Wordless Wednesday: Out to Dry

Giveaway Winner!

Scarlet Threads partnered with The Community Cloth to give away a beautiful handmade scarf.  Congratulations to Ann from Ann On and On.  You won!

Wordless Wednesday: Winter Stillness

Tasty Tuesday: Butterscotch Chocolate Walnut Bars

This Tasty Tuesday recipe comes from our Alabama friend, Yan Zhu. A native of China, Yan Zhu has lived in the USA for more than 10 years. Thanks Yan Zhu for sharing this... it sounds wonderfully decadent! Though he's not teaching us how to make egg drop soup today, maybe we can convince Yan Zhu to do that at a later date! :)

Remember, we're always looking for new Tasty Tuesday recipes, so e-mail your submissions to carrie@scarletthreads.org. And don't forget to enter our Women's Day Giveaway!

Finally(!) a warm, sunny, and fantastically beautiful weekend here in Alabama.
After spending much time outside enjoying the weather, I think the perfect way
to wrap it all up is to try a simple yet delicious dessert: Butterscotch Chocolate
Walnut Bars.

What We Need:


(This makes 9 bars of a decent size, and since money is tight nowadays, I am
also including some price information here for the ones I purchased today.)

8x8-inch baking pan (about $5)

1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup dark brown sugar ($1.09/package. alt: light brown sugar is fine too)
1/4 cup white granulated sugar
1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk ($2.48 for a dozen)
1tsp vanilla extract (alt: rum extract)

1/4 cup chopped Walnut ($1.17 for half a cup. alt: cashew, macadamia, etc ...)
1/4 cup milk chocolate chips ($2.33/package)
1/2 cup butterscotch chips ($2.33/package)

1/2 tsp baking powder ($1.47 /package)
1/8 tsp baking soda ($0.53 /package)
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup all-purpose flour

Preparation Work:

Set your oven for 350 F.

Melt the butter slowly in a pot. While you are waiting on that, measure
walnut, chocolate chips, and butterscotch chips. Mix them in a bowl
and put aside.

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl.

Lightly grease your 8x8 pan.

Now your butter is melted, and it is time for some real work!

Make Batter:

Mix brown and white sugar with the melted butter. Let it cool a little and
then slowly add in eggs (beaten) and stir at the same time. We don't want
to make egg drop soup here. :) Next add vanilla extract and stir.

Here comes the hard part: pour in the flour mixture and chips mixture and
stir like a MANIAC. Your arm will get tired if you are like me, but don't give
up! Keep stirring until the batter is well mixed and consistent.

Scrape the batter into your 8x8, and smooth out the surface evenly.

Relax! We are almost there!

Kicking Back:

Stick the pan into oven for 30 minutes; more or less. You want the bar to be
moist and tender inside but with a golden brown top. I like to experiment with
different time settings to see how it affects the texture.

Put on a pot of coffee while you wait. :)

Voilà

Women's Day Giveaway

Photo Credit

March 8 is International Women's Day, a holiday many Americans know nothing about but one that is widely celebrated in other countries -- including China. We thought we'd kick off our celebration with a giveaway of a beautiful scarf made by a like-minded organization in the Houston area called The Community Cloth.

The Community Cloth is a microenterprise empowering refugee women in Houston. It targets economic, educational, and social goals through the provision of seed grants, training, peer support, and market opportunities for refugee artisans.

Around the world people are forced to flee their homes due to war, political violence, exclusion, and competition for scarce resources in troubled states. Those who have sought refuge in another country are refugees. Houston is one of the busiest resettlement cities in the US, and the thousands of refugees welcomed to the city each year face a number of barriers, including limited English proficiency, unemployment, physical and mental health needs, and more.

This scarf was made by a Karenni refugee woman. The Karenni are one of several ethnic minorities indigenous to Burma (Myanmar) who have been facing systematic persecution by the military junta for decades. The army has a long record of human rights abuses, including imprisoning, torturing and killing minority group members. More than 400,000 Burmese refugees have fled to camps in Thailand and have languished there for 15 years or more.

The Community Cloth is about a new start. Your support helps refugee women provide for the basic needs of their families as they work to establish new lives in Houston.

