Hi everyone. Phew, I made it to the end of the #AtoZChallenge! It’s 11PM now, but I still badly want to write a post for Sherry’s In My Kitchen linky. I could of course write it tomorrow, as it’s technically a beginning-of-the-month linky in Sherry’s timezone, but that feels off to me. Sadly, though I had planned to do some cooking, I haven’t actually prepared any dinners this past month. However, I did enjoy several other kitchen endeavors.
First, I downloaded several new cookbooks off Bookshare. One of them is Coffee Creations by Celeste Wong. I really want to be able to create my own coffees. That being said, being the scatter-brained person that I am, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that most coffees I felt like creating (lattes) are espresso-based. I did buy a milk frother last Monday, but not an espresso machine. Now I’m either having to be creative by deciding that a regular coffee can be the right base for a latte, or consider the milk frother an impulse buy that isn’t for me. And to be honest, I’m not even sure I like lattes, as I enjoy most specialty coffees more for the syrup and add-ins. I did buy a few bottles of coffee syrup that are probably way too large for me to use up before they’ll go bad.
Other than that, I’ve also been creating smoothies. I created the best cherry chocolate mocha smoothie. When starting the blender, it made a weird noise, so I was worried that some cherry pit had remained in my store-bought packet of frozen cherries. I guess not though, since there were no pit remains in my smoothie as far as I could tell and I didn’t get sick either.
I also made a mango-passion fruit smoothie. Yuck! I used mango, passion fruit, banana and coconut water and I guess I don’t like the taste of passion fruit, as I’ve used all other ingredients before and had no problem with them. My fellow clients did claim they liked this one though.
Lastly, I have one kitchen adventure to share that was a success: flat bread topped with cheddar, sun-dried tomatoes, red onion and bell pepper.
When running the photo through Be My Eyes, an image description app, it identified every ingredient correctly, including correctly naming the flat bread. It however did say the flat bread was topped with “orange cheese”. I was apparently already totally blind by the time I saw cheddar for the first time, as I can’t remember its color. I asked my best friend whether this was the pinch of cayenne I had used or whether cheddar is orange. It turns out in the Netherlands, cheddar is colored with annatto and as a result is a little orangey. Originally, it is a white cheese. Isn’t that interesting?
A Multitude of Musings 
I like looking at cookbooks, not that I can cook anything in them
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Oh, why not? You can’t cook, or do you mean the recipes in cookbooks are too hard? I love cookbooks too.
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A couple of reasons some recipes are difficult for me to getmy head around but mostly now days it is because Tim prefers to cook hos own meals and I no longer find things easy to do due to the constant moving of my body
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Ah yes, I see.
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Our cheddar is colored orange here in the USA too. Although you can get white if you want. Your flat bread looks and sounds tasty as does that cherry chocolate mocha smoothie with the mystery hard thing. Probably a frozen cherry.
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Thank you for your kind comment! And thanks for enlightening me about the color of cheddar in the USA.
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I love cherry and chocolate together! Thanks so much for joining in with IMK this month. Have a great May.
cheers
Sherry http://sherryspickings.blogspot.com.au/
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Thank you for stopping by. I honestly had never had cherries and chocolate together except in the yucky liquor-filled chocolates.
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i love those chocolates!:-)
sherry
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I didn’t know that about annatto… so there you go! Here’s to a tasty May.
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Glad I was able to share something you didn’t know yet. Thanks for commenting.
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As Kristin said, most cheddar here in the US is orange, colored with annatto to give it a consistent color. Apparently, the color can vary with the diet of the cow.
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Ah, that’s interesting, thanks for sharing!
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The coffee creations sound interesting. I have tried to make fancy coffee at home but it is still not the same as from coffee shops.
The smoothies sound good especially the cherry one! That is a shame the mango one didn’t work out.
That flatbread looks so good! I could imagine eating this right now. Our cheddar is orange too although you can get white cheddar as well.
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Thanks for commenting. I don’t know what it was about the passion fruit-mango smoothie but it had a really wry taste.
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Interesting about the cheese being orange! I would love to make up my own coffee, that’d be awesome!
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Thanks for commenting. Yes, I think it’d be great if you made your own specialty coffee.
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I have traveled the road of fancy flavored coffees and have returned to my boring black with half and half, but through the years I have also cut my consumption to one large mug each morning. Thanks for sharing your cooking adventures, and have a wonderful May!
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Thanks for sharing your experience. I doubt I’d enjoy flavored coffees on a daily basis, as they’re quite sweet and high in calories. I do drink about five cups of coffee during the day though.
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I recently had a fruit frappe which was Strawberry and Peach, and now I am really wanting to find something similar here. Maybe I should experiment at home although I think that the seasons are coming to an end for both of those fruits
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Strawberry and peach sounds like an interesting and tasty combination. Thanks for sharing. I’m guessing you’re in the southern hemisphere, since here peach season hasn’t started yet and strawberries, though available from greenhouses, aren’t nearly as delicious as those you’ll find in June.
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If you liked the cherry mocha… try raspberry mocha – yummy! I would think you could use the regular coffee instead of espresso, it would just not be as strong I think. The pizza looks really good too!
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Thanks so much for commenting! And funny how you call my flatbreads pizza, since that’s what one of my fellow residents said too. I was actually surprised that Be My Eyes identified it correctly.
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You’re welcome, Astrid.
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You have been busy. The flatbreads look so good. I would have cheese on everything if I could! I love coffee too, but if I have one now, I stick to decaf. I used to get vile migraines from it.
I like the idea of making some new smoothie combos. You’ve got me wanting to try the cherry chocolate mocha smoothie now.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend. 🙂
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Thanks so much for your extensive comment! The cherry mocha smoothie recipe came from healthysmoothiehq.com, but somehow I have been unable to load that website lately.
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I’d never seen orange cheddar until I moved to Canada and now that I live in France, I wonder what the French would think about orange coloured cheese… although mimolette is traditionally orange and I don’t think it’s artificially coloured, so maybe there is some way that cheese turns orange
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Maybe, I have no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever seen white cheese, in fact, since Gouda cheese is also yellow with orange outer layer and that’s all I ever ate before going totally blind. Oh and brie, but that has a yellowish inside too. Now I do wonder what cheeses might be colored here.
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We get both yellow and white cheddar here, and I prefer the white. I must look into Bookshare, this is new to me. I would make lattes with any coffee if I didn’t have an espresso maker. It is all about the milk really 🙂
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Thank you for commenting. I think you’re right about lattes being more about the milk than the coffee. As for Bookshare, I didn’t clarify this in this post as I’ve discussed it a few times on here but it’s a book downloading service specifically for the blind, dyslexic and otherwise print disabled.
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So nice to find your blog,. Your smoothies sound delicious, perhaps the passionfruit seeds made the difference with your smoothy. I need to get into smoothies next Summer. Red Leicester is an orange coloured cheese we can buy here in Queensland which is delicious. Best, Pauline (Happy Retirees Kitchen)
https://happyretireeskitchen.blogspot.com/
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Thank you so much for commenting. That’s interesting about the orange cheese.
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