To round out our “family fun days,” we drove down to Wisconsin Dells with Justin’s parents, John and Sarah, where we met up with his brother Luke and Luke’s girlfriend Cheyanne on Monday.  Justin’s parents booked a suite at The Wilderness Resort where there are two indoor water parks and a wave pool, connected by hallways and skywalks.  After meeting at Damon’s for dinner (so John and Justin could get their trivia fix) we drove back to the Lodge for the evening.  John, Justin, Luke and Cheyanne decided to check out the water parks while Sarah and I drove over to a nearby outlet mall to walk around.

Splash it up!

On Tuesday morning we were up and ready to go when the parks opened.  Justin and I spent the morning in the “Wild Water Dome” where the large wave pool was located.  The dome was also really nice, as the roof was all glass, letting plenty of sunlight in.  As John, Sarah, Luke and Cheyanne joined us, we all decided to explore the other water parks, which included quite a hike to the other end of the resort.  A few tube rides and the lazy river were enjoyed, including some additional time in the wave pool, and by early afternoon we were hungry and tired (and it started to get more and more crowded with Spring Breaking families).  We changed, had a relaxed lunch at Uno’s Chicago Grill, and then headed home.   While we had a great time playing and swimming and sharing the time with family, we all agreed that the Kalahari in the Dells was the better of the two resorts, as the water park is larger and all in one place, and a bit easier to get around.

Thanks, John and Sarah, for this fun get-away!

After pouring over this blog for the last few days, I knew I wanted to try to make a a batch or two of the homemade Girl Scout Cookie recipes, namely the Thin Mints and Tagalongs. Tagalongs have always been my favorite. Vanilla Shortbread Cookies – yes please. Dollop of Peanut Butter Filling in the center – two please. Covered in chocolate – just one more please! And this recipe is spot on. The result is almost identical (possibly better?!) than the original, and thoroughly addicting. The main reason I don’t order any girl scout cookies is to prevent me from eating an entire box of Tagalongs in one sitting. Now I actually have to practice some self-control and keep out of the kitchen.
I already feel my resolve wavering…

When we were in Ohio, we went to Jungle Jim’s grocery store. Quite a trip. It’s not so much a grocery store as it is an amusement park where you buy food. There’s lots of weird stuff going on in there. Anyways, while we were there, I bought a bunch of bottles of weird sodas I had never tried, and we (Beth, myself, Julie, Lynn, Sally, Alex, and my dad) did a taste test of them all:

Yes, I do realize that one of the sodas has an inappropriate name. I thought it was “Funkola Cola”. Whatever, just deal with it.

First up was “Thum’s Up”. Apparently this is from India. The checkout guy was incredulous that I actually wanted to buy this. I wish I would have taken his advice. I thought it tasted like Coke, but with about 1/2 the normal amount of sugar. Sally thought it tasted like laundry detergent and Julie though it tasted like cleaning chemicals. Not exactly what you want in a soda.

Next on the docket was “Almdudler 50 Jahre” – the national soft drink of Austria (my dad’s comment was “Isn’t the national soft drink of Austria just beer?”). This one tasted kind of citrusy, with a hint of pineapple, but mostly it just tasted like bad ginger ale.

Next up was Cheerwine. I first had this in South Carolina last year. Definitely the best of the bunch. It’s basically a black cherry soda. Very good.

Fukola Cola, the one with the inappropriate name and slogan, was normal-ish cola, but Beth and I both experience unpleasant bubbles-up-the-nose. Meh.

Inca Kola was up next. I had heard about this from Peru trips, but had never actually had it. It smells like a banana popsicle, and tastes like the bubble-gum flavored flouride at the dentist. Not the greatest thing in the world, but not the worst either.

Faygo rootbeer was just normal rootbeer, nothing great or bad about it.

Frostie Vanilla Root Beer was probably my second favorite, behind Cheerwine. It basically tastes like a rootbeer float after the ice cream has had a chance to dissolve. A couple of people mention cotton candy, but I think they are confused Definitely the second creepiest mascot of the bunch.

Manhattan Special Sasparilla was up next. This tasted pretty much like Rootbeer flavored Kool-Aid, which apparently they don’t make anymore.

Kickapoo Joy Juice had the best name and creepiest logo of all the sodas. It also has a weird tagline: “Original dogpatch recipe”. It wasn’t bad, it just kind of tasted like flat Mountain Dew. I am slightly concerned that I somehow was duped into drinking dog pee though.

All in all, a successful taste test. Luckily no one had any bad reactions, so the authorities didn’t have to be called:

(from left: Dan, Dave, Gramps, Maggie, Pete, John)
Over six months ago, plans began for a Gasper family reunion. Justin’s dad and his siblings worked at getting everyone together at a state park near Cincinnati, Ohio. Reservations were made and rough plans put in place for the weekend. We all may have had different expectations for the weekend, but God certainly had something else in mind for this gathering. About two weeks ago Justin’s grandmother, Gigi, went into the hospital and had her galbladder removed, but then doctors continued to find masses within her, presumably cancer. Things advanced very quickly, much more so than anyone imagined. Though in her late 80′s, Gigi has been incredibly active, helping with her church, with adults and children, delivering bread and food to a local pantry, visiting with a multitude of friends and family, writing monthly letters and prayer journals to near about a billion people on the planet (slight exaggeration, but still, a lot), caring for Gramps, and feeding and protecting just about every stray cat in their neighborhood. She possesses the characteristic Gasper sense of humor and makes every attempt to show Christ’s love to everyone around her. On Saturday, her children and grandchildren were able to visit with her at the hospital, laugh over memories, and show and receive her love.
(Cousins from left: me, Justin, Beth, Sally, Lynn, baby Carson, Andy – and be sure to notice the sweet mural on the wall!)
Later in the day, Uncle Dave and his wife Jan drove Gramps out to the park, and we were able to share a meal together at the restaurant in the lodge. We continued to catch up on news with other family members and sang Happy Birthday as loudly as possible for Sally’s 28th birthday. Afterward we played games, drank entirely too much crazy soda, and laughed around a campfire.
Though exhausting, the weekend was a good one, and we’re so thankful to have been able to go.

The tulips really came in beautifully this year. They multiplied, came in loads of cheery colors, with an array of heights and variances. And now begins the rather rapid demise of petals and stems, as they have served the purpose of attracting bugs and bees for another spring season. How I wish these days went by slower, lengthening the buds’ lifespan. Distracting eyes from the weeds growing and gaining strength beneath them. For awhile we have a gorgeous, healthy flower garden. In a week or two, we will have a seemingly forsaken patch of weeds. At least the dandelions will add some color!

A group of students and adults from our church are taking a trip down to Lima, Peru this summer. They will be partnering with a local Peruvian church to help teach ESL classes, organize and put on a children’s carnival, and do some other outreach activities in the community. In order to raise the (much needed) funds, the team held a fundraising banquet at church this evening, and they asked if I might do the desserts for the group. I happily agreed, and the ideas immediately began to form. I played around with the alpaca cookie cutter idea for awhile, but then I found something so much better. I wanted it to be a surprise for the team, so I couldn’t post anything on the blog (even though I’ve been busy in the kitchen all week!). I was so excited to see everything come together this afternoon. These cupcakes, with their chocolate alpaca candies, are one of the cutest creations to have left my kitchen. And I was just as excited to find the miniature Peruvian flags! Add in chocolate cake pops painted like the earth and alfajores (Peruvian almond cookies with dulce de leche filling), and I couldn’t wait for others to partake. And while I try to shy away from receiving credit, it always gives me a thrill to have people enjoy something I made. Though, I have to admit, it seems kind of silly to make a statement like that and then write about it on this blog! Really though – I hope you enjoy the pictures at least!
And Kudos to Jim for creating the rockin’ alpaca cut-out photo booth, to Madie (and others) for helping me set up, and to the entire organzing team for the banquet – you really did a fantastic job and the night was a hit!

We had a great time tonight catching up with Dan & Bethany around the campfire, as well as smiling and laughing at/with their one-year-old daughter Jillian. She just started walking, which is obviously her favorite thing (other than terrorizing Justin, that is). Bethany had all the fixin’s for pudgie pies ready, and we happily burned our tongues with the molten lava hot filling (not to be confused with these).

Without a doubt, I like our garden in May better than any other month of the year. Crocuses still hanging around, daffodils and tulips blooms galore, plum and apple trees budding, ground cover spreading, and weeds still at a minimum. Plus, the weather was perfect today – sunny, 75 degrees, with a gentle breeze. Justin played a round of golf and I had the chance to sit out on the deck in a short sleeve shirt and shorts.

For now
I’m looking at the sun
Someday the rain might come
But I love the sunshine

My cousin and his fiance are getting married this summer, and they came over today to taste some different cake flavor possibilities. They picked out eight flavors to try, so I spent the last few days baking and frosting small portions for them to taste. They left happy, with sugar highs and decisions made about the types of cakes – Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, Chocolate Fudge Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting, Lemon Chiffon Cake with Lemon Curd Filling and Lemon Buttercream Frosting, and finally a Vanilla Buttermilk Cake with Strawberry Preserves Filling and Vanilla Buttercream Frosting. Any requests for an invitation should be directed toward the happy couple!

Who in the world came up with the name for Lemon Curd? CURD? That was the best someone could come up with after first stumbling upon the preparation for this silky smooth, buttery, sweet-and-sour concoction? Honestly. It makes something so delicious sound like, well… like cheese. Which, don’t get me wrong, is delicious in its own special way. But a Cheese Curd and Lemon Curd have diddly squat in common, and I take offense to this complete misuse of the word Curd. Even Pudding would have been more acceptable, though, I suppose, that’s a whole other ball of wax!
Well, setting aside the deplorable name, here is an altogether lovely recipe for lemon curd, which takes less than 15 minutes to make. Perfect for a pie, tart, or cake filling, or spread on muffins or scones.

Lemon Curd
(adapted from On Baking, by Sarah Labensky)

4 fl. oz. Lemon Juice, freshly squeezed
6.5 oz. Granulated Sugar, divided
2 tsp. Lemon Zest
2 Eggs
6 oz. Unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into small pieces

1. Combine the Lemon Juice, 3 ounces of the sugar and the zest in a nonreactive saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally.
2. Place the eggs and remaining sugar in a bowl. Gently whisk together – we don’t want lots of air bubbles.
3. While stirring the egg mixture gently, pour about 1/4 of the boiling juice mixture into the eggs. Once combined, continuing stirring and add in the remaining juice mixture to the eggs. Whisk to combine, then add the mixture back to the saucepan and return to the stove.
4. Bring the mixture to a boil, whisking constantly. Continue mixing and boil for 1 minute.
5. Remove from heat and transfer mixture into a cool bowl. Allow to cool, either in an ice bath or in the fridge for several minutes.
6. When the mixture is still warm, but no longer hot, add the butter in five parts, stirring well with a spatula after each addition. When the chunks of butter are almost melted, but not completely, you can add the next addition.
7. Use immediately, or chill, cover, and refrigerate.

I have quite a few events coming up to bake for, and I’ve started by baking a number of cakes for a tasting. Today I put together a simple marble, chocolate fudge, and vanilla buttermilk cakes. The vanilla buttermilk cake recipe comes from a cookbook I’ve mentioned before on this blog, “Sky High: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes.” It is so very tasty – the buttermilk adds such a nice little extra flavor, as well as tons of moisture.
Also coming up is a fundraising banquet at church for the team of students and adults heading on a missions trip this summer to Lima, Peru. I was asked to provide the desserts, and was happy to oblige. I was playing with some ideas for sweets when I came across this Alpaca-shaped cookie cutter online. I have since decided to make some other things and won’t be using the cutter for the banquet, but I had the extra piece of cake that I had leveled off, and felt like testing it out. Yep. It turns out that it cuts things in the shape of an alpaca. Genius.

This weekend Justin and I had made plans to be at different sides of the state. He and his dad and an opportunity to play The Straits Course at Whistling Straits in Kohler, and I went to visit Kurt, Angie & Katie in Keiler. Our weekends could not have been more opposite! Though cold and windy, Justin was excited to have gotten a chance to play a PGA Championship course. Scores and stories will surely be re-shared the next time they watch Tiger play a round there!
And at the other corner of Wisconsin, I was passing time taking photos of lambs, petting downy-soft new chicks, visiting with great friends, and working at making their one-year-old daughter smile and laugh (and was successful most of the time!). And who knew that clothes pins are the bees knees of children’s toys (or snacks)?! And cameras. Cameras are evidently fascinating to one-year-olds. Especially the lens – it calls out to Katie to be touched! It was a fun, relaxed time, even if it did involved getting creamed at Mexican Train Dominoes by a ruthless Harris! And now we are both home, glad to be done with driving and out of the rain and thunderstorms.

Justin has been involved in an online software competition for the last couple of months, and has qualified for a trip to Las Vegas. We’ve gone to this “conference” for the past two years, and we’re thrilled to be going again soon. However, to try to “get to know” the competitors a bit better, TopCoder has asked each of them to submit a video. Not really anything specific required, just something personal and TopCoder- or competition-related. We wanted to try to make it somewhat silly, but we couldn’t figure out how filming Norm attempting to climb a tree was computer-related. Rather, I got a new brand of fondant icing I have been wanting to try, and decided to make TopCoder and TCO cupcakes. Then we will film Justin eating one. This Satin Ice Fondant was very easy to work with, but alas, it still tastes a bit like plastic. I added some vanilla and butter extract, but that just made it taste like vanilla butter gum. So cute? Of course. Tasty? Nothing to rave about, but not half bad. Definitely better than Wilton brand (noticing a theme here…). I only covered these few in fondant – the rest I just stuck with the cream cheese frosting! And sprinkles – lots of sprinkles!

Can you believe this photo came from my camera – Justin thought it was something I found online!

In celebration of both Earth Day and my Aunt Ruth’s birthday, she requested cake pops to take to her office. These came out even better than expected. I also tried some new candy melts, Merkens brand from Confectionery House (which also sells ridiculously cool cupcake wrappers). In addition to the candy coating; I also bought paramount crystals which help thin out the melted candy, making it easier to dip the cake balls. This combination (the new melts and crystals) seemed to be easier to work with than my previous endeavors with Wilton brand melts and shortening, though there wasn’t much difference in the end result.
So whether it is your birthday, or you are just trying not to destroy the earth, Enjoy the day!

This whole weekend (Friday – Sunday) is our church’s Women’s Retreat. We had some plans already set for this weekend, so rather than going for the whole time, and since it was relatively nearby, I decided to just drive out for the day. It was a gorgeous warm, sunny day, and a nice time to connect with a bunch of other gals from our church, be silly, have some quiet time, and do some cooking. The theme for the weekend was “Finding Your True Beauty.” And I was glad to have my camera along to capture some moments that I found beautiful.
In the afternoon there were a number of workshops that the women could choose from to fill an hour, one of which I led. I shared a number of fun and easy appetizer and dessert recipes and ideas, and made sure the women in my little group (trapped in the sweltering hot kitchen) got involved and got their hands dirty. Here is Tammi David putting together some Roasted Garlic and Cambazola Cheese Triangles. She wanted me to take a picture so she could prove to her husband that she helped cook! She also helped with the dishes, which is always a way to endear yourself to me!
I was glad for the chance to be able to spend the day this way.

In a round about sort of way, I happened upon this fun, free site on the internet. After downloading and printing out the design, I spent the next 10 minutes cutting, folding and gluing my little birdie together. Seriously – pretty funny. I would suggest printing it out on cardstock paper if you have it, but the regular old paper already loaded in the printer works pretty good as well. I may soon have a flock of these little guys – perfect for wasting time and eliciting smiles.

The second loaf of challah baked up beautifully. While still far from perfect, it had a great crust and delicious and moist crumb. We shared about half of it with family, but then hoarded the rest away in order to make french toast with it this morning.

The basis for this recipe for french toast is the first recipe I ever wrote down while watching Thirty Minute Meals (caution – link has sound) with Rachel Ray – almost 6 years ago (before she took over the world) – and it is the bomb. But I’ve never used challah bread for french toast before today, and now it is the atom bomb of french toast. Serve with real maple syrup, preferably made by a friend‘s family, and you might as well wipe yourself off the face of the map. Crazy. Good.

French Toast
(adapted from Thirty Minute Meals)

2 eggs
1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar
3/4 Cup Heavy Cream
1/4 Cup Milk
1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg (freshly grated if you have it)
6-8 slices thick (at least 1″ thick) french or challah bread
Butter for pan

Whisk together the eggs, sugar, cream, milk, and nutmeg. Start soaking several slices of bread in the mixture, flip over after a few minutes to soak other side. Heat large non-stick skillet/griddle to medium heat. When the pan is heated, melt a bit of butter in it, then add several pieces of soaked bread to it – only as many as can fit comfortably in the pan, don’t crowd it. While these are cooking, start soaking remaining slices in the egg mixture. Depending on your stovetop’s heat output, each slice should be flipped over after about 3 minutes, when the cooked side is golden brown. The other side usually takes a little bit less time, maybe about 2 minutes. Warning – I’ve never actually timed how long this takes. Maybe it was 4 minutes and 3 minutes? Just keep an eye on it. If the toast darkens after only a minute, turn down your heat a bit, or else you will have beautiful-looking french toast, but it will be nasty and gooey on the inside – blech. I like to preheat my oven to 300 degrees, set a wire rack on a cookie sheet, and have it ready in the warmed oven in order to put my finished slices of french toast on while I cook the whole batch of toast. The finished slices don’t get soggy or cold, and everything can be served together at the same time. And if, by chance, the center of the french toast didn’t get completely done in the pan, the heat from the oven will finish the cooking process.

This post has nothing to do with Easter, but I posted it on Easter, so I have to at least mention Easter. Here’s a picture of a deep-fried Cadbury Creme Egg:

Here’s a funny picture:

Julie and I went to church this morning, out to brunch with her mom, dad, and grandma, and then went up to Wausau to watch golf and hang out with my parents. While we were there, Sarah reached into a cookbook and pulled out this note (it had a recipe on the back), which we are assuming was written about 20 years ago, when I was 9 or 10. Click to get the full details

For those who don’t know, my mom passed away when I was 6, and my dad was left with 3 boys, ages 6, 4, and 2, and a fledgling business, so we were all expected to do stuff that most normal kids didn’t have to deal with. It’s kind of funny looking back at stuff that we just kind of assumed was normal at the time but very much wasn’t.

We also had a long discussion about Facebook

I am still on the fence about this whole thing. While I do enjoy a good bit of technology now and then, there are some things I just don’t see the value in, namely cell phones, instant messaging, and now Facebook. I don’t like cell phones (we only have 1 – prepaid -, and only for emergencies), or instant messaging, because I consider them to be “intrusive” technologies. I mostly like being left alone to focus on important tasks, and I feel that having a phone ringing wherever I was or having an IM window pop up all the time is distracting and I end up resenting either the phone or person IM’ing me. Facebook is scary to me because I haven’t always made the best decisions (actually hardly ever), and I don’t want people remembering me from grade school, middle school, high school, college, etc…, but it would actually be cool to stay in touch with my family, cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, grandparents, parents, etc…, all of whom are starting to use Facebook. Let me know your thoughts. Either Facebook is a gift from the heavens, made from dreams, rainbows, and unicorn farts (Candy mountain! Candy mountain! You fill me with sweets, sugary goodness!!! ), or it is pure evil. I actually already have an account, but I haven’t used it all. If I actually start using the stupid thing, I will have to create a profile pic that uses one of my cats, as that seems to be the Gasper thing to do:

I have also been listening to new music lately, so I thought I would share my current list.

Trav clued me into this compilation, which has a ton of artists that I like on it, including an awesome song by Sufjan Stevens, Justin Vernon (from Bon Iver), YeaSayer, The National, and Beirut:

Pandora also recommended to me a song by Vetiver, and I am currently listening to both “Tight Knit”, and “To Find Me Gone”

A standby favorite of mine is Sufjan Stevens. Both the Illinois and Michigan albums are spectacular:

In the same vein is Welcome Wagon. Sufjan Stevens had an obvious influence in this album. I’m not sure how I feel about the album cover, but it’s good music.

For good up-tempo music, Fatboy Slim and OK Go are two of my many go-to choices. Doesn’t hurt that they know how to make a music video:

Fatboy Slim Video (for some reason can’t embed this one, but it’s probably the best video ever. Christopher Walken is a genius.)

That’s it for me. Random Easter post out — word.

I’ve been holding onto this recipe for challah for a little while now, and finally got it into the kitchen to be made today. And actually, this is the first loaf of challah that has ever come out of my oven! I don’t know why it took me so long – other things just came first I guess. My Kitchen Aid mixer could barely get this dough kneaded, and so I ended up going at it by hand for a little while as well. The recipe makes two LARGE loaves. I wanted to bake one tonight so that we could try it and then use the leftovers for french toast this week. The second loaf is braided and in the fridge, to be baked in the morning for Easter festivities. I was honestly quite surprised when I opened the oven to see how much it had “plumped” during baking! I braided the second loaf a little tighter, so I’m hoping that loaf will be slightly more compact. Definitely dramatic though! And oh-so delicious!

This afternoon Justin was interviewed by a professor with the School of Business at Harvard University. I guess they are interested in including some information on TopCoder‘s business model in upcoming curriculum and wanted to talk to someone who has been working with them for awhile. It’s not every day that “Harvard University” shows up on the caller id! I told him he can now include “Consultant for the Harvard Business School” on his resume.

