Ministry Cookout

Yesterday we all went up into the community where we work to visit for a while. It was sooo great to see everyone and we planned a get together/meeting for this morning through this evening. The meeting part will be first, and then we'll grill out steaks and cook up some typical brazilian food such as rice and beans, along with some shrimp!!!! My mom's making her homemade brownies, too!!!! It is gonna be soooo much fun!!!! =D

Last night, we just hung out at home. We had BBQ chicken, boiled potatoes (sounds boring, but they are super good!), andpasta with either garlic butter sauce or italian dressing. I also had a slice of the BEST ever whole wheat bread!!!! It's homemade, not by me but at the local breadstore where we get most of our bread fresh daily, and soooo good!!! Oh and I broke a cup. Not for the first time, either! I think I broke a replacement cup. At least my dad just saw it as an excuse to get the largest (plastic) cup in the house! =P

Oh I also made homemade chocolate syrup and caramel for "fun coffee"!! We use an Aerolatte to froth some milk and put it on top of our coffee and then swirl syrup on top! Its pretty awesome! =P I'll give you my chocolate syrup recipe, but not the caramel, because I'm still tweaking it! =P

Chocolate Syrup

Ingredients:

1 C water

1/2 C cocoa powder (the better the quality cocoa, the better your syrup will taste!)

2 C sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla

1/8 tsp salt

Combine water and cocoa, whisk together in medium-large saucepan over low heat until cocoa has dissolved. Add sugar, and cook over medium heat until sugar has COMPLETELY dissolved. If you try to go to the next step before the sugar has dissolved, you'll have grainy syrup. Bring syrup to a boil for 3 minutes. Be careful, because it tends to boil over a LOT during this stage, so you may have to keep removing the pot from the eye to let the mixture cool down a little. After boiling, remove from heat, stir in sugar and vanilla. Let cool before serving!

The only thing is that if you overcook this syrup at all, it'll dry up within a couple of days, but if its undercooked, its thin. So you really have to make this a LOT and mess around with the boiling time until you find the right length for you!

So, after I finished my syrup-making, I went into my sister's room (where I sleep because she has the a/c unit! =P I do have my own room, though.) and look who greeted me:



That would be my cat on my bed!!!!!!!!!

I leave you with this pic for today!

Thank goodness its Saturday!

What are your weekend plans?