This was my entry for GoldToken's "Holiday Baking Traditions" contest; saving it here for the fun of it

My favorite recipe to make with kids, as there is no "exact" amount to measure. A little more or less of anything is part of the recipe. Besides, a little marshmallow fight is part of the fun! I normally make a huge batch, using two boxes of brownie mix, but few people have families as large and likely only need the half recipe version posted below:

Preheat oven to 350ºF

In large bowl, hand mix the following:

1 plain Brownie box mix (I prefer Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate)
1/2 16oz package of bakers semi-sweet chocolate chunks (M&M's or chocolate chips also work good)
1/2 16 oz package of bakers caramel pieces
1 box of chocolate Jello pudding mix (not the cook style)
chopped walnuts to taste (I use approx 12 ounces)
1 large egg
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup canola or vegetable oil

Gently stir in (do not mix completely, you want it swirled) the following:

1 6.5 oz jar of marshmallow creme
1 huge, extra large scoop of peanut butter (about 6 ounces worth)

Pour into greased 13"x9"x2" pan and bake for 35 minutes. Note: The brownies will appear to not be done, especially in the center, but don't worry, this is normal.

Sprinkle 1/2 16oz package of Heath Bar toffee pieces on top of the half baked brownies and cover the pan tightly with foil and let set on the counter for 15 minutes before cutting into squares. Serve hot with the very best vanilla ice cream you can find and prepare for heaven. Brownies don't get any better than this!

{ Image: img4.myrecipes.com/i/recipes/ck/00/06/berry-brownies-ck-223465-l.jpg }

Variations:

• Espresso Brownies - add 1/4 instant coffee and 1 TB cinnamon
• Cake Like Brownies - add an extra egg
• Macadamia Brownies - use white chocolate pieces and macadamia nuts instead of walnuts and chocolate chunks
• Pumpkin Brownies - drop the peanut butter and toffee bits; layer several layers of brownie batter with pumpkin puree (1/2 teaspoon ground cloves, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon mixed with large can of pumpkin) with final layer of pumpkin on top, gently make swirls through the layers with knife on top before baking
• Low Cal Brownies - Sorry, there is no low cal version of this recipe hahaha...take a diet day off and enjoy it anyhow!

As I slowly get older, I have found my memory just isn't what it used to be. Lucky all of us, we have GoldToken, because brain games are the answer!

What are brain games? Any game that requires you think, remember and utilize cognitive thinking. By playing brain games for at least 15 minutes every day, you can keep your mind sharp. In addition to being a fun way to give your brain a workout, it is a great way and terrific excuse to take a break from other "normal" work.

A study funded by the National Institute of Health found that cognitive training can counteract seven to fourteen years of age related cognitive decline.

With all the advances in technology today, scientist purport that your memory is like a muscle. We all know that when you exercise your muscles, they get stronger. The same goes with your memory, exercise it and it too will get stronger. And the opposite can be true when it comes to any part of our brain that requires logic and problem-solving ability, if you don’t use it, you can become very unskilled when it comes time to use it.

The trouble is, who wants to do memory exercises, which is exactly what they are, exercises. You get done working all day, the last thing that you want to do is go home and exercise. Most people just want to relax, turn their brains off when they get home. This is where playing GoldToken games can come into play. When brain games are fun, you will enjoy them and start improving your brain power.

The Alzheimer's Association of Northern California suggests playing brain games like Whist or Cribbage to keep the brain healthy.

We have all heard that Alzheimer's is incurable, however, using memory exercises like brain games has been proven to delay its debilitating effect. Alzheimer's causes memory lapses and consequently, odd behavior. This can occur over a sustained period of time, therefore, it is imperative that those with Alzheimer's exercise their brain too. It has been proven time and time again that brain exercise helps to fight the disease and preserve the brain as a functioning organ.

The reason that we can use brain games to fight Alzheimer's and other memory troubles is that the brain can be molded. It is not a rigid concrete like object. Again, if your brain is exercised it will become stronger, but if it is left alone, its power will decrease. By playing brain games, you help your brain retain its cognitive abilities and associations.

Many doctors believe that by playing brain games like Backgammon and Checkers, Alzheimer's can be delayed by ten years or more. This adds to the importance of keeping our brain active. While brain games are not the only way and many other activities should be used, it is nonetheless integral to the brain fitness program.

