Category Archives: Food

(mis)adventures in baking

Next spring, Steve and I have decided to renew our vows.  We will have been together for 15 years and to celebrate, we’ve decided to host the wedding we never had.  It will be a very small and intimate affair, but very special and dear to us.

As I share a bit of the wedding planning process here with you, you will be laughing at me. Not with me, at me, and a lot.  It’s ok, I understand.  I see the ridiculousness.

So, teeny-tiny, not real wedding, you make a little dessert table. Maybe a bunt cake or some cupcakes or something, right? It’s the reasonable thing to do. Me? I want to make this:

image by: The Studio B Photography

Never mind that it’s like 15 times more cake than we need and I probably need some kind of culinary degree to construct it. My “logic” is this…I don’t need to become a cake decorating expert, I just need to master the skills particular to this cake. And I have 10 months to do it.

My darling sister foolishly very kindly offered to help with the cake baking and last weekend she was up for a visit and a practice run.  There were issues.  Lots of issues.  Dividing the batter evenly was clearly one of those issues.

Three layers in; note the size discrepancy. We made one small layer to practice on.  In between every other layer (ok, what’s the word for the layers that make up the layers of a cake?  There has got to be a different word for it because this is just getting confusing) was either raspberry jam or chocolate glaze. Then we covered the whole thing with two layers (there it is again) of chocolate glaze.  There was some orange flavoring in there too, which I think was a nice touch.

First layer of chocolate…


and the second layer after it had chilled…

Not too bad for a first try right? It’s all level, you can’t tell that the layers are uneven underneath, it’s fairly smooth considering we didn’t have the right tools or anything.  Seems like a fairly good base for the fondant.

Oh, the fondant. Ever make fondant before? Word of advice? Don’t. So not only am I trying to make fondant, which is notorious for being a big ole’ pain in the behind, but I’m trying to switch out ingredients to make it safe for us. We find this recipe that looks ok as is. Only it’s missing many of the ingredients that are in *all* of the other recipes. Worth a try, right?

Wrong.

Of course.

duh!

We make it anyway and number one: unbleached sugar does not a pretty fondant make. Unless you really dig salt dough and like the idea of covering a cake in it. Two: it is not the right consistency at. all.  Lots and lots of doctoring and like 10 lbs of sugar later, we have this HUGE amount of “fondant” that resembles leftover gravy that’s been stored in the refrigerator. No problem. We can make this work (ha, ha, ha, ha, ha). So we watch a few videos on decorating. (sure that looks easy. I’m sure ours will roll out just like that) (it didn’t) (at some point we ended up picking up small pieces of it and pressing them onto the cake)

It’s possible that Steve may have gotten his head bitten off,  just a little bit, while trying to offer up a compliment during a particularly strained decorating moment.  Sarcasm practically oozes out of the man’s pores, how was I supposed to know he was being sincere for once!?

This is the point where we gave up in frustration….

Yup.

See? You’re laughing already, aren’t you?

After we told everyone to “just eat the darn thing!”, that they had been begging to eat non-stop for the entire 48 hours we were working on it, we hugged each other and then practically collapsed on the floor while laughing hysterically.

I was prepared to scrap the whole thing, but my sister is now on a mission. I said I was considering serving like strawberries and cream. She said, “Oh, strawberry shortcake might be nice”, I said, “no, like strawberries…on a plate, end of story.” She’s researching and sending me ideas. The report from her roommates was that the chocolate part was awesome, but they didn’t understand the fondant, nor recognize it as such.

The fondant did *taste* good, at least if you didn’t look at it too much while you were eating it. It tasted way better than any fondant I’ve ever had. Which is probably where we went wrong. I still maintain that we totally could have made those decorations, if we….you know… had a substance that was actually capable of being shaped that way.

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celebrations and festivals, Food, Life, wedding
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strawberries

A bit of late season gathering.  I made a quadruple batch of the honey sweetened freezer jam recipe found in boxes of Pomona’s Pectin.  Freezer jam is lovely because in addition to being relatively fast and easy, the berries keep their vibrant red and somehow seem fresher and more summer-like even than the straight frozen ones, which tend to lose much of their flavor.  For the rest I used Melanie’s simple and brilliant method of freezing them on cookie sheets and then storing the berries in jars.  I regret not having any little jars of jam with which to line my pantry walls.  The site of that always gives me a very pleasant and comfortable feeling.  But alas!  I ran out of honey and had to get them processed quickly.  There is only so much room in the refrigerator after all.  I’ll just have to step up my jam making with some later season fruits.

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Food, Kids
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While we were gone…

We made corn and gluten free home-made marshmallows.  I think it’s the closest I’ve ever come to slipping into a diabetic coma.

