did you know?

Remember daisy-doo-das? Well, they are for sale, online, for reals this time!

Here's where you can find them, and lots of other great products:

bumblelady.com

This is a great site, started by my best friend Trisha Simon. She is an amazingly talented cosmetologist, who owns Striking Image Salon, with locations in South Salt Lake and Ogden.

bumblelady.com is also accepting applications to sell on the site, so if you have a great product to sell, let Trisha know here.

madeleines

I have had some madeleine adventures this week. I volunteered to make these French cookies for my Relief Society Christmas party, which has a "Christmas Around the World" theme. They passed around a clipboard of cookie recipes from all different countries, taken from Christmas-Cookies.com, and asked that people volunteer to choose a country and make the corresponding cookies. I figured I may be the only person with access to madeleine pans, so that's how I got stuck with them.

Here is the recipe I was given:

Cinnamon Madeleines

2 eggs
1 cup white sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 t ground nutmeg
3/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
1/2 t almond extract
1/2 t cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350F. Spray madeleine molds with non-stick spray. In a double boiler, heat eggs and sugar stirring constantly; whipping in as much air as possible. Remove from heat, let cool. Stir in flour, then add remaining ingredients. Fill madeleine molds with a generous amount of batter, but don't spread it out. bake until lightly browned, approximately 15 minutes. Cool one minute, then remove to racks to cool completely. Sprinkle with powdered sugar or dip in chocolate.

I followed these vague directions as best I could, since it didn't say how long to heat the egg and sugar, and "fill generously" isn't exactly a helpful description. Here's what the final product looked like:



Terrible! Cooling one minute, yeah right. Even though they were the greasiest buggars ever, they would not come out of the pans! They tasted like butter and snickerdoodles, not like they should have. After cursing and thanking my lucky stars that I tested the recipe before the event (this was Saturday, the party is Tuesday) I looked for another option. I went with America's Test Kitchen, and made their madeleines today. Here's the recipe:

1 c cake flour
1/4 t salt
2 large eggs
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup sugar
1 T vanilla extract
10 T unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1. Adjust oven rack to middle and heat to 375. Grease madeleine mold. Whisk flour and salt together.

2. In large bowl, beat egg and egg yolk with electric mixer on high until frothy, 3 to 5 minutes. Beat in sugar and vanilla until very thick, 3 to 5 minutes. with rubber spatula, gently fold in flour mixture, followed by melted butter.

3. Spoon half of batter into prepared mold, filling to the rims. Bake until golden and spring back when pressed lightly, about 10 minutes, rotating mold halfway through baking.

4. Let cookies cool in mold for 10 minutes, then flip out onto a wire rack and let cool completely before serving, about 1 hour. Cool and re-grease mold and repeat with the remaining batter.


Here's what this recipe yielded:



They actually look like the real thing! The ingredient list is almost the same, but the drastic difference in preparation can made a huge difference in the end result. And don't worry, I tasted one and they are delicious!

Strangers

Do you ever follow blogs of people you don't know in real life? I do. Here are the blogs I follow through Google Reader (which I would highly recommend, by the way!).


Your Heart Out
Build/Make/Craft/Bake
Design Gal & Her Handyman
Happy Together
Design Sponge
say YES! to hoboken
The Purl Bee
Everyday Chaos
Not So Idle Hands
Ruffles and Stuff
U create
Better After
Freshly Picked
What I Wore

i. want. to. live. here.

badly.

improv

I like to improvise in the kitchen. A compliments me on being able to make something out of nothing occasionally.

Tonight I realllly wanted something carbolicious, like pasta. Spaghetti is one of my most favorite foods. Since we're pretty well off red meat, I had to improvise.

I started with a veggie burger (classic variety) in a frying pan with some olive oil spray. Meanwhile, I started to boil some water.

Once the burger thawed a bit, I chopped it up into bits with my spatula, a la ground beef, and added a small can of tomato sauce. (At this point I started my whole wheat angel hair, which cooks for 7 minutes.) Then I spiced it up with my usual Italian herbs, oregano and basil, and added some garlic powder and fresh black pepper.

Once the noodles finished up, I dumped the sauce on, gave it a stir, and topped it with some parmesan. It was super fast, super easy, super vegetarian, and super delicious. So YES! Veggie burgers can be used as a substitute for ground beef, just so you know.

for Amanda.

You requested the recipe for Tuscan Soup, so I say, in my most Wesley-like typing voice, as you wish.

I used a recipe from All Recipes, found here.

I believe I used some chicken bullion as a substitute, only one Italian sausage that was lonely in the freezer, a lot (I mean a lot) of spinach, white pepper, garlic powder (I wish I had done fresh in with the onion) and chili flakes for a kick. If your sausage is super spicy, you could omit the chili flakes. gnocchi would also be a delicious addition.

new friends

We met some new people today, they are young (very young) newlyweds and live two doors down across the street. This is good, because EVERYONE I KNOW IS PREGNANT. Okay, not everyone. I've just heard news recently of 7+ people I know being knocked up, and at least one trying. That is a lot! Don't worry, if you are part of that group, I'll only dislike you for 10-20 seconds.

I feel very lucky that no one gives us a hard time about not starting a family yet. Mostly when people find out how young I am, I hear more good-for-you's than nagging questions of why not. Reality is, I still have 1.5 years left of school, and A is about to go back and will be another 3-4 years. And I'm still just 2 years into adulthood anyway, not in any hurry.

It is hard though. I know kids are hard. I know your life changes forever when you have them. I know that they cost a lot of money. I know they are non-returnable. I still looooove babies. And kids. I think being the youngest and not having any younger siblings has magnified this. I'm excited for when I'm at that point in my life. I'm excited to see A as a daddy, and excited for the whole experience. This is why it is hard to hear that exciting news from friends, because it is (sometimes a little) hard that we're not quite there yet.

That being said, I love where we are at right now. I love going to Disneyland on a whim, I love being able to go out without having to pay someone to stay at home with kids, I love not having clean up poop/drool/throw-up/toys/other messes, I love going to school and working, I love having A all to myself. I just have to remind myself of all of these things regularly. I also have to persuade A to get me a puppy despite my allergies, and make some new friends who are not married yet/just newleyweds/anyone without kids. Any volunteers?