Accomplishments

Yes I know it's a stupid title for a post but right now I'm not coming up with anything better. I was actually able to get some things accomplished recently. I tried a new recipe - the lemon pound cake I mentioned in a previous post. It's really good but I had a few issues with it. I had to bake it for 60 minutes instead of the 45-50 minutes the recipe calls for. I couldn't get quite enough zest from my lemon either; it probably could have been more lemony. I also added frosting to the top. I had some vanilla frosting leftover from the cake balls I made at Christmas so I took that and added a little of the juice from the lemon I zested.

C was hilarious when I was trying to cook it. First he came up to me while I was mixing the flour, baking powder and salt together and asked "mom, can I have some?" So I tell him it's not done yet. Comes back about five minutes later to ask again and I had to tell him not yet. Then I start using the hand mixer to mix the ingredients together. At this point C has gone into the other room. A few minutes later I hear him hollering "Excuse me!" I turn off the mixture and go into the other room. He then asks "Can you keep it down?" Oh I just about died laughing. Finally finish mixing the ingredients together and he comes back to ask if it is now done. "No honey it has to cook first". However by the time it was done...he no longer wanted cake! Aaack!

My other thing, while not finished yet, still feels like quite the accomplishment. I'm making a giant checkerboard by knitting 64 squares on the diagonal until they measure 5" across. Like I said this will be huge when it's done. This weekend I finished the third row of squares. I've been seaming as I go so that it's not too overwhelming in the end. With this new row it is actually starting to look like a blanket. I feel like I've been working on it forever but part of the problem is I keep putting it down to work on things that are more fun or challenging. I'm hoping to be done with the monstrosity by April but who knows.

I think I'm going to be baking...

I perusing some of my favorite blogs - even though I'm not much of a chef I find myself graviting towards cooking blogs - and found a recipe for lemon pound cake. Here's the thing, I love lemon desserts. I will almost always pick chocolate over any dessert but if something lemon is an option the decision gets a lot harder. I love the lemon cookies at Paradise Bakery, my mom's lemon bars, Starbuck's lemon pound cake, you get the idea. So something tells me I will be attempting a new recipe this weekend. I had some luck before with quick breads of this sort; I made two dozen pumpkin loaves the first week of December. What will make this better is I will actually like this one (yes I made the pumpkin bread even though I don't like it. I had received a pumpkin and didn't know what else to do with it so I made the bread for a cookie exchange). Wish me luck with this one!

New Year New Resolutions (Part 2)

Okay this is an authentic check off my list. I actually went for Girls Night Out on Friday. With two little ones and a hubby that gets up for work before dawn, this is hard to accomplish. But I made a deal with hubby - I went out but agreed to be home by a reasonable hour.
So off I went to First Fridays. First Fridays is on the first Friday (guess how they got the name?) in Downtown. All of the restaurants and galleries stay open later that night and people actually come downtown instead of it being empty. I think it's great that this is happening - downtowns are an important part of a city. So some of us girls went to check things out. It was a blast! I had to bug out early, but still had a great time while I was there. I've got to do things like this more often. It was fun being an adult instead of just mommy.
I think the next item to cross off my list is my new January cooking. I need to find something chicken or beef  or pasta (that way hubby will at least try it) but still different from the ordinary. Maybe a soup?

New Year's New Resolutions (Part 1)

So I know it is not the new year yet, but I completed one of the things on my list and I'm going to go ahead and count it. I tried Sushi yesterday! They were sampling sushi at Costco when I went there to pick up a few things. I walked by it the first time and didn't stop; I was a little intimidated (okay don't laugh). I circled back around and grabbed a piece. It was pretty good! I would still like to go to a restaurant for an authentic experience but at least I can say I've tried it.

