A Sea of Quinoa

COOKING ADVENTURE # 73: Blackened Chicken with Lime Cilantro Quinoa and Choco. Chip Cookie (Take #2)

Jeepers. I tried SO hard to pay attention to the instructions on this recipe. I usually have a hard time with finding the ingredients for these adventures. This time, it was just following the simple directions. I assumed that creating this dish was somehow more involved than it actually was. While gleaning snippets of important sentences and stitching them back together all wrong in my head, I managed to turn my kitchen into a minefield of quinoa. Yes. Almost every surface had quinoa on it by the end of this adventure because I over-complicated everything. At least the food tasted amazing in the end. If it had all been for nothing, you’d see a much more self-deprecating post than this. Of course, all was well and good until I attempted to make that personal chocolate chip cookie again that I failed to do a couple Cooking Adventures ago. Why is it SO hard to make this thing?! It’s almost like I need to hire a professional chef in order to make me a cookie. Pathetic.

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Fruit Archeology

COOKING ADVENTURE #72: Peach Crunch Cake

Admit it: at some point in your life, you have forgotten about a piece of fruit. Whether it be in your car, your backpack, fridge, or that little bowl on the kitchen counter-top, you happen to one day excavate and find a wrinkled-up, dried husk of an apple or lemon, or that soft black banana somewhere. Heck, I found a clementine in my bag a month ago that I’d forgotten about completely. No mess like you’d expect… just this hard and crumpled orange orb that looked like it wouldn’t break open even if slammed down on asphalt. Why am I making it a point to tell you this? Well, since I had to just perform an archaeological dig on my peach crunch cake in order to find the peaches, I was reminded of that little clementine from last month. I decided to just make this a fruit archaeology themed Cooking Adventure seeing as how I have such a difficult time keeping track of my fruit. Probably the first and last time a sentence like that will be said. You heard it here first, folks.

Don’t Feed the Orzo After Midnight

COOKING ADVENTURES #71: Lemon Pepper Shrimp with Orzo

Ah, shrimp. One of those foods that almost always reminds me of warm weather, bright sun, and crisp salty sea air. After all of the rain we’ve been getting, I was dying for a sun-soaked day off where I could finally make some kind of shrimp dish. But I also didn’t want to spend a ridiculous amount of time making it. I searched online for several shrimp recipes and eventually came up with this delicious one from a fellow wordpress blog Fit Fabulous & Frugal. I checked out the ingredients and was satisfied when I found that I had most of them. The only thing that I was missing was orzo. I’ve cooked with Orzo once. These tiny little marquise-shaped pastas usually come in a giant plastic container and seem to multiply once boiled in hot water, a reaction akin to something out of Gremlins. And while none of them morphed into mischievous large-earred imps, I had the realization that my ratio of shrimp to orzo was just a little bit… off.

Inspiration Through Music: Aurah

As of late, things have been kind of crazy. I’ve been trying to set up numerous events for the fall, whilst trying to get a summer photo contest underway, attempt to edit my novel, and write two more at the same time. I’ve been waiting on a few email replies as well. Nothing seems to be more aggravating than waiting for an email… especially if it is an important one. So, one night last week, I returned home and eagerly logged on, hoping that I had finally received word about something so that I could put it to rest. No such luck. There was an email, however, from someone telling me how much they loved my Inspiration Through Music blogs. I appreciate this gesture more than you can imagine. Up until now, I wasn’t even sure people were reading these posts because of how little feedback I got in terms of likes and comments. Anyway, they gave me a recommendation for a little band that I hadn’t heard of at the time, Aurah. I listened to their song, Khorwa, and was absolutely blown away. How had I not heard of these guys before? This is exactly the kind of thing I love to listen to while writing.

Fresh Marshmallows

COOKING ADVENTURES #70: Rice Krispie Treats and Personal Chocolate Chip Cookie

Finally after nearly a month of no Cooking Adventures, I have returned with a necessary reboot. Most of you know the whole spiel: I went on a crazy hike, got nominated for an award, and have been working crazy hours in between whilst trying to finish a manuscript. All of that is done and over with. Now I’ve got some time to get back into the swing of things with some new recipes. And while this weeks didn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to create, I did have some trouble with another recipe that I’ve made several times without incident. I intend to share both experiences with you. And you’re going to love the one I messed up on. It was none other than a single chocolate chip cookie. “How? How utterly incompetent must you be to screw up making a chocolate chip cookie?” you may ask. Apparently, just incompetent enough.

Photo Contest, Anyone?

Good morning!

I’m here to announce yet another photo contest for this summer. It will run all the way until August 31st at 11:59 pm. This time, I’m in need of a photo for my novel, “Night Time, Dotted Line”. As always there are specific guidelines for the photos. And like last year, there will be some nifty prizes for the winner. Interested? Click on the link below. It will take you to my website where you can check out the photo contest guidelines.

http://voxthebook.com/Photo_Contest.html

Good luck to all those who enter!

~KSilva

What I’ve Been Doing the Last Month…

Hello All,

I have been extremely sporadic with my posts for over a month now. I’m going to tell you why.

I was nominated for a book award at the prestigious Maine Literary Awards. I went to that awards ceremony with some extreme excitement and trepidation. And while I didn’t win that evening (the award went to the extremely talented Joseph Souza), I had lots of fun getting to know several of the other authors that had shown up to the event. The nomination has also granted me the chance to have a guest author blog on the Southern Writers Magazine blog. I’ll be sending that in at the end of this week.

I worked four days at my day job, took one day off to drive up to Unity and watch one of my best friends graduate (congrats again, Sabrina!), then worked another two days, then drove off to New Hampshire for a work clinic and some crazy hiking with one of my other best friends, and then returned to work another three days. While it was all fun, it left me little to no time to get anything done.

I realized that I only had a month to finish writing a manuscript on a story I started back in 2o10! I had given myself the June 1st deadline as a way to knock myself into gear and not be lazy. And while I was a couple days late finishing the manuscript, I’m happy to announce that “Night Time, Dotted Line” my indie dram-edy’s first draft is finally finished. I’ll be spending the summer and beginning of the fall editing, revising, and formatting. Joy, oh, sweet joy.

This brings me to the blog and some changes going on here.

If you didn’t catch my last Inspiration Through Music post, then you’ll have missed the fact that that blog will not be a weekly blog any longer. I have no time to commit to it each week any more but I would still like to keep it as an occasional blog.

The last Cooking Adventure that I did was some time ago… as most of you are aware. May was an absolutely crazy month for me… as I’ve said several times before. I want to make sure we get summer on this blog kicked off the right way and unfortunately, I’m going to have to abandon my last idea for a cooking adventure which I cooked… and don’t remember much of what happened.

As of late, my choices for the cooking blog have been rather bland or boring, things that are much too easy for me to make. It may have something to do with me grappling with financial woes or just not having enough time. But, I don’t want to let down the devoted readers of this particular blog either. That being said, we’re going to see a Cooking Adventures Re-Boot in the month of June. This week, I’ll be making Rice Krispy Treats or attempting to anyway… and next week, I’ll be making a Lemon Pepper Shrimp with Orzo dish to kick off this fantastic summer weather we’ve been having.

Stay tuned for a post this week. And yes, this time, I mean it.

~KSilva