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Jacob’s Cookbook

27 Apr

A brownie recipe from Jacob's new cookbook

I know I’ve mentioned it in the past, but I meet some amazing people in my job at the newspaper, and I mean really amazing. So often I come home after a story, completely stunned by what I’ve just learned about the person I’ve just interviewed. Two weekends ago I had an interview that completely blew me away both as a parent and as someone who loves food and cooking.

Two weekends ago I met Jacob.

Jacob is 14. He’s an eighth grade student and he’s about to publish a cookbook as part of a project he has to do for school. The proceeds from his cookbook will benefit the local community food bank.

That in itself is amazing, but that’s not what blew me away, actually.

Here’s what did: when I interviewed Jacob I asked him where he got all of his recipes from for his cookbook.

His answer: he made them up.

Jacob has not only created a cookbook at age 14, which will benefit a worthy cause, but he created all of the recipes himself from scratch, including how much of each ingredient for each recipe. He created the cookbook page layouts, made all of the recipes, took all the photos of all the foods, and typed them all up himself.

I just about fell out of my chair.

I said to Jacob, “That. is. amazing.”

Jacob with his cookbook before it goes to print.

Jacob said he knew that, but I don’t think he REALLY knew that. I mean I don’t think I could just MAKE UP a recipe (never mind a cookbook full of them) and figure out all the stuff that has to go in it, all by myself and I am FORTY YEARS OLD-I’ve been cooking for several of his lifetimes and I couldn’t do that!!

I sat and interviewed Jacob for about 45 minutes or so, and my article about him can be seen here.

More importantly though, I have one of Jacob’s dessert recipes right HERE on my blog!  That’s right, he was kind enough to share one of his recipes with me and one with the newspaper. I am so glad that the one I have is a dessert recipe, since apparently Jacob and I both have a sweet tooth.

Here it is, Jacob’s recipe which he created himself for Orange Zest Brownies.

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“As most people know, opposites attract. Well it is the same for flavors in food. A citrus flavor will go great with a sweet and creamy flavor. That is why orange chocolate brownies are perfect! Enjoy!” -Jacob Gebhart,  Amazing Appetizers and Decadent Desserts

Easy ingredients!

INGREDIENTS

BROWNIES

2 oz. unsweetened chocolate

1/3 cup shortening (I used 1/3 cup butter instead.)

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 TBSP orange zest
FROSTING

3 oz. cream cheese

1-2 TBSP milk

2 and 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar

1 TBSP orange zest

The orange zest gives it a great flavor.

DIRECTIONS

BROWNIES

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and spray an 8×8 baking pan with non-stick cooking spray.

Heat chocolate and shortening in a 2 quart sauce pan over low heat, stirring constantly until melted.

Remove from heat, add sugar, eggs, vanilla, mix well. Then add remaining ingredients and stir until combined.

Spread batter in prepared pan evenly.

Bake for 25 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Make sure to cool completely before cutting and frosting.

FROSTING

With an electric mixer, on medium speed, combine cream cheese and 1 TBSP of milk.

Add sugar, a little at a time, beat after each addition. (I added the last TBSP of milk halfway through as it got thick.)

Then add the orange zest and combine.

Cut cooled brownies into 9 pieces. Spread each square with orange cream frosting.

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I found the recipe very easy to follow and quick and easy to make, just how I like my recipes to be! If you’re a taster when you bake, I highly recommend tasting the batter after the sugar is added but before the eggs. SO GOOD. I also tasted the cream cheese frosting before and after the zest was added, to see just how much the zest changed the flavor, and I was amazed at what a little bit of zest can do both to the texture (it was immediately creamier) and to the taste (it did now have that hint of orange flavor in it.)

For the orange zest, I used the zest from two medium oranges and split it between the batter and the frosting. It did work out to be just about one whole tablespoon in each, I’d say.

I opted to serve my frosting “on the side” as optional because with all the different likes and don’t likes at my house,  I didn’t want anyone not to want the brownies because they had “stuff” on them.

I also took half the batch to a friend’s house one afternoon and we enjoyed them with our coffee.

Great job Jacob, thanks for sharing your recipe with me! It truly was a decadent dessert!

Anyone who is interested in purchasing Jacob’s cookbook, Amazing Appetizers and Decadent Desserts, when it’s published, please send an email to Jacob at jayg@cox.net.

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A book for your kids: “Is Your Hair Made of Donuts?”

