Not quite done with the fun...

Day 27

I tried a new recipe: lasagna rollatini (no pictures because it just doesn't photograph well, but trust me it is yummy). This is my weekend thing now - Nate naps, I bake/cook for the next couple of days. It works out well. This recipe was particularly fun because I wasn't sure I could successfully roll lasagna without having it all break or having the cheese ooze out the sides - but I made it work!

Day 28

I tried a new (to me) chocolate chip cookie recipe. It involves a little more work than any other recipe I've tried (there's a whole "whisk and wait three times" part) but, man, are they delicious. I can see why this recipe is so popular. AND it uses melted (browned) butter, which means if you're like me and always forget to leave the butter out to soften, it doesn't matter!

Day 29

I taped students together for a "human caterpillar" leadership exercise. Nothing quite gets any educator work-related tension out like taping students together and then laughing at them for half an hour.

Tomorrow... Day 30!!!

The best fun mixed with the hardest moments

Days 24 and 25 of my 30 days of fun project included some of the best fun yet, but also what were probably the saddest moments.

Day 24

Thankfully, it was a great day at work. I was feeling better, got a lot done, had a lot of great interactions with coworkers and students - everything that makes for a good day at work. This was a relief because I was still somewhat reeling from the awful Tuesday.

What was most fun about that day, though, was that it was Nate's 15 month pediatrician appointment. Do those of you with kids look forward to your child's well-visits? I get SO excited about them because I just can't wait to see how much he's grown and how he's doing with all of his milestones.

From his one year appointment, Nate gained two pounds and grew one and a half inches. He continues to be in the 75th percentile for height and his weight is still in the 95th percentile, so that's something for us to continue to keep an eye on. Also, I asked about his legs because he seems more bowlegged than other kids his age. The doctor agreed that he is and said that if at his 18 month appointment (3 months from now) he's still overly bowlegged, she'll refer us to an orthopedist.

Those were the only concerns, though. She was amazed that he has all his teeth except his two year molars, and was very happy with all the things he can do, including his vocabulary. He also had to get two shots, but was such a little champ with them, as always. He didn't even cry after the first one and then only cried for half a minute after the second one. He's just SO good. Having a great well-visit is always so much fun and makes my day great.

Day 25

Day 25 was Nate's last day at daycare, so I had a difficult time concentrating on anything all day. I held it together okay when I dropped him off in the morning until one of his teachers told me she was going to miss him and hoped he'd be back soon. I couldn't even choke out a goodbye after that. 

So, needless to say, I spent a lot of the day thinking about how hard it was going to be to pick him up later. I knew I had to do something fun to make myself feel better.

One thing I knew I wanted to do was make a peanut butter pie. This lovely blogger, Jennie, recently lost her dear husband, Mikey, to a sudden heart attack. In a stunningly beautiful and strong post, she asked people to make a peanut butter pie on Friday, the day of Mikey's memorial service, and share it with someone they love.

I didn't follow Jennie's recipe, though, because I had some other things I wanted to do so I made a shorter, but still yummy, version. The recipe makes two, so I kept one for us and gave the other to my sister.

My husband isn't a big sweets eater, though, and the spirit here is to make something someone loves and share it with them. So, regardless of the fact that it's summer, I made beef stew (following PW's recipe, but without the beer).

And, because I also wanted to make something new that was slightly challenging but a possible favorite (to get my mind on something other than daycare), I made Shutterbean's homemade soft pretzels.

mmmm cheese pretzels!

yummy salt pretzels (my fave!)

I thought I'd be standing around, crying over the pretzel dough, but I wasn't. For some reason, cooking and baking always makes me feel better - the methodical measuring, mixing, chopping, dicing - it just feels good.

It was hard to pick up Nate at the end of the day, and most difficult of all to watch him excitedly get his lunch bag out of the cabinet (one of his favorite things to do) for the last time for the foreseeable future. But my sister came over with her kids to pick up her pie after we got home and it was great fun watching them all play together. At that point, I knew the hardest parts were over and actually felt relief. I made it through what I knew would be an unreasonably difficult day.