Just two days ago I mentioned to Justin that I was surprised that our crocus hadn’t started blooming. So I stepped out our front door this morning, and lo and behold the miniature yellow and purple flowers have made their appearance. All cheery and happy and the like. A couple of our daffodils are just days away from showing off their yellow petals, and the tulips are finally starting to bust their shoots through the dingy, brown-gray earth. Spring! I may even take the winter coats to the dry cleaners next week, though I don’t want to push my luck too far!

Every so often, a website called MacHeist is updated with a new bundle of Mac software that is a huge discount for what is provided. I bought it last year, and bought it again this year. I use The Hit List and Espresso pretty much every day. — A side note — The Hit List has an awesome easter egg in it: When you check a task as done it plays a little chime. I had a task called “Send package to Luke”, reminding me to send something to my brother, and when I checked it as done, it played a little Star Wars song instead, because I had the word “Luke” in the task. It also plays a Super Mario Brothers song for tasks with Mario or Luigi in the name. –

I am also encouraging Julie to start using Delicious Library to account for our DVD’s and books, since we tend to lend things out and forget who has what, and Sous Chef for her recipes.

Anyways, one of the apps in the bundle is called “World of Goo“. It’s a fun little game where you try to get these little “Goo Balls” moved around, and different species of Goo Balls have different properties. Julie is now officially addicted. I laugh every time she yells at the computer because something goes wrong

Seven years ago today Justin and I took that monumental step of tying the knot. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny spring day, and for the most part, everything went off without a hitch. Church? Check. Flowers? Check. Dresses and Tuxes? Check and Check. Photographer and Cake? Check and yummy Check. Rings? Check. Friends and Family? Double Check. Each other? Forever Check.
The day went by quickly, but I think reflected who we are – fun and laid back. Definitely gave and received more hugs that day than probably in the seven years since. Gosh, I loved those bridesmaids’ dresses. I wish I could have worn one! Well, except that I got to wear the wedding dress, which wasn’t half bad. I also love how well the photographs came out. It was great to look through the proof album and see the shots that we could never have noticed were happening. This shot of Justin’s grandmother Gigi and my Grandma always makes me smile, and gets me choked up at the same time.
While time may have passed by and we’ve grown up and experienced life a bit more, I love Justin, and am ridiculously thankful that we walked down that aisle seven years ago.

Justin has found some new resolve to exercise. He has set up a monitor and his XBox on a cabinet in front of treadmill, and while he plays Call of Duty with his brothers he walks. I felt like this was a decision that may land him in the hospital, but so far so good. He gets to kill a bunch of Nazis, talk with Trav and Luke, and burn calories all at the same time. I stand at the ready with the phone and the camera – the phone in case 9-1-1 is needed, and the camera to document the fiasco.

When Julie and I were in Seattle, we took a drive to the Pacific ocean. It’s a longer drive than you might think, at least a couple of hours.

The beach itself isn’t much of a “lay out and get a sun tan” beach. The water itself is very cold and very dangerous, so there wasn’t any swimming or anything like that. We found this guy and took his picture. He had some weird contraption made out of PVC that he used to suck sand in and then “spit” it back out. Apparently a particular type of shrimp burrows into the sand when the tide goes out and he was collecting them in the jar. He knew where they were since they still had to breath, so there were tiny little air bubbles on the surface of the sand.

We spent some time walking on the beach watching people fly kites. Apparently this is a popular thing to do. A couple of them were so big they actually had to be attached to the trailer hitches on people’s trucks.

After we walked around on the beach, we stopped at a Mexican restaurant and then headed home.

So today’s baking experiment was to attempt to copy these ridiculously cute cake pops by Bakerella. Miraculously, I was able to find all the necessary components within Stevens Point – mainly the candy sprinkles to use for the feet and beak and wings. So this afternoon I set to the task before me. I had made a cake and some frosting ahead of time, so all I had left was all the putzy things. Forming and freezing the cake balls, melting the candy discs, inserting the lollipop stick and dipping the balls (NO – that’s NOT what she said!), then attaching the feet, beaks and wings, and finally drawing on two little eyes. And hooray! They actually came pretty close! They are crazy cute and tasty to boot! Madie showed no mercy to this little chick…

So, while Julie and I were living in Seattle, Dad, Trav, and Luke came to visit. We did the “touristy” stuff, like go downtown, the Space Needle, and the Experience Music Project:.

We also ate waaaay too much Chinese food one nigh at our favorite take out place. While we were out and about, Trav proceeded to make his “stupid” face in every picture we took. Click on each one to get the full effect

If you’ve ever been down by the Space Needle, you soon realize it’s kind of a weird place. The Space Needle is front and center, but the Experience Music Project is right next to it, with the monorail that always catches on fire going through it (the picture of Trav and Luke above is them braving the monorail ride); there’s a weird carnival with kiddie roller coasters, the Key Arena where the Supersonics play, and the “International Fountain“, which is always a crowd pleaser. It’s a giant fountain that shoots water in time with music. Very cool. Plus a picture to prove that Trav isn’t the only joker in the family.

When in Seattle, Julie got a job at an environmental consulting firm, and I worked for the University of Washington Medical Center. I split time between the University Medical Center:

And Harborview Medical Center, which is run by the University:

The job was a job, but Julie and I definitely enjoyed our time exploring Seattle. Summers were awesome: 70-75 degrees every day and sunny. The winters were a bit dreary, with rain and in the 40s-50s pretty much every day, but it was nice to be in a big city, with actual stuff to do.

We definitely would take more advantage of things like the Pike Place market. The market itself is pretty amazing. On TV you always see the fish chuckers, but the actual market is multiple levels of shops and restaurants, with all sorts of weird things to find.

View Larger Map
After we got back from the honeymoon, Julie and I pretty much packed up our junk and moved out to Seattle. We didn’t have jobs, but it sounded like a good idea. We packed up a U-Haul, attached our old Honda to the back and set off from Wausau, with a stop in Winona.

It took awhile, and it was scary going up the mountains, but we made it. We had a small apartment lined up in Kirkland, which is one of the eastern suburbs of Seattle. We were on the 3rd floor, and I think our rent was more than we pay for our home mortgage now.

It had a small kitchen, dining room, and living room, a deck, bathroom and two bedrooms. This was before Julie started to cook a bunch, so the small kitchen wasn’t a big deal, and coming straight from student housing, the rest of the apartment felt way too big. We didn’t use the deck much, since the people who lived below us smoked constantly and it came right up into our apartment.

We lived right next to a strip mall with a Rite-Aid and an Albertson’s, and a sweet Chinese restaurant, so grocery shopping and eating out was super easy. We really didn’t keep much stuff around in the apartment. When we needed something, we would just walk over to Albertson’s, usually a few times a week.

This was all pre-cats (Nut came later), so it was peaceful and relaxing

This is the craziest thing I have seen this week:

The honeymoon was our first experience with “sophisticated” food. Up to that point, we had relied pretty much on typical Wisconsin cuisine, and the occasional (or not so occasional) Little Caesar’s $5 Hot ‘n Ready pizza, during college. This was all before Julie really got into baking, or went to culinary school, but we pigged out on the honeymoon

If you have never been on a cruise, it is an entirely different universe. There is food available all the time. As I like to say: This is one reason why other countries hate us. Buffets and restaurants are always going, and even if you want something at 3 in the morning, you can call up room service and get something for free!

The desserts are constant. It’s like every person on a cruise turns into a 4 year old. It’s not enough to have 1 (or 2 or 4) desserts after dinner and a couple with lunch, they also have to have midnight dessert buffets so that everyone can get their fill. Yes, that’s a giant dragon carved out of ice, and a horse made out of cheese, in the middle of the ocean.

You wouldn’t want to go to bed without being hopelessly hopped up on sugar. Starting with donuts and Cocoa Krispies for breakfast, it is possible on a cruise ship to eat only absolutely horrible things all day long. It’s wonderful.

What’s even more impressive is that, during culinary school, Julie ended up making stuff that looked like this:

Of course this all wasn’t enough, so I swung by Cinnabon on the way home. The Miami airport Cinnabon was the best one I have ever had. Sorry Jenn, the one in O’Hare just doesn’t cut it.

I was talking with Julie a couple of days ago that when we don’t have much going on on the blog, I would post some pictures about past trips we have taken, pre-blog, so I decided to scan in some photos from our honeymoon. Hard to believe that we got married before digital cameras were popular. To everyone who’s older than us: That’s right, I went there

Julie and I got married April 6th, 2002. She can scan in some wedding pictures and post about that some other time, if she wants. We left right from the reception and drove down to Chicago to catch our 6 AM flight to Miami, so we could catch a week-long cruise. The taxi ride from the airport to the port was by far the scariest taxi ride I have ever experienced. The dude was all over the road, speeding, and taking weird shortcuts through back alleys, but we made it pretty much unscathed. Our cruise was going to take us from Miami to Puerto Rico, to St. Croix, and then to St. Thomas before we made our way back home.

Our first stop was in Puerto Rico. We were supposed to do a night-time kayak tour through the bioluminescent algae that stay on top of the water. Should have been very cool. The only problem was the wind speeds were too high and the waves too big, so the excursion was cancelled We ended up just walking around the port town a bit and swung by Walgreens so Julie could buy some shampoo.

The next stop was in the US Virgin Islands: St. Croix. We booked a shore excursion at a “private island” where we got to lounge around on the beach and enjoy the weather. It was much more fun than I am making it look in this picture. This was probably right after Julie accidentally knocked over our fruity drinks I got us. Enjoy the swimsuit, since I left it at the snuba place mentioned below. Julie still brings that up on a regular basis.

After St. Croix we stopped in St. Thomas, which was our favorite stop of the trip. The island was extremely nice, and the shore excursion was the best one: snuba. At this point, I had been scuba diving with Dad, Trav, and Luke in the Cayman Islands, but Julie had never been diving with a regulator. It was fun, and after a brief training session we got to enjoy our snuba.

The snuba place was attached to a “zoo”, and an underwater observatory where you could take stairs down into the water and look at all the fish from windows underwater. Pretty cool. Below is a picture of Julie pointing out where we were on the island, as well as investigating one of the lizards that was running loose. This is not something she would probably ever do again.

All in all it was an excellent vacation, one of the best we have ever had. This is when we discovered how much we like cruising and got to start acting all grown up and married and stuff.

What would our world look like without salt? More specifically, what would the culinary world taste like without wonderful coarse sea salt? Definitely more dull. Duller? More duller? Any way you say it, salt adds so much pep to our palates! I had just recently purchased some coarse Pacific Sea Salt from Penzey’s Spices in Appleton and thought these Salted Chocolate and Vanilla Bean cookies were crying out to be made with it. I love how the sea salt crystals seem to catapult this cookie into the “sophisticated” and “unique” realm while also being simple and sweet. I added a couple teaspoons of water to the dough as it was mixing to allow it to come together a little easier, but otherwise stuck to the recipe (using a vanilla bean, rather than extract). This would be a great recipe to double and put the unbaked rolls into the freezer, taking one out to slice and bake when the need arises.

Last night we went over to our friends Daryl & Lori’s house for an evening of games and silliness. Along with two other couples, we first played Ticket to Ride, which is a lot of fun and can certainly get competitive! Each couple was a team and had to get their color trains to connect destinations across the game board of the United States. There was plenty of groaning when one couple would claim a route that another couple needed desperately to get to a certain city, but also plenty of laughing and good-natured ribbing.

If you have read this blog for any length of time, you already are aware of what a huge food nerd I am. I love trying out new ingredients, looking for higher quality, better tasting products to use while baking and cooking. One main ingredient that I use almost all the time is butter. I’ve devoted way too much of my time to reading about and researching butter and the different qualities regions around the world impart into their butter. Again and again I have read that European butter is where it’s at. Being from Wisconsin, dairy is not taken lightly, and a bit of state pride rose against this notion that somehow cows in far off places are better than the good ol’ bovines I come across around these parts. But, also being from central Wisconsin, I don’t have access to even TRY these aforementioned foreign butters to see how they stack up. So while in Houston, in the beautiful, bright, well-stocked Central Market’s dairy section, I stood in awe, feeling a bit giddy, of all the varieties of butter. I had to try them. All of them. Now. It was difficult, but I was able to limit myself to purchasing three different kinds to take home. (A near crisis was averted, when TSA threatened to confiscate my beloved butter because if it melted, it would have turned into a LIQUID measuring more than 3 ounces. COME ON!) Tonight I warmed a loaf of french bread, and we sat down to put these three new butters to the test. From left to right, there is a butter from France, England, and Ireland. I had high expectations for these three, as I had read great things about all of them. First we tried the butter from France (which really, I just bought it because it came in a little wooden crate – how adorable!), and we both could tell a difference right away. It was smooth and creamy, not unlike our good Wisconsin butter, but the taste – it felt almost bright and clear and completely fresh on the palate. It didn’t taste processed or mundane. It was downright lovely. Next we tried the English butter. Also good, but we both felt it tasted almost identical to any butter we could have gotten here. Finaly, the Irish butter. This was also exceptional. The taste again was fresh and bright, though not quite to the extent of the French butter. So in the end, the French won our little test. While each of the butters had an identical ingredient list (cream and salt), the difference came down to where those cows lived. Definitely a fun, and educational, dinner!

These cupcakes were a cinch to throw together and the icing is sweet sweet sweet! I made a double batch of this recipe from PW and came out with 32 cupcakes (2 smaller events to bake for today – a church meeting and our small group meeting). I doubled the recipe for the frosting/glaze, and I ended up having quite a bit extra – I probably could have stuck with the ingredient amounts for a single batch. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting is one of my favorite combinations (and by favorite, I mean it is a type of cake with frosting on it). This frosting was a little “runnier” than I expected, but still very easy to pull together with minimal ingredients. I’m considering trying it with white chocolate as well – that would have been cute to drizzle over the dark chocolate icing.

I found these mini Reese’s Pieces at the store a little while ago, and thought they would be fun to try in Monster Cookies. Well, I haven’t made Monster Cookies yet, but somehow the package still cut itself open and somehow half the package still found itself in my belly (not all at once, mind you!).
As I was flipping through my recipe binder looking for something new to try, I came across this recipe, which seemed to yield itself nicely to an addition of a half cup of mini Reese’s Pieces. So I added those but left out the 1/2 cup of salted peanuts (only because I didn’t have any). These puppies pack a peanut butter punch second only to Peanut Butter Fudge Crunch. Keeper.

Caution: Do not attempt to eat these without a glass of water or milk nearby!

A friend and I were talking about breakfast foods this past week (yeah, I know – awesome), and coddled eggs flew into my brain and have since taken up residence there, not allowing me to forget about them again. So yesterday I went down to the basement closet and rummaged around and found each of my coddlers. My Grandma collected porcelain egg coddlers, and when I stayed overnight at their house as a child, in the morning I got to choose one of their coddlers in which to have my egg made for breakfast. It is hard to describe a coddled egg. I guess the consistency is in between a poached egg and a sunny side up egg, but steamed inside a small porcelain cup. The smaller coddlers only just fit a single egg inside. The slightly larger coddlers can fit two eggs, or else an egg and different additions, such as cheese, meat, or cooked vegetables. My Grandma also had a couple of very large coddlers, that you could fit a whole meal inside. My favorite is simply a single egg with a little bit of cheese, salt and pepper cooked inside a larger coddler, as then I can stir it around easily and not have it splooge out. I made one today to go with a piece of toast for lunch (daylight savings time really threw off my meals today…). It was as delicious as I remembered, and I will certainly not be packing away the coddlers anytime soon!

After yesterday’s pretzels, both Justin and I thought that the dough might be good to try to make Puka Dog rolls. I made hot dogs wrapped with biscuit dough the other day, and while they were not intended to replicate Puka Dogs, they caused Justin to start craving a Puka Dog. So we ran to the store today to pick up hot dogs (not something I typically have in the fridge) as well as some ingredients to try to copy the signature Puka Dog sauces – namely the Mango Relish and Lemon Garlic Jalapeno Sauce. Mixing up the sauces and baking the pretzel rolls went just fine. The problem came about when we were trying to figure out how to pierce the pretzel bun in a way that would allow us to get the hot dog inside it. I first used the metal handle of a wisk, but it wasn’t large enough in diameter to allow the hot dog to slide into it. We couldn’t think of what else to do, so we ended up just simply slicing them like a regular hot dog bun. This certainly lost some of the authenticity of a Puka Dog, but it was all we could do. Then we slathered on some of the Lemon Garlic Jalapeno Sauce I made (lemon zest and juice, jalapeno pepper, garlic, salt and pepper, and a little mayo blended in the food processor).
Next came a schmear of the mango relish (just mango puree, really).
Add the hot dog, and voila! While not exactly a Puka Dog, it was pretty darn close, and we both enjoyed the silly things for a late lunch/early dinner.

On Monday we booked our hotel for our stay in Las Vegas in June during a conference Justin attends. And all the talk about the hotel got me hungry for the food, primarily huge soft pretzels. I’ve had a recipe for soft pretzels floating around my kitchen for a couple of weeks now, but I never got motivated enough to attempt them. Which was silly, as they turned out to be so much easier than I expected. Honestly, the hardest step in the process was going through my pots trying to find one that wasn’t aluminum! I almost followed the recipe exactly, though I increased the salt added to the dough by about a half of a teaspoon (1 1/2 total), and I didn’t add the extra 1/4 cup of flour (only 3 cups total). Also, the recipe called to make 12 small pretzels. That did not fit the picture in my head regarding a New York pretzel, so I made six large pretzels. I rolled the dough into pretzels without a hitch, and then the boiling process went off without a hitch as well. Nothing fell apart or boiled out of control or was anything other than pretty easy. And the results are terrific! They are not honest-to-goodness pretzels, as I obviously could not boil them in lye, as professional pretzels are, but these are about as close as I’m going to get to an authentic New York pretzel in my kitchen. I will definitely be making these again very soon! I have visions of a “Hot Sam’s” Pretzel Party in the near future. Remember Hot Sam’s in the mall? Gigantic soft pretzels on a stick, and then you pick different toppings – from cheddar cheese to jalapenos to chocolate with sprinkles (my pick!). Pretzels definitely trigger happy (and ridiculously messy) memories!

This is a recipe adapted from a Cooking Light issue. It is a pretty easy dessert that really looks nice (and tastes just as great). I’ve made this for a baby shower before, and added pink food coloring to the mint layer, which was as cute as can be.
These are for a church function tomorrow evening, so I used the green food coloring so people would know what flavor they are.

Because everyone knows that anything green tastes minty, right?

Dark Chocolate Mint Squares

Bottom Layer:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 cup granulated sugar
4 eggs
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
2 Tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 (16-ounce) can chocolate syrup

Mint layer:
2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 Tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
2 drops green food coloring

Chocolate glaze:
1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup butter

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. To prepare bottom layer, combine flour and salt in a small bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the granulated sugar, eggs, 1/4 cup melted butter, water, vanilla, and chocolate syrup until smooth. Add flour mixture to chocolate mixture, stirring until blended. Pour batter into a 9 X 13-inch baking pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees for 23 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out almost clean. Cool completely in pan on a wire rack.
3. To prepare mint layer, whisk together the powdered sugar, 1/4 cup melted butter, milk, extract, and food coloring until smooth. Spread mint mixture over cooled cake.
4. To prepare the glaze, combine the chocolate chips and 1/4 cup butter in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high for 1 minute or until melted, stirring after 30 seconds. Let stand 2 minutes. Spread chocolate glaze evenly over top the mint layer. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Oh. My. Goodness. I think I will be full for the next week and a half. Justin surprised me with tickets to Christian’s Bistro’s Fat Tuesday celebration this evening, with friends Jim & Jenn. We had such a good time eating, laughing, eating, taking pictures, eating, being silly, and eating again. Servers continually were bringing out plates of New Orleans-inspired wonderfulness. Crab fish pocket pies, jambalaya, etouffee, hush puppies, crab boulettes, smoked sausage meatballs in a parmesan cream sauce, flatbread pizza, plus, my all-time favorite – Parmesan potato chips with truffle oil. Over the top, Off the hook Fantastic. Great food and great friends definitely equal a great birthday gift!

We went up to Wausau this evening to celebrate my mom’s birthday with a quiet dinner and a yummy cake.  I love my mom.  And I have come to realize that she is pretty dang smart (I doubted this for a bit when I was in high school) and pretty dang funny (also didn’t notice that in high school).  Don’t get me wrong, we never had any knock-down, drag-out screaming matches, but she was a pretty strict mom with high expectations and I was a know–it-all kid that thought I wasn’t having enough fun in life (I was).  But there is something about growing up a bit that helps us appreciate our parents a bit more, and how much time, energy, love, and hope that they pour into us childish children.  

I was perusing thisiswhyyourfat today and ran across this:

I am fine with bacon rolls and giant Oreos, but this is a little too much. I think I threw up in my mouth a little.

This is one of my very favorite bread recipes.  I picked it up while taking an artisan bread baking course in school.  The only measurements I have are using a scale, rather than cups, but the recipe is well worth the cost of an inexpensive digital cook’s scale (mine was $20 at Target).  I usually make mini baguettes with the dough, and can get about 12 small loaves from the recipe.  You can go ahead and make larger ones if you like.  We’ve affectionately termed this bread “guppy bread,” as my small loaves will often bulge or bust open.  I’m getting better and this doesn’t happen as much as when I first started, but the name has stuck, even if the loaves no longer resemble the little fish!

Trav is traveling to New Zealand today, and the house feels kind of empty. In the spirit of his love for Dawson’s Creek, I have emulated Dawson’s horrible “cry face”. I just wish I could get my hair to look like it had crab claws gripping my forehead.