I was unreasonably nervous about leaving home for the first time.  What would become of our gardens?  Most irrationally; would it all still be here when we get back?  All’s well.  Our lovely neighbor held down the fort and kept Eden well watered in our stead.

There was very little swimming.  I think the deepest I ever made it was over my ankles.  The kids were a bit more adventurous, but mostly there was a lot of sand play and catch in sweaters.  We left the beach and came home to a mini-heatwave where we would have been glad of some water to jump in to!

I knitted the entire body of an adult sweater.  I brought my need point, all stalled out on the the letter ‘F’, thinking it would be lovely to stitch away on the beach.  I carried it many places with me and got it all sandy and managed approximately 4 more stitches.

The latest roasting obsession?  Olives.  These are the kinds of things that happen when you go camping with Elijah.  They’re good though.  Warm and mellow and smokey.

We’ve been back for four days now and every day except for one was spent away from home.  By Sunday’s end-of-season baseball party, it was all I could do to force myself back out the door.  I’m so glad to be home this morning!  With a whole week completely and blissfully devoid of outside plans.  The only exception being a possible in-town strawberry picking excursion with friends, if the weather allows.  Otherwise it’s just going to be us, at home and in the garden.  I feel so bad about Steve having to go back to work today!  I think we’ll have to find a way to make his homecoming extra pleasant.  I was thinking of extending the camp-like fun with dinner cooked over a fire, but it looks like rain.  Perhaps some spicy papadums and a foot rub with sweet orange oil?

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crafts, Food, Kids, Life, photography, Yarn Crafts
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these, mostly rainy, days


 

1) I finally got enough plants out of the way that we can use the backdoor that leads straight out to the kitchen garden.

2) Mushrooms grown by our neighbor on their way to mingling with herbs from our own garden in a pot of soup.

3) Wool gathered by Galen while visiting the sheep.

4) Page from Iain’s Nature Journal.

5 & 6) In spring we swing…and jump!

7) Red Eft in the garden.

8 & 9) Getting wood in the rain.  Stacking it in all sorts of weather.  Winter preparations start early here.

10-16) I waited and waited and waited, not the least bit patiently, for the peonies to bloom and now they finally have and oh!  Be still my beating heart!  I love them so!

17-24) The rest of the garden is growing as well.  We’re still eating mini-salads of baby greens and thinned plants.

25) Page from Elijah’s Nature Journal.

26) Joy is a baseball field with an adjoining playground.

27) Green lemonade and yam chips made in a borrowed dehydrator.

These last several weeks have been a blur, with playoff games, company dance auditions, putting together the end of year reports for the school district, trying to get the garden settled before we take our leave.

And than there is just life and well more life.  I mean if the stove has to have a gas leak, I guess it it better to know about it and have to deal with it than to not and say blow up or something.  Ditto the exhaust leak in the car.

Now baseball season has come to an end and Thursday morning we leave for our annual camping excursion.  One that I am in no way prepared for.

But matching Salt Water Sandals came in the mail for the Wee Girl and I, so obviously we are all set.  Just so long as we don’t need anything to eat, or anything to wear while we are there.  Oh, and also provided my male children are cool with wearing say snow boots on the beach.  Or possibly baseball cleats?  As it stands, Elijah’s sandals from last year, which should still fit, can not be found.  We’ve been searching everywhere.  I have no idea where he could have packed them.  And the lovely new sandals that I bought next-size-up for Galen when they were on sale at the end of the season last year?  We’ve been searching everywhere.  I have no idea where I could have packed them.  And Iain just came to me to say that one of his sandals just broke.  I think we’ll just hope that the sand’s not too hot and everyone can just go barefoot!

When we get back I should be able to post here regularly again.  Provided of course that I don’t come back with Lyme Disease like I did last year! (fingers and toes crossed and double crossed again!)  And when I do, I have so much to share!  Off the top of my head I have at least 4 knitting projects that I’ve yet to post about, a bit of embroidery, some wardrobe refashioning, some sewing, a lot of gardening, possibly a recipe or two, and at least one finished room!  Of course there will be little bits about our trip as well.  I should be back here again early the week of the 24th.

Happy almost summer to you all!

~Melody

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Food, Gardens, Homeschooling, Kids, Life, snapshots
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Week in the Life, Sunday

~The answer to the question, “doesn’t it sound like that woodpecker is pecking on the house?!?” is, yes.  Because he was.  This yellow bellied sapsucker (my father-in-law’s favorite bird name ever, by the way) took a wrong turn and ended up stranded on our screened in porch.

~Cooking and cleaning this morning.  We have friends coming to brunch.

~I made that fabulous chicken with lemons and olives, quinoa and butternut squash.  They brought a yummy salad of golden beets, red onion, dikon radish and cucumber.  For dessert Iain and Elijah made my friend Heather‘s absolutely amazing orange-chocolate covered dates (as a side note, if you all clamber for it maybe we can convince her to do a guest post with the recipe.  Because believe me, you want this recipe!).