According to John Hopfield of Princeton University, '...card games require us to use a unique set of our neural pathways known as "association memory". This adds to the legitimacy of playing card games in the fight against Alzheimer's.'

If you are thinking that improving your memory is going to be something that just happens, it is not. It is going to take some time to improve it. Start by joining a few tournaments of your favorite game types and learning new and challenging games to exercise your brain to it's fullest ability. As I said at the beginning, your memory can get stronger. But it is up to you to train it, just like you exercise and train your muscles. You go to the gym to work out your muscles, you need to do the same thing to improve your memory. If you don’t use use your memory or work it out, it is going to go through the atrophy process and deteriorate over time. Like the old saying goes “use it or lose it”.

This was my entry for GoldToken's "Summer Recipe" contest, saving here for the fun of it

I have been making my own shakes, smoothies and "icecreams" for years in an effort to cut calories and eat healthier. The trick that turns this everyday smoothie into a low cost/low cal "ice-cream" is in the yogurt. This is one of my favs:

Almost Ice Cream

Three ripe bananas
6 ounces Strawberry Yogurt (or your favorite fruity flavor)
Sweetener to taste - honey, sugar, Splenda etc (I use a splash of Torani's sugar free Raspberry Syrup)
Tray of ice cubes
About 1 cup of half & half or milk


Mix all ingredients in blender until smooth - pouring the half n half or milk into blender slowly as it blends until it achieves an ice-creamy consistency

• Makes four 1 1/2 cup servings
• Approx 29 carbs 132 calories per serving if using a sugar free sweetener

Variations

• Toss in 1/2 cup fresh berries, peaches or apples for variety. Each one gives it's own unique flavor.
• Use plain vanilla yogurt instead of a fruity yogurt, use caramel syrup for the sweetener, and add 1/4 cup powdered coco for a lovely chocolate flavor
• Add a handful of walnuts/peanuts or almonds while blending - delectable!
• Replace the yogurt with sour cream if you want the consistency to be more of a dessert smoothie
• Chop fruits into 1/2 inch chunks and add after blending
• Top with coolwhip and fresh fruit
• No fruit or bananas? Try frozen orange juice concentrate or other juice concentrate
• Add peanutbutter to the chocolate smoothie for a silky nutty flavor

{ Image: 2.bp.blogspot.com/_jnfrhbKW8zk/TBEf7NfeP2I/AAAAAAAAAjM/_k3HtIlTvQU/s1600/1.png }

Saturday, I picked up a handful of nectarines from the local farmers market. Amazing how quickly fresh fruit can go from ripe to over ripe; this time, almost forcing me to blend the last two into this summers most delightful smoothy. But so worth it! If you try this, please let me know how incredible yours turned out.

California Summer Smoothy

Two ripe nectarines with the skin on (can be substituted with mango, papaya, peaches, apples, etc)
Two ripe bananas,
1 tray of ice cubes
1/2 cup of half n half/milk/ice tea
a dollop (two table spoons or so) of sour cream
sweetener to taste (I prefer a dash of raspberry syrup, but sugar or Splenda work fine)

Blend in blender until creamy and serve. Delectable! Makes 2 to 4 large servings, depending on how hungry you are. :-D

Someone asked why we write game rules in a masculine form. I understand and empathize with anyones concern regarding GoldToken's rules being written in the masculine form. But there is a logical explanation. Here is the question and my answer:

>>How come all of the rules are written in the masculine? For example "He makes a move" or "His turn is over". This is very upsetting, as I am female, and enjoy playing on your site. They should be written to be gender neutral, so males and females can play, and not feel like the rules are targeting a certain sex.

For starters, it may be noted that the site is owned by me, a woman. The rules are not so much written in the masculine as they are vernacular English. The verbiage used on GoldToken stems from old English and as yet, is not politically incorrect. It has been written to appeal to all nationalities regardless of gender.

One of the most fundamental principles in the philosophy of language is the necessity to understand the concept of intention, between what is really meant and the way of meaning it. Because I have chosen to use the form of "he" in place of "he/she" in the rules does not make it wrong or inferior.