And I had a great dinner and dessert to eat with my family, and the big takeaway from yesterday was to cherish the ones you love, which I do. The rest can be irrelevant sometimes.

Bit o' scone, Mum?

It's 5am and I'm up without an alarm clock. I didn't think I was that excited, but I think I was more nervous to miss the start of everything.

You know, everything - Prince Duke William's wedding. Yeah, I'm up for it and I love it. I think it's great fun, like the Oscars - not incredibly important, but enjoyable to watch (especially for the fashion). I understand people who don't understand why it's interesting, but I do have to say I'm bothered by the comments I've seen saying, "I hope they get divorced in a few years." I wouldn't say that about nearly anyone. At the base of things, William and Kate are two twentysomethings getting married because they love each other (we hope/assume). Why wouldn't we want to celebrate that?

To truly celebrate the occasion, I've made a bit of a treat: PW's Maple Pecan Scones (from her cookbook). That recipe calls for forming the dough into a large circle and cutting it into eight wedges. I decided to instead form the dough into a large rectangle and cut the dough into twenty-four petite wedges, like PW's petite vanilla scones.

All in all, the recipe mostly went as planned. The only glitch was rolling out the dough, which I suck at, always. I need to get a silicone French rolling pin; I think that will help. So I ended up forming the dough by hand and that actually worked out just fine. (No pictures of the finished scones because it was dark when I made them and it's dark as I'm eating them and the flash makes them look unappetizing, alas.)

I definitely recommend this recipe - it is quite delicious. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a scone and a cuppa English Breakfast Tea to get to and a wedding to watch.

This post is another in a series where I attempt to make every recipe in The Pioneer Woman's cookbook.  You can click on "Pioneer Woman" in my tags to read the other attempts.

Pink Velvet Cake

For Easter, I made The Pioneer Woman's Red Velvet Cake, except I didn't have red food coloring so I used pink instead and told everyone I did this because it was Easter, not Christmas. Sounds good, right?

Until this venture, I had never made a layer cake before. Not one, ever. Not even from a box. Even my mother-in-law and the hubby were shocked at this. The hubby said I was like one of those star chefs who end up on a cooking competition and then go, "Oh, wait, I have to know how to boil water? I've never done that before." But it's true. Layer cakes have always intimidated me because there are so many stages at which the whole thing can go wrong. In her post about Red Velvet Sheet Cake, PW says she prefers the simplicity of sheet cakes because they're easier. However, she also hosts at home usually, I believe. I never do, so my desserts always need to be transportable and I don't see a sheet cake as being highly transportable (especially when you're also juggling a diaper bag and proto-toddler).

Things about layer cake that intimidate me:

-cooking the actual layers

-stacking the layers

-trimming the layers

-frosting the layers

-running out of frosting

I worry too much, in general, but I learned something valuable from this experiment: frosting covers a million sins. (Except when you eat a lot of it. Then you probably end up with cellulite.)

So PW's recipe calls for 10 inch pans and I only had 9 inch, so I baked them an additional 4 minutes until they seemed done (toothpick came out clean). After letting them fully cool, I did the initial middle icing and then stacked them.

And then I decided to get all fancy-pants and try to trim the layers so as to make a nice, perfectly round cake. What I ended up with was 3/4 round (untouched because I gave up) and one squared off side, like it was trying to start an octogon cake. I gave up on trimming and resigned myself to filling in the missing cake segment with icing. It worked, too.

Or at least everyone was nice enough to not saying anything to me about how I patched cake with frosting. I also forgot to put the vanilla extract in the icing. Oops. But I don't think that mattered too much.

I think the cake came out a little dry, which is a pattern I'm noticing with PW's recipes - well, or with my execution of them, probably. (And boy did I execute this cake, ha! Ba-dum-dum, I'll be here all week.)

For anything of hers I make that's flour-based (breads, cakes, etc), I find them to be a bit dry as well as a bit bland. (I'm thinking particularly of her cornbread, which I don't think I'd make again, truthfully.)