~It was just one of those glorious, golden days, where the weather is beautiful and everyone more or less gets along, with good food and good company and everything just generally being right with the world.

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Food, Kids, Life, snapshots
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Week in the Life, Saturday

~I know I’ve mentioned before that my Middlest Boy has a great love of horses.

~Well, while we are not in a position to get him that pony he has always wanted, we have decided that for his 10th birthday, he is getting riding lessons.  He found out today, when we took them all on a visit to the horse farm.  He can’t wait to start.

~Màiri Rose was gifted a pretty green araucana egg.  I made a snack of it for the two littles, along with odd and ends thinned from my seedling trays.

~The big boys are off at practice again tonight.  The last one before opening day.

~Have I mentioned that my children are the owner/builders of the worlds most elaborate cardboard box house?  Work on the third addition has stalled out due to running out of tape.  There is however, a fireplace (complete with chimney) and some shelves inside.

~I finally got around to unpacking our books.  It was like greeting as many old friends.

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Books, Food, Kids, Life, snapshots, toy making
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Week in the Life, Friday


~Turns out the auto-focus on my camera is not broken is was just, uhm, turned off.  Really wish I had figured that out at the beginning of the week instead of the end!  Also a friendly reminder that I need to continue learning more about my camera.

~Our nuts.com order came today.  I think that for my kids it’s like what going to the candy store, with money saved up, used to be for generations past.  I was ordering flour in bulk (arrowroot and coconut), along with some dates and chocolate making supplies, but they each added in their own little orders.  Galen bought himself banana chips.  Iain and Elijah pooled their resources for dried mulberries, pineapple and crystallized ginger.  They all traded and shared their prizes, even with the Wee Girl who had nothing to share in exchange.

~I can’t believe it’s been a week since we visited the sheep.  The lambs grew a lot!

~It was windy today.  The sun came and went, but it snowed lightly the whole time we were out.

~Finally made it to the woods to identify wildflowers, among other things.

Iain, Irish dancing on a drainage pipe!

~On the way home we came across deer tracks, with tiny, tiny fawn tracks along side them.

~Steve’s car broke down between work and the grocery store, leaving him with a long tow truck ride home.

~We baked date bread and ate it for dinner with red raspberry leaf tea, just because we felt like it.

~We let Iain and Elijah watch the beginning of the Phillies game, instead of reading tonight.  I love that they bring their books in to read during the commercial breaks.

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Food, Homeschooling, Kids, Life, Mothering, snapshots
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Week in the Life, Thursday

~the Wee Girl was up most of the night complaining that he “tummy hurt” and asking me to rub it.  We’re both very tired this morning.  I had all sorts of plans for the day, especially if the weather was nice, which it seems to be!  But I think that perhaps we had better stay close to home.

~Thursday is bathroom cleaning day.  I was completely convinced it would also be bathroom painting day, but it didn’t work out that way.

~Iain and Elijah are each working on a map of our town now.  I’ll take pictures for us, but I think I’ll opt not to share them here.

~Màiri Rose makes up little songs and sings them to herself and others.  Sometimes she just goes right from one song to the next.  Today I tried to keep track of some of the little snippets of song I heard from her.  None of it’s complete, but this is what I have.

~~~The Songs of Màiri Rose Irene, Age 3~~~

The birds were flying up in the sky, the stars were flying up in the sky. The birds were flying then they came on down and the birds were singing to me.

The people all swam at the ocean and they lived together.  They all lived together in their little house.  And they ate pancakes.

Over the ocean, in my little boat.  The boat was singing to me.

Then they all lived together in their little crooked house.  Then they all swimmed and swimmed and swimmed.

~~~~~~~~~~

~Did some touch up painting and trim installing in Iain and Elijah’s room.

~They are off to practice again tonight.  In the rain.

~”It was Pop-pop and then it turned into Me-Mom!” ~the Wee Girl, after getting off the phone with my parents.

~While dinner cooked and the dishwasher ran, and the fourth load of laundry for the day was in the wash; after Galen had had his fill of loom building for the day, I managed to sew 4 or 5 seams.  I have two little dresses starting to take shape.

 

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Food, Homeschooling, Housewifery, Kids, Life, sewing, snapshots, The Renovation Journal
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Week in the Life, Wednesday

~Iain and Elijah spotted a pileated woodpecker from bed this morning

~breakfast plans were altered in an attempt to allow Goosey to sleep later.  I ended up serving leftover chicken dippers and acorn squash with maple syrup (the later having been cooked in the crockpot overnight).

He says, “look with my tape measure, I can hang from the ceiling!”