I feel the use of he/she, he or she, s/he, or some other phrase offends just about everybody, including most likely the reader, self, because it is a kind of kludge. It's polysyllabic and syntactically complex, and it draws attention to its political correctness at the expense of its sense and reference. "Political correctness" is distracting, and it's a poor informational strategy because of that, just as misspelling is a poor informational strategy in writing. What one normally wants in a pronoun is something monosyllabic and unstressed that won't draw any attention to itself. After all, we already know who we're talking about, or we wouldn't be using a pronoun in the first place. To go through and change every "he" to he/she is a lose-lose situation in my opinion.

Blogging. It is a fairly newish term given to journaling online. Newish, because 20 years ago blogging was unknown. Mecir suggested we add a GoldToken blog ability besides offering classic games, because GoldToken is very much a social site. If players enjoy it, we will add more features to what he has set up now. I would be most interested in following this up by setting up a club blog ability. Clubs could use it to track club history, games...any number of things really. But we have to see if players are even interested in utilizing it first.

According to Wikipedia, a blog (a contraction of the term "weblog" or web log) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. One of the features we were sure to include here.

Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts. GoldToken has a test DB set up to see if it is anything players might use here. If so and it is well used, we will add something like it here too. Would you enjoy the ability to post a mini line that everyone could read? A "what are doing doing now" box that could be shared on your subscribers game sheet? Maybe under your message box or in the right hand column? What are your thoughts on this idea? It would be simple to code and easy to implement. But a waste of time if nobody cares for the idea.

Are you going to utilize your blog ability here? If so, what kind of blog are you going to write? Once you decide, you are by no means restricted to stay in one category. It can be humorous one day and serious the next. Or a journal of the days events and a comment on the latest political scandal.

Blogs, as a whole, provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries or journals. Make it anything you want; a place to save your poetry or short stories, political commentary, research, travel tales or news articles, etc. A typical blog combines text, images, and often links to other blogs. To link to another players blog on GoldToken, use this format: { Blog: badger }. Do be extra careful to ensure any blog or outside source is family safe. Re: no cusswords, flaming or derogatory material. GoldToken is unable to allow blogs that link to un-family friendly sites, including MySpace, YouTube and Twitter. Yes, even Twitter. I have an account there, but like every one here on GoldToken, am unable to link to it here because, Twitter is so big, the site administrators are simply unable to ensure it remains family safe.

Do be careful what you blog about. GoldToken’s moderators will diligently hold all players to the site rules in their blogs just like they do the discussion boards. Why is this? Blogs can bring serious legal and social consequences. Several cases have been brought before the national courts against bloggers concerning issues of defamation or liability. We must protect GoldToken from any outcome that might close our beloved site, and our aim to keep GoldToken family safe and kid friendly has never changed. In order to uphold these values, GoldToken needs to curb abuses that threaten our ability to provide this service and the freedom of expression it encourages. As a result, there are some boundaries on the type of content that can be hosted on GoldToken blogs. The boundaries our rules define are those that both comply with legal requirements and that serve to enhance the service as a whole.

Sure, it can be a bear if your post/blog has been moderated, but that’s life. It’s not like our words are so much more valuable than everyone else’s that it won’t ever happen if we misbehave when posting. lol...even I have been moddied! If you genuinely care about the other players and the well being of GoldToken as a whole, you will understand. It comes down to this basic rule: if you use your blog to defame another player, post copyrighted material without prior permission or anything slanderous, your blog can be shut down or moderated. We are currently working on GoldToken’s “Blogger Terms of Service” and will post them soon for everyone

I have blogged for a few years, starting around 2004 on 360, the site yahoo closed recently. They allowed members to transfer their blogs to their personal yahoo profiles, but with limited abilities. It’s not like I was regularly posting there, but it did provide a lovely outlet for my feelings and life’s experiences. Now I can continue that here.

Google has an advisory on some blogs that says:

Content Warning
Some readers of this blog have contacted Google because they believe this blog's content is objectionable. In general, Google does not review nor do we endorse the content of this or any blog. For more information about our content policies, please visit the Blogger Terms of Service.

Google posts this warning for the same reason Yahoo shut theirs down, objectionable material. They tried to manage naughty and potentially illegal material by closing accounts of those that abused it, but found it impossible due to the number of bloggers world wide that used their services. Here on GoldToken, we are attempting to provide a safe place for players to blog where we don’t have to worry about being shut down. Lets all work together, respecting the basic rules, so that we can keep our new feature and enjoy sharing our blogs with each other.

BLOG_TO_YOU_SOON