I don't know how many recipes I have left to complete in her book, but I know there are still several flour-based ones, so we'll have to see how those go. This cake was passable, but not the best I've had or the best I've made. I have another layer cake to make this Friday, so I'm glad I had this practice. Onwards and upwards!

This post is another in a series where I attempt to make every recipe in The Pioneer Woman's cookbook.  You can click on "Pioneer Woman" in my tags to read the other attempts.

Black Heels to Tractor Wheels - and chocolate chip cookies

Even though I had already read two-thirds of The Pioneer Woman's love story as it was published on her website, I was thoroughly excited about the publication of this book.

Not only did she promise some new material in the first two-thirds, there was also that final third that she added, which she promised would include the story of her honeymoon and the first year of her marriage to Marlboro Man.

While I have always absolutely loved reading her love story on her website (and I say "have always loved" because I've read it several times), at times it makes me jealous because in some ways she has led a very fortunate life.  She clearly didn't grow up wanting for anything and while she claims to have many of the same image issues that many women do, she's obviously very pretty and was adequately aware of that throughout her youth.  She attended college in southern California and enjoyed everything Los Angeles had to offer.  When she returned home between L.A. and her plan to move to Chicago, she very easily dated several men and enjoyed life before randomly meeting Marlboro Man one night.

And now - now she has an amazing website, is clearly a great cook, a very good photographer, maintains a beautiful home, homeschools her four gorgeous children, and still wants for very little (except DSL).  And she's still amazingly beautiful (absolutely stunning in person).  So I find a lot to be jealous of.

So I always find it interesting when she talks about something she struggles with, which she does in the newly added material in her book.  Not to be too spoiler-y, but the ranch had some struggles that first year, she didn't have a necessarily easy pregnancy with her first child (yes, she was pregnant in their first year of marriage) and she didn't immediately take to motherhood, which is something I found particularly comforting to read as I felt many of the same emotions she did (although without the circle of support she describes as having - I wish someone came over and cooked and cleaned for me).

I found that the writing style shifted a bit with the third section, which I would guess is because she wrote it separately from the first two parts and also because the subject matter was far less light than it was as she described falling in love with her husband.  If you want to fall in love with your partner all over again, definitely read this book, though.  That's why I've read the online version a few times; I always come away from it feeling happy to have found love and to be married.

This book isn't for everyone, of course, just like her website isn't necessarily interesting to everyone.  But if you like her website even just a little, you will probably like this book (and you can read the online parts of it first to see how much you like it).

And, naturally, she adds some recipes at the end of her book.  Most of them are ones readers of her site and owners of her cookbook will recognize, though - nothing new worth noting...

Except the recipe for chocolate chip cookies.  This recipe is available on her site but something about it at the end of her book called out to me.

And then, after I made them, they continued to call out to me, like an ex you've dumped who just won't take a hint.  (Not that that's ever happened to me, but I read about stuff like that.)  I told myself I can't ever make these again, by which I mean I must now make them every week for the rest of my life.  I might, in fact, make them tonight.  Last night I was craving them because I ran out of them the day before, but I was too lazy to start baking at 9:30pm so instead I ate apple slices with peanut butter and chocolate chips (which, by the way, is a totally awesome snack).

For the cookies, I did not use half butter and half margarine like PW does because I just couldn't bring myself to buy margarine.  It reminds me of all the bad parts of the 80s, like shoulder pads and Aqua Net and stirrup pants.  So I used all butter; tonight I'll probably use half butter and half shortening to see how that affects the texture.

I did, however, include two tablespoons of flax seeds, as she recommends - and I honestly do think they made a difference.  The little nutty crunch they add just tips these cookies over from good to obsessively irresistable.  And the ratio of semisweet to milk chocolate chips is just right.  Yumsa.  If you like chocolate chip cookies, go make these tonight.  Or don't, because then you'll eat them all and blame me for the five pounds you may gain.  But I dare say they're worth the risk.

16. Read 30 books I haven’t read before (in addition to the above) and blog about them. (27/30)