touched a toad since I was probably nine years old. Eeeek. But I knew he would not survive sitting out with us all day in the baking sun. 

As we sat on the beach we enjoyed watching the rain bands sweep across the ocean in the distance. It looked near but in reality it was miles away. People were still enjoying the water and bathing in the sun. 

The skies got darker and we could actually see the storm in the distance as the sun was still bright on the coast. It was beautiful and I love storms.

It was nice sitting on mother natures porch watching the storms pass by.  

It has rained all around us all week but never came to where we are. 

It has been so nice here that we have decided to extend or stay a couple more days. 

Seagrass

I have been here at the beach a week now. Sorry for not posting much but I have just been on this routine where I get up, eat, get dress, and meet up with Nick on his walk. He will walk about three or so miles then I meet up with him and do another two or three miles. The other day, I walked up to the laundry mat to put some clothes in to wash and ended up walking three miles while they washed and another two miles while they dried. After we walk each morning, we put out the umbrellas and chairs and sit on the beach until supper time. I would love to sit on the beach and blog but the sun is just too bright. Today is a cloudy day so I’m sitting out here having my breakfast and blogging a while. 

It has been crazy in the Carolinas. Last week there was a hurricane on Monday here in SC, then Sunday we had an Earthquake in my home town of North Carolina. But something else was odd here at the coast. As we were sitting on the beach, we could see dark spots in the waters. They were gaining and getting closer to shore. We thought it was schools of fish and so did others by overhearing conversations. 

As the waves rolled in, we could tell it was not fish. It was masses of seagrass. It laid a pile of brush along the shore as far as you can see. It went from South to North. People were running out of the water and others were lining the shore to get pictures and conversations.

We have a friend that is on Beach patrol and he said it is pretty normal after a storm but this much at one time is a little odd. I have a friends that live down here and they said they have never seen anything like this.

It made the beach look nasty and it is still there today. We were told that the city was in the process of cleaning it up but it was too much for their machines. It will be a slow process and most of the seagrass will eventually work its way under the sand and back out to sea. Meanwhile I made the best of it and instead of building a sand castle, I built a tiki bar.

 

I can imagine this is what the crew on Gilligan’s Island used for roof shelter on their beach huts. You think?

Have you ever seen this much seagrass at one time? Has Mother nature threw some new things your way lately?

Weird Finding

I am once again at the beach. We love it here. Since this is were we keep our 2nd home, we do not go many other places. We have talked about getting a smaller camper to tote along for weekend trips to the mountains or local camps, but for now, we always head to the coast. We can stay a whole week here for the price that most people spend on 3 nights in a hotel. Camping is the best and you always have your own bed and toilet.

Yesterday when we arrived at the campground, it was raining so we decided to go out for lunch and wait it out. It is hard to set the camper up on the outside while its pouring rain. The rain had stopped by the time we finished lunch and we were set. 

Once we got unpacked and the camper leveled and hooked up, we headed out for a walk on the beach.. I was sure I would be able to find some good shells since we just had a hurricane hit two days ago, but oddly, there were very few sea shells on the sand. As we walked further up near the dunes, I spotted a weird looking thing. Nick said he always called it a sea snake skeleton, so I took a photo. Once I was back to the camper,  I googled it. 

Come to learn, this is not a sea snake. It is actually Whelk egg casing. Whelks are sea snells that live inside conk shells. The will lay their eggs in the ocean and the babies will hatch through holes in the coil. Then the egg casing will end up washed up on shore like this one. There were also two little (dead) crabs laying next to it. Not sure about the story on those. 

Below is a photo I found when I looked it up on the internet. Pretty cool huh?

(Source)

This morning we slept in as we listened to thunderstorms in the distance. Looks like we will be fighting against pop up storms through out the day. That is pretty normal around here. I just finished breakfast of oatmeal and eggs and now we are heading out for a walk. Today is going to be a good day. 

Mask

There seems to be a lot of controversy about wearing mask. Some people are so afraid of catching covid, they will wear them in their own homes. Some people will half way wear them and then some refuse to wear them at all. I see people arguing with others about their choice all day long and it is ridiculous. 

If you want my opinion, I do not believe the mask work in preventing the spread of this virus. They could eliminate some germs from others but I still believe social distancing and washing your hands and surfaces are the best remedy. I feel like the mask mandate is a way the government is trying to control us. But thats just me. 

I actually have my mask with me everywhere I go. If I have to wear it to get in the door, so be it. I will put it on not to cause any controversy. Usually once I am in the store I will drop the mask off one ear and carry on with my shopping. It’s my right. However, if I am in an area of the store where several people are around me, I will simply put my mask back on out of respect. I do respect others concerns for their own health. If I unfortunately catch the virus, I will stay at home and hope and pray I get though it. 

Why has no one wanted to wear a mask during flu season? Again, during flu season I take extra precautions on touching my face and keeping my hands washed. But still, why not a mask? 

No matter what someone chooses to do, why is it anyone else business? Why do you feel its your place to scold those for not wearing a mask or to make fun of those that choose to wear a mask? I see this happening every day on social media. If you are afraid to be around someone not wearing a mask, simply avoid them. If someone chooses to wear a mask, respect their decision. 

Speaking of mask, check out this hand made card I created for my Etsy shop the other day. Cute huh?