Chocolate Sandwich Cookies will always be a favorite of ours.  They’re easy to make, take minimal ingredients, and are always a hit.  Well, while checking some of my favorite blogs, I came across Bakerella’s post for these.  They’re almost identical to our beloved chocolate sandwich cookies, but perfect for Valentine’s Day!  So I stopped at the store to pick up a box of red velvet cake mix (all I could find was Duncan Hines) and threw them together this morning.  Rather than using butter or margarine, as Bakerella suggests, I stuck with the trusty chocolate sandwich cookies recipe – the cake mix, 2 eggs, and 1/3 cup of vegetable/canola oil.  I scooped the dough onto the cookies sheets and smooshed them just a bit, and baked them for 8 minutes.  And I probably could have dropped that back to 7 1/2, or even 7, but the main thing is not to overbake them.  Take them out when they are just cracked, but still very wet-looking on the inside.  Let them cool on the cookie sheets for 1-2 minutes, and then remove to wire racks to cool.  I make my cream cheese frosting the same as Bakerella does, which is delicious.  I scoop my frosting into a zip top bag, snip a corner, and then pipe a mound of frosting on the cookies to make sandwiches.  Verdict – very yummy, perfectly red-tasting, and Valentine-y to boot.  A great holiday version of an old favorite!

While in Texas last year and during a trip to India, Travis developed a taste for Indian cuisine.  Over the past few months, he has worked at cooking dinner about once a week, and this often involves a new curry recipe.  Being his last week with us, and probably the last time he makes dinner, he asked if I would make Naan, an Indian-style flatbread, to go along with the meal.  I found this highly-rated recipe and felt it didn’t look any harder than any other type of bread.  I’m not sure how traditional or authentic it is, but as it turned out great, I don’t really care!  The individual naan(s?) came out smaller than I’ve seen, only about the size of my hand, and I made about 20-25 of them from the recipe.  I’ll definitely make this again, but will roll the balls of dough larger, about the size of racquetballs rather than golfballs, to increase the size of the finished naan.  I’m excited to have a bag full of them in my freezer now.  They reheat in only 2-3 minutes in a 375 degree oven.  Easy!

Since I (Justin) have a thing for over the top food, imagine my surprise when I found out there is a whole website dedicated to that very topic:

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

Here are a couple choice entries:

#1: “Mega Oreo”

#2: “Deep fried Coca Cola”

#3: Self explanatory. Every piece of equipment made should have a button labeled “Push here to dispense gravy”

Other nasty favorites include “The meat ship”, and “60 pound rice crispy treat”

I was looking for a quick and easy recipe yesterday that would cover two bases – a church function and treats for small group.  This “Spreads” recipe seemed to fit the bill, so I thought I’d try it out.  I didn’t have margarine, so I just used good ol’ butter.  The consistency was a bit different than PW’s, as the dough was much thicker, and not really spreadable.  I just patted it into a rectangle shape on my cookie sheet and it worked just fine.  I also put a silicone baking mat on my cookie sheet before the dough, simply to make removing the giant cookie/bar easier.  One other minor variation – I put a combination of semisweet chocolate chips and butterscotch chips on the top, and it came out very tasty.  It really was pretty simple to put together, and I was able to turn two of these puppies out of my kitchen in under an hour.  Nice, simple, yummy.

This past weekend we had a good friend come visit.  Emily flew up from Texas on Friday, ready to experience Wisconsin.  It was a whirlwind of a visit, but we had a fantastic time catching up, laughing, making bread, laughing, visiting a cheese factory, laughing again, playing games and watching movies, and oh yeah, laughing some more.  All of us wished she could have stayed a few more days, though we’ve already talked about heading down to Houston in the fall.  We have too much fun together to stay apart for too long!

Yesterday we drove down to Wisconsin Dells to the Kalahari Resort (link will play music – awful music).  This was set up by John and Sarah as a chance for the immediate family to get together and have some fun.  John, Sarah, Travis, Luke, Niki, Justin and I all shared two rooms (upgrade to suites upon arrival!) and had a blast going between the Indoor Theme Park and the Indoor Water Park.  We rode the go-karts, braved the ropes course, won tickets on “ski-ball” and “Deal or No Deal”, and played many games of laser tag at the Theme Park.  The water park was a blamy 75-80 degrees and we enjoyed our time in the wave pool, floating around the lazy river, and zipping down the water slides.  We are definitely worn out from all the activities, but we had a great time.  

Why does Julie get to have all the fun with the recipes? I am including one of my own, that my friend Doug Allord clued me in to. I had seen it before, but this one contained an actual recipe.

Here’s what you need:

Bacon Explosion

2 pounds thick cut bacon
2 pounds Italian sausage
1 jar of your favorite barbeque sauce
1 jar of your favorite barbeque rub

Follow the instructions here, and then dial 911.

I personally think a nice twist would be to add a bunch of cheese and then beer batter the whole thing and deep fry it, along the lines of the video below. If you end up trying it, let me know!

I thought I would share a story to explain what happens in our house. On Wednesday, Julie and I had pretty bad days. It started on Monday, when the furnace broke at our house, and we thought we were going to have to bring in a repair man. Luckily, I was able to fix it (fingers crossed). On Wednesday, Julie was using the treadmill and managed to statically shock the main control board, rendering it broken. Also on Wednesday our bank called and reported a fraudulent charge, so we are currently without debit cards.

In the midst of all this, Julie and I were a little “short” with each other, and Trav, sensing the tension in the house, decided to try to remedy the situation. In his words: “Party mustaches make everything better”

I was pretty bored last night, and as I was flipping through my bread book deciding what to make, I kept going right by the good (but boring sounding) “Country Bread” and landed at the “Whole Wheat Bread with Hazelnuts and Currants.”  Yep, that sounded quite a bit more interesting than country bread!  And as I had both hazelnuts and currants on hand, I decided to go with it.  I mixed up the pre-ferment last night, and then this morning mixed and kneaded the final dough.  In a day marred by multiple malcontent moments, this bread is a bright spot.  The baking bread smelled incredible, and the final loaf tasted even better than I would have guessed.  No single flavor overwhelms the loaf, but the mixture of whole wheat flour, the tiny Zante currants, and the coarsely chopped, toasted hazelnuts blend beautifully.  Definitely not a boring bread, and perfect with a schmear of peanut butter. 

Today I went up to Wausau and met up with my mom, Aunt Ruth, cousin Laura, friend Katie, friend Shelley and her daughter Morgan for what we coined “Bread & Blankets.”  For a fun project, Shelley thought of making tied fleece blankets to donate to one of the local hospitals’ maternity wards (do they still call them that, or do they now have fancy names like “Happy New Birth Center?”) where she works.  Each of us brought enough fleece to make a blanket or two, and then I also brought bread dough to bake bread while we worked.  We had a great time admiring the fabrics others brought, laying them out, cutting the sides and tying the edges to make cozy, soft blankets. In all we made nine blankets to donate, ate the whole loaf of bread, and are looking forward to doing this again soon!  If you are interested in doing something similar with your friends, let me know and I can connect you with Shelley!

This is a pictorial reason why we don’t buy our cats toys very often. Julie splurged on a toy we affectionately call a “smacky”. It’s a weird toy that has a hole in it you fill with catnip by jamming that catnip plastic cylinder into it. Nothing morbid about that…

Here is what happened:

Norm: Oooh! New toy, fun!

10 seconds later: Toy scary! Run away!

Storm: Hmm… New toy

10 seconds later: Loss of all interest

Next 12 hours: Pure sack of lazy

Ah the joys of having a cat….

This is it.  Other ones may have fancy additions like toasted hazelnuts or froo-froo berries, but for a good, ol’ chocolate-y chocolate chip cookie, Alton Brown’s got it covered.  The only tiny thing I add is a sprinkling of kosher salt right on top of the cookie before baking.  Salty, sweet, milk chocolate buttons, and tons of yummy.

So, to try to combat the steady stream of sweets and breads making their way out of my kitchen, every now and then I do make an attempt at being active.  That typically involves the treadmill or free weights, but tonight I did something much more amusing.  I met up with my Aunt Ruth and we took a Cross Country Ski Lesson!  The Nordic Ski Club of Wausau was giving free lessons tonight at Nine Mile Forest & Ski Area, which included free use of rental equipment and no charge for the trail pass.  We went fully expecting to spend the evening on our hineys, laughing hysterically, and generally making fools of ourselves.  Well, we actually didn’t do half bad!  The place was packed, and there were plenty of newbies and loads of instructors and semi-experienced skiers as well.  We ended up in a very small group which was just Ruth and I, one other lady, and our instructor.  We got the hang of it pretty quickly, and as long as we didn’t stray too far from our “tracks” we did well.  Yes, we did bite it a time or two, but were able to get right up and kept moving along.  All in all, it was a beautiful night to be outside, we got to try a fun new activity, and neither of us broke any bones.  Definitely a success!

Alright, get out your flour and yeast and let’s get some dough mixed.  I’ve adapted the Rustic Bread recipe from Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes, by Jeffry Hamelman.  This is a terrific, detailed guide to making just about every type of bread under the sun, and I haven’t come across a dud yet.  This recipe will yield 2 large, or 3-4 small- to medium-sized loaves.

I just thought this was kind of a funny picture, and thought I’d share it.  I stopped by our building to make sure everything was okay with the freezing temperatures (everything was), and out in the sun flitting about the cars were about fifty of these puffy little birds.  They were obviously trying to glean what little bit of warmth there was from the sunshine!

I love ciabatta bread.  I love what a great, chewy bread it is, but with giant, irregular air pockets so that it doesn’t feel quite as heavy or filling as a rustic or country bread.  A wonderful yeasty smell without being overwhelming, and a crust that has just enough bite to it to be substantial, but without breaking into a billion shards.  Not necessarily the best of “soup” breads, but great for sandwiches and paninis, or just a roll with a dinner.  But sorry, this isn’t one of those “super easy, no kneading, hardly takes any time” breads.  This one begins the night before by mixing up a starter, or “poolish,” which the next day is added to additional flour, yeast, salt and water to make the final dough.  Then it rises for 3 hours, and has to be turned out and folded after each hour, and then shaped into loaves or rolls, then risen again for another 1 1/2 – 2 hours, and then finally baked.  But oh, the outcome.  Delicious, delicious ciabatta!

We don’t buy toys for our cats.  Once in a blue moon someone will give them a toy, which we douse in catnip and both cats will rub their faces on said toy, lick all the catnip off said toy, and then lay in a corner, completely dazed for about 30 minutes.  But what really gets them going?  This specific little crumpled up cough drop wrapper.  No kidding.  Justin threw this down for Storm to play with about TWO MONTHS ago, and she still plays with the silly little booger almost every day.  As we can all see in the photograph, it is very obviously the coolest thing on the planet.

Obviously, since these have a fancy french name, I’m not talking about the neon orange “cheesy” styrofoam peanuts at the store.  Nope, I’m talking about honest-to-goodness savory pate a choux (pronounced paat-aa-shoe), or cream puff dough, with shredded Gruyere cheese mixed in.  Since I got Pastry Cream out of the way yesterday, I figured I would conquer all my silly, completely unfounded kitchen phobias.  Pate a choux is even easier than pastry cream.  No worries about curdled eggs or lumpy custards, just mixing a dough in a saucepan and then shifting it to a mixing bowl to add the eggs.  I think I made about a gazillion cream puffs in school, as they were always a hit at fundraisers, and you bake what you know people like (and will give money for).  The next step is just to combine my last two projects, and make real cream puffs or eclairs, filled with that psychotically good vanilla pastry cream.  Oh crud.  I think I just gained 3 pounds just writing about it.  

Pastry Cream.  What I remember most about making pastry cream in culinary school was being totally stressed out by it – and everyone else being stressed about it too.  I know that we made it, and that it tasted phenomenal, but somehow the stress turned into some sort of fear that it wouldn’t turn out if I made it at home.  That it would take forever, or curdle, or burn, or do something strange that I would never recover from.  Something like that.  But you know what? It was, well, easy!  The milk came to a simmer just fine, the eggs were tempered just fine, and then it only took about 5 minutes for the mixture to thicken and turn to a nice, thick, smooth custard.  Half was saved as vanilla to make a Boston Cream Pie for Welcome to Woodlands, and the other half was mixed with some chocolate to make a Triple Chocolate Cream Cake for our friend Lincoln’s birthday.  And oh, the taste, the mouth-feel, the fresh vanilla bean smell.  Won-Der-Ful.  

I got an email from Jenn a couple of days ago, saying that this might be the recipe that she would actually try baking.  After several emails back and forth it was decided that I would bake them, but that she would come over and keep me company during the process.  It turns out it is a pretty good “visiting” type of cookie to bake.   You mix up the dough, then stick it in the fridge (and sit down and talk), then it goes from the fridge to the oven (again, opportunity to sit and talk), then allow it to cool (insert sitting and talking here), and then cut it and bake it again.  End result being lots of sitting and talking and some incredibly yummy, fragrant, not overly crunchy biscotti.  And actually, about halfway through the afternoon Jenn had to take her daughter to play practice, but they made sure to stop by afterwards to try some of the results of the day.   By the way, I ran into some dried Mission  ”Figlets” at Woodman’s, and that is what “we” used.  Well, and you can see that I drizzled them with a little bit of melted Ghirardelli double chocolate.  I’ll definitely be making these again!

Today’s recipe is a very homey, warm, comforting, granny-esque type of cake.  And I totally changed the name from the original (here) because I actually took it somewhere and didn’t want people scared off by it.  Oh, and you know they would be – people don’t actually rush forward when you say, “Oh this, just a little prune cake I whipped up.”  But when  you rename it to “Caramel Spice Cake,” that evokes a slightly more positive response.  Well, whatever you call it, it was very well received and really quite delicious.  I didn’t boil the caramel topping quite as long as I should have (because it was getting late) but it was still sweet and yummy, and of course, good for your innards!

Yummmm.  

This is another very easy bread recipe that I came across in the latest issue of Cooking Light, and I thought I’d give it a shot.  It came out very well, even though it got messed up a little bit.  Let me explain.  I started out following the recipe, but had to veer off a bit when it came to the rising and baking of the bread.  Cooking Light states to place all three loaves of bread on a single baking sheet to rise.  After thirty minutes, my bread loaves had all risen to the point that they were completely smooshed against the sides of the pan and each other.  So I had to gingerly try to move the loaves onto their own baking sheets, which caused them to deflate a bit.  Then, in the baking process, I had dinner in the oven at 375 degrees, so I just put the first loaf in at that temperature, for about 23-24 minutes, rather than at 350 degrees for 30 minutes as the recipe calls for.  And in the end, the bread still came out as a very softly crusted, but very tasty bread.  Also, Cooking Light claims this is a “no-knead” bread, but I’d have to disagree.  The recipe does say to beat the bread in an electric mixer until it forms a ball – this took 3-4 minutes in my kitchenaid.  That is pretty much like kneading it by hand for 6-8 minutes!  It was still easier than a full fledged kneaded bread, but not quite as easy as Bittman’s bread!

For a couple of years now I have been using unbleached, unbromated flour – both all-purpose and bread flours.  Many recipes recommended it, and in my baking classes, that is what we used.  It just sounded better to use something that didn’t have anything in common with laundering socks and underwear.  Well, I ran across another reason while reading a new book, Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating by Ari Weinzweig.  Apparently, bromate is added to some flours in order to save time between the milling process of the flour and when it can be shipped out.  Bromate speeds up the maturation process of the flour, so it can be shipped out of the factory with a day of milling, rather than the typical two or three weeks.  So by adding bromate, producers save both time and money.  But at what cost?  Apparently, bromate has been found to be a potentially cancer-causing agent.  And even worse, most countries in the Western World have banned bromate except the United States.

After several weeks of working at organizing my recipe “pile” I am finally done.  I’ve long had a stack on my desk where I just throw recipes that I have cut out of magazines, printed off the internet, or gotten from friends or family.  It isn’t much of a surprise that most of those recipes, that I thought looked or sounded great at one time, quickly got buried by the newest additions rather than make it to the kitchen in order to be tried.  In the organizational process I have used over 400 clear plastic sheet protectors, 5 big binders, and several packages of page dividers.  But finally, these recipes, mostly forgotten, will now have their moment.  Or at least, a better chance of getting their moment!

Today’s recipe comes from the January/ February issue of Cooking Light.  Seriously.  It is a recipe that they “made over,” trying to make it lighter than the original.  Well, they really just made them smaller.  Pretty silly makeover, if you ask me, but a stinkin’ addicting recipe.  And honestly, I didn’t have some of the ingredients, so I threw some other things in, and they came out peanut buttery, chewy, crunchy, and downright yummy.  Here is the link for the Swag Bars recipe I started with.  It called for Total cereal flakes, which I didn’t have, so I used rice krispies.  It called for 1 1/2 cups of peanuts, but I only had a cup, so I added in a half cup of chopped cashews.  It called for (a paltry) 2 ounces of chocolate to drizzle over the top.  I went up to 4 ounces, and that was just enough to add a very thin layer over the top of the bars.  Definitely not excessive.  Well, except when you eat four of them.

Looking for a fantastically easy, amazingly tasty bread recipe?  You might have seen this one floating out and about in cyber space, but I finally caught up with it.  Step 1: Mix flour, salt, yeast and water in a bowl.  Step 2: Cover said bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit overnight.  Step 3: Shape the dough into a ball.  Step 4: Dump the dough in a hot casserole dish and bake.  ”Where’s the step where I have to knead it until my arms fall off?” you might be asking.  Ah ha!  It isn’t kneaded/needed!  And this is probably the best crackly crust that has come out of my oven.  

I got a new cookbook for Christmas – Baking: From My Kitchen to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.  It is chockfull of great recipes and mouth-watering pictures.  I started going through it, marking the pages of recipes I would like to try with post-it notes.  Well, after about 10 pages I gave up, as I was marking every page!  I probably would have gone through a whole tablet of post-it notes by the end of this substantial book!  So last night for a fun dinner, I decided to try three biscuit recipes out of it – Basic Biscuits (with milk), Buttermilk Biscuits, and Sweet Cream Biscuits.  I cooked some bacon and scrambled some eggs, and along with some butter, Sweet Plum Butter and Strawberry Rhubarb Butter, our biscuit taste-testing supper commenced.  All three were very good, but we all agreed that the Sweet Cream Biscuits were our favorites.  One thing I loved about the recipes is how they can be frozen – now I have a dozen biscuits to take out in a snap and throw them in the oven.

We went over to Robert & Rachel’s home last night, where they had a party for about ten of their friends.  They asked everyone to bring a dish to pass, and about an hour before we went, I found this recipe for Sugar & Spice Candied Nuts.  I had all the ingredients on hand and just a bit of time, so I started making a batch, thinking they’d be perfect.  Well, I got to the point where I was measuring in the spices, and in went the cinnamon.  And then I stopped.  And groaned.  You see, our friend Rachel is VERY ALLERGIC to cinnamon!  I couldn’t bring these into their house!  As the cinnamon was already mixed in, I went ahead and finished the batch.  And they are terrific!  We will definitely be enjoying these for a few days!  Nice and crunchy, salty-sweet, and honestly, pretty healthy.  I ended up slicing some Cranberry Orange Shortbread cookies I had ready in the freezer, and brought those instead.  It was a fun night of visiting with friends, eating, and playing games.  Happy New Year!

Okay, between Ginger Chewies, and now this recipe, I am going through molasses just as fast as sugar!  No, mine aren’t as pretty as Martha Stewart’s (but really, is that even possible?), but all I had was dark, bold molasses and not the “Light” molasses that the recipe called for.  I added just a little bit of vanilla to cut into the molasses flavor just a bit, and mine only took 8 minutes to bake in the oven, not the 12-15 as the recipe states.  When making the frosting, I had to add a little milk to mine as I mixed it to make it a bit creamier – and I wouldn’t suggest using a whisk if you are following the recipe, it turned into a bit of a pain when the butter clumped with the sugar inside the whisk – just use an electric mixer.  In the end, they tasted, well, incredible!  I love it when I try a new recipe and upon sharing them, people go ballistic over them.  The same thing happened with the Ginger Chewies.  Which makes me wonder – you really don’t see that many cookies or recipes with molasses anymore.  It certainly isn’t as “hip” as Green Tea or Candied Ginger, but there is definitely something comforting and welcoming about it – a hug for your tummy.

Honestly, how much snow can one state possibly need, really?!  

What is it about cinnamon rolls?  Warm from the oven, covered in icing, that sweet spicy smell in the air that has the power to cause men to swoon cinnamon rolls.  I have tried several cinnamon rolls recipes in the past, and they never quite turn out.  The filling is awesome, but the dough leaves something to be desired, or vice versa, or the dough fails to rise (it is so hard to throw away what seems to be a perfectly good jar of yeast, just because it is getting up in age…).  But I think I’ve finally got it.  These are amazing.  And I have to admit, I didn’t even make the icing Ree does, I just did a vanilla icing, rather than the maple.  Still.  They rock.  And even after I made a ridiculously messy mess while rolling them up (every spill a cup of melted butter on the floor?), I still promise to make these again.  I made half the recipe, and got three round pans out of it.  One was made the next morning, and the other two are being saved for Christmas morning.  Family, Presents, and Cinnamon Rolls.  Can life get better?  I submit that it cannot!

