This domain is for sale, would be a great place to host a solar power information website, or a directory of solar energy providers, etc.

This domain is for sale, would be a great place to host a solar power information website, or a directory of solar energy providers, etc.

Stumped about what to give for Mother’s Day? How about a board game and a basket of gourmet snacks? Some of my family’s most enjoyable moments were spent hunched over a game table with a bowls of nuts or crackers at our elbows.

I can thank my mother and grandmother for my love of games. They taught my sister and me how to play gin rummy as soon as we were old enough to understand numbers and suits and hold ten cards in our hands. My grandmother was the fastest shuffler and dealer I have ever seen. She’d smack the deck on the table, split it in half, and let it rip with the impressive efficiency of a well-seasoned professional.

For me, learning how to play card games was like being allowed into a special club. Suddenly, there was an activity that I could share with grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, whether they were ten or eighty –one that was cheap, quiet, and required no physical prowess. Even the most cantankerous older relative was usually up for a game or two of gin rummy.

Sometime around my adolescence, my mother and I started what became an endless Scrabble competition. As a teen, I could sit across the Scrabble board from my mother and have a normal conversation with her – no eye-rolling, no sarcasm, just pleasant chatter. Her worn Scrabble game box is like a scrapbook; filled with years of old score sheets.

My teenaged daughter is currently dating a boy who comes from good game-playing stock. More often than not, when they hang out at his house, they end up playing board games with his parents and siblings. Their decision about whose house to spend time at has become more about what board games and how many players are available than whose television screen is larger.

Ladies used to gather for daytime bridge parties where they’d eat, drink, play cards and gossip. Now, my friends and I meet for a monthly night of Bunco, a game that requires no strategy or skill, but allows for even more gabbing, eating and drinking…therapy with dice.

My mother is still a game enthusiast. When she moved from one city to another over the years, she would get involved in a bridge club as a way to make new friends. In the community she lives in now, neighbors meet one or two evenings a week to play games eat snacks or dessert. Armed with a clever new game and a basket of gourmet snacks, she should enjoy a surge in popularity.

Contributed By Laura Weaver

Are you thinking about giving a gift of chocolate on Mother’s Day? Shopping for chocolate isn’t as easy as it used to be. Because of the growing interest in chocolate varieties, it can be difficult to understand the new language of chocolate.

To decipher the package labels, you’ll need to know a little about how chocolate is made. Every cocoa product begins with the “nib” in the center of the cocoa bean. After the beans are harvested, the nibs are separated from the beans, then roasted and crushed between grinding stones or rollers. Heat friction turns the nibs to cocoa liquor, which, despite its name, contains no alcohol. At this point, the liquor can be used in chocolate or pressed, separating it into two products - cocoa butter and cocoa powder.

If you took the cocoa liquor and did nothing more than cool it and form it into bars, it would be unsweetened baking chocolate. All other varieties of chocolate – bittersweet, semisweet, milk chocolate and sweet chocolate – are made from a combination of three main ingredients: cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, and sweeteners.

Milk chocolate, the most popular variety of chocolate in the United States, is made by combining the three main ingredients with milk and other flavorings. The FDA requires that milk chocolate made in the U.S.A. contain at least 10% chocolate liquor and 12% whole milk. Recently, manufacturers have introduced a dark milk chocolate, which contains up to 42% chocolate liquor.

Sweet chocolate, frequently used for candy and icing, is made with more sweeteners and carries a heftier load of chocolate liquor than standard milk chocolate – a minimum of 15%.

Semisweet and bittersweet (or dark) chocolate are both required to contain at least 35% chocolate liquor. The higher percentage means more antioxidants (and more intense chocolate flavor), so if you are shopping for chocolates that may have health benefits, these are the kinds you should be looking for. High quality bittersweet chocolate can contain as much as 85% percent chocolate liquor.

What about white chocolate? There is a good-natured argument in the candy world about whether white chocolate is really chocolate at all. Introduced to Americans in the mid-1980s by Nestlé through their now-extinct Alpine bar, white chocolate is a combination of cocoa butter, milk, sugar and flavorings. Although missing the chocolate liquor or cocoa required of all real chocolate products, the FDA ruled in 2004 that products containing at least 20% cocoa butter, 14% milk solids and less than 55% sweeteners can be called white chocolate.

In my family, chocolate preferences are genetic. We fight over bittersweet chocolate, tolerate milk chocolate, and reject white chocolate. If you don’t know which variety your mother likes best, do some taste-testing. What could be more fun?

Contributed By Laura Weaver

We’ve all heard about the impact that the internet has had on holiday shopping, and Valentine’s Day is no exception. With help from the Internet, suitors have the potential to shine (or fizzle) on Valentine’s Day like never before.

Please read the whole article: Gifts for Valentine's Day