12 Apr

Joy Feldman wears a wig when she reads to students that really does look like it's made of donuts!

There are so many reasons I love my job at the newspaper, but one of my favorite things is all of the amazing people I get to meet, all of the things I get to learn about through my interviews.

Today’s children’s book is one that I found out about through my work at the paper. Local author Joy Feldman spoke at one of the schools in our city and I covered her visit. What an amazing woman! You can read my full article about her here.

Feldman’s book, “Is Your Hair Made of Donuts” is her second book, but her first book geared towards children. Her goal is to encourage children and families to eat healthier foods, and to remember that you truly are what you eat.

The story revolves around the two main characters, Maddie and Matt and their quest for healthy eating. It even includes some of Matt and Maddie’s favorite recipes in the back of the book. The book also comes with a free downloadable teachers’ guide to coordinates with the book.

You can order Feldman’s books on her website and you can take a look at all she has to offer, including her adult book, “Joyful Cooking: In Pursuit of Good Health,” which Feldman says is more than a cookbook, it’s a resource for pursuing a healthy lifestyle.

I’m thrilled to have my own copy of “Is Your Hair Made of Donuts” for my family, thanks to Joy, and the title does make me think quite a bit about my own eating habits.

I believe my hair might just be made of chocolate chips!

Your kids will love reading about Matt and Maddie and learning about how your eating habits really do make a difference! Teachers will love the guide that goes along with the book.

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New England Newspaper & Press Association Awards

12 Feb

Tonight was the night I'd been looking forward to for a month now, and I was so happy it didn't snow!

Last night was the 2012 NENPA Awards Banquet. Awards were given out to nominees from Maine to Connecticut in a wide variety of categories. The awards are based on your work from the 2011 calendar year. The event is held at the historic Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts each year and if I had to guess, there were over 600 nominees at the dinner ceremony. It’s quite an honor to even be nominated, an honor to know that you rank up there as a writer or photographer with the top journalists in all of New England. In 2010 I attended and placed second for Education Reporting for my 2009 work. I was thrilled!

Our company, Beacon Communications, has several different newspapers: The Cranston Herald and The Johnston Sun Rise, both of whom I write for, and The Warwick Beacon. This year there were six of us nominated for awards, four of us attended, and my husband Don. Our company allows each of us to submit our best work in three categories if we’d like to be considered for an award by NENPA. This year I had submitted one in Education Reporting, one in Religious Reporting, and one Educational Series. You submit in August and you hear back from NENPA in January, with the award ceremony in February.

When I heard from my editor that I’d won again this year, it was in the Religious Reporting category. She mentioned that there were still several categories whose judges had not reported back. Education was one of those categories. By the time February came, I hadn’t heard anything else about winning in another category so I assumed I was only nominated in that one.

We arrived at the Park Plaza hotel with plenty of time to spare so we walked into the room where they post all of the nominated work, separated by category and class. (Class is determined by your newspaper’s circulation.) As we walked up and down the aisles looking for the Religious Reporting category, we walked past the Education Reporting category and I sadly said to Don, “Awww…there’s Education.” That’s what I had won for in 2009 and I was bummed out that my piece I’d submitted hadn’t won again. Suddenly though, I did a double-take because hanging on the board in front of me, covered by another entry, was my Education submission, nominated for an award. I was so shocked and I was thrilled!! Now I knew that not only would I be recognized in one category, but two, and that my area of expertise, Education, had in fact, been nominated for an award.

There, sticking out from behind two other entries, was a Cranston Herald nominee, MY nominated work! I was so surprised!

Dessert was delicious!!

Dinner consisted of salad, chicken, veggies and some sort of green rice.  Dessert was delicious and well-worth the wait. It was a chocolate mousse served inside a hard chocolate shell, shaped like a pyramid. There was whipped cream and half a strawberry on the plate, along with some sauce drizzled on the plate as well.

After dessert and coffee, they began announcing the nominees in each class for each category, in alphabetical order. It’s grueling to sit through and wait for your category to be called, then your class in that category and then your name to see where you placed.

During the weeks leading up to the event, I had hoped and prayed for first or second place and the other day when I was at the hairdresser for an appointment, I said to one of the stylists, “I only want first or second place. I’ll be so disappointed if I only get third.”

