Rain's Art and Dinner Date

 Good morning Friends,

   I am posting today for Rain's Art and Dinner date-link in my sidebar. We share art and/or food- a perfect pairing.

  I didn't follow the prompt this week, but I have gotten out my watercolor paints and watercolor inks this week. Monday, I found my watercolor postcards that I have had for awhile now. When I was just getting into painting I was following tutorials more and one site was selling these postcards on discount. So I painted and stamped some of them or used only watercolors, and sent them off to my usa slow mail friends. That was fun.

    Tuesday morning I decided to get out a piece of watercolor paper and paint flowers inspired by a calendar photo I had saved. I must remind my readers I am a total novice when it comes to painting. I used watercolor paints and inks.

  My first piece I didn't like at all, thought I could salvage it a bit with stamps nope, I will just fold it in half and use it for slow mail

 The second attempt was better, but not sure why I did the flower petals so small.

 This was my inspiration piece. I used to think that looking at a photo was "cheating" but after watching a video using acrylics the artist says no it is good to use your own photos or another reference and not rely on memory.

Note all photos will enlarge just click on them

For this second painting after I put in the background I grabbed my black walnut ink and dip pen and outlined the flowers and stems first. Made sure it was dry and then used watercolor paints. The darker green in the grassy area is alcohol ink

  I am fairly pleased with this for me, but would have been better with larger petals Also the photo reference did not have leaves, but on my version thinking I should have added some large leaves to the stems--always learning

   I made a couple batches of keto ice cream recently. This is the recipe I follow  I use the swerve powdered sweetener and xylitol. These two sweeteners combined help to make the keto ice cream creamy. 

 Warning though xylitol will kill dogs, not sure why as it is made from the birch tree and is a natural product.

    I also double the recipe, use cream for the condensed milk recipe and then switch over to 1/2 and 1/2 for the rest of the recipe-after using the last cup of the cream in the quart container.

   I added fresh strawberries and blueberries to the first batch. I also used strawberry extract instead of vanilla extract.

 

 The second batch I turned into a chocolate espresso ice cream-soooo good my favorite so far.  Follow the same recipe at the end of making the condensed milk add 3 ounces of dark cocoa I use Hershey's special dark as it has a rich flavor-I also added in two tablespoons of espresso powder, and for the rest of the recipe added in vanilla extract.

 it does take 30 minutes of constant stirring of the cream to begin the condensed milk recipe

The sweeteners and the butter added to above

then the espresso, cocoa, whisked til blended and the xanthan gum let sit for 10 minutes covered then continue on with the recipe

I usually make this early morning and then mid afternoon it is ready to churn. I found if I let it sit over nite it seperates too much

For me this was well worth the money

added these in at the end.  I think I will leave these out next time, they are very hard after the ice cream has been in the freezer, and I think I cracked a crown-ugh can't believe that happened-so do not want to go the dentist and it's a long drive too.

                              

  Last week I needed to use up fresh apples and frozen peach slices so made up a crisp with gluten free oat flakes and oat flour I used Splenda to sweeten the fruit (I no longer bake with sugar) and sprinkled instant tapioca (gluten free) and baking spice as I layered the fruits,  and in the crumble topping I used coconut sugar or sometimes I use swerve brown sweetener along with cinnamon.

Happy Thursday and thanks so much for visiting