Crab Rangoon Recipe

Crab Rangoons

What you will need:

One 8oz Package of Cream Cheese

8oz of Canned Crab

Won ton wrappers

Green onion sliced thin

1/2 teaspoon of Garlic powder

1 teaspoon of Soy Sauce

1 egg white

This recipe will make about 40 crab rangoons

First off I like to use the fluffy whipped style cream cheese. Put the cream cheese in a bowl, open the canned crab meat and drain the liquid off so you have dry crab meat.  Then add the crab meat and the green onions to the cream chese. Next you add the soy sauce and the garlic powder. Mix this until smooth. I like to use a spoon, but my wife uses a blender. Next, fill the wonton wrappers with about 1 teaspoon of the creamy crab and cheese mix. Brush the edges of the wrapper with the egg whites and fold the wrapper in half. I lay them on a cookie sheet and freeze them for 1 hour so that the cream cheese doesn’t melt out of them in the hot oil. Fry them at 325 degrees until they look golden and crunchy.  They don't need to fry very long.  The wrappers are really thin so they burn quickly.

If you eat them before they cool, the cream cheese will still be hot which will cause the filling to run out when you bite into them. However, when they are allowed to cool they will be crunchy on the outside and smooth and creamy on the inside. When my wife and I lived in town and she would make homemade cashew chicken,  I would go and buy crab rangoons from a Chinese restaurant and bring them home. However, when we moved out to the secluded country the rangoons would be cold before I could get them home. So, I decided to try and make some at home on my own. Now, it's become a tradition that I always make the crab rangoons any time my wife makes homemade Chinese chicken. This is the one thing I can make that my wife can't, or so she lets me think.

Fluency Blog Reflection

2/3/12

The blogging assignment was not as bad as thought it was going to be. At first I thought “oh no, I really don’t want to have to put my thoughts on the internet.” I actually found it kind of freeing. While writing blog posts were far from the highlight of my week it was more enjoyable than I had originally believed it could be. At first I had difficulty writing things and when I looked at the writing prompts, I would just say “yeah right I am not going to try writing about that.” After the first week I tried a couple of the prompts, some I was happy and some were abandoned very quickly. The best part of this assignment was it gave me the ability to try different styles of writing and I was able to choose what style I wanted to try. I feel that my successes were mainly when writing about subjects that were more personal to me and things I believed in. The post I probably enjoyed the most would have been what I considered my persuasive essay on why we shouldn’t take baths. When working on this post I used some of the tips we have learned about first drafts and freewriting and just getting in there and letting our thoughts flow. When I was done I was actually impressed with what I had written. It seemed to me that it had a certain amount of personality that I often feel my writing lacks. When I first saw this prompt I thought well maybe I can do that but was not sure I could. Some of my failures included the story I had written about the daughter moving back in with her parents. The story prompts that I tried were the prompts that I struggled with the most. I noticed that the more I wrote the easier it got for me and the less time I would have to spend on it. This was probably a combination of my thoughts flowing more freely to the paper and my typing skill increasing as well. One thing that I found interesting was that I actually started getting excited about writing. When I would sit down and get ready to write I was not sure what I was going to end up with. The sense of achievement I felt when I actually enjoyed writing about something and also enjoyed reading what I wrote was what amazed me the most.

Good Reasons for Sleeping In

 2/29/12

I have compiled ten good reasons for sleeping in. The number one reason to sleep in is because there are no kids at home to wake up at six a.m. This doesn’t happen very often in my house so we try to take advantage of it as often as possible. The second reason for sleeping in is that you work overnight and who really knows what sleeping in is when your schedule is that messed up. You can sleep until nine pm and you always have the excuse “I worked all night last night.” The third reason to sleep in would be because your alarm did not go off because of a power outage the night before. You can’t use this as an excuse very often but occasionally it will work. The fourth reason to sleep in would be that it is President’s Day and you don’t have anything to do on President’s Day. The fifth reason could include something about having to console a friend who is going through a tough time by giving him someone to drink with so he wasn’t drunk and alone. The sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth reasons are used in deer camp every year by someone. Number six is “I waited for the sun to come up before I went to my stand hoping I could scare some deer towards your stand.” Number seven would be “I knew everyone would be hungry around ten and decided to stay here and make sure we all had breakfast. So why don’t you get a fire going and we will make some eggs.” The eighth reason to sleep in is  “It was so cold last night in the tent that my legs were frozen to the floor and I couldn’t get up.” The ninth reason is “I was going to get up early but no one woke me up.” The tenth reason to sleep in is because the lake is too foggy at five thirty in the morning and you couldn’t see where you were going anyway.

2/29/12

Why was today such a bad day? This is not going to sound good but my daughter moved home today. I thought that my wife and I would be enjoying a house to ourselves by the end of the week. Our youngest son is leaving for college 600 miles away on Thursday. At first it was hard to imagine the house being empty but as we got closer to school beginning we came around to the idea of not having a house full. It grew on us and now all we have is disappointment, because our oldest is needing a place to stay.

