The Zereps

we’ve been getting alot of cold weather here lately (-10 F last night), which has prompted me to make lots of comfort food, like soups, stews, cornbread, etc. as i was scrounging for tasty recipes, i came upon this little gem. both eric and i are infatuated with the yumminess of this recipe.

and now, ladies and gentlemen, i give you *CHOCOLATE SYRUP* and *VEGAN BROWNIES*!

super tasty chocolate syrup! (make this beforehand and chill in the fridge in a jar or squeezy container)

• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1 2/3 cups white sugar
• 1 1/4 cups water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

over medium heat, combine cocoa, sugar and water. boil for 1 minute. take off heat and stir in vanilla.

vegan brownies!

• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 cups white sugar (i use about 1.5 cups)
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup vegetable oil (i use about 3/4 cup, i like light olive oil ::shrug::)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

preheat to 350. stir together the dry ingredients. add the wet ingredients. put in a greased/sprayed pan (make sure it’s the correct size for amount of batter). bake 25-30 minutes (mine always takes 35 or longer due to elevation and type of pan. also, it will take longer if you put in all the oil it calls for). *let sit 10-20 minutes* before cutting.

i must also note, you totally HAVE to use Hershey’s Special Dark Dutch Process cocoa powder…it is to die for! the brownies and syrup come out looking like asphalt, but oh so yummy! and if you can’t find special dark dutch process, use the best cocoa you can afford/find.

the syrup also makes super yummy soy hot chocolates and rice-milk hot chocolates, therefore i would say that it also makes good regular hot chocolates, too.

go try it! it’s super yummy and cheap! they are also from allrecipes.com, in case you’re wondering.

hip hip hoooray! our first piece of furniture! ::relieved sigh:: no more sitting on the floor for us!

it’s very harry potter-ish/vintage-looking, and oh so comfy! it got eric’s stamp of approval the first moment his bum touched the cushions. we’re gonna eventually get more, but since this is the first one, it’s very momentous. 🙂 jabba even gives it two paws up! (or down, since he’s passed out taking a nap)

…in snowy colorado! we got *more* snow this morning, but thankfully it didn’t stick. just enough to be pretty. and…get this….we FINALLY got sally subi a bath! she’s no longer a dirty dirty girl. hooray for carwashes! we would have gotten one before, but when it gets below 20 they close all the carwashes because they freeze.

we’re also done with the kitchen, until we can do the counters and floors. here’s a pic:

we would like to see a movie this weekend, but the 2 movies we want to see aren’t playing in our local theatre…’children of men‘ and ‘pan’s labrynth‘. we might hop on over to boulder to see one of them tomorrow (free tickets..yay!).

I was poking around the net the other day and I did a search for ‘Jabba‘ on Google; it turns out that our sweet little puppy’s site JabbaThePug.com is ranked #10 for that key word (aka more popular than 99% of all the Star Wars web sites out there for that search.) Help us keep our ranking–Click the search link above and go to his site. 😉

We’ll take over that notorious ganster’s rankings one of these days. 😉 Long live the pugs!

we’ve been busy with a couple little projects around the house lately. mainly the kitchen. in an effort to bring our kitchen into the 21st century i’ve been painting, nailing, drilling, etc. i’m still not done, but it’s looking alot better!

here’s what it looked like after ripping out 2 cabinets and painting the facades of the rest:

and here is eric, this morning, working on hiding the cables from the undercabinet lighting i installed yesterday:

so yurp…that’s what i’ve been up to…and we’ve been making lots of trips to lowes and home depot. i could spend hours there! it’s so much fun!

we’ve also been enjoying watching tv! this is the first time we’ve enjoyed ‘purchased’ programing. we particularly love HGTV, foodnetwork, and the Monster channel.

anyhoo…i’ll post another pic when we’re done with most of the kitchen (counters and floors will be another couple weeks off). hopefully we should get furniture within the next 2 weeks! 😀

ok, so eric posted some pics, but here’s a few more! sorry, no album, though!

just call us auntie candy and uncle eric! while we were out in cali for christmas, shannon and marc had their little cupcake….eve noel perez! hooray for them! she’s such a little cutie. 😀

here we are waiting for eve to make her much anticipated arrival:

what a cutie!

after spending a few days in sac, we spent part of christmas eve and part of christmas day in paradise. it was nice! jabba got to play with two little min-pins at my grandma and grandpa’s house…he had a great time and so did we!

after making another short appearance in sac, we headed back to CO, with my mom, al, and mickey caravaning with us. jabba LOVED having mickey spend a week here. he had someone to play with all the time! here’s an action shot:

as you probably know, we’ve gotten several big snow storms lately. here’s a shot of jabba watching eric shovel snow:

once our new years visitors left for cali, we got started with a few projects around the house. i’ve been busy painting, and yesterday we got around to hanging new light fixtures. here’s eric the electrician:

new entryway light and paint:

a very cluttered and out of sorts kitchen with new lights and paint and blinds:

we love our new lights! gone are the white orbs and almost all of the white walls. 😀

anyhoo…we’ve been really busy lately. we wish we had more time to visit friends and family while we were in california, but our time was limited. and it was really nice to have my family staying with us for new years. 😀 they were real troopers, considering we don’t have furniture!
it’s been really fun painting and updating our house. the next two projects we have in our sights is a new countertop (ours is really bland), and new flooring (yaay for cork!). but they might have to wait on furniture..our backs and butts hurt from siting on the floor all the time..hey…we’re not 20 anymore 😉 hehe

OK.. so we may be a little slow around here at thezereps, but we always deliver! 😉 As requested–

Pictures of the snow-covered house

OK.. OK.. so we’re a little behind on the blogging. we’ve been pretty busy lately. I’ve been feeling a little under the weather lately; think I caught something that’s going around. Feeling better now though. We finally got DSL hooked up at our house! (Hurray for Qwest! They really go the extra mile to help you set up your DSL; our house had some internal phone wiring problems and the tech they sent out didn’t even charge us even though the internal wiring is technically ‘our problem.’)

As some of you know, Candice and I took a short trip to Northern California to visit family for the holidays. Unfortunately for us, since we drove from our new home in Colorado we spend 4 days on the road (2 each way) and only had 3 to spend in Cali. Most of you probably heard about the huge snowstorm that hit the Denver area. We got extremely lucky–we left at around 7am right when the storm was just starting; there was a lot of wind and snow, but no accumulation at that point. They closed the road behind us about 3-4 hours after we were there though because the storm was in full force by that time.

The weather after mid-Wyoming was pretty mild, up until we got to Truckee in California. I guess out-running one storm is one thing, but you gotta have some great luck to out-run two storms. Our luck wasn’t that good this time. We got stuck in Truckee for almost an hour; sitting in place, then driving 5-10mph for the next hour in almost zero visibility conditions down through the Sierra Mountains. We made it to Sacramento eventually though, but let’s just say it was a long day.
Pictures of the trip are here: The Zereps Drive to California

Many more pictures to come soon.. but I’m tired and have to go back to work tomorrow. :(  Happy New Year everybody!

Check out some pictures