Cooking Baking Eating

Sometimes I shock myself with the random things that I do. They really make me question just how completely awesome I am. I know I’m pretty awesome at cooking, sewing, wielding the camera, and navigating the overall strangeness of life, but there are things that I am NOT awesome at.

Like I am not awesome at keeping myself from doing stupid things. The stupid things that I’m talking about include being so frustrated because I cannot find my car keys and later realize I was holding them in my hand all along, or losing my shoes in the morning (my husband loves that one, its almost a daily occurrence). Even forgetting to take my seatbelt off before getting out of the car and ending up flailing my arms as I’m tangled in my seatbelt while hanging half out of the car.

That was pretty awesome for those watching, I assume. However, as of the other night I have a new “awesomeness” I can add my long list of weirdness.

I set my oven on fire.

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I bought myself a new popsicle mold a few weeks ago, and I have to say I’m a bit obsessed. I decided that the little one that makes 4 is just too darn small, so I ordered this bad boy and had a little happy fit at work when it arrived. Not only are the popsicles bigger, but I can make 10 popsicles.

10!

That’s a lot of popsicles.

But in the time that I’ve been using it I’ve noticed that I never seem to quite fill all of the molds. I’m usually off by 2-3 molds, but that works for me since I can make a whole ton of filling and just see how far it gets me.

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Sometimes you just get a craving and you have to have it. The other night I was craving pie. Not just any pie, but blackberry pie ala mode.

Sadly, I was just too darn lazy to go to a restaurant to get some pie, and had no motivation what so ever to start a pie crust. So instead I did the next best thing: cobbler.

After digging through my freezer I found a bag of frozen blackberries hiding in the back. Score. We still didn’t have any ice cream, but that’s easily fixed by sending my loving husband to the store. And he did. Brownie points for that guy. Read more »

The weather is turning beautiful, FINALLY. I am really looking forward to having some nice and sunny days.

What I am not looking forward to is the HOT weather and the allergies.

Stupid allergies. I’m pretty much allergic to everything, and so far this year has been kicking my butt. It almost makes me miss winter. I’m not allergic to winter.

At a recent trip to our favorite thrift store, I found a little popsicle mold that makes 4 pops. Totally awesome. I’ve been wanting to make some fun popsicles for a while and now that I have a mold I will be making them all the time.

This was my first foray in the popsicle making business. I used frozen peaches, frozen mangoes and orange juice. They turned out rather well. I honestly didn’t measure anything so I have no recipe to offer, except that this combo is quite delicious.

The only things I would do differently next time would be letting the fruit FULLY thaw before blending and straining the mixture before I put it in the molds. The texture was a little funky because of the fruit bits, so I think a good straining will help that. I also think banana would be a very tasty addition to this mix.

I love that I can make my own pops and control the sugar, the ones from the store are so incredibly sweet to me that I can’t eat them. Yay! New and fun stuff!

I’ve been looking into popcorn makers for a few weeks, and I could never get myself to actually pull the plug and buy one. I couldn’t justify spending the $20+ to buy something for the sole purpose of making popcorn.

Even though I had been having a horrible, almost pregnancy style craving for caramel corn. Which is funny since normally I am NOT a fan.

I go through phases. You get used to it.

Then we were bumming around a thrift store and I found one for $4.99! It seemed to work when I plugged it in at the thrift store to test it, so I figured why not take a chance. So far this has been my favorite thing I’ve gotten from a thrift store.
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Here’s the one thing that sucks about living so far from my family: Holidays.

We moved roughly 6 years ago to the Pacific Northwest, away from everything we knew, family, friends, and memories. We really haven’t regretted the decision, except of course in times of trouble or holidays. We haven’t always been able to make it home for holidays or birthdays, mostly we see them at Christmas, so it was nice that our friends were kind enough to invite us to their early Pre-Thanksgiving Day celebration.

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It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

It’s been a long and tough road this last year or so. Between work and personal stresses I just had to take a break from posting. That’s not to say that I haven’t been in the kitchen, I never stopped cooking and taking pictures, they just never made it into a post.

Then the other day I got a phone call from my husband during my lunch break. Evidently Grandma and her beauty shop friends were discussing my lack of posting on here and they were not to happy about it either. Grandma then took it upon herself to fax my husband several recipes to try and get my creative juices flowing.

That was quite a happy moment to have during the “fun” of my work day.

Thanks Grandma. It’s much appreciated. You guys rock.

Roughly a year ago the husband and I moved. I hate moving. It’s probably the biggest life disruptions ever. What I also hated was moving from a very large kitchen to a smaller one. I ended up losing more than 10 cabinets!

Somehow during all that stress my body just started craving chocolate! I normally don’t have chocolate cravings, so in an effort to try and feed that stress craving and keep my health up during an annoying move I decided to come up with a more nutritional way to feed the need. Plus I needed something simple. Most of my stuff was either still in boxes or completely lost in the void that is moving.

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I had never heard of a Pavlova before I saw it being made a while ago on Ina Garten’s TV show. It looked neat but didn’t really appeal to what I “thought” I wanted in a dessert.

The time passed and I wanted to make a splash at a friends party with something light, berry, and cool. I remembered this one and thought it could be a really neat one if I did it right. Anything light and delicate seems to crumble under my hands, and that’s exactly what the meringue is in Pavlova.

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I’m not normally the type of person to really enjoy eating puddings or a custard. Yogurt is even a stretch for me sometimes. Mouth texture is a huge thing for me with eating, crunchy I can do but soft and custard-ish or gooey really doesn’t do it for me.

So why in the world is this chick doing a bread pudding? Grandma was very generous and let us stay with her during our Christmas traveling, but her one request was that I would cook with her and make her some home made bread pudding. So I had to practice!
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A few years ago I made a trifle by the seat of my pants for a little get together. Now keep in mind there were only 4 of us and I used my largest mixing bowl to make it. We ate the whole thing. Just the 4 of us. Insanity.

I made it again for a little party on Friday night. This type of dessert is quite awesome for those times where you won’t have enough time just before the party to get anything together and get ready at the same time, and it only gets better as it sits and all the flavors combine.

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