She asked me how many people I had been up against, to even be nominated at all, and I said I wasn’t sure, maybe hundreds since the competition encompassed all of New England. She was shocked to hear that, and she said, “You should be thrilled no matter WHAT place you get! Think of your daughters and the lessons you want to be teaching them. You don’t want them to think it’s about the winning or what place you get,” and at that point I thanked her for bringing me back to reality. She said to me, “I’m going to pray that you get third place and that you’re able to be happy with that.” I hugged her as I left, and I thought about what she said from then on.

I placed third in both categories, actually tying with another journalist for third place in the Education Reporting category.

I also found out later, that there were 3000 entries into this year’s competition. Although not all 3000 were in my two categories, it does show just how tough the competition was overall.

I’m thrilled that I have been recognized yet again for my contribution to journalism here in New England, and in my city and state. I’m thrilled to have a job I love, and that I can be proud of the work that I do. I am glad my daughters can be proud of me and I need to be better at accepting less than first place! I don’t want them to ever think that third isn’t “good enough,” because it certainly is. To be in a room filled with almost 1000 New England journalists, knowing that you’re one of them and you all make up the cream of the crop, is quite a feeling, and I can’t wait to do it again!

I can now say I am a FOUR TIME award-winning journalist!!

Here are a few more photos from last night’s event.

Beacon Communications was well-represented at the NENPA Awards!

Education, I couldn't believe it!

It's great to have Don there with me when I get these awards. He often makes it possible for me to do the jobs I do, by taking care of the kids when I'm out on nights and weekends, so having him share in the limelight is nice!

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What would your message be?

21 Oct

This was me, just before my presentation began.

This week I was asked to speak at our local community college to a writing class. A friend of mine from college works there and she asked me to come in and speak. I was very excited, I love public speaking even though so many people do not. I also love speaking to students, although this was my first time speaking to college-aged students. Usually I speak to upper level elementary students or to middle school students.

I was asked to speak to them about how writing has influenced my career, but the prompt really got me thinking. There was so much more I wanted to tell these students before they leave their college life behind and go out into the “real world.”  There was so much that I wanted to share, things I had already learned that I felt important to tell them.

My speech was about 20 minutes long, maybe a half hour. I had a power point presentation to go along with it, and I brought lots of samples of my writing with me as well, some hands-on things for them to look through.

The college years: once a writer and snacker, always a writer and snacker!

I talked all about my decision making process in college, trying to decide where I wanted to go in life, what I wanted to “do.” I told them about my days as a teacher and my desire to be home with my children once we started our family 12 years ago. I talked about running a home-based business for eleven years and about how I happened upon my job as a reporter and photographer at a school event three years ago next week. I talked about winning my journalism awards and how fantastic that was, about writing books and being an author and how fantastic that is as well.

However, I what I tried to  emphasize the most and what I hope they took away with them was this:

Don’t think you have to do just one thing in your lifetime.

Don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself over and over again, should the need or desire to try something new arise.

Doing what you love is so important.

In this day and age, with the economic times as they are, think out of the box. See what else you can do with your skills and your hobbies, even if it’s not exactly what you went to school for or what you thought you wanted to do for a career.

Don’t be afraid to say yes to something new, and to see where that takes you. Opportunities are around every corner.

Don’t be afraid to put your family first, if that is something that is a priority for you (as it was and still is, for me.)

And most importantly, writing is so important. If you can write and write well, even if you don’t love it the way I do, you can do anything.

I hope my message got through to them and I hope my presentation makes a difference for at least one of those students.

It makes me wonder though, if you were speaking to them, if this was your one chance to inspire this next generation, what would your message be?

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My first morsel

25 Sep

Welcome to my very first blog post for my new blog, The Whole Bag of Chips. Slowly but surely, I’m catching up with the world of mom blogging. I’m transitioning from the role of reader of mom blogs to that of writer of a mom blog. Wish me luck!

Over the days and weeks I hope to share with you funny or meaningful tidbits from my life as a married mother of three school-aged daughters, as a newspaper reporter and as an author. You can see more about me in the “About” section of the blog and you can also check out my website at http://www.jenniferlcowart.com. You can order my books at http://www.amazon.com.

But for now….

This is my family:

It was SO hot on this August day! We were letterboxing, one of our family's favorite activities, in Bristol, RI.

This is our new puppy, Bella, my fourth child!

This past August we got a new dog, so every once in a while, you might see a post about her on this blog! She’s a cutie-patootie!

I’m sure that with jobs and kids and a puppy, and all that goes on in our daily lives there will be lots to share as time goes by.  I hope that you’ll find it helpful, funny and engaging. I encourage you to comment along the way!

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