Gotta love carbs.

After answering a recent Four Foods on Friday in which I admitted I had never even taken my waffle maker out of the box, I finally braved it a couple nights ago. Actually, I had had enough of Lauren ridiculing me for being intimidated by a small kitchen appliance.

Why did I wait so long? They were so easy to make and so yummy! I am no longer intimidated; in fact, I've been looking up waffle recipes to experiment further. So there, Lauren - IN YOUR FACE!

I didn't use a scratch recipe for my first time; I used Quaker Oatmeal Pancake Mix, which was really good. I doubled the recipe to get extra waffles, plus added some cinnamon.

I had already taken a bite before I remembered I wanted to get a picture (yes, we're still using Christmas napkins; it was a big pack I bought for about $1):



( A couple more... )

Tonight's dinner was Breakfast Pizza, so since I've already documented that recipe before, I won't do it again. I got a huge craving for some chocolate cake, but was too tired (lazy) to make it from scratch. Instead, I used a Duncan Hines devil's food cake mix, a small box of instant chocolate pudding, then added four large eggs, 1-1/4 cup water (I actually used half water and half brewed coffee), 1/2 cup oil and 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips. I baked it in a Bundt pan for almost an hour, then dusted with powder sugar once it was completely cool. It is DELICIOUS, and exactly what I was wanting.



Nothing really going on this weekend; I know it's the Superbowl, but I don't think we're going to bother with it. I've got a couple of busy weeks ahead, so I think we'll just relax and hang out.

The kids were off today, but it wasn't because of the snow. Although I wonder if school would even have been called off because it wasn't sunny. But that's just snarky.

I wanted to go to Costco today and get that errand done, but I'm glad I decided to stay put. There wasn't a lot of snow, but it did cause a forty-vehicle pile-up not far from here. Even if I didn't have any trouble driving to and from Costco, I would've been caught up in the traffic caused by the accident on my way home. Instead, I got some good cleaning done, got the girls' laundry done, did the downstairs vacuuming and ran a load of dishes.

Then I did this:



What is better than warm cookies on a snow day! The only things I do differently from the recipe are make the cookies smaller and bake them for about nine minutes. Today's batch was made with mini chocolate chips and toffee chips.

( Click to see snow! )

Oh, and YUM:

Becca and the rest of the fifth graders had a mock election for a social studies unit. They all had to run for office, which included making posters and speeches. Becca ran for "delegate," and actually ended up winning one of six delegate positions. One of her campaign promises was a cupcake for every fifth-grader (promised with my OK). So I decided Friday was a good time for her to make good on that promise, what with the upcoming Presidential Inauguration.

So a good chunk of Thursday (when the kids had off for no snow) was spent making the cupcakes. I used four white cake mixes (I added about a tablespoon of vanilla extract to each batch to enrich the flavor), dyed half the batter blue and added red sprinkles to the other half, then layered the batters. I made buttercream frosting and topped the cupcakes with red and blue sprinkles, plus an American flag. They turned out cute, I think, and Becca said they were well-received.



( A couple more pictures... )

Get it?

It's been a week since I've updated. I've been both very busy and sluggish. It's possible to be both at once. Seasonal depression takes away my energy, but knowing that I must pull it together for the kids gets me moving. That and making lists. LOTS of lists. Lists keep me somewhat sane and feeling less pressure.

We hosted both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, which may sound like a lot (and it is), but I prefer to stay home and have everyone come here. I do like making lots of food for people, plus I hated leaving my house on Christmas Day when I was a kid, so I don't make my kids go anywhere. Although there's a lot of cooking, baking, cleaning and other prep beforehand, being in my own home makes me feel a little less stressed (and every little bit helps).

So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were busy, but Friday through today was nothing but hanging out. Friday was actually a jammies and ponytail day (I did shower, though!).

Monday I spent doing last-minute shopping and my grocery shopping. Although it was cold and windy, the sun was out for a change, so that helped a lot. There were idiots on the road, but the stores were actually pretty stress-free. And I'm one of the those crazy freaks who loves grocery shopping. It's somewhat relaxing.