One thing about baking so much lately, is that I feel like I am almost constantly washing, drying, and putting away dishes, only to take them out and make them dirty again (and again and again).  Even right now, at 9:43 pm, there are dirty dishes to be done, mainly because I have reached my limit of doing dishes today and couldn’t stand to put my hands in that scalding hot water again.  But honestly, the amount of dishes that today’s recipe produced was worth it.  This is definitely a great recipe to have on hand, and I know I will make it again.  I love using vanilla beans.  Splitting them open and scraping out the tiny black seed paste inside is somehow satisfying – and the wonderful fragrance that fills the workspace is one that makes you close your eyes, lean forward, and breath in as deeply as your lungs allow.  I loved seeing the bits of vanilla throughout the sugar, and then mixed into the cake dough.  There is something exotic about using vanilla beans in a recipe – and one of the few times that “black stuff” is okay in a cake!  I would have certainly offered up some of this ridiculously good Cranberry Vanilla Coffeecake as payment for someone willing to do some dishes!

Finally, a new jar of yeast, and properly risen dough!  The little critters acted exactly as they should have, and the recipe for Dinner Rolls by the Pioneer Woman came out wonderfully.  I only made half a batch (which still made 20 rolls), and I will soon enough be making them again.  Very easy, no kneading and yummy, fresh, buttery rolls coming out of the oven for dinner.  Before I put the pans in the oven, I brushed the tops of the rolls with a little melted butter, and then sprinkled just a bit of kosher salt over each.  Yum Yum Yum… I think I need to go eat another one, just to make sure they’re still good!

Two recipes for the price of one today, and two good ones, for that matter!  Via a link on Joy’s blog, I felt an urgency to make this Butterscotch Banana Chocolate Swirl Cake.  I threatened Justin and Trav away from the last of the bananas on our counter, and had all of the other ingredients on hand.  As you’ll notice if you follow the link to the recipe, it only calls for half of the recipe for the yellow cake.  As I didn’t threaten hard or fast enough, by the time I got to the bananas there was only one left, so I couldn’t just double the recipe.  Instead I took Peabody’s advice and made the Pecan Pie Cake with the other half (I had all the ingredients for that on hand as well).  To make them perty, I drizzled some butterscotch and chocolate ganache over the banana one, and poured the remaining chocolate ganache over the pecan one.  Both turned out great, though Justin declared that the Butterscotch Banana one as his favorite, and requested four layers of it for his birthday.  

Okay.  The jar of yeast is officially going in the garbage.  I made these yesterday.  Helen’s look pretty incredible, eh?  Ha.  Not when you have crummy yeast like I did.  The problem with mostly bad yeast, and not completely bad, is that when you mix it with warm water, it still foams a bit and looks okay.  And then you mix it into your flour and eggs and butter and all sorts of other wonderful things, and it does diddly squat.  The little punks just wouldn’t do their jobs.  Rise!  Grow!  Release your yeasty gases!  Nope.  Nothing.  I still went ahead and rolled out the (dense, flat) dough and spread on the dulce de leche and cream cheese, pleading with it to do something, anything, in the fridge overnight.  They didn’t, couldn’t really, as they very obviously had passed on.  So I baked the pan, still with (completely illogical) hopes that in the oven they would *poof* come alive and look magnificent coming out.  They didn’t.  The rolls looked okay.  And they tasted okay, but not wonderful and yeasty and, well, you get the picture.  

I decided to pull out a couple of bread/ biscuit recipes to try these next few days, so we’ll see what turns out!  Tonight’s attempt was Angel Biscuits, from Cooking Light September 2007.  I think I had two things against me – the biscuit cutter is getting rather dull (which kind of “squished” the sides down and didn’t allow the biscuits to puff up straight and tall) and I think I need a new jar of yeast (the dough never really rose).  However, even with both those (pretty major) things against me, they tasted really great.  The buttermilk definitely gives a bit of a tangy flavor, great with strawberry rhubarb jam or honey, or dunked in a creamy soup – like the white cheddar asparagus soup we had for dinner!

This past weekend I made a giant batch of sugar cookies (I added a bit of lemon zest this time – YUM!), and then the King family came over to help decorate them all.  I mixed up five colors of frosting to keep everyone busy, and had plenty of colored sugars, jimmies, nonpareils, dragees, etc.  The seven of us crowded around our table and proceeded to eat too much sugar, oh, and decorate the cookies!  As you can see, Justin and Travis still had a little bit too much fun being creative with the cookies.  We all agreed this is a great holiday tradition to start together!

As promised, I made Russian Tea Cakes to compare to the Hazelnut Tea Cakes I made earlier in the week.  And yep, I’d have to say I like them a little bit more.  And they are a cinch to throw together – WAY easier than pie!

Justin and I started a tradition on our honeymoon to pick up a Christmas tree ornament when we traveled somewhere new (by plane).  After our wedding, we took a Caribbean cruise to San Juan, St. Thomas and St. Croix and found this funny shrimp ornament.  Since that first trip we have found ornaments in Costa Rica, Panama, Vancouver, Las Vegas, Hawaii and Peru.  It is fun to search for a small, meaningful souvenir while we are on a vacation, and it then reminds us of those fun travels when we hang it on the tree each year.  

So I decided to take Hershey’s prize basket‘s suggestion and just go ahead and make Peanut Blossoms with everything that was sent.  I followed the recipe almost to the tee – I used butter-flavored shortening and doubled the vanilla (as usual).  And just as I was mixing them up, I got a call from Claudia, who was in town – all the way from Peru!  She is working at Cascade Mountain ski hill in Portage over the winter (her “summer” break – poor girl) and had a friend drive her into Stevens Point to visit with some people from Woodlands who she had met in Peru.  The cookies came out of the oven just as she arrived, so we were able to catch up a bit over glasses of milk and warm Peanut Blossoms (that’s when they’re the best – the Kiss is nice and gooey!).  It was fun to laugh and remember moments from Peru, as well as tease her about willingly coming to Wisconsin in the middle of winter!

This evening I drove up to Wausau to make Christmas candy at my Aunt Phyllis’ house.  Ruth, Michelle and Mom were there, as well as Mark, Philip and Joseph (but only because it was their house).  Us girls had a fun time making WheatThin candy (peanut butter sandwiched between 2 WheatThins, dipped in a mixture of semi-sweet & white chocolate), White Clusters  (melted white chocolate mixed with peanut butter, Rice Krispies, mini marshmallows, and peanuts), Peanut Butter Balls (peanut butter, butter, powdered sugar and graham cracker crumbs formed into balls and then dipped in semi-sweet chocolate), Angel Food candy (sugar heated to soft-crack stage, then baking soda is added to “puff” it up, then once it hardens it is dipped in chocolate), and Peppermint Candy (melted white chocolate mixed with crushed peppermint sticks).  Lots of stories shared and plenty of laughing, all the while making fantastic candy to share and take to holiday festivities.  

I couldn’t really decide whether to blog about these cookies or not.  I was leaning away from it, as I thought they were just okay, but other people have given them two thumbs up and so now I feel it is worth it to share.  It really comes down to the hazelnuts.  If  you love hazelnuts, you will flip over these.  If you aren’t the biggest fan of them (which I guess includes me), they’ll just be so-so.  As the hazelnuts are toasted and then finely ground, the flavor is very much in the forefront.  The buttery shortbread-type cookie dough is the secondary player.  My favorite part is the powdered sugar coating.  I like my family’s “Russian Tea Cakes” a bit better, but they are made with walnuts or pecans and that’s the main difference.  I’ll make those in a few days to let you compare.  

When you aren’t feeling the greatest, it seems to make you appreciate the little things a little bit more.  For me, it is a box of Puffs tissues and Clementines that are in season.  These little Cuties are just what us Wisconsinites need mid-December.  Colds are running rampant, it is bitter cold outside, and drier than the Sahara inside.  And along comes a bright, juicy, sweet, easy-to-peel and immune-boosting snack.  Better than any cookie that can be baked (just this once!).

Our friend Doug Allord obviously has too much time on his hands and has made me the “Banana Man in Japan, named Stan who ran for a plan for a bran fan that can ban a tan crayon from the van”. I hope this isn’t a trend of putting me in strange photos (hint hint)

Today was the YMCA’s annual Frostbite Run.  And the weather lived up to the race’s name – it was only about 18 degrees outside.  Aunt Ruth and Cousin Laura ran the 5 mile course in great time, and Justin and I came out to show our support for their craziness.  Lots of runners definitely had spirit and ran with santa hats or jingle bells, but this trio really went all out!  After the race, Justin wanted to pretend that he had just finished running it too.  Which, I guess, means to hold a banana and look, um, exhausted?

So I was feeling pretty crummy yesterday.  And the sick 11-year-old kid in me wanted to curl up on the couch with a blanket and watch movies.  As in, watch movies I watched when I was 11.  So while Justin cued up two that I ADORED when I was younger – The Little Mermaid & The Lion King- I produced a batch of these little darlings.  These browned butter brown sugar shortbread cookies are eye-brow raising good.  They’re cookies that won’t make it as the centerfold of a cookbook – but it will be on the page that is splattered with butter and flour and crusted with sugar. 

Two new recipes to try today – one for the cake, and the other for the frosting.  Both = Fantastic.  I was asked to make a dessert for tomorrow evening’s Welcome to Woodlands social, and decided to try another cake recipe out of Sky High: Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes.  I first made a half batch of the Vanilla Buttermilk batter and made cupcakes to take to small group tonight.  Then I proceeded to make the full recipe with three 8-inch cake pans.  I also have been wanting to try this recipe for Chocolate Buttercream Frosting, and if Joy says it’s the best, I’m willing to give it a shot.  I first made one batch for the cupcakes.  And because it was so stinkin’ good, I made another batch to frost the cake.  Don’t you love the little waves?!  Just take a spoon and, with the back of it, pat the cake to form little spikes.  I know I would definitely feel welcomed after a piece of this cake!

My biggest project this week was baking and decorating a cake for a friend’s golden birthday (29 on the 29th).  It was a surprise party thrown for her by her husband.  He asked me to make a cake for 100 people, and chose a cherry almond cake with almond buttercream – one of my favorites (to eat and to make!).  I did two round tiers – a bottom, 16-inch round, and a 12-inch round on top.  As it was her golden birthday, I decorated with a gold ribbon around the base of each tier, and then piped dots around the cakes which were painted with an edible gold glaze.  One of the new things that I tried with this cake was a different type of support structure.  In the past I have used wood dowels, which have to be measured and then painstakingly cut to the right size.  It is always a chore, and the last one I did, I ended up breaking a good knife.  So one time when I was watching Ace of Cakes recently, I noticed one of the guys putting supports in a cake, almost like straws, but really thick, and easily snipping them to the right height with a scissors.  Snip Snip Snip, and it was done!  (Yes, I know, most people just watch that show for the fun, but I have stuff to LEARN from watching it!)  So I went to their website, and found one of their links for cake advice.  And there was the answer – bubble tea straws!!  I immediately found a source online and purchased some – spent about $5 on 50 straws.  Oh, but let me tell you, how wonderfully easy it was to cut those supports for the cake.  Snip Snip Snip, and it was done!  Never, ever will I use those awful wood dowels again.  

There are many things I appreciate and admire about my mother-in-law, including (but not limited to) her ability to stay out of all photographs, her humility (she’s going to hate this post!), and her amazing recipe for crescent rolls (those tubes of dough have no place in her kitchen!).   She generously and happily shared this recipe with me the first year Justin and I were married, and it is my go-to dinner roll recipe.  They freeze remarkably well, and I usually make a giant batch and freeze the majority of them, taking them out and reheating them in the oven with dinners for a month.  I haven’t made them in quite awhile, but as Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I made a big triple batch this week – 3 dozen for a friend to take to her family’s thanksgiving dinner, and a couple dozen for ours.  Here you go, from the Gasper family to yours.

Two words:

Bacon Salt

I don’t think I have ever agreed with a product’s slogan more: “Everything should taste like bacon”.

What more could you expect from a company funded in part by winning $5000 on America’s Funniest Home Videos?

Everything about this company is perfect. From the fact that they actually make a product called Baconnaise, to the fact that they somehow also obtained Kosher certification.

I don’t think this reviewer is exaggerating at all:

“”This is one of those inventions, like the wheel or the incandescent light bulb, that will forever change the landscape of our culture.”
— John Campanelli, Cleveland Plain Dealer”

Update:

We went to Copps looking for Baconnaise, and could only find Bacon Salt. Still worked well on popcorn! Not like the faux bacon experience Jim had.

I’m in a moody kind of mood today.  The kind of mood that I am apt to make rash decisions without a moment’s thought or care.  However, rather than randomly painting a room or moving furniture around, I thought the blog could use a new look.  So what do you think?  Are the renovations appreciated?  Or should it be changed back?  I guess I am also in an approval-seeking mood!

Justin and I spent a good part of the day in the car.  This morning we drove over to Appleton to pick up a few things – Penzey’s for spices, World Market for chocolate, and Game Stop for a used XBox 360 controller (Trav picked up an XBox this past week, but it only comes with one controller).  

The bread was a hit.  I should mention I changed the recipe just a little.  For the soaker I only used about an 1/8 of a cup of oats, but then I added about 1/4 cup of a seed blend I had on hand – sunflower, poppy, sesame and some other seeds.  I also don’t really like fennel seeds, so I left that out of the bread completely.  The flavor from the seed blend more than made up for leaving those nasty fennel seeds out.  The recipe also made quite a bit.  I made two small to medium size baguette style loaves, and then I made a dozen small rolls as well to freeze (though I don’t know if they will last that long!).  The bread was a perfect compliment to the soup for lunch.  

I haven’t made leavened bread in a LONG time.  I used to make a loaf almost every other day, sometimes every day, but I got out of habit and it always seems like such a time investment in theory.  Well, I was determined to change that today.  Not only did I make pizza dough and Parmesan bread sticks from scratch, but I decided to throw in a loaf of Roasted Butternut Squash bread as well.  I thought it would make a good accompaniment to our Roasted Vegetable Soup for tomorrow’s lunch (the pizza dough was for Roasted Vegetable Pizza this evening).  The good ol’ Kitchen Aid is kneading it as I’m typing this, and I’m going to let it rise in the refrigerator overnight.  I’ll let you know tomorrow how it turns out!

I recently got a cookie decorating book called Cookie Craft.  Some of the pictures of the cookies are pretty incredible.  Today Justin asked if we could make and decorate cookies like in the book.  As nothing else was on the agenda during the day, I agreed to go along.  I made the sugar cookie dough from the book (which is wonderful) and Justin choose the cookie cutters – a train, a motorcycle, a rocket, a cat, a man, a plane, a turkey, a dinosaur, and a reindeer.  I rolled out the dough, and Justin cut out the shapes.  After a run to Michael’s to get a few supplies we came back and I made the Royal Icing and mixed together a number of different colors.  Then Trav, Justin and I sat down at the table among cookies, tubes of icing, and sprinkles and sugars.  And proceeded to create some very silly-looking cookies.  Trav’s standout was Mooning Man, Justin had a dinosaur wearing lipstick, and I made a pretty good tye-dyed turkey.  And of course, the last cookie got as much icing and decorations as humanly possible.  Which Travis ate immediately after this photo was taken.  All in all, it was a fun day and  fun project, though NONE of the cookies looked like the ones in the book!!

I had kind of a long day today, and Youtube saved the day. Don’t ask me how I stumbled on this, but I haven’t seen such a pure demonstration of absolute genius in a long time. Pure and simple, this video should be shown over and over on it’s own TV station all day, all the time. It should be implanted in a chip in the brain of every person on the planet.

I now present to you “Hamster on a Piano, Eating Popcorn”.

It was a tasty day.  For lunch we had beef pot roast, fresh green beans, french bread, and my favoritist mashed potatoes.  The only way I make them is with Yukon Gold potatoes.  They have such a buttery flavor already that they only need a tablespoon or two of added butter, a little bit of skim milk, salt and pepper, and a couple ounces of reduced fat cream cheese mashed in, and they are the creamiest, buttery-ist, tastiest mashed potatoes of Wonderfulland.  

Later in the day I decided to try making Chocolate Toffee cookies.  We picked up some Heath bars last night just for that purpose.  They spend much of their time in the fridge chilling (which gave me time to fold the laundry, take a nap, etc), but the end result is a chocolatey, chewy, toffee-y cookie that is oh-so-tasty.  I figure you could mix in just about any type of chocolatey candy that you like – peanut butter, caramel, or mint chips, chopped butterfingers or snickers bars, and so on.

I feel like I am on a baking spree.  Must keep baking… faster!  More more more!  What will be the next yummy thing coming out of the oven?  What will be the next “keeper” recipe?  Chocolate ganache?  Done!  Chocolate Cardamom Cupcakes?  Done!  Peanut Butter Fudge Crunch? Done!  Sandwich Cookies?  Done!  And so on and so forth as the sink fills up with dishes and I scald my hands in the too-hot water.  But oh, the goodies being made – I see my future, and it makes me smile.  

These Ginger Chewies made me smile.  The dough smelled wonderful.  They smelled wonderful baking.  They smelled wonderful cooling.  And they tasted homey and comforting and Christmas-y.  I made them to take to the Faxon’s house last night as they opened their home and soup pots to anyone who might want to stop by.  I was kind of hoping for a few leftover cookies, as I figured the spicy quotient of them would only increase with a day’s time, but that was pure foolishness.  That just means I will have to make another batch.  

Soon.  

Very very soon. 

 

Since Julie posted what she was listening to while baking, it occurred to me that I listen to music pretty much all day. I have 8300 songs in my iTunes library, and something is always playing. When I work, I generally listen to more laid back, relaxing, music, contrary to what you might see in Hollywood movies showing how computer people work. We don’t all listen to techno music in front of 8 large monitors with all sorts of fancy 3D graphics, drinking booze, with sunglasses on. Just the cool guys do that.

Here’s what I have been listening to the last couple of days:

Ray LaMontagne
Gossip in the Grain

This is one of my favorite artists, and the new CD is really, really good. Very relaxing music, with a different sound than a lot of what is coming out right now.

The Reindeer Section
Son of Evil Reindeer

Kind of a hit and miss CD, but “You Are My Joy”, and “Your Sweet Voice” stand out

Sigur Ros
Takk
Slow, and kind of depressing, but good for relaxation. Plus, the lyrics are in Icelandic, so they aren’t very distracting.

Bon Iver
For Emma, Forever Ago
Recorded in a cabin in Wisconsin in winter, so about as melancholy as you would expect. “Skinny Love” is the stand out track

Stringing lights and baking cookies – kinda sounds like a Christmas-y day, doesn’t it?  Let me explain.  I like stringing Christmas lights on our fence, and have since we moved in.  Two years ago kids came through and broke a bunch of the light bulbs, rendering the christmas lights worthless and me really mad.  So last year we wound lights around our trees.  Pretty, but a HUGE pain in the rump to take down.  So this year, I am hoping the neighborhood kids have grown up a bit and won’t be jerks, and am stringing the lights on our fence again.  Plus I got the lights on clearance in January or February of last year, so if they do get busted, it will only be $15 down the drain.  

Me:  Um… Mother Nature… Excuse me?

As a treat for small group tonight, we were going to bring this little bag of random Japanese candies we got in Honolulu.  But after trying a few of the pieces, I decided that I didn’t really consider the Japanese candy a “treat.”  So a couple hours before heading out I decided to throw together some Andes Mint Chip Cookies instead.  I had been sitting on a couple bags of the Andes Mint Chips for a couple months now, and all of a sudden I wanted those cookies NOW.  I think I can trace back my love of Andes Mint Candies directly to my Grandma.  I can picture in my mind exactly where they kept their stash of Andes Candies in their house at the top of the hill in Marathon – right on the hutch in the dining room.  Which makes me remember other things about that house – the bowl of whole nuts in the shell, that we would always want to crack open the shell, but never wanted to eat the nasty broken nut on the inside – the worn game of Mastermind – the GIANT cartoon deck of cards – the flowers by the back door that bloomed AT NIGHT (AMAZING – especially to an 8 year old).  

I made this recipe this afternoon, and they are just as tasty as can be.  I felt like the name “Little Dippers” was kind of an ambiguous title, as they do little to describe what these cookies taste like.  Granted, it is a cute name if the cookies are cut as stars, but what if, like me, you didn’t really want to make stars?  What if, rather, you wanted to make tiny little leaves and pumpkins to remind you of autumn and the fact that it is quickly speeding by?  Well, then you call them “Mini Mocha Cookies” to let people know what they are about to bite into.  Chocolate and coffee are a very agreeable pair, and they play very nicely in these little bites!

So for the last few days I have been working away in the kitchen preparing for a family meal-making session.  We decided on some great recipes that can be made ahead and frozen, and then pulled out to cook when it is needed.  There were 10 of us gathered at my mom’s house today and we made over 30 meals to separate between 6 households.  It is quite a bit of work to put together, but it is fun work, and the day was a lot of fun.  I’m already looking forward to the next time – probably after the holidays.

Alright, since you all are probably dry heaving from Justin & Travis’ recipe for “fruity” brats, I thought I would throw this one in from yesterday.  Now, if you have never tried this, I know it looks awful.  Heck, it even sounds awful.  But oh, the taste… the mouthfeel… luxury for your taste buds can be bought for $2.38.  Along with Justin’s Hawaiian brats, we bought some beef marrow bones at the People’s Meat Market in Custer.  This was actually our main reason for heading out there in the first place!  I had read, heard and seen about the wonderfulness of roasted beef marrow in chef’s biographies and on tv, and awhile ago we tried it for the first time.  I cannot adequately describe it to you, but I’ll try anyways.  The texture is a combination of butter, olive oil, and roasted garlic.  If it was possible to eat silk, I think it would feel like this.  The smell is that of roasted meat, but way more intense.  The taste… is uniquely beef marrow.  It is actually slightly on the bland side, but just a little sprinkling of coarse salt catapults it into an extraordinary league of its own.  All I can say is that you should try it sometime.  Spend two bucks, roast the bones drizzled with a bit of olive oil for 15-20 minutes at 450 degrees, scoop out the marrow (if it is still pink, just stick it on a little pan and shove it in the oven for another minute or two) and spread it on toasted french bread, and sprinkle with a little coarse salt, and fresh parsley, if you have it.  Open your mind and mouth, and expand your culinary world – you’ll be glad you did!

