Christmas Tree!

Here's the project for the night! <(^^,)> I'll post pics of the finished project ;) Yay! It's Christmas!

Oppose the PROTECT-IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act

Dear friend,

I just emailed Congress to urge them to oppose the Internet Blacklist Legislation, known as the PROTECT-IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House. This legislation seeks to give the executive branch power to conduct slash-and-burn campaigns against websites that allegedly host – or even link to – content that infringes on intellectual property rights. That would “disappear” whole domain names, fundamentally undermining Internet security, and/or choke off their financial support. The Internet Blacklist Legislation puts more sites than ever at risk, effectively upending the DMCA safe harbors that have been crucial to the growth of Internet innovation and creativity.

Sadly, these short-sighted and dangerous bills won’t do much to stop online infringement – but they will jeopardize our ability to speak and read online with the kind of freedom we cherish in the offline world. Deep-pocketed Hollywood lobbyists are aggressively pushing to control and censor the open Internet, willing to sacrifice free speech and our Internet culture in hopes of controlling how people view their movies and products.

We need to stop this bill before it goes any further. Will you contact your representatives in Congress and urge them to oppose the Internet Blacklist Legislation? Visit: https://eff.org/r.C8A

Please do your research and really consider how much this would hurt the online community.

Google Music!

Welp, Google just made my day!  They have gone and released Google Music!  You can buy music or upload your current library.  One of the best things about it is you can listen to your music anywhere!  The web, your Android enabled device!  That means no more syncing, no more losing your music because your hard drive crashed.  Although if you have a music library greater than 20,000 songs, you're out of luck for now, Google has 20k as the limit right now.

I just got the Music Manager application installed on my computer to start adding my music library and told it I use iTunes to manage my music.  It surprised me, it found ALL of my songs and is currently uploading them!  And I just downloaded the App for my Android phone so I can't wait to try it out as well!

So if you have a Google Account you should definitely check out Google Music!  If you want to watch the release presentation you can view it on YouTube Here.  The first part of the video is just music with swirly lines :P so you might want to skip 29:30 into the video ;-)

NOTE: Google Music will not upload your songs that have DRM protection!

Grain/Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

We all need to have some treats sometime or another, we can't eat healthy 100% of the time, can we?  Here is a recipe my mother-in-law found for Grain/Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies, and they taste amazing, almost like regular "unhealthy" chocolate chip cookies!  The original recipe is from http://thisprimallife.com
 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 ¼ cup almond flour
1/8 tsp baking soda
few shakes of salt
5 tbsp melted butter
3 tbsp Honey
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup dark chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, set aside.  Mix wet ingredients in a separate bowl, add to dry ingredients and mix until well combined.  Fold in chocolate chips.  Spoon batter onto parchment-lined baking sheet.  Bake for 10-13 minutes until set and slightly toasty.  These will firm up as they cool.
Yield: 12 cookies
 
Double Chocolate Chip Cookies:  Add 2 tbsp of cocoa powder to the dry ingredients.

 One change to the original recipe is we like to use Honey instead of Agave Nectar.  And instead of Almond Flour we like to use "Just Almond Meal" from Trader Joe's 

 We also don't mix the wet and dry ingredients in a separate bowl.  We just mix the dry ingredients, then add the wet ingredients and mix them all together.  I hope y'all enjoy these cookies as much as I do! ^_^


Note: Pretty much all pictures used on here are my own :-)  (I can't think of any I've used so far that weren't, but just in case anyone was wondering)

Spanish-Style Quinoa

My brother-in-law was coming over to hang out this evening and I was planning on making some grilled chicken and needed a side dish to go with it.  I remembered I had some Quinoa (pronounced keen-wah) on hand because I've been wanting to try it for a long time. I didn't have the guts to eat it plain for the first time, that would just be weird :P , so I Googled me up some recipes! 

There are many great sounding recipes for Quinoa out there, but I needed one that I could make with what I had on hand.  I stumbled upon a recipe on Allrecipes.com for Spanish-Style Quinoa, and I had all of the ingredients except green bell peppers, which works for me since neither my wife, brother-in-law, or me are too crazy about 'em, and it's simple.


Spanish-Style Quinoa

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 cup uncooked quinoa
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small green bell pepper, chopped
• 1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

Heat the vegetable oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir in the quinoa, onion, garlic, and green pepper. Cook and stir 5 to 10 minutes until the onion is tender, and the quinoa has lightly toasted. 

Stir in the tomato sauce and water, then season with the chili powder, garlic powder, and cumin. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the quinoa is tender, and the liquid is absorbed, about 30 minutes. Stir the quinoa occasionally as it cooks. 

It turned out really good!  It reminded me of the rice you get when you go to some of these Mexican restaurants, just without all of the vegetables in it.  And the texture of the quinoa itself was very much like rice, to me anyways.  I might try and play around with this recipe a bit next time, but it's definitely a keeper!  And the quinoa itself is a keeper as well!  I look forward to trying out some more recipes soon!

Grilled Chicken

Yep, Grilled Chicken was for supper!  And yeah, I know you're jealous! :P

Grilled Chicken is one of those go-to meals that are simple, easy, and taste great.  When cooking chicken you want to make sure the inside is completely white, no pink!  If you like to be specific, the internal temperature should be above 165° F.

There are many variations of seasoning/marinating you can do with chicken, they possibilities are practically endless!  When marinating chicken you get the best flavor if you let it marinate over night.  If you're in a pinch with time, marinate it no less than 1 hour.  But the longer the better!

Some of my favorite ways to grill chicken are marinating the chicken with Italian Dressing, Balsamic Vinaigrette, and Bethany's favorite, Lawry's Seasoned Salt.