Tuesday was spent baking. Becca had two requests - the peanut-butter cookie with the Hershey kiss in the middle, and fudge. But she decided on mocha fudge, so after making that, she decided she didn't like it. I'm not sure I did either. I need to try it again before I decide to just throw it out.

Here are the girls starting our marathon baking session:



( Lots more this way... )

So another Christmas done. All of our Christmas decorations, including tree, are down as of today. Actually, I got the most wonderful gift of all today - Chris let me sleep in and when I came downstairs, everything, including the vacuuming, was done. He and the girls did it all while I snoozed peacefully and obliviously. Now THAT is a Christmas miracle!

Although I've been overwhelmed and stressed, not to mention fighting my usual seasonal depression, I have been able to get it together and get in some fun stuff. We were supposed to go to Hersheypark tonight to see the Christmas lights, but it's so damp and dreary and miserably cold that we decided to go next weekend. But we did get a bunch of cookies baked today.

I have some cookie pictures but no recipe yet; they are Chris's mom's recipes and I'll get them from her in a couple days and post them. These cookies are DELICIOUS. And it wouldn't be Christmas without them. Here is a picture of just a few; they recipe made a lot. And we all ate a lot. Seriously, they'll be gone before Christmas.



( More cookies this way... )

In our town, the volunteer fire department sends Santa out through the neighborhoods on a fire truck. He is followed by several other rescue vehicles, and they have the sirens going and lights flashing. It's pretty cool. For a donation to the fire department, Santa will make a special stop at your house and visit with your kids. My friend Michelle did this a couple times a few years ago, making a party out of it. It was fun. This year we just hung out in the court until he came through. He passes out candy canes to everyone. The dogs howl and bark up a storm while all this is going on.





I like to check out local beach cams, and I grabbed this one from the Rehoboth Beach, Delaware cam the other day:



And finally, check out my little elves gettin' down to some country music:

I've been both busy and unmotivated since I last updated, which has made Christmas preparations difficult. I have so much to do, but the weather has been so gray and gloomy for over a month now that sometimes just getting out of bed in the morning can be the most successful part of my day. Christmas Eve is only a week away, and I still have shopping to finish, menus to plan, food to buy, presents to wrap and cleaning to do. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed.

I seem to do better when I have commitments to honor. Back during book fair, I got roped into signing up to help out with the hearing and vision testing at Becca's school this week. I had to do that Monday and today, plus I had Market Day today, so I was at the school for NINE HOURS (plus five hours Monday). Certainly kept my mind off my stress for a while!

Another recent commitment was my monthly Baking Gals project. It took me a couple weeks after picking my team to get myself into gear and get it done, but I got it sent out last Friday. I baked about four dozen Oatmeal Scotchies and made some Glazed Pecans. I made Oatmeal Scotchies for the first time a couple weeks before I made them for Operation Baking Gals, and right now they are my new favorite cookie. I also bought some Main Cup coffee, some Coffee Nips, gum, Blow-Pops and candy canes. Lauren and Becca wrote letters and I added a card. I don't think my box will get there before Christmas, but since there are a bunch of us on the team, the boxes should be staggered throughout the month.

Here are a few pictures of the goodies:

The picture of the glazed nuts didn't turn out that great, but they tasted delicious!



( A few more... )

Jujuboo boo-ed me today (which sounds funny spoken out loud), which was pretty cool. I'm supposed to go around to blogs I like and Boo them as well; however, I'm whipped and getting ready to go to bed after I post. By the time I get back on, Halloween will be done.

So if you read my stuff and you have a journal/blog of your own, consider yourself Boo-ed as well, and grab the graphic to post to your place. Happy Halloween!



I have been very busy in the kitchen today! I made cake balls for the 5th grade party tomorrow, candy corn bark for the school staff, more bark for us because my children protested the other bark leaving the house (because, you know, they won't be getting enough chocolate tomorrow night), and a cake for tomorrow night's dessert. Tiring, but fun.

( Pictures and links to recipes for the Halloween goodies... )

I have been terrible about taking pictures of food I make recently. It's so much harder to do a photo journal post of a recipe while you're overseeing homework, running kids here and there, etc. But here are a few things I've made recently, with links to the recipes.