~the neighbor’s cat, a frequent visitor here and much beloved, especially by the small fry, had an unfortunate run in with a porcupine this morning.  We suspect it was the rather portly fellow that sometimes comes out to nibble things, around the edges of our yard at dusk.  Iain and Elijah discovered her in her rather prickly state and I sent them at once to fetch the neighbor.  They helped get her home and stayed for the de-quilling.  And then a bit longer still to visit with the frogs in the pond.  All is well with her now.  She came back to play just after.  And that was our excitement for the day.

~I got a roast and golden beets into the crockpot early on in the day so that I could easily feed dinner to different people at different times again tonight.

~We’re trying to identify this skull we found in the woods, but I keep forgetting to pick up some more books at the library to help us out.

~The weather was very fickle today, one minute being bright and sunny and the next threatening rain.  We hit a clear patch and decided to high-tail it to the woods to try to identify wildflowers, but before I could quite get everything ready to go, the sky opened up and it started raining, snowing and sleeting all at the same time.  All three boys were playing baseball in the yard at the time, waiting for me to finish up a few things.  Galen looked up and said, “I think it might be time to roll out the tarp!” (a reference to how they would go about protecting the field for a major league game)

~We settled for guide books by our own fireside instead.~mid-morning snack: apple and collard smoothie

~Elijah is growing cacti from seed, he has 8 of them so far.  Iain is attempting to grow pitcher plants.  They have been planted in a pot in the refrigerator for the last 5 weeks.  In another week he can take them out, then they might germinate in 1-3 months.

~lunch: catfish with leftover asparagus soup and kale salad

fetching wood

~The older ones are off even earlier today.  It’s choir day and they and rehearsing for their last concert of the year.  My parents a making a special trip up to see this one and everyone is excited.

~Another night of just me and the littles.  There are a lot of nights like this at this time of year, but it’s a short period.  Starting next week there will be baseball games and we’ll all be going out several nights a week!

~We three home bodies headed out to the garden to try to prepare some space for more cold weather veggies.  Until we were forced back in by a heavy hail shower.  Funny how the forecast was for little to no precipitation today!

~Galen has been looking for more challenging “work” lately.  A bit of woodworking together tonight.  We’ve started building a peg loom.

~After dinner II, which took place at a reasonable time for once, the older ones went to their bed’s to read and Steve and I curled up to watch an episode of Mad Men on Netflix.

~I’m really not sure how much longer I’ll be able to resist making myself a circle skirt.

~I’m almost done the second sleeve on Elijah’s birthday sweater!

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crafts, Food, Homeschooling, Kids, Life, snapshots, The Renovation Journal, Yarn Crafts
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Week in the Life, Tuesday

~Snow and sleet all morning.

~Elijah built the fire today.  His first.

~Pre-breakfast: banana, pear, orange and collard smoothie

~Actual breakfast: red cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, radishes, olive, guacamole and tulsi-mint tea with honey.

~Too wet to take sketch books out to continue our wildflower study as planned.

~A lot of the morning and early afternoon was much the same as yesterday; quiddler over breakfast, chores, more baseball play (yes, even in the snow), school work, etc.

~Everyone needs things for spring, so I’m trying to get a bit of sewing in each day.

~Library day, which just happens to coincide with a tea party at the library

~I wore the dress I made last week for the first time.

~So funny and a little nice to be introduced to all, as Mrs. —-.  I feel certain that Steve looked over his shoulder for his mother!

~the two small fry came back well fortified with A.A. Milne.  Rosebud calls them “knee-the-pooh books”.

~More horse magazines and “Caroline books” and “Rose books” (the series chronicling Laura Ingalls-Wilder’s mother’s and daughter’s lives) for the bigger ones.  They went through all three of the ones they brought home last week.

~The only thing I managed to grab was a couple of wildflower guides for school this week.

~It’s off to baseball practice for all of the big boys, including the very biggest boy of all.

~Working on Mother’s Day cards for the Grandmothers

~Dinner,Part I: chicken dippers and broccoli

~Littles to bed

~Dinner, Part II: the same thing two and a half hours later.  Only with tea this time too because I knew they would all come home chilled.

~Between the three of them I get an almost literal play by play of the entire practice.  Even though they are starving, it’s hard to get them to even sit down and eat, they are still so excited.  And while they eat they are constantly popping back up again to show me just how a certain play was made.  It was a very good practice!

~The biggest problem with us all sleeping down here is that this little munchkin:

is not sleeping!  Until the upstairs floors are finished we’re all sleeping in rooms just off and open to the kitchen/dinning room area.  Which means that late nights for them more often then not, inadvertently turn into late nights for him.  This photo was taken 3 hours after his bedtime.  sigh.  He would be watching us at the table, then every time I looked over, he would quickly lay his head back down.

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Books, crafts, Food, Kids, Life, sewing, snapshots
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