We had “Hawaiian brats” for dinner tonight. They supposedly had pineapple in the sausage, but they tasted like regular brats. Trav decided to kick his up a notch with some Nerds. He pointed out that fruit goes with meat all the time (apple pork chops anyone?), but I made sure to correct him that Nerds are not fruit. He said it tasted like eating an 80′s cartoon.

Today my Dad and I made our yearly trek to Whistling Straits to play golf. After November 1st, the rates on the Irish Course go way down, so it’s a chance to play a top class course relatively cheaply.

One of these days we will spring for a chance to play the Straits Course, which is the one where the PGA TOUR comes and plays every few years. The weather was perfect for November, but pretty windy. Now it’s on to Red Robin for dinner

I found both of these recipes last week and printed them out to make soon.  ”Soon” turned out to be today.  As the last soup recipe I tried from Martha Stewart’s website turned out wonderfully, I decided to give this broccoli soup recipe a shot.  It was pretty easy to put together, and turned out pretty darn good.  I did take the liberty of adding a bit of reduced-fat cream cheese and a handful of shredded parmesan cheese that was in the fridge to the pot which did help to thicken it slightly.  We all agreed that it could have been even a little bit thicker, but it was still tasty.

The second recipe is crazy delicious.  I have yet to make a recipe from Bake or Break that isn’t crazy delicious, and these bars certainly continued the trend.  Chopped Peanut Butter Cups, Butterfingers, Honey Roasted Peanuts, Chocolate Chips, Nutter Butter cookies for a crust??  Yep – this one had to be made.  I actually kind of messed up the recipe a bit, and accidently put the “topping” directly on the crust and then put all the goodies on top of that, 

rather than putting the goodies directly onto the crust and then pouring the topping over that, but I think you could mash everything together in a bowl and microwave it and it would still turn out tasting good!

I really enjoy Halloween.  I love handing out candy to the kids running down the block, seeing what they are dressed up as, hearing their parents encourage them to say “thank you!”  I like putting up a few fun decorations and carving pumpkins.  This year, it was a beautiful and warm day, and I spent a good part of it on the front step working on the pumpkins (when I wasn’t chasing our cats back inside the house)!  But it did get pretty nippy outside when the sun went down, and there were a number of jackets over costumes and gloved hands.  The smartest “Wisconsin” costumes were the furry Tigers, Poohs, and a few monkeys that had hoods and mittens as part of the costume.  I think we had about 125-150 pieces of candy, and we ran out at about 7:15, so definitely a good showing!

We drove home through snow flurries and ran over an already-smooshed skunk.  Welcome back to Wisconsin!

Really though, glad to be home! (If I say that enough, maybe it will be true!

Today was the last real day of vacation. We got off the ship without incident, and caught the shuttle to our hotel around 11:50.

We then stowed our bags at the front desk (it was too early to check in), and walked down to our new favorite bakery

We got some rolls for the morning, since there probably won’t be much too eat at 3 AM, and then split a grilled cheese sandwich. This was no Wonder bread and Kraft singles grilled cheese sandwich, this was two giant slices of rosemary olive oil bread, with three cream French brie and gorgonzola cheese stuffed between them and then toasted until the cheese was perfectly melty. I haven’t ever had a grilled cheese sandwich quite like it. I would have taken a picture of it, but it strangely disappeared much too quickly

This evening, we wandered out to Umi Sushi, which was less than a mile walk from our hotel. Julie and I split some teriyaki chicken, as well as 3 different types of sushi. We had tuna negiri (left), which is just strips of tuna on rice, a spicy tuna roll (middle), and the “Crunch Dragon Roll” (right). The dragon roll was definitely our favorite. It was crab, shrimp tempura, avocado, and diced cucumber in a roll, topped with spicy tuna and a dusting of Panko.

Also, due to popular demand, below is a picture of Julie, since there have been complaints about needing more Julie pics. It’s kind of hard to tell, but she is standing on the edge of a 400 foot volcanic crater.

Now we are going to go to bed at 8:30, to be ready to catch a taxi at 4, for our 6:20 flight to Denver. Blech.

We are back in San Diego, waiting to disembark from the ship. The seas were incredibly calm on our return trip from Hawaii, which was apparently a large difference from the cruise that preceded ours, where they had 25 foot swells to deal with. These large ships have stabilizers that can be deployed like airplane wings from under the ship, and that helps, but there isn’t much you can do with swells that big. Luckily, we didn’t have to deal with that. The last couple of days have been filled with eating and sleeping and overall relaxation. We haven’t eaten as much in the dining room this cruise as we have in others. We found that the main buffet area has similar food to the dining room most nights, without requiring us to get dressed up. They also have a Mongolian grill area where you pick the raw ingredients and cook it for you, and a pizza bar, both of which were nice. We did eat at the specialty restaurants on the ship a couple of times: Portofino and Chops Grille. They were both very good, and had top notch food.

Here is a night shot of Honolulu, as we depart for Kona:

On our way out from Kona, the dolphins gave us a show, jumping around and basically causing ruckus on the ship. At around 11 PM on Monday, the ship swung by the south end of the island and we were able to see the lava flowing from the top of a volcano down into the ocean. It was very cool, but hard to photograph.

Our golfing skills came into use a couple of days ago. One of the activities was a “long drive” challenge, using the simulator on the ship. Julie and I both won our respective gender divisions, and came away with some sweet white elephant “gifts”. Luckily, Robert wasn’t there to write my name down.

Here’s a picture of a cake decorating demonstration, which was quite entertaining:

Today we are just waiting to disembark, and then we will spend time in San Diego, leaving for Minneapolis very early tomorrow morning. We should be back in Stevens Point around 7-7:30 tomorrow.

It’s going to be hard to leave the ship. Here’s a shot of the “Centrum”, which is the 8 story lobby in the middle of the ship.

Another beautiful weather day, today anchored at Kona, on the Big Island. We had a chance to snuba – which is the combination of snorkeling and scuba diving. Great fun, and we saw all sorts of fish and coral.

Also, just a note – I didn’t just feel like Spam yesterday – it is actually REALLY popular in Hawaii, so I just felt like I needed to have some!!

Today was another day in Honolulu. We are leaving at 5:30 today for Kona. We are 5 hours behind Wisconsin, so it was kind of weird to wake up this morning and have football games on the TV already in the 2nd quarter. Glad the Packers did well today! Today we ate breakfast on board and took a bus to the Ala Moana Center where we shopped for souvenirs. Lunch was the highlight of the day again. The food court at the shopping center had just about every type of food you could want, but Julie wanted something with Spam in it. The first thing we found was at a Hawaiian fast food shop, called the “Beach Boy Special”. It didn’t start out so bad, Spam and rice, but then it was covered in something called “Stew Gravy”. (Trav: I could only picture Gravy Robbers from Tim and Eric). Too scary for our taste, but we did manage to find Spam sushi that was much more palatable

I had some curry with fried chicken and Kalabi, which was really good, and then for desert we got some Shave Ice. It tasted like happiness mixed with sunshine and kitten kisses. Needless to say, we both enjoyed it quite a bit.

Wow! What a day we’ve had. A very, very filling day! Our tour started at 10 am, and the next 3 1/2 hours we would drive for a few minutes, eat something tasty, drive for a few more minutes, eat some tasty, walk for a few minutes, eat something tasty – again and again and again. Our tour guides were incredibly knowledgeable, personable, and genuinely enjoyed sharing their love of food with our small group (only 9 of us). Our first stop was to try what is called a “manapua,” which is baked hawaiian sweet bread with a choice of filling. We chose one stuffed with cha siu (sweet roasted pork) and one with kalua pig (smoked, pulled pork). They were both a treat, though our preference was the cha sui.
Our next stop was a bakery for wonderful cream puffs with a silky chocolate filling and a chantilly cream topping – mmmmm….
We then drove into Chinatown and began walking around a bit. We stopped at a rice noodle “factory,” where they were making steamed rice noodles from scratch and by hand. It is an incredibly tedious process which is quickly dying, as young people are no longer carrying on the family’s business. The noodles, which have bits of smoked pork or dried shimp in it, were probably the highlight of the tour, for both Justin and I – incredible!
Once outside the noodle storefront, our guides bought a number of different kinds of fruit for us to try – including this most interesting “rambutan” or “hairy fruit.” The outside felt almost rubbery, like some crazy toy, and once you rip it open a bit, you can split the skin in half, and the inside looks just like a hard boiled egg! The flesh is very sweet and juicy, similar in texture to a… um… hmmm… kind of between a melon and plum. Very tasty though!
We continued our tour with a snack shop, which specialized in a type of dried snack, called “crack seed.” It is hard to explain, but many types of fruits and such seasoned with a special li hing powder (see Justin’s post below). I thought all the apothecary jars and their contents were absolutely eye-catching!
We had a short stop at a tiny shop or char siu with the most amazing roasted and glazed pork and duck – small morsels of wonderfulness. We also stopped at a lei stand, where a number of women were making hand-made flower leis. It was hard to resist some of the fragrant flowers!
After a stop for a sit-down lunch of a honey garlic chicken, beef and seasoned rice (thankfully not a large amount – we were already filling up quickly – but all terrific!), we made our final stop at another sweet bakery for a portuguese donut called a “malasada.” Have you had these, Dan & Pam? The dough isn’t necessarily very sweet, but yeasty and airy, fried and covered in sugar. Incredibly yummy, and a perfect end to the tour.

Today I accomplished two things. We started the day on a “Taste of Chinatown” tour that was amazing. The food and tour itself were wonderful. I’m going to let Julie cover the tour, but it definitely comes highly recommended, if you like trying new foods. The first thing that was accomplished was that the weird “dirt” on the gummy bears I bought at Walmart has been identified, thanks to the tour. It’s called “Li Hing”, and it’s made from dried plums. Now I am a little less afraid of the gummy bears. On the tour, they explained what it was and how it was made, and gave the Li Hing to us, in powder form, on pineapple, which was nice.

A side note: for all you “Lost” fans, as part of the tour we ate at the Liliha bakery, which was the diner where they filmed scenes with Kate’s mom in an episode from the first or second season.

The actual mission for the day was to find a “Puka Dog”.

We ended up getting directions to one in Waikiki, dropped off there after the tour, and then took a bus back to the cruise ship. They take a weird bun, put it in paper on a special heater that pokes a perfect hot-dog sized hole into it, pour tropical fruit relish and sauce from a row of spigots into the hole, and then pop the cooked hot dog into it.

We ordered one with a Polish sausage hot dog, jalapeno garlic lemon sauce, and mango relish. I was definitely afraid of the silly thing:

But it was actually pretty stinking good. Julie and I ended up finishing the entire thing. It wasn’t cheap, at $6.25, but definitely worth it.

Goodness gracious, it has been a beautiful day anchored in Maui’s Lahaina Harbor. This morning I woke up EARLY – but only because I fell asleep EARLY and slept harder than a log. I jogged around the track on the top deck of the ship for a bit, and then watched the sunrise. Gorgeous. After waking up Justin and eating a quick breakfast we caught one of the tenders (like a shuttle-boat) ashore – and caught sight of this rainbow as well! We walked and did a bit of shopping around Lahaina for awhile, stopped at Hilo Hattie’s, which is something of an icon, but we didn’t have time to go when we were actually IN Hilo. After tendering back to the ship for a quick lunch and changed into swimsuits, we headed up the coast a bit to Ka’anapali Beach, which came highly recommended – by the Travel Channel, guide books, and our friends Clay & Laurie, who have stayed there in the past. The water was quite cool, relatively speaking – it was pretty close to empty, but that didn’t stop us from swimming for a good 45 minutes! And finally, a great sunset to cap off the day!

Julie was noticing a theme with a lot of the pictures taken of me over the span of our vacation so far. Things seem to be similar to what normally happens at home. Why did we go on vacation to do the same stuff I could have done at home?

Here I am playing Wii. I totally beat all the old people and made them cry.

Here I am getting bothered by a cat while trying to use a computer:

And here I am at Walmart getting nasty gummy bears. They were some weird Japanese brand. I didn’t notice until I opened the package, but they are covered in some weird stuff that looks like dirt. I think it’s supposed to be spicy. Good thing I got some gummy coke bottles as a backup, just in case.

Today was an incredible day! We docked in Hilo, on the Big Island at about 8 am, and were off the ship and ready to go on our Lava Viewing Hiking tour by 8:15! It turned out our tour was very small – 16 people total, split between two vans – so very personal, and not packed like sardines into a big tour bus! We stopped at numerous places around the island, including the Thurston Lava Tube, Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut factory, and several lava viewing areas. Our highlights were walking to one of the active steam vents and craters on Kiluea, a black sand beach, and seeing some incredible lava flows. Tomorrow we are on to Maui – Lahaina. We’re looking forward to another great day!

We are currently about 3/4 of the way to Hawaii. Our first day at sea was rather rough- 10-15 foot sweels. I had a bit of a headache, but that was about it. The last two days have been perfect, and our favorite place has definitely been the solarium pool, which is covered with a sunroof, so it is warm, a great place to swim and then pass the afternoon reading! Sorry, no pictures, but hopefully those will be coming soon! We have one more day at sea tomorrow, and then we have our first stop in Hawaii – Hilo, on Thursday! Here are some pics of the first couple of days:

Phew! After standing in line after line after line, we have finally made it onto the Radiance of the Seas. We found our room right away to drop off a few of our things, and then started exploring. Well, by exploring, I mean making our way to the Lido Deck for the lunch buffet! We passed several pools, art galleries, the fitness center and the lobby along the way to the food. We are always a bit amazed at just how big these ships are, and how much they can pack in! We still haven’t seen the other dining rooms, the casino, the theaters, the shops, etc. Our first try at the buffet was a success, with the smoked bbq pork being our favorite of the meal! We set sail at 5 pm, with an obligatory muster drill at 4:30 (Justin’s very favorite part of the whole cruise – ha!).

We got into San Diego last night, and everything went well. I really dislike flying, but the flights were actually pretty good. I am pretty particular when it comes to airlines, as we have had good and bad experiences in the past. So far, Frontier has been one of our favorites. They are pretty efficient and consistent, and the planes are reasonably comfortable and quiet, which is all I am really looking for. We got in after dark, so we were in for a treat this morning when we opened up the shades on the window. Our hotel is located here:

View Larger Map

We are on a peninsula between a marina and a bay. Our hotel room is right across the street from the bay.

It has been a really nice morning so far. We found a donut place to visit, which was awesome. It really makes me want a good donut place in Stevens Point. Copps and County Market just don’t cut it. This place had excellent raised and glazed donuts, with good shredded coconut, as opposed to the blended stuff we normally get. The lady behind the counter was surprised I got a Coke instead of coffee, but you haven’t lived until you have washed down a sugar glazed fried donut with a tall glass of Coke

After the donut run, we wandered around looking for a Walgreen’s or convenience store, as Julie forgot a brush for her hair. We found a pharmacy at around 8:55, but it didn’t open until 9, and we were standing outside when I noticed a bakery across the street. We wandered over to take a look and found a cool bakery with all sorts of different breads and rolls available. We got a demi-baguette and a Gorgonzola, red onion, and walnut focaccia. We are going to have those for lunch before we head to the ship. We can see our ship across the harbor!

We’ve certainly had a full day of cars and planes. We drove to Minneapolis this morning, checked in for our flight without problems (for the most part) and all our flights were on time (for the most part.) It turned out the fee for an overweight bag is $75!! The fee for a whole extra bag is only $25! Since one of our bags was overweight, I quickly pulled out an extra duffle we had packed and shifted things around, and then actually put in Justin’s carry-on bag inside it as well, and the ticket agent counted it as simply checking a carry-on, which apparently there is no extra fee for! Very bizarre, but it all worked out. All the bags made it to San Diego just fine along with us, and we made it to our hotel just fine as well. We have a San Diego Bay view from our window – very cool. It is good to be done for the day, but we are both very excited to get onboard the ship tomorrow!

I forgot to post these pictures yesterday after we got back from my parents’ house last night.  They recently arrived back from vacationing in Estes Park, Colorado for a week, and they came back with some pretty cool pictures.  I love this picture they took with the camera timer of themselves at Bear Lake, and, for all you doubters, here is proof that Paul CAN smile in a photograph!  I don’t know how Mom caught him, though she did say something about him being in the process of defacing park property… (aka carving his initials on the log!) 

This business about only being able to check one bag per person without paying extra is a sham.  Though Justin’s size 13 dress shoes certainly don’t help matters at all.  Yes, I was able to zip this suitcase closed, but just barely.  And a safety strap will definitely be going around it.  Don’t worry, I’m not looking for sympathy as I know we won’t receive any but I needed to post something!

Phew!!  This has been a very busy, but very productive day in and around the kitchen.  I ran to Appleton to World Market for chocolate, and it turned out to be on sale (hooray!).  Then drove over to Penzy’s Spices to pick up some sea salt for myself and cinnamon for my mom.  I also had a coupon for a free container of minced garlic, which I forgot at home, but they still gave me the free container (hooray!).  Drove home and started working in the kitchen.  Ruth!  Pay attention – these are all good recipes to use up that crazy humongous squash!  I found these few recipes on Martha Stewart’s site a couple of days ago and wanted to try them right away.  So I pulled some dough out to rise and started chopping vegetables – butternut squash, red potatoes, carrots, parsnips, red onions and smashed garlic cloves, plus some freshly ground pepper, the aforementioned sea salt, and some good quality olive oil.  Oh, and did I mention the bacon again?  Well, I had to use up the rest of the package from before – we’re going on vacation, can’t have good bacon going to waste!  With a quarter of the roasted vegetables I made the Roasted Vegetable Pizza with Ricotta Cheese.  Amazing!  All three of us really liked it a lot.  I was slightly skeptical of root vegetables on pizza, but it was a hit.  While the pizza was baking I pureed the rest of the vegetables up for the Roasted Fall Vegetable Soup.  Also fantastic, but I am saving that to take up to Wausau tomorrow evening for dinner with my parents.   Hmm… unless I need to have a small bowl now to make sure it is still okay…

And then to top it off, two desserts - one to take to share with my parents and the other for Student Ministries.  I stuck with the ridiculous caramel oatmeal squares that I have become obsessed with for my parents (also courtesy of Martha Stewart), and then made a new recipe, 

brownies topped with chocolate chip cookie dough for SM.  

In other kitchen-related work, our friends Heath, Jim & Jenn came to help us pick up and move some restaurant equipment we purchased – a big electric convection oven, a chest freezer, hand-washing sink, mop bucket and ringer, and a 20 quart Hobart Stand Mixer, which doesn’t weigh nearly as much as Jim & Justin would have you believe!

Julie and I are going to have to have a vow renewal, just so I can get this cake.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2008/10/sunday-sweets-super-mario-wedding-cake.html

Yes, I know for the most part it was a rainy cloudy, mildly depressing day, but this lemon chiffon cake with lemon curd filling (homemade!) and lemon cream frosting certainly was a ray of light.  Happy Birthday to Jim!  I hope your innards survive the battle with the chili cheese burger!  (And kudos to anyone who can place the title reference!)

Today we went to look at some used restaurant equipment.  We are hoping to find the majority of the equipment for the kitchen to be used, and thus save a BUNDLE of money.  However, it is a bit scary as well.  Take this Blodgett Full Size Electric Convection Oven.  New, these can run between four and five THOUSAND dollars.  Six years old, the price drops to about 800 bucks.  And we could probably offer less and they’d take it.  But, if we take it, plug it in and in two weeks it breaks, we’re out of luck – no warranty, no service agreement, etc.  Sure hope it isn’t a hunk of junk!

Here is a cute little cake I made for a baby shower today.  Almond Buttermilk Cake with Strawberry Rhubarb filling and vanilla almond buttercream frosting.  Yum!

“I”ll have a couple of pots of soup ready,” the E-vite read, “You bring: bread, cheese, a drink, dessert… whatever flips your skirt.”  How could anyone resist, really?!  Our friends Rich & Angel Faxon opened their home to just about everyone on their email list tonight and just about everyone answered their call!  There was plenty of soup in the pots (tomato lentil and chicken noodle), bread on the counter, and adults and kids spread just about everywhere else.  Though, as you can see, the men certainly seemed to end up congregating in one area!  And Maylie tried everything to stay turned away from the camera, but I caught her in the end!  A big thanks to Angel for a great idea and an even better follow-through!

County Market had a great sale on their pumpkins and gourds today, so I went over this morning and picked up a number of each to decorate our porch. I saw these funny pumpkin men in a magazine at least four or five years ago and I try to make a couple each year. They are so easy and always make people smile. Just take 3 or more small pumpkins and gourds, drill holes through each and stick a wooden skewer through them all to keep them vertical. Drill a couple of holes for the arms (just twigs) and draw on a face with a sharpie. Happy Fall!

I feel like we need to apologize to Mother Nature.  We’ve killed lots of trees in the buying of a building.  But it is done.  It is ours (the bank’s).  Well, either that (Justin adds) or we just saved a bunch of money on car insurance by switching to Geico.  