I will say it isn’t a huge surprise, she has never had a job. She spends most of her time living in new age hippie camps growing organic vegetables and living in a shanty with a tarp for a roof. I guess really I don’t blame her for wanting to move back into a real house with modern conveniences such as a toilet. If it were up to me I would have told her “No, you can’t move back in again.” However it wasn’t up to me. You know how that works!

I love my daughter, but we just don’t really see eye to eye she is into the occupy movement, a member of PETA and a self-proclaimed Obamaniac. I guess if you were to describe her you could say she has no work ethic, she only eats plants, and she will vote for whoever MTV tells her to. This couldn’t be any further from me and the old lady. We have worked for everything we have and enjoy a good rare steak. I have always worked many times I worked somewhere I really hated because my family needed the insurance. I never dreamed of the government providing me with it. Man how the times have changed.

 I suppose I can handle my daughter living with us for a little while the real issue is going to be her boyfriend who just asked me if his band can set up in my garage to practice. That was the last straw I wanted to tell him to cut his hair and get a job, but my wife told me I had to be nice.

Pets

2/29/12

I wanted to write about what the best pets are, but I thought it would be more fun to list what the worst pets are. I think number one would have to be the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach. I do not understand why any boding would possibly want a pet Cockroach, much less a huge one that hisses. I guess the whole idea of bugs as pets seems kind of odd anyway. Number two would be a chimpanzee, I want nothing to do with a pet that has to wear a diaper. If it can’t be trained to go outside then a pet should just stay outside. Plus I once saw an episode of Oprah about a woman who had her face eaten off by a chimp. That doesn’t appeal to me. Monkeys in general are out in my opinion. The third worst pet I think you could have would be a skunk. I don’t like the idea of accidentally seeing a skunk much less waking up to one running around my house every morning. I know you can get their scent glands removed but I don’t want to take a chance that they skunk smell may actually cover up a worse scent. In addition skunks are one the major carriers of rabies. The fourth worst pet you could have would be a snake. I don’t really know anyone who likes snakes. I think this is an ancient survival mechanism that we have inherited from our ancestors. I don’t like mice either but still I don’t want to have to feed them to a “pet”.

I know that many people keep all of these animals as pets, but I wouldn’t allow any of these in my house. I am a dog person and I don’t really care for cats, but I would have cats before chimps, roaches, skunks, or snakes. I am sure there are reasons why people like these animals but I think it is for the shock value of being able to say “here is my pet roach”.

Shopping

2/29/12

I hate shopping. I think that my distaste for shopping comes from the fact that I need someone else to supply things for me and I cannot be self-reliant. I know that being self-reliant is a great idea, but it is probably not very feasible in our modern society. I think that the reason for this is because we as a society enjoy our free time and conveniences. This doesn’t mean I can’t hope to one day be more self-reliant but I will never be to provide all myself with all my needs. Another reason why I hate shopping is people; I am not a people person and although I don’t like to say it I may be slightly anti-social. Part of the reason for this is because of lack of manners people sometimes demonstrate. Or maybe it’s just my lack of tolerance for others. I think my wife and I would have different opinions on this. For these reasons when I go shopping it is in and out. I know what I need and I generally know where it is. If I don’t know where it is I don’t need it. This applies to the grocery store, gas stations, Wal-Mart and especially the mall. I especially dislike the mall. I can handle outdoors stores for a little while but even there I start feeling stressed out after some time. The one place I know of that I may enjoy shopping would be the Branson Landing. It has the Bass Pro outdoor store, a few great restaurants as well as being outdoors, which makes me feel a whole lot less contained. The best part is if you don’t mind walking around in the rain and cold you may be one of the only ones there. It may be helpful for me to be around people more. I am sure I could learn to be more sociable. However I do not see this happening.

Too Old For......

2/29/12

I was talking to my wife one evening last year and she had said, “I wish you played some sort of sport so the kids and I could come watch you.” I jokingly said “You can watch on of my fishing tournaments.” Believe it or not that was not the kind of sport she was referring to.  I was never really an athletic person and I am not in the best shape of my life so I just kind of blew this off. Around two weeks later a friend of mine from work asked me if I had ever played softball. I told him no and he tried to convince me to fill an empty spot on his team. I tried to tell him that I on a softball team was probably not going to help the team out. He then told me who all was on the team and I realized that with a recreational softball team it was more about enjoying the game than being an excellent athlete. Then I remembered my wife telling me she wished I played an organized sport. In the end I agreed to play and after the first practiced realized that while not being the best player on the team I wasn’t the worst. Then I realized that I was one of the oldest people on the team. Only two were as old as or older than me. We played a few games and I realized that my belief that softball isn’t that physical was quickly broken. I was sore after each game and I realized just how out of shape I was in. It wasn’t until about the sixth game when I realized maybe I should not be doing this.

I thought I would slide into second base and ended up dislocating my left kneecap. This was very painful but nothing new to me I had trouble with my knees when I was younger. I ended up being off work almost all summer long and was not able to do much of anything. This made me realize that I was probably too old to play softball for fun and my wife hasn’t asked me to play any more sports.