New Year New Resolutions

I was hanging out on Ravelry tonight and heard the best idea in one of the forums. Somebody suggested instead of one or two big resolutions doing a bunch of little ones. So I am going to come up with 100 new ideas and my goal is to do at least 75 of them by December 31st, 2011. I'm hoping to make some simple, like cooking something new once a month, but also having ones that challenge me more. This post will be my master list but I will have new posts for everything I have accomplished. Here we go...
1. January new dish (1/31/11)
2. February new dish (2/13/11)
3. March new dish
4. April new dish (4/18/11)
5. May new dish
6. June new dish
7. July new dish
8. August new dish (8/7/11)
9. September new dish (9/4/11)
10. October new dish (11/1/11)
11. November new dish
12. December new dish
13. Try sushi (12/29/10) (6/17/11)
14. Try a new veggie(9/23/11)
15. Visit a new museum (6/6/11)
16. Learn to knit in the round (4/15/11)
17. Go without electronics for a day
18. Lose 10 lbs
19. Clean out my closet and get rid of clothes I don't wear (7/27/11)
20. Clean out the videos/Dvds
21. Make scones
22. Make fresh homemade bread
23. Learn how to cable knit
24. Have a girls night out (1/7/11)
25. Floss - and no I'm not kidding. I take my dental health very seriously and this is one area I've been lacking
26. Swim in the ocean (6/5/11)
27. Give up caffeine for a week
28. Give up chocolate for a week (9/7/11)
29. Join a KAL (7/1/11)

They like me, they really like me!

...or at least they like my baking. I did my Christmas baking this week and made peanut butter balls and two different types of cake balls (french vanilla and milk chocolate with half dipped in chocolate and half dipped in vanilla). I had a lot of trouble with my baking this year; I'm not quite sure where I left my brain.

First the peanut butter balls. Simple recipe:
-1 1/2 cups of peanut butter
-1 stick of butter
-1 tsp of vanilla
-1 lb of powdered sugar
Heat the butter and peanut butter together over medium heat until melted. Take off the heat and stir in the vanilla. Here's where my first problem began. I forgot to check that I had vanilla before I started - which I did not. Okay so skip the vanilla; it won't mess up the flavor too much. Next pour the mixture over the powdered sugar in a bowl. And this is the big screw up. I had what I thought was half of a two pound bag of powdered sugar. I added it without properly measuring - total rookie mistake. Yeah there was way too much powdered sugar! So I mixed up another partial batch of the peanut butter/butter mixture and dumped it in...and had to do it again...and again. At this point I was out of peanut butter too but I was finally happy with the ratio. I did, however, have a lot more dough than I planned for. Now the instructions call for rolling the mixture into balls. Fortunately that was successful. I had to use more chocolate than expected but everything was dipped.

Next was the first set of cake balls. Made a German Chocolate cake but over stirred or something. I ended up with pieces of hard boiled egg whites in my cake. I had to toss that batch. I moved onto the next set of cake balls - french vanilla. Cake turned out okay but I had to revive it with extra frosting since I didn't get around to balling them right away and the cake started to dry out. The third was finally successful - chocolate cake. Then I moved on to dipping. The chocolate went fine, but I had clumpy vanilla for my first batch. Finally got it to stir smoothly on the second batch. Baking done!

I took everything I made and divided them up for my parents, E's parents, the office and a few for us to enjoy at home. I brought the office ones in today. I had an entire container full and an office of 25 people has managed to devour all but five of them! Hopefully the families like them that much.

So tired

I am so tired. I feel like I have been going nonstop. The amount of things I have to do has been relentless. Part of it is due to it being the Christmas season, part of it is due to work and part of it is day to day busyness. (I can tell I'm tired - I tried to spell this word as business four times before I finally got it right) It also doesn't help that J has not been sleeping well lately. Between teething and two back to back colds, he has been miserable. Unfortunately this means waking up multiple times per night crying. Which means I wake up multiple times per night - also wanting to cry. I have to keep telling myself "this too shall pass". C was a horrible sleeper - worse than J and he eventually slept through the night in his own bed. For now I just need to focus on enjoying the good parts of this age.