Have you all figured out my favorite food combo yet?  Here we have a ridiculously easy recipe that I haven’t made since July, when I made a giant batch of the dough to sell in the final month at Entree Vous (Shout Out to Ann!).  Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies.  As we were going up to have dinner with my dad and stepmom and CJ can’t eat gluten, I like bringing up a treat that we can all enjoy together.  This is the perfect little cookie to take somewhere if you have A) hardly any ingredients on hand and B) 20 minutes before you have to leave.  They take less than 5 minutes to mix up and less than 10 minutes to bake – perfect.  Oh, and if you only have the 5 minutes, the dough is crazy good all on its own!

I love butternut squash.  Probably within the last 3 or 4 years I have “discovered” this gourd.  It is funny to me, even just the name.  Butternut – how can you go wrong there?!  Squash – Um, really?  That word seems better suited to describing the act of walking through a muddy field.  Either way, I have yet to mess up anything with this as a primary ingredient.  I love chopping it up, roasting it with bacon (mmmm….bacon….) and tossing it with cheese ravioli or tortellini, currants, toasted walnuts and a little parmesan cheese.  I love it roasted (with bacon…) and pureed into soup.  And now, a new favorite recipe, which will definitely be used again (and again, and again!).  I found it in Better Homes and Gardens October issue, and though it has the unfortunate name of “Butternut Squash Bake,” which only conjures up images of tuna noodle casserole for me, I had most of the ingredients on hand and thought I’d give it a shot.  Yum yum yum.  Okay.  Hold on.  I need to preface it by saying that I tweaked the original recipe (their picture is much prettier) a bit… by roasting the squash with bacon.  I know, not called for, but it really helped propel this recipe into the “stellar” category!

Well, today was a great day with tons of food and fun with family.  Justin and I drove up to Minocqua today  with my aunts Ruth, Jean and Phyllis, and met up with Aunt Martha and cousins Elizabeth, Rebecca and Emily for Beef-a-rama.  Beef-a-rama is hard to describe to someone without it sounding like the craziest thing on the planet.  Store owners along Main Street each make a beef roast for a city-wide cook-off, and at the same time put out snacks for people who come for the craft fair and store sales, and the general moochers (us) who don’t really buy anything, just eat the free snacks.  Mid-afternoon there is a Parade of Beef, where the store owners march their roast, typically with a themed float (pirates, hawaiian, halloween, whatever) down to the lake-front park where the roasts are carved up and sold in sandwiches.  It really is something else.  But lots of fun.  After our fill of snacks, we went to Martha & Ron’s cabin in Hazelhurst on Bear Lake and ate some (okay, A LOT) more – homemade crab ragoon, hot dogs, brats, homemade french fries, birthday cake (happy birthday to Martha, Elizabeth, and Rebecca!), rice krispie roll-ups, peanut butter fudge crunch, etc etc.  All of it delicious.  Definitely a fun day!

I am on the search for the best brownies with the best frosting.  I have to admit I am a bit partial to brownies with frosting.  Yummy, gooey frosting.  This year after the Walk Wisconsin 1/2 marathon they offered the BEST frosted brownies.  As in, every time I think of them I am oh so close to just calling the organizers and finding out who donated them, and then begging that person to give me the recipe.  I KNOW I will end up breaking down and doing it soon, I might as well get it over with.  Because this recipe I used this evening was a gigantic letdown.  They sounded promising while making them (after all, they were called BEST Brownies with Creamy Frosting).  They looked promising when they were done.  But then, one bite later, and I became angry because of the giant waste of ingredients it was.  Granted, it only made an 8-inch square pan, but still.  How much does a cup of flour cost – 3 cents?  Wasted.  In the end, I spent the next twenty minutes making Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge Crunch and the evening was salvaged.  

Julie and I went out for lunch at Christian’s Bistro with our friends the Rickerts. Storm’s pose sums up how I felt afterwards. So full…..

Okay, so these cake pops were as close to a failure as a success can be.  And actually, thinking back, everything went pretty well, except for the drawing of the faces, which turned into a nightmare.  The “FoodWriter” markers I got from Michael’s were really the main sticking point – because the didn’t Write on the Food.  Isn’t that their whole purpose for existing??  And if they don’t do that, what is the point of their continued existence??  So they will be returned tomorrow and instead I ended up getting black candy coating and piped the faces on, which didn’t turn out as well as I hoped but oh well (see Points 1, 2 & 3 from yesterday’s post).  But in the end, they aren’t half bad for my first time making ‘em.  And they taste terrific, so that is a definite plus.  So we’ll see.  I’m not rushing out to buy more lollipop sticks and candy melts in order to make more tomorrow, but they are pretty funny for a fun occasion.

Here are the funny (slightly distrubing?) treats I’m making to take to the kids tomorrow night in Student Ministries.  Really, what 13-year-old boy will be able to resist biting into that smiling face??  I was almost going to take it a step further by making the inside with red velvet cake, but held myself back and decided to stick with good ol’ chocolate.  As there are plenty of putzy steps to these little guys, I decided to bake up the cake tonight.  Yes.  That is a box mix.  Yes.  That is a can of frosting.  Point #1: They’re putzy.  Point #2: They’re for kids who will eat them in two bites. And Point #3: THEY ARE LOLLIPOP HEADS!!  Lay off.  If you want them for your wedding, I’ll make a Chai Spice Cake and Cardamom Buttercream frosting from scratch before dipping them and drawing the cute faces on!  I’ll be sure to post the results (great for lessons on the French Revolution) - good or bad – tomorrow!

Here, Storm embodies how our day was spent:

Yep, Pastor Dan gives a great sermon this morning on putting actions behind our words, and instead we are choosing to adhere to one of Pastor Brian’s earlier sermons about observing the Sabbath!

David got his head anointed with oil, which is cool, I guess, if you don’t mind the idea of dumping Canola oil in your hair, but if I was ever anointed I want it to be with what I affectionately call “choco-butter fancy delight”. It took all my will power not to just grab a straw and start sucking that concoction down as fast as I could.

Good thing I didn’t. Don’t want to end up like this:

I made this recipe about a week ago, and selfishly hoarded the cookies and recipe, planning to save them all for us.  I actually even doubled the recipe, which means I had a HUGE LOAD of some of the BEST cookie dough in my freezer begging to be shared every time I opened the door to get ice.  And then an occasion came along that I didn’t really have time to make something new up, but yet it still had to be something BIG, yummy, and worthy of selling for cash.  Pastor Jordan asked if I wanted to offer something to the students on Wednesday nights, as a homemade alternative to the current pre-packaged and preserved offerings from Sam’s Club.  I quickly agreed, and pulled out THE dough.  THE dough that I used up all the chocolate I had in my house for last week.  Milk Chocolate, Semisweet Chocolate, Bittersweet Chocolate, Chips and Buttons.  When I took the cookies into church, the women in the office were eyeing them up like, well, like women eye up chocolate.  I wonder if any of the cookies made it to the students!

Nope.  Sorry.  No cookies.  No brownies.  Not even bran muffins.  

Instead I occupied my day with craft time.  This was a very complicated, multi-step project for the person wishing to temporarily store their used coffee grounds in a piece of art.  Step 1: Peel label off of peanut butter jar.  Step 1.5: Wash out jar (optional).  Step 2: Cut three pieces of ribbon, preferably ribbon from the clearance basket at the craft store.  Step 3: Glue ribbon onto jar.  Step 4: Write something witty on it, neatly spaced between the ribbon.  Ta Daa!  

I know, I know.  I’ll stick with baking!

For this evening’s small group treat, I decided not to mess around with a new recipe and pulled out a classic that is always a hit – Chocolate Sandwich Cookies.  The name is rather underwhelming, but as we have already established – I am not creative in that area.  This is a recipe that my mom made years ago, and since then it makes an appearance at most family functions, church picnics, and evenings with friends.  Make them.  Love them.  Just try living the rest of your life without them!   

Okay, so after a pretty bad baking bust yesterday (nope, not even going to talk about it!), I managed to redeem myself this afternoon with some pretty stinkin’ tasty brownies.  And not just any brownies, but spiced up brownies, courtesy of Smitten Kitchen.  These are definitely some wonderfully fudgy brownies, rather than cakey, but that was just fine with me.  The cinnamon, cardamom, and smoked paprika (I didn’t have chipotle) give just a hint of something different.  I was a little worried that all you would be able to taste was the spice, but it really is just a fraction of a flavor, something to make you go, mmmm…. what is that???  Right before you take another bite… and another… and one more!  Add a Packers win to the afternoon and an evening with the Kings – definitely a great day!

Last night I decided I had had enough of this long hair business.  Actually, about a month ago I had had enough of this long hair business, but because it had taken so much time to grow out (4 years!) and other people seemed to like it (thank you), I kept it.  However, as other people don’t have to deal with it, go through massive amounts of shampoo and conditioner to keep it clean, and massive amounts of ibuprofen because of the headaches it causes, I pulled into the hair salon this morning (sans appointment) determined to be rid of it.  As Claire cut a substantial eight inches off, I thought I might feel some regret over cutting it off.  I didn’t.  Not an ounce.  I was overjoyed when she was done.  

Travis did an excellent job of feeding us today.  Bright and early he went to the grocery store and picked up doughnuts for breakfast, and then put together a vegetarian chili in the crockpot.  We were tortured by the wonderful smells all day long!  He then put together two types of muffins – cheese muffins and cornbread muffins (sorry, no link – just my own recipe!) to go with the meal.  Everything turned out great, and Justin and I certainly appreciated Trav’s work in the kitchen! 

As many of you know, I have been knocking the possibility of starting a dessert/cake type business around in my head.  As we have started down this path, THE question that keeps getting asked is, “What will it be called?”  The immediate answer is, “I have no idea!”  I am not very creative in this area.  We have been throwing around a couple of names amongst ourselves, but then we thought of all of YOU, many of whom are WAY more creative than us.  So here’s your chance – PLEASE HELP US!  We’re hoping to pick a name in the next week or two, so let’s say, you have until Sunday, Sept. 21st to send a name idea (or as many as you can think of!) to us.  Either just add a comment with your idea, or shoot me an email: juliebgasper(at)yahoo(dot)com.  I would be focusing on special occasion cakes, cookies, desserts, etc. initially, but could see myself expanding into breads and such at some point down the road.  We’ll announce the “winner” on Monday the 22nd.  And you better believe the winner is going to get something delicious baked for them!

Okay, so after weeks of talking about it, Justin and Travis (and Jim!) went out last night to Target and got Rock Band.  And now we have been doing diddly-squat except rocking out upstairs.  Justin has gotten minimal work done, I haven’t baked a thing, and Travis only got a couple hours of writing in.  Here is a great picture of the group last night – Travis playing guitar, Maureen singing and Madie playing the drums (with Jenn helping a bit!).  In the picture I took facing them, they all have crazy red demon eyes, so I decided not to post that one!

Here’s what I made today: chocolatey peanut buttery yummyness.  Also known as Brownie Peanut Butter Cups.  

Well actually, yesterday, we drove down to Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois.  John and Sarah drove down from Weston and picked the three of us up at 6:15 am, and then we stopped in Madison on the way and picked up Luke and Niki.  We arrived at the park about 10:15 ready for a full day of running between and riding roller coasters.  John splurged on the Flash Pass option for all of us, which allowed us to “reserve” rides at certain times, so you can then jump right to the front of the line when your time comes up.  So instead of waiting in lines, we would ride one roller coaster, immediately reserve another one for 20-40 minutes in advance, and then run over to the next one, and so one.  The guys estimated they got in 2-3 times the amount of rides and saved 4-5 hours of waiting in lines with the passes.  Very neat.  The guys favorite ride by far was Raging Bull.  I think they ended up going on it 4 or 5 times!

What a colorful dinner we had this evening!  Bright yellow sweet corn, red-orange pesto parmesan chicken, and smashed purple potatoes!  I found this recipe and thought it would work out well with the leftover purple potatoes we had from the farmer’s market.  They were very good (I’ll try the recipe again in the future with red potatoes, as it was so simple and yummy!) and the whole meal was like a rainbow (a tasty, tasty rainbow)!  

Today felt like Fall.  Much cooler, damp from rain showers, and cloudy.  This was a jeans and sweatshirt day – the first one since June.  This was a grilled peanut butter and jelly (plum apple butter) sandwich for lunch day.  This was a day to make something that smelled of cinnamon and spice to warm up and feel cozy.  This was a day for Chai Cake with Honey-Ginger Glaze.  Well, tomorrow, and the next day, and most likely the next day, will all be days for Chai Cake with Honey-Ginger Glaze.  This was another recipe from my new cake cookbook, Sky High: Irresistible Three Layer Cakes.  This was another home run recipe.  So much so that after the batter was made and poured into the pans and we each had a small taste from the scrapings in the bowl, it was determined that I had to make more just for us.  The cake was slotted to be taken to church for Welcome to Woodlands tonight, and I am not sure just taking two-thirds of a cake in would have been appropriate.  So as the cake was baking I made another half of the recipe and poured it in a muffin tin for cupcakes.  A chai latte is my favorite hot drink, and putting it in cake form, and then glazing it with a mixture of cream cheese, butter, confectioner’s sugar, honey and fresh ginger is pure genius.  Kudos to Alisa Huntsman, Peter Wynne, and Tina Rupp.  They are my current food heros.

The other day at the farmers market there was a table with a basket on it, which was full of zucchini.  Well, the sign said each zucchini was only 75 cents.  So who in their right mind just wouldn’t purchase the biggest, most gargantuan zucchini available, right?  I knew I would only be making bread with it, so I was going for quantity, plain and simple.  I really should have taken a picture of the massive ZUCCHINI I picked out (see, I even had to write it in all caps, just to get the point across!).  It was bigger than some of the weights I use during BodyPump!  Last night the guys watched some weird Austrailian Western Irish film (I did preface that with the word weird) so I was determined to take that huge ZUCCHINI and make it into tasty tasty bread.  I got over 4 cups of shredded zucchini, so I made two batches of the recipe.  At the last minute Justin requested some muffins with it, So I made one batch with walnuts and used mini loaf pans, and the other batch without walnuts into muffins.   They both turned out wonderfully.  I had little doubt, as it had over two cups of sugar in each batch!  We have to make sure to feed our sweet tooth!  (Oh, and on that note – I had a dentist appointment on Tuesday – still no cavities – hooray!)

Labor Day.  Rather a bittersweet type of day in my opinion.  A nice long weekend, with an extra day to spend with friends and family, but also the signal of school back in session, leaves beginning to change, and the final days of wearing shorts for the year.  

This year’s work-free day was quite busy.  Travis took Jennie (just a friend) to the airport very early this morning for her 6 am flight home.  We so enjoyed meeting her and having her stay with us this past week and hope to see her again (though it may be later than sooner, as she lives just outside Vancouver, BC!).  

Justin and I drove out to Rosholt this morning and I ran the 5K Labor Day Run at 9 am.  It was already very warm, and those rolling hills are a killer, but I was glad to finish it in a reasonable amount of time and always enjoy the race each year.  

Mom & Paul came down from Wausau for lunch and part of the afternoon.  We finished off much of our farmer’s market finds – roasted green beans and potatoes, corn on the cob, and carrot sticks served along with shredded barbeque chicken – and a few final Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge Crunch Bars (and my parents split the last piece of chocolate peanut butter cake – lucky ducks).

Later in the afternoon I tried another new recipe, for Oatmeal Cinnamon Chip muffins.  Very tasty.  Have you ever used cinnamon chips for baking?  I love them in scones.  Mmmm…scones…  I haven’t made those in a LONG time, and now I have half a bag of cinnamon chips to use up – Great idea!  You’ll see them posted soon enough!

Today was the birthday for both my brothers: Trav and Luke. They are two years apart, but their birthdays fall on the same day. Here is an undoctored picture of what 26 and 24 years of living on the edge can do to a person:

We had a fun day celebrating Travis’ & Luke’s birthdays today.  Travis turned 26 & Luke turned 24.  Aunt Maggie and Cousin Beth were up from Chicago, and with John and Sarah, Luke & Nikki, Travis & Jennie, and Justin and I, we were quite a ruckus group!  We all met and John & Sarah’s around 1 pm and had a nice afternoon of visiting, running to the fireworks store, and watching old home videos of the boys from 1987.  Then we had a wonderful meal of grilled chicken and brats, corn on the cob, fresh green beans, baked potatoes, homemade crescent rolls, chips and dip, etc.  And if we weren’t stuffed enough, we followed it all up with Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake.  I saw this cake on the smitten kitchen blog a couple of weeks ago and immediately decided I needed to buy the book that the recipe was in.  When Travis saw the cake, he asked right away if I would make it for his birthday.  Sounded great to me!  And yesterday, after the cake was made, he also requested Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge Crunch Bars to line the plate.  Yes, it is completely over the top, but it was definitely a fun birthday treat.  After we were packed to the gills with food and dessert, the guys opened their birthday gifts, and then we headed out to John & Sarah’s land in the country and the guys arranged quite the fireworks display.  It was a fun way to end the evening, even though there were several times of running for cover while laughing hysterically!

Justin and I spent lots of time in the car today, but as it took us over to Hudson, WI/Minneapolis, MN, it was time well spent.  We got to Hudson right about noon, stopped for a quick bite to eat, and then I dropped Justin off at Troy Burn Golf Club.  His dad had to work in the area in the morning, so they decided to meet up there for their afternoon round.  They both agree that it is a very nice, but very challenging course.

Then I drove into downtown Minneapolis to Nicollet Mall for the Farmer’s Market.  The weather was gorgeous, I got a primo parking spot and came away with plenty of goodies – bread, carrots, sweet corn and green beans.  I was very tempted by all the beautiful flowers, but I figured they would wilt by the time I got them home into water anyway.  A picture lasts much longer, even if it doesn’t smell as nice!

I also just enjoyed walked and driving around the downtown area, with the skyways and sunshine!

After a quick trip to IKEA, I drove back into Hudson and walked around their downtown area and then along the waterfront.  I had brought a blanket and a book along in case I had extra time, and it was very nice to relax a bit before I returned to the golf course to pick up Justin.

To make up for yesterday’s lack of anything worth writing about, I’ll give you two recipes for the price of one today.  

First off, I bought pears last week and promptly forgot about them until yesterday when I was going through the refrigerator and found the fully ripened and ready boscs in the drawer.  As we have been on somewhat of a muffin kick lately, I found a recipe for pear muffins.  This is a very good recipe, but I ended up with 10 muffins rather than 6 (definitely not a bad thing!).  I think it depends on how big your pears are.  I also added just a bit of water as the batter was a little drier than I liked.  They came out very very good though, and I will definitely keep this recipe around.

Next, as we have had an abundance of plums from our tiny little plum tree (and we really don’t care for eating straight plums), I found a highly reviewed recipe for Plum-Apple Butter.  While not a true jelly/jam recipe (doesn’t contain pectin), it is as close as I was willing to come to one.  This was a rather labor-intensive process with lots of putzy steps (which I am really not a fan of) and it made a huge load of dirty dishes (also not a fan of), but as I would probably only make it once a year, and only then depending on our plum crop, I’ll also keep this recipe neatly tucked in my file.  

Plus, it’s fantastic! 

I think Storm has the memory of a goldfish.  ”What is this fantastic little house for me to sit in?  So comfy!”  She doesn’t remember for a second that the only time these carriers ever come out is to take them to the vet so they can get shots.  As you can see from the picture, Norm remembers.  He remembers VERY WELL.  As soon as Justin brought these out of the basement closet, Norm ran down to Travis’ room and hid under his bed.  And as soon as Justin let him out of the carrier upon arriving home, Norm ran down to Travis’ room and hid under his bed.  He is there as I write this, several hours later.

Mmmm….dulce de leche.  Or in english, sweetened condensed milk (goat’s or cow’s) heated to produce a wonderfully thick, rich caramel.  I’ve made it in the past by boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk, completely submerged in water, for 3 hours.  This is an incredibly easy method with incredibly tasty results.  However, recent warnings against this method (namely, that the cans can explode) and the fact that our house was like a sauna for several hours because of the steam, have led me to find alternative methods.  The first of which is the easy way – just go out and by it!  Well, as this product is not quite in the mainstream of grocery items available in Stevens Point, we drove down to Plover’s Mexican grocery store, La Guadalapana.  And Hooray!  They actually carried two different types – one made with cow’s milk and one from goat’s (I had read about both on the internet).  So I happily scooped up both in order to make Alfajores this weekend, which is a Peruvian sandwich cookie, made with almond cookie dough and dulce de leche (or a similar product, manjar blanco, which I’ll never find in Wisconsin unless I make it!) sandwiched in between.  

What an absolutely beautiful day outside!  It finally rained last night after a week of ridiculously high humidity percentages, and the sky was clear and sunny.  Gorgeous.  After Justin and I got back from the gym, Travis and I went downtown to the Farmers’ Market.  What a spread!  I always forget to take my camera there, and that is exactly where I wanted to take all sorts of fantastic pictures to post.  Ripe tomatoes, green beans, sweet corn, peppers, potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, flower bouquets, and on and on.  I had to hold myself back, and we still came home with a bag full of goodies, including beans, carrots, corn, and yellow and purple fingerling potatoes.  I love summer.

