Look What's Cooking: Chocolate Covered Peanuts

Here is an easy recipe submitted by a library patron, Chocolate Covered Peanuts

Ingredients :
1 lb white chocolate chips
1 lb semi-sweet chocolate chips
1lb Spanish Peanuts (or any other nut of your choice).

Directions:

• Combine both the white and semi-sweet chips in a microwave safe bowl or in a double-boiler and melt
• Add the peanuts and gently mix well
• Drop by teaspoonfuls onto waxed paper or foil to cool.
• Store in an covered container.

To see the readers step by step mini-movie of this recipe, check out the Look What's Cooking section of our Wiki.

Check out the MyLibrary Wiki!

MyLibrary has a new tool for you to share information! It is a Wiki which you can add content to yourself. It can be edited by anyone, anytime. We added a few sample pages to get you started because of the overwhelming response to the new "Look What's Cooking" section of our blog. You can find MyLibrary's Wiki on www.wikispaces.com or just follow this link.

Look What's Cooking: Peppermint Bark

Since the Holidays are fast approaching, our theme this month is Favorite Holiday Recipes. Our first recipe is Peppermint Bark.

Ingredients needed:
1 pound white chocolate/melting bark
1 package (12) peppermint candy canes
red food coloring
Peppermint extract

Directions:

• Place white chocolate in a microwave safe bowl and slowly melt. This can be done on the stove top using a double-boiler. Make sure not to let any moisture mix in with the chocolate in either case or it will crystalize.
• Unwrap all the candy canes then place in a plastic food storage bag and seal. Cushion the bag between a kitchen towel to absorb some of the noise and pound away with a heavy object. (a mallet, a hammer, or a meat tenderizer all work well).
• Once the chocolate is melted, add two to three drops of food coloring to tint it pink and two to three drops of extract. Adjust either to your prefernce.
• Stir in the crushed candy canes.
• Spread on a sheet of waxed paper or foil to cool. A waxed paper covered cookie sheet works well if you need to move it during cooling.
• Once it has hardened, break into bite sized pieces and store in a covered container. Refrigeration is not necessary, but is recommended to prevent melting.

This bark, packaged in a decorative bag or tin, makes a great gift. One variation would be to melt a layer of dark chocolate, let it harden, and then add to melted bark over that for a two layer version.

New Blog Feature: Look What's Cooking

Welcome to a new feature on the MyLibrary Community Blog: Look What's Cooking! Periodically we will post featured recipes and cooking related items. Many times, a theme will be featured and since this is December, we will begin with holiday recipes. Check back for updates or subscribe to our RSS feed.

We welcome your suggestions and comments! If you have an idea or recipie we can feature, submit it to Laina, the assistant librarian, who would be happy to blog about it.

Library Thing!

This is a new site I discovered through my High Tech Learning class. Here is a random book cover cloud of my library

What's Next?

The sun finally came out and my friends were able to skydive. They all had a great time and joked about being ready to go do it again. It was a great way to mark a milestone birthday and we learned about a whole new "culture" I joked to someone that the instructors all seemed to have a "surfer" vibe about them. What was really interesting to find out was that many of the tandem instructors started out doing a jump just for fun and "caught the bug." Many of them just do this on weekends because it gives them experience jumping and saves them money.

Amy and Christina were also given the option of have their jumps recorded on video which they decided to do. The videographer actually jumps with the student and instructor and catches the freefall portion. Brief interviews are edited into a short film of your day skydiving. Here is Christina's video








Now it is your turn. Who is going to take the next adventure? Are you ready to try sking and need some tips on where to go and what to take with you? Maybe you are heading out on vacation and want to try parasailing. Post your plans here and make sure you give us a report when you come back!

Ready to Jump?

The day of September 30th dawned with a 40% chance of scattered showers, but we gathered the troops and headed out to the Drop Zone anyway. Amy and Christina showed varying degrees of nervousness as the day progressed, but by the time we got there, they were ready to go. Here is a video account of our afternoon. Because it was very windy all day, the sound of the video is very muffled and you cannot make out what everyone is saying very well. I added some music and text to the video so you can figure out what is going on. As always, post your thoughts in the comments section.

What Jump to Make

Frorm the USPA, we learned that there are three ways you can make your first skydive: tandem, solo freefall and instant opening.

A tandem jump is one in which you are strapped to a certified instructor who controls the parachute.
A solo freefall is a jump in which you have your own parachute and jump alongside two instructors who guide you through the freefall process.
Instant opening is a solo jump with no freefall at a lower altitude with your chute opening as soon as you jump.
You can learn more about these jumps here http://www.uspa.org/about/index.htm#tandem

The most popular way for first timers is a tandem jump which also requires the least amount of training and is the cheapest method. It didn't take much deliberation for this group of skydivers to decide on a tandem jump.

Our final step was to call and make a reservation. Saturday Sept. 30th was the final date agreed upon and an afternoon reservation was made.

If you were going skydiving, which type of jump would you like to make and why? Post your answer in the comments section

Picking a Site

Doing some basic searching on the internet led to the United States Parachuting Assocition which can be found here

http://www.uspa.org/default.htm

The USPA has a list of member sites, known as Drop Zones, by state. Can you find this list on their website?

There are six drop zones in Indiana. We explored the information provided by the USPA and visited the websites of some of the individual drop zones. One of the sites had been recommended to Amy by someone who had jumped from there and since it was listed as a certified site by the USPA, it was decided that Skydive Greensburg was the way to go.

Is there a Drop Zone near where you live?

Now we have an idea of ...
what we are going to do Skydiving
when we are going The second or fourth weekend of September
and where Skydive Greensburg

What do you think we need to decide next? Post your ideas in the comments section

Skydiving: Where to begin

For her 30th Birthday, my friend Amy decided she wanted to go skydiving. Two more of our friends decided to join her. The problem was, they didn't know where to begin. What are the options around here? Where can we jump? How much does it cost? How long will it take. These are just a few of the questions they should consider.

They started out by asking around. Did they know anyone who has done this before, and would they recommend the place? If you want have been skydiving before, post your thoughts in the comments section. The next thing they did was start looking at the calendar. What day could all of them do it? Not only did they have to consider their own schedules, but all the people that wanted to come watch needed enough notice to make arrangements for themselves.

They heard of a few places and came up with a couple of open weekends....what do you think they should do next?

Stay tuned to see if your idea is the one they chose.

Create Your Own Adventure

Welcome to Public Library X's Create Your Own Adventure Blog

Have you ever wanted to take an adventure? Do something out of the ordinary? An idea strikes, but where do you go from there? This is a community blog designed to let people post an idea for their own adventure, gather information, and then post the results.

As an example to get us started, we will begin with my friends and their quest to go skydiving. Check back on their progress periodically, offer advice and tips and then come create your own adventure and share it with us.