The scarf is yellow and brown with teal and red accents. It is woven, and relatively light weight; perfect for accenting your wardrobe in any season!

How do you enter the giveaway?

You get one entry for each of the following things you do:
1 - Comment on this post.
2 - Become a follower of or subscribe to this blog.
3 - Follow us on Twitter.
4 - Become a Facebook fan of Scarlet Threads.
5 - Become a Facebook fan of The Community Cloth.
6 – Add the Scarlet Threads button to your blog.

And, you get TWO entries for anything on the following list that you do:
7 - Post about this giveaway on your blog.
8 - Twitter about the giveaway.
9 - Post about the giveaway on Facebook.

Giveaway closes on Friday, March 12 at midnight CST. Winner will be posted on Saturday, March 13.

Baking Memories

Mary had a beautiful idea for grand-daughter Lily's birthday.  She sent these pictures and this story... maybe it will inspire you.  I think it's a great way to make a little girl feel like a special grown-up lady.

For my granddaughter's recent birthday, I decided to make up a "Birthday Baking Box." Of course, I started with a child-sized Scarlet Threads apron, and filled a box with baking cups, baking utensils, boxes of cake and muffin mixes, measuring cups and spoons, and many other baking items. My granddaughter Lily loved it. 

Thanks, Mary, for sharing.  It looks like you are busy making sweet memories together!  We're so glad Scarlet Threads got to be a part of this. 

And for everyone else out there... we're always looking for other great ideas and stories that Scarlet Threads gets to be a part of, so if you have any, please share!

Pandamonium: The Advent of the Apron Party

I know what you are thinking: Pandemonium is spelled wrong! Well, you are wrong, this was PANDA-monium and it was a feeding frenzy.

I purchased a book, a cupcake book, on a recent trip to Home Goods that I thought would make for a fun and adventurous girls' night, which I promptly hosted this past Saturday night. One of my favorite things about moving to Houston has been spending time with old friends and meeting new ones--Saturday was the perfect mixture.In order of arrival we had Lauren (a friend from college), DeDe (a friend & fellow swimmer from high school), MarCia (a relatively new friend), Xindi (also a relatively new friend), and Xochitl (a new friend from work).

Aside: How often do you meet people whose names begin with “X”? How much more rare is it to have 2 people with names that begin with “X” in your house at once?

Luckily, everyone hit it off famously, and soon we were chatting like old friends and all at once. Even without our bottle of wine, we would have been laughing loudly and making a racket. I may or may not have baked two full sheet cakes worth of cupcakes and mini-cupcakes as I was slightly delusional, forgetting that I only had a twelve count cupcake pan. Such is life. I would highly recommend using D.H. Moist Deluxe cake mixes and substituting milk for water. I would also recommend reading the white cake mix box slowly; recalling that this is a white cake mix, do NOT use the full egg—egg whites only, that’s what makes it white. Sheesh, Eileen. I told you I was moderately delusional that day.

We didn’t really follow the directions, per se, we mainly just looked at the picture and looked at our ingredients and went from there. And, there was plenty of artistic license taken. I would say that the “most authentic” pandas came first, that is if you don’t have a problem oreo wings instead of arms. Artisans eventually attempted to portray the emotions of pandas in captivity giving individual sculptures sadness, glee, or some sort of derangement that caused a strange sparkle in the eye.

A major topic of conversation was, of course, the mission of Scarlet Threads. The avowed reason for our get together was to brainstorm ideas on ways to help spread the message. We talked about it, but I’m not sure how many ideas we had. Everyone agreed that the aprons are adorable, of course, and we all support the science that Valerie and Caroline put forward in their Tasty Tuesday installments that the ST aprons tend to have an improving effect on all culinary endeavors.

Now, we need your input. Is this a way to spread the message? Can we become a force to be reckoned with like Pampered Chef or Tupperware? I tend to think this is way more fun than retail and that it’s a good way spread the message behind the product (which is a darn good message).

Our very own MarCia might be the next person to host an Apron Party and I can't wait to see how it goes. For your next girls night, consider hosting an Apron Party of your own. Leave a comment if you are interested and we can figure out a way to make this happen!

For more pictures of the action, visit the facebook fan page...
--Eileen