So I have this new recipe for Key Lime White Chocolate Chip Cookies, and I am rather torn about it.  They were incredibly easy to make, and the flavor is really good – especially if you like lime.  But the texture is off a bit.  I think they needed another full cup of flour to give a bit more substance to them.  And maybe some macadamia nuts… maybe add more lime zest and back off on the lime juice… and something else… just not sure at the moment!  But honestly, I am not sure if I want to take the time to make something that is just “really good” and not “fantastic.”  Though maybe they could become fantastic!  And as I write this, Justin thinks I should make them again.  And maybe my slight disappointment comes from the fact that I really just want another pan of those Peanut Butter Fudge Crunch bars…

My day had been going by, quite uneventfully. A morning jog around the Schmeekle Reserve, a trip to the grocery store (needed a new jar of peanut butter, as you can see), a quick easy lunch (warm french roll with Havarti Cheese – mmmmm) and then making a new recipe. And now my day is fantastic and wonderful and I have a recipe that will be with me until, well, until I have a heart attack from eating too many of these bars!!!

While enjoying dinner tonight (no chippy chicken, thank you very much!) we received a phone call which only promised to increase the fun factor of the evening – Jenn King asking if we wanted to meet their family at Belts’ for ice cream!  So an hour later the three of us walked down to meet up with the King family.  Here you can see the adults intent on eating their treats (and ignoring the camera) and Maureen and Madie enjoying their ham-tastic shakes (okay, the flavor was bananaberry, but Justin said it tasted like ham!).

We had a very nice Sunday, much of which was spent outdoors.  After church Grandpa & Grandma (John & Sue) Miller dropped by and the five of us enjoyed a nice lunch out at Charcoal Grill.  Justin had to get some work done at home this afternoon, but Grandpa, Grandma, Travis and I went biking along the Green Circle Trail a bit.  It was a very warm afternoon but there was a good breeze, and since so much of the trail is shaded it was great for riding bikes.  

Shortly after we returned home Grandpa & Grandma headed up to Wausau and Travis, Justin and I headed over to Iverson Park for Woodlands’ Picnic and Baptism.  They had grills roaring and we had a great time sharing good food and spending the evening with friends.  

I certainly had plenty to keep me busy this weekend.  I was organizing a wedding at church for a young couple, and between the rehearsal last night and the ceremony today, I had an awful lot of details to keep straight in my head!  This was a rather large wedding (almost 300 guests), with 9 bridesmaids and 9 groomsmen, two ushers, 4 greeters, parents, grandparents, plus the bride, groom and pastor.  Oh, and a full band set up on stage.  It was a bit of a puzzle at the rehearsal fitting everything, but everything came together in the end.  Once all the bouquets and boutonnieres were distributed and pinned on correctly it was easy sailing!  The ceremony went beautifully and the church was cleared out and everyone was on their way to the reception by 4:45 pm.

Yesterday afternoon I was driving home from Wausau after a nice lunch out with my mom, when a rock hit our windshield.  Thankfully it was just a chip and was located on the lower half on the passenger side.  As soon as I got home I called the auto glass repair place (with the little red trucks, beep beep!) and scheduled them to come out this morning.  So we were given the illusive “8 am to 12 pm” time slot.  So I woke up a little earlier than usual, and began waiting.  Couldn’t go for a run, couldn’t go to the grocery store (I needed oatmeal for cookies!), etc.  I jumped in and out of the shower (didn’t want to miss their call!), and then ended up sitting on the couch.  Continued to sit on the couch.  Norm came and sat on the couch with me.  Got off the couch at 11:30, deciding to take a picture of the chip to post on the blog.  As I turned to come back inside the house, here came the truck, pulling into our driveway at 11:45.  The chip was fixed in 5 minutes and my waiting for the day was finally done.  On to the store for the oatmeal, and then mixed up a quick batch of Monster Cookies.  

So we were watching a new show on the food network, and Justin decided he wanted to try what they were making.  It didn’t necessarily sound all that bad at the time, chicken tenders coated in crushed nacho cheese corn chips and a special seasoning blend and pan-fried.  As chicken was already on my shopping list, a bag of doritos was an easy addition.  Obviously my brain is still a little foggy from all the traveling, because it should have had warning bells going off like crazy.  It really wasn’t until it was in the pan cooking that the major doubts began washing over me like a tsunami.  This was going to be bad.  Very bad.  And you know what… It was bad.  Very bad.  The fact that this recipe made it onto a nationally televised spot is proof that the end of the world can’t be far off.  Do not cook anything in doritos, please.  Just eat them out of the bag if you need to, just don’t coat anything in them, sprinkle them on top of anything, etc.  It is now time to go to Belt’s to make up for this crazy bad dinner!

Well, first and foremost, we certainly did not go hungry while in Peru.  And for the most part, the food was phenomenal.  Anyone coming from a meat & potatoes area like Wisconsin probably won’t struggle too much with liking the food from a meat & potatoes (emphasis on the potatoes) country like Peru.  I am trying the think if there were any meals (other than the one at the Chinese restaurant) that didn’t contain either potatoes or yucca (pronounced You-ka, which is another tuber, similar to the potato).  I won’t go over every meal, just some of the more memorable ones, or there would be way too many pictures on this post!  Also, I already posted a picture of our typical breakfast on the first day of the trip, so check back to then if you missed it.  Just add scrambled eggs with ham to the picture, and that was what we had every day for breakfast.

We left our hotel in Chincha early on Saturday morning, and started making our way toward Lima. We made a couple of stops along the way. The first was an interesting experience. Jose Hipolito Unanue was a Peruvian of some prominence that built a huge mansion, pretty much a castle, that is somewhat of a tourist spot now. It turns out he built his wealth by illegally trading African slaves. Parts of the castle that are open include tunnels to the dungeon that held slaves, the auctioning block and paddocks. While the property must have been spectacular to see when it was in pristine condition, it has not been maintained for many years. It is in a pretty terrible state and will continue to crumble away. Honestly, to me it felt a fitting end for that type of place.  Our second stop was at the coast for a lunch near the beach. We walked along the beach, some of the crazier guys went for a (very cold) swim, we walked down the long dock, and shopped a bit at the tables some locals had set up with trinkets. Since it is winter in Peru there were very few others out, but it was still a pretty place. We even saw some dolphins and a sea otter frolicking in the water (what else do dolphins do but Frolic?!).Then we headed into Lima for an afternoon shopping at the artisan markets, finding alpaca sweaters, blankets, t-shirts, purses, and fun other items to take home for gifts or souvenirs. Lima is a busy city that I would have enjoyed seeing more of. I appreciated the chance to see even a bit of it. After dinner we headed to the airport, where we had to part ways with a vital part of our team for the last 10 days – our translators. Pauola, Dave, Claudia, Aldo, Gabriel, Christian, Emily, Raquel, and Gordy truly became like family to us as we relied very heavily on their assistance with the language. Then, after two long flights and a bus ride, we are back safe and sound, with many memories and stories. Thank you to everyone for your prayers! I’ll still have one more Peru-orientated post tomorrow with pictures of some of the food we got to try.

Today was our last work day of the trip. The teams at each work site worked fast and furiously to finish as much as we could. One team worked on laying bricks and mortar walls, one group finished covering a roof with cement, and another team got the electricity working. It was great for Raul, Hector, and their family to be able to flip a switch and the light to come on, in a safe, livable house. The window and doors will be installed shortly and they will begin to move in. This is Raul’s (nearly) completed house, and Hector’s is right next door. Hector has seven daughters, and Raul is his son-in-law. Hector is considered the leader of their community, and has worked very hard on taking care of the needs of his neighbors and family. We really enjoyed working beside him, hearing his story, and getting to know him and his family.

So we now have pictures of many of the steps of building an adobe home (of which we’re working on four separate homes). Here is a quick lesson. The first step is mixing mud for the bricks. This involves getting the correct dirt mixture bought and delivered, having water delivered, and hacking straw to give the bricks extra structure. In some cases, as on one of the sites, the homeowner doesn’t have enough money for the dirt mixture and old, broken adobes (from walls that fell in the earthquake) have to be crushed before the water can be added. The formed bricks need to set out between 4 and 7 days, depending on if the sun comes out! One two-room house needs over 1000 bricks. While the first round of bricks dry, trenches are dug and filled with concrete (mixed by hand) to provide the foundation (all of the homes thatwere destroyed in the earthquake did not have a solid, cement foundation). Then more mud is mixed to act as the mortar and layers of bricks are laid for the walls. A special plastic mesh, called maya, is draped and then painstakingly tied tight to the interior and exterior walls. This is a vital step, as the mesh is what keeps the walls from tipping in the event of another earthquake. More mud is mixed and spread over the mesh. At this point bamboo beams (treated for termites and stained) is nailed to form the first layer of the roof (which serves as a very beautiful ceiling for the interior. Electric boxes, lights, and switches are also installed. Cement is then smoothed over all the walls and forms the top layer of the roof. Install doors and windows, paint it, and you have a sturdy, warm, secure home.

Please continue to pray for health. We are doing well, though Lori pulled a muscle in her back and is hurting. Everyone with intestinal issues are on meds and doing much better!

Today’s tasks weren’t very different from yesterdays, with spreading mud on the walls of another one of the four adobe houses we are working on. We also worked at staining the bamboo for the roof (the stained side is the ceiling and concrete gets poured on top). As you can see in one of the photos, all of my weight-lifting is paying off (don’t be fooled – those branches I’m carrying are willow, and were feather-lite!). It’s hard to believe there are only two days of work left.
Please pray for team health and strength, a number of the guys are feeling the effects of the different foods!

I thought about Julie’s idea of me biking her around with baked goods, and the more I thought about it, the less it seemed like a good idea. Towards the end, this is all I could picture:

That doesn’t exactly seem ideal to me. I probably would loose a lot of weight. Julie would have to dangle a cupcake on a string in front of me to make me move.

Oh, and here’s a picture of me in front of an elusive white rhino.

Here’s a good tangent: I wanted a sweet picture of a white rhino drawing to put up as well, so I went into Google image search and typed “white rhino”. Judging by the pictures that came up, “white rhino” is the name of a particular strain of marijuana, so I figure I am on some sort of DEA watch list now. I hope it was worth it.

Unicorns!

(No more posting after 11PM, I promise)

So here’s what I am thinking. Here in Chincha, lots of vendors ride their bikes, pedaling their wares through the neighborhood, especially around midafternoon when you get hungry! A pastelito (baker) rode near the site where we were working and Gordy and Emily picked us out a few things to try. I think this is a great way to see how my cookies and pastries sell in Stevens Point! Justin could rig up a litle box on top of my bike, I could get a special little horn (ai-ooo-ga!), and I could pedal around town, selling my cakes and cookies! Good idea?

Today, our team didn’t have to make a single brick (our backs were thankful!). As you can see, the end result is often marred by all the dogs around. They’re everywhere. They all just kind of wander around during the day. Thankfully they don’t really come near people for the most part. Our task today was to coat the mesh on the walls with mud, to prepare them for the finishing coat of plaster or cement. Here is Emily, one of our translators, working hard and smiling through each moment!

Today was again packed with making adobe bricks and digging trenches, but I got to experience something that will likely be a highlight of my trip. I got to go with Raquel and Claudia to get some of our lunch supplies for the week. Gordy, Claudia and I took a taxi over to Gordy & Bear’s apartment where Bear gave us the list of things we needed, Raquel met us there, and we took another taxi to the huge open market. It was incredible. The colors, smells, sounds, etc were almost overwhelming. It wouldn’t have been safe to walk around with my camera snapping away (though I wanted to!), but I did get a picture of the cookie stall, which was an incredible array of sugary treats! After we found our way out with our purchases, we next drove to the fruit market, where we bought bananas and mandarins. Claudia was so helpful explaining the different kinds of fruit, and even had me try some! One was an orange banana (delicioso!), a tiny mandarin (fantastico!), and a granido (sp?), which you had to peel open to get to the juicy seeds, similar to a pomegranates’ seeds, but very sweet. It was certainly something unusual to try, but it tasted sweet and wonderful! After the fruit market we went to the regular supermarket to get loaves of white bread (Bimbo brand!), Pepsi, and, of course, Inca Cola (which is a yellow soda that tastes like cream soda but smells like bubble gum – I think it’s great! Claudia and I also decided to share a few small bags of Yucca (You-ka) chips (I’ve loved the cooked yucca we’ve had with meals), and two types of fried banana chips. The yucca chips were mostly just salt flavor, and we haven’t tried the banana chips yet (maybe tomorrow!). It was such a fun morning, and I really am thankful for them asking me along!
We then took the food to the job sites, and after lunch started working on adobe bricks and making mud. Again, very hard work, but we really had a lot of fun, especially between Claudia and Pat trying to coat each other in mud!
After getting back to the hotel and a quick jump in the shower and a absolutely wonderful meal (my favorite so far – but more on that later in the week!), about 8 of our team members, myself, Lori Clapham, Jon Cronce, Jim King, Steve Williams, Andrews Oliver, Lane Kirstetter, and then our translators Emily, Claudia, Dave, and Christian went to a youth event, with junior high age students, with some indoor games and a presentation a psychologist with the mission set up about domestic violence (which is a huge problem here). It was fun to meet with the older students, even after a very long day of work!
Now I am very ready for a good night’s rest, with lots more work tomorrow! Please continue to pray for health and safety, and especially team unity.

Well, we have had the, um, pleasure (?) of experiencing a Peruvian wedding reception last night at our hotel. After dinner half our team visited with Gordy & Bear (Beverly) at their apartment. We had a very good time hearing each other’s stories and spending some time in prayer. We got back to the hotel at about 10:15, and the wedding guests were just eating dinner. The reception was in the courtyard of the hotel, so we definitely heard (and felt) every speech, song, and rhythm of the wedding. Sleep was elusive, to say the least. Well, until SIX AM when the music finally stopped. I am not exaggerating!! On the plus side – near miracle- hardly any of us are overly sore from yesterday!!
This morning after breakfast we drove to a local church for their worship service. It was actually very similar in style to Woodlands, and our translators were spaced among us. Afterwards we came back to the hotel to change and get ready for lunch and an afternoon children’s sports event. There were about 75 kids with ages ranging from 2 to 17, ready to play soccer, throw frisbees and footballs, fly kites, etc. Most of the little kids just wanted attention, as in Carina’s case, who latched onto Jon Cronce. The final picture is of 19 of our team members crammed into a “combi,” or bus the size of a minivan, on the way back to the hotel. Before dinner Lori, Jim, Phil Neff, Tim Olsen, and I walked down the road to the street vendors to find some candy and soda. We had a successful outing, and am I sure Justin will appreciate the new treats that I bring home!

Today was very productive, though I am sure we will be pretty sore this evening and tomorrow. Lots of mixing mud for adobe bricks and mortar, making adobe bricks (as in the first picture), playing with kids, adding layers of bricks to walls, lining the walls with mud and mesh, tying the mesh onto the wall (as Lori is doing in the third picture), moving bricks, etc, etc, etc. We are now back at the hotel, cleaning up a bit (okay, cleaning up A LOT) before heading out for dinner. I’ll write a good entry on the food we have been eating later in the week!

I received word today that Julie and the Woodlands team made it safely to Lima, Peru last night. They left for Chincha this morning. They checked into the hotel this afternoon and traveled to the work site to get an overview of what they are going to be doing. The hotel has wireless internet, so hopefully Julie will be able to blog about what is going on there as well.

Today, I went with Travis, Dad, and Sarah to Luke and Niki’s place in Madison. There we met up with Niki, Max (Niki’s brother), and Luke and went out to lunch at the Great Dane Pub. I had the “THE GREAT DANE’S BRAT & BACON PRETZEL BURGER”. I thought this would be a good chance to compare what I am going to be eating while Julie is gone to what she is going to be having. Here is a picture of my exact burger, with the burger, bacon, cheese, and “brat patty”. The pretzel part is the bun itself, made from pretzel dough. How crazy wonderful is that?

Here is a representative picture of “Cuy“, which Peruvians eat 65 million of per year.

I know that by posting this, Julie is going to bring something weird home for me to eat, just to get back at me. I am sure the food they are having is actually really good, but I just wanted to poke fun a little.

Greetings from Peru! We got to our hotel here in Lima about midnight after a long day of flights. It is great how much they feed you on a long international flight though, isn´t it? We just finished a nice breakfast of coffee, fresh rolls with jam, and papaya juice (thick!). Today we drive down to Chincha, where I hope to load a picture or two when I can! Here are some pictures – the first of our typical breakfast, rolls, jam, coffee, and papaya juice; the second is of a park (of love) that was very close to our hotel in Lima; and the third is of one of the sites we will be working at, with adobe bricks drying. We have seen and done a lot today. Eaten new foods (very good food!), walked past the street vendors with unusual items to buy, and visited several of the sites we will begin working at tomorrow. These Peruvians have lived through some of the worst circumstances in the past year. It is great to hear that we are bringing hope by helping to rebuild, but it is also very overwhelming and hard to take in everything. Please pray for strength for our team, as we will begin working very early tomorrow and throughout the day.

Well, my checked bag is packed and ready, and my carry-on isn’t far behind it.  I am hoping our scale is accurate enough that my bag doesn’t go over 50 pounds at the airport (I’m hoping they don’t use doctor’s scales, which are always WAY higher than the truth!!).  I should already be in bed as I write this, trying to get at least some sleep before having to be at church at 4:15 in the morning.  But honestly, I would just be laying awake in bed thinking anyway!  Please pray our travel goes smoothly tomorrow – fly out of O’Hare around noon, then connect to our flight to Lima in Houston, planning to arrive in Lima about 10 pm.  I’m hoping to be able to update the blog as I am down there (our hotel is rumored to have internet access), or else Justin will be manning the posts till I’m home!

Today was my final day working at Entree Vous.  I went in this morning and made up a few last meals for gift certificate orders, then spent some time cleaning the floors and scouring the three basin sink.  All that was left after that was to remove my key from the ring, give Ann a hug and head out the door.  It wasn’t until later this afternoon that it really started to sink in.  A single key doesn’t weigh a whole lot on a scale, but the fact that it isn’t there anymore signals a big difference in my life.  The door to a very significant part of my world has closed and I feel like I’m floundering a bit.  At least, I suppose, until I add the next “key.”   

Well, the kitchen certainly got a workout today.  When I got home from the gym (my workout!) I made a batch of chocolate-chip-plus cookies (milk chocolate & semisweet chocolate chips, plus mini m&m’s) for small group this evening.  Then to use up some pears I made a batch of mini loaves of pear bread.  I froze all but one of the small loaves.  Justin can enjoy another one (or three) while I’m away.  

The kitchen was a bit of a mess by then, so I gave it a quick cleaning.  Have you seen or tried these cleaning wipes?  They’re great!  I like the “lavender” scent, mainly because it doesn’t have a cleaning chemical smell.  They were in a bundle on clearance at Target, and I thought I’d give ‘em a shot.  Very handy.

Then a very yummy dinner – maple soy salmon, roasted fingerling potatoes (from Saturday’s Farmer’s Market), and a new recipe for cauliflower – roasted with carmelized onions and Spanish smoked paprika and just a dusting of cocoa powder – very unique, but also very good!  And then Travis offered to do the dishes that couldn’t go in the dishwasher (I knew there was a good reason for letting him stay! .

After dinner I went out to check out our raspberry bushes – what a bounty!  I probably should have been checking them a few days ago, but not too many had fallen off yet.  I had been planning to bring them to small group to share, but Travis would have none of that and claimed them for his breakfast!

John and Sarah dropped Travis off this afternoon.  As you can see, Storm appreciates her new friend, even if he is skinnier than she is.  Trav will be staying the week, and then is heading out on a short train trip to Portland with a friend.  

Two years ago when we were in Las Vegas, my mom, aunt Ruth and I went out for dinner to Bouchon.  I would list this among my top favorite meals of all time.  We didn’t necessarily get a huge spread but they just had PERFECT french bread, sweet cream butter, and roasted pistachios to enjoy before our entrees arrived, and I have yet to have gnocchi that compare to what I had there.  Little did we know that we missed out BIG time by not stopping at their bakery, which is in the lobby of the Venetian hotel.  I found this recipe online, and figured if their sweets even came close to their meals, we would have a hit.  This was more than a hit.  This was a bottom-of-the-ninth-game-on-the-line-holy-smokes grand slam.  These were cookies that I had to get out of my house NOW.  As soon as they were done and I had devoured one, I called up Jane Whitford, as they were the friends that were the closest in proximity that I could take these little devils to (sorry everyone else – if you want emergency cookie drops, you’ll just have to move across the street!  I even tried to think of a way to send some of these to you, Aunt Shelley, but I think you would get a package of crumbs – tasty tasty crumbs).  Make these cookies.  (I used Skippy peanut butter and roasted peanuts and note that they spread a lot on the cookie sheets!)  They are not hard and you will NOT be disappointed!!  

We were at Target today, and I got drawn in to the “Kitty Chaise Lounge”. It attached to a window sill, allowing the cats to look out the window in our new office easier. What I forgot at Target was that Storm is not a normal cat size. She is, in fact, the size of a manatee with a gland problem. She managed to squish herself into the chaise lounge alright, but it wasn’t pretty.

Well, he did it again.  For three years running, Justin has taken the prize for the Longest Drive at the annual Putts for Pets fundraiser for the South Wood County Humane Society.  Each year we have paired up on a team with our good friends Robert and Rachel (shown here passing us in their much faster cart).   We always have a great time with them laughing and being silly, and playing a game that resembles golf.  Robert & Rachel always manage to get to the stake to mark the longest drive first, which means they get to christen Justin with a special nickname each year.  Past names have included Justin “The Bee” Gasper and Justin “Apple Pie” Gasper.  Like I said, it is mostly a chance to just be silly!  This year the event was held at Bullseye Country Club rather than The Ridges.  We thought the course was a little bit nicer, but the food left much to be desired (though we somewhat expected this and raided the trail mix packets out of our goody bags before dinner!).  