I think once Halloween and Book Fair are done, I'll be able to focus more on food blogging.

Breakfast Pizza (although we had it for dinner one night):



Breakfast Pizza recipe

( Two more recipes this way... )

This month I baked all bar cookies. We had from September 27th to October 6th to get everything baked and shipped, but I didn't get to it until Sunday the 5th. Last weekend was Chris's birthday weekend, then last week was busy, and blah blah blah, I'm baking at the last minute. So bar cookies made it easier. However, I was not thinking ahead, because I had planned to individually wrap the bars after cutting - there were about 7 or 8 dozen bars total to wrap! Thankfully, Chris helped out and the two of us got them wrapped in under 30 minutes.

I can't even remember the exact names of the recipes, and I don't have the recipes, either! I had checked a book out of the library called "The Only Bake Sale Cookbook You'll Ever Need : 201 Mouthwatering, Kid-Pleasing Treats" that had some really good recipes, but it was due yesterday, so I had to return it before I had time to copy down recipes.

I made a nut-topped caramel shortbread bar that smelled like a Payday candy bar (mmmmmmmmmm), a cookie bar with chocolate chips and chopped walnuts, and a cookie bar (the Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe in a jellyroll pan) with chocolate chips, dried cranberries and coconut.



( A few more pictures... )

I also stopped at the drugstore on the way to the post office and picked up a bunch of non-meltable Halloween candy (the package was going to Iraq). Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of everything all packaged up. I really did this in a hurry - next time I can hopefully take my time, because I do enjoy participating in this project.

I found a fun ongoing project that I decided to participate in for the first time this month. It's called Cookie Carnival and it's run by Kate over at the blog Clean Plate Club. She picks a recipe once a month, and all the participants make it and post the results.

This month's recipe was Martha Stewart's Pink Grapefruit Sandwich Cookies. I'm not a fan of grapefruit, but that's the whole point of this - to try something new and interesting. The recipe can be found here.

( The process... )

These are a pretty cookie, but I don't think they taste anything like grapefruit. They just tasted like a regular sugar cookie, only extremely sweet. They were too sweet for my husband, which is really saying something! Also, the filling wasn't that great. For one thing, I don't think it needed the honey. Not only did it add extra sweetness that wasn't needed, but it made the texture very goopy. As you can see in the picture below, it started oozing out of the cookies after just a couple minutes as I was trying to get a good picture. I had to keep the cookies refrigerated, which made them hard to bite into.

I wouldn't make this cookie again, but it was a fun way to spend an afternoon, and I'm looking forward to next month's.

Wednesday I spent the afternoon baking cookies to send out. I made chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal cookies with white chocolate chips and dried cranberries. Both were very yummy! I had testers, of course, once school was over, then Chris tested some when he got home from work. Hopefully they will be enjoyed by the recipients as well.

I really had fun with this, and plan to participate again if there's a Round 3, depending on when it is.

Here are a few pictures of baking day:

On that plate are just a few dozen cookies. There were lots more cooling on baking sheets around the kitchen! Can you find the dog in this picture?



( A few more pictures... )

I am participating in a great project called Operation Baking Gals. Those of us participating bake cookies or other goodies and send them to soldiers overseas. I am on Team Meet Me in the Kitchen. If you are interested in joining, just go to Operation Baking Gals and follow the instructions.

I will be leaving this entry up at the top of my journal until Round 2 is over and all baked goods have been sent, so scroll down for regular entries until then.

Tomorrow is the annual teacher luncheon at Becca's school. This year the school is celebrating its 40th anniversary, so I was asked to make a cake. It definitely looks much better in person than in the picture! The transfer is more green than it shows in the picture (the school's colors are green and white). It's a coconut-rum cake, filled with lime mousse swirled with lime curd and topped with coconut, then frosted with lime buttercream.

Bananas are one of my favorite fruits. But I seem to be the only one who actually eats them. And for me, they have to be very yellow and firm. Once they get spotty and soft, I'm not crazy about them. Sometimes I think my family doesn't eat them so I'll have to make something with them.

