Friday Funny 12-21/18 (Merry Christmas!)

Here we are again, it's Christmas time. I'm very happy to be spending it on Denali Rose with Bill, and our kitties, Gus, and Elsie.

After last week's cookie debacle, for holiday desserts, I found some other no-bake recipes on Pinterest. I made a Heath Toffee Cheesecake, though that title is misleading, there isn't any cheese in it. It was delicious, but truthfully there isn't anything in it that's healthy, and I probably won't make it again. 

This is pudding mix, 1/2 &1/2, cool whip, and chopped up Heath Bars, with chocolate chips.

My no-bake pumpkin pie, is delicious also, and better for you. It's made with pumpkin, spice, and greek yogurt.

I found a fun recipe using Oreo cookies, but after I got to the store, and found buying Oreos, cream cheese, and white/dark chocolate chips, was way more expensive than buying the box mix. 

I didn't even  know this existed.

We'll be getting plenty of sweet treats in lieu of baked goods.

I also had plans to decorate the boat inside, and outside with Grinch, and Whoville motif, but I decided that the money was better spent in other, more practical areas. I had some creative ideas though!

Instead, I made my own Grinch ornaments, and did Grinch on a small scale inside the boat.

I bought wooden disks, pipe cleaners, ribbon, and a "How the Grinch Stole Christmas book from Amazon. I cut out scenes, colored them with gel pens, and glued them to the wood disks. Some pipe cleaner, and ribbon trim, and voila, a set of ornaments that are unique, flat, unbreakable, and easy to store. 

A string of lights, lime green beads, and its' Grinch decor.

The mast

Stockings were hung, from the portlight with care, see the outside IGA bag? It's beer, chilled in the perfect outside temps.

I bought this little fabric tree at a local bazaar, it doesn't fold up, but it's small and lightweight. Add to it some mini lights, and it becomes a Christmas Tree! 

It doesn't have that great smell that real trees have, but then the cats don't want to knock it over either.

I got these ornaments from a gal in Wasilla AK, who makes them from clay. They're supposed to be caricatures of Elsie and Gus, I had her put glasses on the black one, (Partial blind Elsie), and a sailor hat on the brown one, (Gus, the first mate).

Elsie and Gus

We put up one string of lights on the outside of Denali Rose. Bill wrapped one rope of red lights around a halyard, and we hoisted it to the top of the mast, we also left the masthead tricolor light on. When you look at our boat from the back, you see the white light, from port, (left), you see red, and from starboard, (right), you see green. Our mast is so tall, that people driving by the marina can see it, and it's the only boat with Christmas lights on.

Denali Rose's red mast.

Wrangell is having a boat parade on Saturday, where people dress up their boats and motor by the town. I'm not inclined to motor past with just one string of lights. Also the predicted 40kt wind gusts make that trip less than desirable.

Tree lighting (photo credit, Rich Einert)

Someone was taking photos downtown during the annual tree lighting ceremony, and then posted them to facebook. Here's one of Bill and I, lower right hand corner, in our orange foul-weather coats. It was rainy, and windy, and we thought the huge tree might topple over in the gusts.

We're decorated up, presents wrapped, prime rib aging. We're all ready this year, and all together.

From Bill, and Donna - Merry Christmas!

As always, we enjoy hearing from you, either here in comments or on our Facebook Denali Rose Sailboat page.

Friday Funny 12-14/18 (Galley Experiments)

I tried.

You might remember my recent post about our oven not working, and I hinted at trying to "bake" cookies on the induction plate instead. Here's the result of my experiment.

Supplies gathered

I bought pre-made cookie dough for a couple of reasons, one, since I haven't been baking, I don't have any baking ingredients onboard, and two, it was easy. My 20/20 hindsight says, starting out with chocolate ships, (haha, I mean chips), in the frying pan wasn't a good idea.

I put some high heat spray oil in the pan, and because cookies are baked at 350 degrees, I set the induction plate to that temperature. Another 20/20 hindsight... too hot.

No eating raw dough

I cut up the cookie dough into 16 semi-equal parts, and placed half in the heated pan. Bill called to me, "Hey I smell something hot! Are you cooking?"

What he smelled were the chocolate chips burning in the too hot pan. I quickly turned down the heat, opened the overhead hatch wider, and turned on the fan. It wasn't the delicious smell of cookies baking that we all know, and love.

Semi cooked cookies, burnt chocolate chips.

Yum, doesn't that look appetizing? Um, NOT. It looks like burned sausage patties. 

Uncooked cookies, cooked cookies. Do you want to eat either one? I thought not.

Then, when I used the spatula to lift them out, trying to keep them in cookie shape, they just fell into crumbles. Now it looks like a plate of burnt hamburger. 😑

Try again.

Lower heat setting.

I turned the heat way down, added the dough, and put a lid on it. I was thinking that they might "bake"inside the pan. I checked on it quite frequently, and probably lifted the lid too often.

Slightly baked cookies.

This was sort of working, but flipping the cookies over just made a crumble mess again. The difference this time, is that they're not burned.

That's how the cookie crumbles. 😁

Bill says they would make good topping for ice cream. That may be true, but our freezer is so full of meat, that there isn't any room for ice cream.

We had dinner the other night on a neighbor's boat, and he has a large back deck freezer on his trawler. We brought ice cream for dessert, and we didn't eat it all, so the remainder is still in his freezer. Our neighbor spends about 2 weeks a month here in Wrangell, he's our traveling vet, and he has left for his land home in Juneau, for the holidays.

Shhhh, we could, perhaps sneak onboard, and .....

As always, we enjoy hearing from you, either here in comments or on our Facebook Denali Rose Sailboat page.