Here is a picture of our silly cat.  Actually, our naughty cat.  This basket used to have miscellaneous junk in it in a cabinet, but as I am cleaning out, sorting through, and organizing our office, it found its way onto the dining room table (which has become the catch-all for “things that don’t have a space”).  Cats don’t belong on the dining room table.  Norm (typically) gets yelled at if we catch him up there.  But when I walked in and saw him sitting in this little basket, I was laughing too hard to yell at him.  Does that make him “miscellaneous junk?”  

Here is a nice picture of our bed.  Look closely.  Can you find the item that doesn’t belong?  Did you find it… or do you give up?

Yes.  That is a crumpled tissue wedged above my light.  Justin blew his nose last night while on his side of the bed (the left side) and then threw it (with the lights off) in the “general direction” of the garbage can, which is against the wall by my side of the bed.  That is as far as it got.  We didn’t notice it until this afternoon.  I’m just glad it didn’t hit me in the face!!  

Phew.  The basement bathroom is officially complete.  I ended up not having to work today, so I came home and finished the last coat of paint.  I then worked at hanging the *first* mirror.  It really is amazing how many pieces a mirror can shatter into, isn’t it?  It wasn’t until after I cleaned it all up that I realized what a cool picture it could have been.  I even contemplated (only for a second) dumping all the shards out of the bag in order to “recreate” the disaster.  Anyways, after a quick trip to Menards for another mirror, the bathroom is DONE.  Justin helped hang the second (and final) mirror, as well as the picture.  I really wish I would have taken a “before” picture, just so you all could truly appreciate the difference.  

When we were in Dubuque and stopped at the Calico Bean Market shop, they were selling little bags of just the marshmallows from Lucky Charms.  It is very funny to just see a bag of them without any of the actual cereal bits, though it is probably just about every 8 year-old’s dream.  I immediately decided to get them to see how they would work in Rice Krispie Bars.  Well, I’ll tell you how they work – awesomely.  I melted regular marshmallows and butter and added that to the already combined rice krispies and rainbow marshmallows.  Stirred everything up and mashed it into a pan, then sprinkled a few more of the fun marshmallows over the top.  I did add a little salt and vanilla into the melted marshmallow mixture as well to try to cut some of the sweetness.  These are probably the tastiest rice krispie bars ever.  Especially if you grew up on Lucky Charms.  And they are obviously way prettier than regular rice krispies (and luckier, of course).

This was definitely a weekend of watching golf.  On Saturday we drove down to Milwaukee to watch the US Bank Championship.  Our friend Clay works for US Bank and has hooked us up with great corporate tickets for the last few years.  This typically gets us into a great parking lot and into the corporate tent area, which means free food, drinks, and ice cream.  Definitely a treat!  While the weather wasn’t the greatest this year and rained off and on, there were a few hours that it held off and we were able to walk throughout the course and follow a number of groups of players.  Some of the names that I recognized and watched included Kenny Perry, Chad Campbell, and Bill Haas.  

I can hardly believe that in two weeks I will be in Peru (specifically Chincha, south of Lima).  PERU!  It has gone from several months to 14 days in the blink of an eye.  I am officially in the “antsy” phase before I travel.  I am a details person when we do some major travel.  I like all my tickets and such in a certain portfolio, all my toiletries bought and packed (I LOVE mini tubes of toothpaste, mini lotions, mini everything!), and typically have an extensive list of what needs to be packed and how.  Really.  I can get a little neurotic about this – but I also love it.  I like thinking that I’ll be prepared for anything.  This is never the case with missions trips.  My last trip to Kentucky my deodorant cracked open on the second day and smashed all over the floor – and it was about 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity.  And wouldn’t you know it, one of the students on the trip packed an extra stick of the exact same kind I use.  Fancy that.  It all comes down to the fact that I will never be prepared for this trip and everything that will happen, but it is fantastic knowing that God will be completely prepared and can cover all our mishaps.  When you get a moment here and there, I would appreciate any prayers you can send heavenward – not only for my own experience, but also for the whole team and the Peruvian people that we hope to help a bit.  Here is a website that has some more information about what we hope to accomplish.

Okay, a quick word of warning – do not attempt to make these bars without a BIG glass of milk standing by!!  

I think God is installing some new software updates to iWeather, and there are a few bugs in the system.  One minute, sunny and hot, the next torrential downpours with hail.  One minute clear with a slight breeze, the next a green sky with OMINOUS black clouds that spin in circles and shift up and down.  I think the majority of the storms have rolled through for now, with a slight chance for a few more throughout the night.  Our lawn and flowers happily lapped up the rain, though there are plenty of substantial puddles down the road where a drain has backed up!

Ah Ha!  Through a sneaky game of peek-a-boo with the camera constantly clicking we finally managed it – proof that Katie Snyder smiles – and when she does, watch out!!  She is just as cute as cute can be!  (Though she does manage to be cute, even without smiling – she is a baby after all!)  Thank goodness for digital cameras – we would have gone through lots of film otherwise!  

We have been enjoying the fantastic weather down here in the Galena, IL/Dubuque, IA/Kieler, WI area while visiting Angie, Kurt & Katie. While Kurt was working today, Angie, Katie, Justin and I drove into Dubuque and hiked a trail in the Mines of Spain recreational area. Beautiful views of the Mississippi river valley, as well as the bluffs in the area.

Then we drove up to Potosi, WI to the newly completed restaurant, brewery and museum there. We had a delicious lunch and walked around a bit, and definitely had to get a picture in front of the World’s Tallest Beer Bottle. Special.

Justin and I then walked around downtown Galena for a bit, picking up some items – namely Strawberry Rhubarb Butter from The Galena Canning Company – our favorite!

This evening we had a great meal with Angie, and then tried our hardest to get a picture of Katie smiling. She is bound and determined to immediately stop smiling just before the camera clicks!

I love crazy people. Without crazy people, life would be pretty stinking boring. Just look at these pictures of a field between Kieler, WI and Galena, IL. It’s just a normal cow pasture, but I can totally understand what went through the crazy guy’s mind before this happened. “This field is missing something. It has cows and weeds, but it needs a little extra pizazz. I’ve got it: DINOSAURS! Dinosaurs are like khaki pants; they go with EVERYTHING! GERTRUDE! I gotta get me some metal so we can class up our cow field!”

Pop quiz: What sort of whistling sounds can a man covered in BBQ sauce make exactly? I definitely need a recording.

While this may be the Chinese Year of the Rat, I think I will remember it better as the Year of the Paint.  I have moved into the basement, where I am painting a little, dark, scary half bath that we never use (because of the aforementioned reasons).  As Travis will be moving in at the end of the month and we are giving him the basement room, we thought it would be nice if this bathroom was actually usable for him.  The previous owners had painted this bathroom a very dark maroon pink with dark teal trim (yes, it was as horrid as it sounds).  I managed to get two coats of primer (light tan) on the walls, trim, and door yesterday, and it will take another two coats of the final paint to really cover it all.  It is already a pretty substantial difference.  We are also replacing the tiny old mirror with a larger one, and the old dark wood toilet seat with a new white one.  I won’t be able to finish it for a little while, as we are heading down to Galena, Il for the next two days to visit our good friend Angie, her husband Kurt, and new baby girl, Katie.  We are leaving in less than an hour!  

Yesterday Dad and I went golfing in Sheboygan Falls, at a course named The Bull. It’s definitely one of my favorite courses (behind the Irish Course at Whistling Straits), so it was a treat to be able to play, especially when the weather cooperated. We ate at Firehouse Pizza in Sheboygan Falls on the way home.

What a great (and yummy!) surprise when I opened the mailbox this afternoon (well, besides the fact that there weren’t ANY bills in there!) and found a small loaf of bread from our friends Luke and Becca!  The other day we were walking downtown and were right near the Student Impact office, and stopped in and were able to chat for a few minutes, as we hadn’t seen them in some time.  They are diligently working to raise support in order to move to Duluth/Superior, where they have been assigned as staff workers with Campus Crusade for Christ.  They are such a fun couple, and have a great love of, and gift for working with college students.  We will miss them greatly, but wish them the best!

Some poor fairy out there is missing her magic wand.  It can be found at SentryWorld, in the parking lot, in case you run into her.  It did not help Justin hit his driver any better, so we did not hold on to it.  

This CRAZY recipe comes to us courtesy of Jim & Jenn King.  We were at their house for small group this evening, and they shared this little tidbit with us – something Jenn’s dad has made for them! Very easy and fun for the whole family (if you want to be on sugar highs for the next week!).  Just take a glazed donut – preferably at least a day old (we used one from Kwik Trip – on sale) and slice it half.  Butter the cut side (here’s the funny part – we used “Take Control” cholesterol-reducing butter spread!), and toast it like a grilled cheese sandwich.  We decided to kick it up a notch by adding jelly on one half and cinnamon sugar on another.  Hmmm… verdict?  Weird.  The edges actually crisp up a bit and the sugar caramelizes just a little, but then the sugar hits you right between the eyes and makes any intelligent thought vanish.  Was it good – sure!  It was a toasted donut!  Will we ever do this again in our lives?  Heck no!  This was purely to make your day, Jenn!!  

Pretty much another 4th of July day!  In the morning we walked downtown to the Farmer’s Market, and brought home a bag of wonderfulness.  The baker from La Baguette in Minocqua came down with fresh bread, so we bought a number of small loaves, including a baguette, ciabatta, bacon & cheese loaf, a french loaf, and small pear tart.  We also bought a bunch of fresh baby bok choy to make a salad we just call “Angie’s salad” afer our friend who first made if for us!  

Gotta love the 4th of July. I got to eat pizza and garlic knots from Polito’s and play Mario Kart Wii with Luke and Dad, and then I got to go to the Jorden’s for a cookout, where more soda, hotdogs, and ice cream cake was consumed, along with Julie’s awesome pear bread. I jumped on a trampoline for the first time in a couple of years, and found out that I have gained a little weight since high school, as I was able to hit the ground through the trampoline. Follow that up with bean bag tossing in Amherst before the fireworks, and a sweet glow stick, and you have just about as perfect a day as you can get, without golf being involved. Too bad I didn’t have this awesome CD to go along with the glow stick.

Happy 4th of July!  Another gorgeous day – sunny and warm, and next to nothing on our agenda!  

We went for a walk this

morning and came by Don Price, who was out painting their house.  He wanted us to be sure to know that Julie, his wife, has been out just as much as he has, working on this big project!

I tried another new recipe today, for Pear Bread.  

An absolute hit!  Nice and sweet, moist, and the house smelled AMAZING.  This is one I will definitely make again very soon, and make into mini-loaves in order to freeze and just have a small amount at a time!  It actually worked out really well this first time to make two big loaves, as we headed over to John & Cheryl’s house this afternoon for a cookout, and it was the perfect thing to bring to share!  Jane & Abi Whitford, Lincoln & Ann Brunner & their girls, Derek & Kari Leonard & their boys, Loraine Erickson & her boys, Erin Huffman, Mike McGuire, Mike & Melissa and their son all made an appearance at the Jordens, and we had a great time visiting, jumping on the trampoline, playing games, etc.  Afterwards a number of us drove out to see the Amherst fireworks, as Stevens Point is waiting until tomorrow for theirs (I know, we don’t get it either!).

This morning we drove up to Weston for the opening of their new skate park where Justin’s brother Luke was up to be a part of the demonstration team.  Justin & Luke’s dad John was one of the people to encourage the town to build a high quality, challenging park that skaters would be able to enjoy and use for many years. He was often the one taking Luke and his friends to skate parks around the area and saw some good ones and many bad ones.  This new one is all concrete, with deep bowls, rails and edges.  Lots of people turned out for the ribbon-cutting ceremony and opening, young and old alike.  

While my summer projects include lots of painting (fence, rooms, etc), Justin is working at rewiring our theater upstairs.  When we moved in he put in a great home theater.  He has since found some higher quality cables (for speakers, the projector, amp and other equipment), and wanted to do it in a way that all the wires were within the ceiling or walls, rather than in tracks along the outside of the walls.  So, rather than head out for a walk this evening, he has been climbing up and down in the crawlspace and I have been helping feed wires through one hole in the ceiling or another.  He really is working hard to do the best job possible, and hopefully the end result will be something he is very pleased with.  I am very willing to clean up the insulation particles that have flown around the room in appreciation for all his hard work!

Today we joined in the celebration for Justin’s grandparents’ (Sarah’s parents) 40th wedding anniversary.  Almost all the kids and grandkids were there – only Travis (in Texas) and Luke (in Madison) weren’t able to be there.  The weather was beautiful and perfect for a cookout and visiting outside.  The adult children did a special song for their parents, and the little kids also did a fun praise song.  There was also a funny poem by Rachel, a devotional time by Abe and Sarah put together some older and new photos into a touching slideshow of their marriage. Jonathan then put together a scavenger hunt with clues for them to find their gift from everyone (a gift certificate for massages).  

PLUS – Justin got touched by a baby and didn’t implode!  

He had lots of fun at the party – as you can see.

  

Madelyn also wanted to make sure everyone saw the turtle they found.

  

We really had a very nice time.

What a lovely evening we had.  Our small group all met at our place for a cookout and time to visit.  There were brats, chicken, and shrimp on the grill, pasta salad, fruit pizza, strawberry pie, etc etc etc!  The weather was perfect – not to hot, nice and sunny, hardly any wind.  We were able to eat and enjoy each other’s company.  After dinner we enjoyed time in the backyard, playing frisbee, relaxing in the hammock (here is Ann and two of her three daughters – Kathryn & Ellie), and visiting around the campfire.  The only ones not able to make it were Jim & Jenn and their girls – we missed you!  

I made Monster Cookies this afternoon.  I found a recipe for them at Bake or Break, which differed slightly from the one I had been previously using (which I honestly wasn’t all that pleased with).  My eyes will never wander again, looking for a better recipe, as these came out ridiculously delicious.  I remember my aunt Phyllis making Monster cookies when I was a kid and LOVING them.  I always wondered why my mom never made them but, as I was mixing the dough this afternoon, I think I figured out the reason.  My mom realized, in her motherly wisdom, that I could not be controlled around these cookies.  Well, look at them!  Unless you are stricken with a peanut allergy (my condolences…), what would ever keep you back from those?!   (Stop licking the screen, Jenn – that’s gross)  Which is why the only time I make these is when I am getting them out of my house and into other people’s stomachs as soon as possible.  Though I never can make a batch without having at least one (okay, okay… four).  

After many nice, sunny days, we have rain today.  And while our plants and lawn definitely needed the rain, I wasn’t in a rush for it to fall!  I would much rather be going for a walk or bike ride this evening than be stuck inside.  As you can see, Norm wishes it wasn’t raining either!

Okay, so most of you have seen our fence, and realize what a big task it is to repaint the crazy thing.  Yes, we got a big chunk of it done on Saturday, but that still left another big chunk!  As a surprise for Justin (Surprise!), who is out golfing today, I asked a neighborhood boy (Thanks, Luke!) over to help hold the cardboard so I could paint as much as possible.  We were flying!  As you can see, some things OTHER than the fence got painted as well!  The only parts left to paint are the areas that our plants are by, which will have to wait until fall when we cut them back (probably only another 1/2 hour of work).  But this is huge!  We really accomplished a lot, and I know Justin will be excited that he doesn’t have to commit another day to this project (well, until the fall!).

It took me a long time to decide if I wanted to mention this, but I was just really disturbed by James Dobson’s remarks that made the news today, including the fact that he feels he speaks for millions of evangelical Christians. I am not one of them. http://www.jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com

A very nice, relaxing day after many busy ones!  Not that we still didn’t fit a lot in, but at least we weren’t rushing around.  I went to the gym this morning, then came home and we played some MarioKart on the Wii.  Justin got some work done as well as putzing in the garden a bit, after which we walked downtown, picked up sandwiches for lunch, stopped at the library, and walked home.  Justin worked again and I mowed the lawn, and then we both had a chance to sit in the swing or hammock outside in the sun and read our newly borrowed books.  This evening we are heading out for small group.  The picture is Justin’s view of what got accomplished today…

Today after church we drove up to my dad and stepmom’s campsite near Birnamwood, WI.  They have their mobile home parked at a year-long campsite and enjoy spending almost all of their weekends there.  We finally found a free weekend afternoon to go up and visit with them among all the busy ones!  While the weather didn’t exactly cooperate and rained a bit, it ended up clearing up long enough to fire up the grill for burgers.  I also brought along those crazy-good flourless chocolate cakes.  Yum yum!  

Goodness Gracious.  6 cans of paint, a trip to Menards (for more paint), and 4 hours later, a big portion of our fence is repainted.  It has been needing to be done for the last 3 years, and we finally got to it.  Last year we got CLOSE – we at least bought some paint and a paint sprayer, but alas, both sat in our garage and basement over the winter.  This year we are determined to get it done.  We still have the front and east side of our lot to do, but that is not as tall as the west and north side.  Hopefully the next nice weekend we get we can hammer it out.  I think we can… I think we can…

We also took the cats out this afternoon, and Storm was chasing something through the flowers.  I am assuming it was a bunny, but it could have been anything.  Whatever it was, it knew she was coming a mile away.  Storm doesn’t exactly possess a “stealth” ability.  She was going through those flowers like Godzilla goes through Tokyo.  She isn’t as bad as this guy but she could stand to lose a few pounds.

Okay.  I apologize in advance.  But this might be the silliest thing I ever saw on a household product, much less a toilet bowl cleaner.  Don’t get me wrong – I am all about killing any living organism (germ, virus, bacteria, etc) that might be in our toilet, but the FLU virus??  I didn’t realize there was such a high risk of catching the FLU from the TOILET BOWL!  Who has heard of someone catching the flu from the toilet?  And if so, I think they just might need an updated lesson on how to use the toilet exactly!  

This morning we left very early and drove up just past Minocqua, WI to Crystal Lake.  I actually dropped Justin off at TimberRidge Golf Course in Minocqua, where he met his dad and they played a round.  I drove the rest of the way to Crystal Lake, and met up with Justin’s mom, Sarah.  They have been camping there for the week.  We spent a very nice morning riding bikes, reading on the beach, talking, and walking along some of the trails.  The day was mostly sunny, but very breezy at times.  They had a great campsite location, right off the beach, and the breezes kept all the bugs away.  John and Justin’s round took much longer than expected – very busy – and we didn’t end up eating lunch/ dinner until after 3:30.  But it was very tasty.  There was a slight mishap with the tripod spilling the brats, but as the guys hadn’t shown up yet, we just rinsed them off and put them back on the grate!  We put shrimp kabobs on the heat just as they pulled in, and lunch commenced without any more plunging proteins!  Afterwards, we cleaned up the dishes and such, and then headed into Minocqua for ice cream before heading home.  A very nice day.

So this morning I went to the gym again and ran 2 miles and walked 4, and then came home and baked again (can you see the pattern here!).  Well, I did get to have the pleasure of having a few more shots in between there (typhoid & hep A vaccines this time).  And, in my defense, I made a somewhat healthy cookie today (as opposed to the peanut butter brownies, which there is probably a picture of next to “unhealthy” in the dictionary!).  I tried another new recipe, and Justin and I have both pronounced it a hit.  And at only around 85 calories per cookie, they are practically guilt-free (until you reach your fourth or fifth of the day!!).  

Well, both Justin and I have sore arms today from tetanus shots.  I needed to get one for when I go to Peru in August, and since they were only $4 at the free local clinic, I dragged Justin along to experience the fun right along with me!  It has been over 10 years since either of us had had one, so we were due anyway.  We were both very grown up about it, and neither of us cried at all.

Quite a bit on our schedule today!  Typical Monday morning workout at Adventure 212 (BodyPump!) and then immediately came home and made peanut butter chocolate bars (I know, I know.  Quite laughing at me!).  I am completely hooked on a new (to me) blog, smittenkitchen.com.  Her pictures of food are INCREDIBLE, and descriptions are so funny and detailed that you want to try some of her recipes right away!! This was the first recipe that I have tried, but I have a stack that I printed out and want to work through.  As you can tell from the picture, our small group thought they were alright.  I think I would tweek the recipe just a tiny bit.  I felt like the semisweet chocolate overpowered the peanut butter in them, and thought they would be great with some strawberry rhubarb jam swirled in with the batter.  Or maybe just cut back on the chocolate a little.  They were certainly easy to throw together, and were excellent as is!

Happy Father’s Day to our own dads, but also to all of our friends and family who have kids!

Another gorgeous day! Sunny, warm, and a little breezy, and it feels great. I always like to think my favorite season is fall or spring, but they really just don’t compare to summer. And the fact that I actually get a bit of a tan and am no longer creepily pale is certainly a benefit!

Justin drove up to Wausau today to play a round of golf at Greenwood Hills Country Club. It is one of the nicer courses in the area, but as it is a country club and he needs to be invited by a member to play, he doesn’t get to go very often. Hopefully he and his dad will have a good time with the other two men they are playing with, no matter what the scorecard says!

After a week of so much rain, it is bright and sunny and warm today. Justin and I celebrated by going to the Driving Range at SentryWorld. It was a bit breezy, but the sun made it well worth our time.

I’m not sure if enjoying reading a blog is a good reason to actually start a blog, but it is what it is. We also thought, if anything, it will help our friends and family keep better track of us and what we are up to.  So whatever your reason is for reading, I hope you enjoy it, even through the days when not much is happening!