Last week I described the cake on the left of the above picture. If you need a reminder, that’s a Chocolate Dulce de Leche cake. Yum! It really was an exceptional cake and I was extremely pleased with how it turned out. Although… maybe the bright birthday candles on it look weird… who knows.
Right now I’m sitting here watching recorded shows of Best Baker America. Their challenge was a mind-bending cake with Vanilla being present. Looking at my cakes above… I fail. Oh well! haha.
But today, let’s focus on that Funfetti cake on the right. And wow, there’s a lot of thoughts covered above in just a short period of time. haha… some days that’s how my mind goes. My husband jokes that I am the queen of Random! (more…)
I made Dulce de Leche last week. Guys, it’s EASY! It takes a little time, but it’s super easy. Why oh why haven’t I done this before? Oh that’s right, because I didn’t have any reason to, until now. Now? What changed? Well… let’s start at the beginning.
Deb’s birthday was last Thursday. Every year on Memorial Day Weekend we find ourselves at the lake right around Deb’s birthday. We usually have a group dinner on Friday night, but Saturday night tends to be the BIG shindig. Then Sunday night we eat leftovers from the first two nights. It’s a lot of fun.
This year, plans stayed the same! I told everyone I was bringing the birthday cake. We also have another birthday that falls during Memorial Day Weekend, but I’ll focus on that cake later. Today, let’s talk about the Chocolate Dulce de Leche Cake because, oh. my. gosh. it’s amazing! (more…)
I don’t know if you know it or not, but summer has officially sprung! Here in the midwest we went from Winter to Summer. Spring, what’s that? I’m pretty sure last fall we didn’t know what Fall was. We just fell from Summer into Winter. Crazy Midwest weather.
But, that being said, It’s coming on big time wedding season. They say that people in the olden days got married in June because they took their yearly shower in June so they’d smell good. But for good measure they carried a bouquet of flowers to hid that musty smell. haha. I sure hope that was a joke! In this instance, I just hope I’m gullible because if that’s true, pew.
Last weekend, I went to a wedding. Yup, that’s where I was headed with all of that. The weather was gorgeous! We drove out to Big Hill Lake near Cherryvale, Kansas. I have a bunch of friends that live in that area. I was apparently only 3 miles from one of them. I’m not sure about the other… but on one of their farm websites they mention Big Hill Lake in their description on where they’re located.
When I got there, wedding preparations were already underway. As you can see, I got in on some good pictures of them making lemonade. We also had taste testers in this endeavor. It was fun. (more…)
If you’ve been paying attention to the weather around the country any this week, then you’ll know the Midwest was supposed to get hit with a HUGE potential of Severe Thunderstorms/Tornadic weather. I woke up this morning to a HUGE bang of thunder. I always say that all we need is a good thunderstorm and all trees just blossom BAM! Yup, I was right.
The other thing to note is we’re on baby watch 2018. No… not me. The horse’s sillies. One mare is 1 week overdue and the other is about 2 weeks out. With crappy weather like this, I halfway expected to walk out and find 2 babies on the ground. So far, notta.
But there is a light rain going on and by the time I was done feeding critters, I’m kind of soggy. Which reminds me of a day not too long ago that I got soggy. Let me explain…
The Duck Race
A couple weekends ago we were helping out with Trails for Kids. One of the events to raise money is the Duck Race. We sell little toy ducks that float for $2/each or 3 for $5. Then we go to Sugar Creek, the creek that runs right alongside the campground. We dump them in, and the winner wins half the pot of money collected. Easy enough, right? Sure… (more…)
I’ve stared at this computer screen for over a day now trying to decide just how to word this. I think maybe that title should be reasons why I tend not to drink because I have drank. Every so often I may even have the occasional one, but not very often. In fact, the last one I remember was a year ago in Cozumel. Oh, wait, last fall I had a horrible cold and did a couple shots of whiskey to try and kill my cough. It worked.
Yes, I’ve been drunk, once. It was awful. Bad enough I swore I’d never do it again. I spent the whole night sitting in the hallway with a friend taking turns crawling to the bathroom to go pee. Then we thought it would be a good idea to walk around town. It is a small town, but still… Not our brightest move. The next day I had a hangover and swore I’d never do that again. So far, I haven’t. I was 25.
On my 21st birthday, I was the sober driver. I got everyone else drunk. I choose to be the DD (and not the designated drunk.. haha) so that if something happens, we have a way to get wherever, including a hospital if need be. (more…)
Yey! Easter has come (and gone!). This year we made a trip to my aunt and uncles in southern Oklahoma for Easter. It is a 5 1/2 hour trip down, so we left Friday, celebrated Easter (with dinner) on Saturday and drove home on Sunday. Luckily this was our year to have Tbug with us too! Woot woot!
We weren’t able to get Tbug until something like 1:30 on Friday and my dad wasn’t able to get off work until closer to 3ish so by the time we got out of there, it was closer to 4 or 5. I can’t quite remember but does it really matter?