This time I decided to try a new recipe I found through Tastespotting, which is a great site if you love to look at food porn.

I won't type out the recipe, since you can find it here, but I did make a few substitutions:

I didn't have yogurt, so I used low-fat sour cream.
I didn't have dark rum, so I used regular Barcardi.
I didn't have fresh coconut, so I used the kind in the bag.

So we start with this:



( and ended up with something really good.... )

One of the best parts of summer is the fresh fruit. Blueberries are in season right now (haven't gone picking yet, but the little stand up the road has some), and while they're yummy to eat raw, you've got to make at least one pie during the season.

I decided to make a crumb-topped pie. I had a graham cracker crust shell on hand, so I thought this would be quick and easy. But the recipe I got from the Keebler site called for blueberry pie filling. I wanted the filling to be fresh, not canned, so I decided to make my own filling. Unfortunately, this didn't turn out the way I planned.

The blueberries:



( Recipe and pictures this way... )

I am a faithful reader of Missypedia. She posts great recipes with beautiful pictures. The other day she posted a recipe for The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies EVAR, and I just had to try them.

I usually use the Crisco sticks recipe when I make chocolate chip cookies, but lately I've been dissatisfied with the results. They seem to puff up and don't get very brown. The pictures on Missy's site were exactly what I've been wanting my cookies to look like.

I had planned on waiting until we got back from vacation to try them, but today I was just hanging out and doing laundry, plus I had all the ingredients, so I decided to give them a try.

Oh. My. God.

Missy wasn't kidding when she said best EVAR. This is my new recipe. Chris and the girls loved them, too. I'm not going to post the recipe since it's already in Missy's blog, but here are some pictures to drool over. I followed the recipe to the letter, except I melted the butter in the microwave and used vanilla paste instead of extract.

We'll start with the ingredients:



( And move on to the yummy parts... )

I'm a little late on this for this week, but not too late!

This week's questions from Fun Crafts and Recipes:

The theme is “chocolate”.

#1. What’s your favorite beverage containing chocolate or chocolate flavoring?

Mocha iced coffee.

#2. What’s your favorite chocolate bar? OR Share a pic of your favorite candy, chocolate or otherwise.

Java Twix right now. Unfortunately, it's a limited edition and getting harder and harder to find.

#3. What’s the most unusual thing you’ve ever eaten that had chocolate in it?

I once made a mole with unsweetened chocolate, but I don't think that's very unusual.

#4. Share a recipe using chocolate.

Easiest brownies ever:

Ingredients:

* 1 (3.9 ounce) package instant chocolate pudding mix
* 2 cups milk
* 1 (18.25 ounce) package chocolate cake mix
* 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
* 1/3 cup confectioners' sugar for decoration

Directions:

Grease a 15x10 baking pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare pudding mix according to directions using the 2 cups milk. Whisk in cake mix, then fold in chips. Pour into pan and bake 30 to 35 minutes. Dust with confectioners' sugar when cool, if desired.

Tomorrow is the Staff Appreciation Lunch at the elementary school, where parent volunteers prepare and provide food. I usually make a dessert. The theme this year is The 70s, so I made a tie-dyed cheesecake. I found the recipe here; it's a Disney resort recipe.

My colors are different; I used McCormick's Neon food coloring, but I think it looks pretty good. I hope it tastes good!

( Pictures this way... )

I do love to bake, and it always makes my family happy when I bake chocolate chip cookies. They're so easy to make, and so quick that it's almost instant gratification. After the dough is put together (really only about 5-10 minutes), then it's only about 12-15 minutes from oven to mouth.

I use the recipe on the Crisco sticks package; I haven't found another chocolate chip cookie recipe that we like as much. I don't deviate from the basic dough recipe except that I use vanilla paste instead of extract. It really does make a difference, I think. It's more expensive than extract, but definitely worth it.

I also use the basic dough recipe for adding ingredients other than chocolate chips, such as peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, dried cranberries, dried blueberries, toffee chips, etc. You're only limited by your imagination!

( Recipe and pictures this way... )