On the drive down I listened to the book, The Time of My Life by Patrick Swayze and his wife Lisa Niemi. I can’t read in a car. I get car sick just sitting in one if I’m in the back seat, so reading is totally out of the question. But Audible to the rescue! It wasn’t a total loss, yey! I’ll have to do a “book report” on that in the coming days. So totally worth reading (or in my case, listening to).
We stopped in Oklahoma City for dinner. Technically Norman at a restaurant called Salt Grass. So totally YUM! Oh and don’t worry, I sent my friend Camille a picture of the water tower. I didn’t forget her on my way through… although I never got a response. In the words of Stephanie Tanner, How Rude! haha.
We got into AC & UB’s close to 11 pm. Abug told UB she was going to get up the next morning at 7 am and do chores with him. (more…)
Just put me in bubble wrap, please. Seriously… My middle name should be Grace because I’m as “graceful” as they come. My dad likes to tease me that I took all those years of ballet lessons and am as clumsy as they come. I guess if the shoe fits, lace that puppy up and wear it.
My aunt and uncle have a hot tub and Abug was begging to get in it since she couldn’t get in their swimming pool. Way to cold for the pool. So Saturday evening we all got in the hot tub with her. At about 20 minutes, we sent the girls in to shower/get dressed in jammies. Hubby and I decided I’d give Tbug about 10 minutes and then I’d go in. He’d give me about 5 and he’d shortly follow.
At about 10 minutes I went to get out of the hot tub. That was my first mistake. AC has a 2 step stool to get in and out of the hot tub with. I stepped on the first step, stepped on the second step, put my foot on the concrete and that was my second mistake. I felt the puddle of water on the concrete and thought dang, it’s a little slick. Then I proceeded to put my weight on my left leg… the third mistake. It went all downhill after that… literally. (more…)
One of my absolute favorite things to do is to cook. I’m pretty calm, cool, and collected when I’m in the kitchen, even under semi stressful situations. So let me paint this picture. Do you see the rolls above? They look pretty good, right? Well, they didn’t always look that way. Oh no…
We celebrated Easter this year with my aunt and uncle down at their house in Oklahoma. By the way, I LOVE my aunt’s kitchen. If someone wants to grant me a wish, I want her kitchen please! Anyway… I was going to make the rolls on Thursday before we went down on Friday, but AC told me to use her kitchen. Probably best, because trying to travel with bread wouldn’t have been all that easy.
So I woke up Saturday morning (we did Easter on Saturday since we had to travel home on Sunday) and started in on the rolls. I chose Pioneer Woman’s Clover Leaf Rolls from her Thanksgiving episode. It’s basically the same dough she uses for her cinnamon rolls. And I absolutely LOVE that dough recipe.
Everything was going according to schedule. Milk, Sugar, and oil on the stove to heat up just below boiling point. Cool off. Add Yeast. Dump mixture into flour, let rise for about an hour. Pull off in walnut sized chunks. Place three to a muffin cup. Let rise second time. Bake. Eat. Enjoy. Yum!
Or so I thought. AC ran out of flour in her jar so I yanked a bag out of the freezer. Mistake potential number 1. Then I spent a little time measuring it while my milk mixture was cooling. When I tested the mixture, it seemed a little cooler than normal. Mistake potential number 2. When I added the milk/yeast mixture to the cold flour, placed a teatowel over it, and went on about my business. I’m sure I allowed them to rise way over an hour because I forgot to set a timer for myself or make note of when I set them aside. (more…)
Yesterday’s post got really long, really fast… so I thought I’d discuss the cookbook incident today. You know, in a separate post.
When the initial cookbook came out, it was back in 2010 (technically late 2009, but I went to the signing in 2010). I remember because I drove to Stillwater, Oklahoma to get it signed and meet her. My husband and I were due to get married that year. Oddly enough I had to tell her all about that. Like she cared. haha. But this, this is how I remember 2010. (more…)
There’s a long-running joke at my house that I have an arranged marriage for Tbug. I’m going to marry her to Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman’s oldest son Bryce.
This joke started sometime last summer. Truthfully, he’s a cute boy. He’s a farmer/rancher. I always say farm boys are the best. Tbug wanted to own a horse ranch someday, or so she said when she was younger. If he sticks with the family business, they run Mustangs plus all the horses they use for everyday ranch work. Win-win…
Then for my own reasons… they go snow skiing in Colorado and I always wanted to go. They can just take me too (and my husband… of course). Hello, his mom is The Pioneer Woman. I mean come on. And finally, if Abug would have been a boy, she’d have been named Bryce. I’d finally get my Bryce. There are more reasons for the joke and it keeps getting added to, but those are some of the big ones.
The Mercantile
Ever since the Merc has opened I have wanted to go. Pawhuska is only about 2 1/2 hours from here so not to bad. But it seems like every plan I had made to go, didn’t happen. They all fell through. I was starting to think it would NEVER happen. FINALLY, it did. I guess patience is key and sometimes I don’t have that.
A couple weeks ago I was talking to my sister in law about wanting to go. She said we should make plans to go. I kind of scoffed in her face and said I refuse to make any more plans like that because they keep falling through. Then a couple weeks later I mentioned to my husband and said she would go. One thing led to another and they made plans for us to go. (more…)
