My running friends

The very best thing about taking up a more serious running habit has been the friends I have made along the way.  Mary, Jen and I have been running together for almost 2 years because Mary was a big girl and asked at the end of our running group if I would like to join her for some runs over the rest of the summer.  Of course I said yes because she's fab and she's an only child too so it's like we're kindred spirits.  She already knew Jen so she joined us as well.  Susan came along a little while later when her running buddy sustained an injury.  We all belong to a much larger running group but it's always been the four of us at 5:30 in the morning, year round.  We've had a lot of fun training for some longer runs...freezing to death or roasting or even getting rained on (except Susan - she melts in the rain).  We have all done the Broad Street Run in Philadelphia for at least the last two years (I joined in last year but they've all done it more than that).  This is us last year after we finished the 10 miles.

Susan, Me, Mary and Jen

We just did it again on Sunday.  Everyone did great except for me.  I think I ripped a calf muscle but have to wait for the official diagnosis.  (It's official... I have a slight tear...it's much better already)  I hobbled the last 2 miles.  It wasn't fun.

Anyway, I'll never be one for a marathon but Mary ran her very first on Sunday, all by herself.  Running 26.2 miles on Mother's Day is not my cup of tea.  Nor is it the other 364 but it's very exciting for her.

Because she's such a good friend, I wanted to do something nice for her so she knew I was routing her on so this is what I came up with...yummy chocolate cupcakes with vanilla bean icing and inspirational cookie toppers.  I hope she likes them!  I had a much more grand idea in mind but you know what they say about best laid plans.  I need to practice my writing and get the right icing consistency.  That would be a start.  Also, I need to remember to take photos before I'm running out the door with the box.

And run she did.  Yippee!

Pinkies Chocolate Lunch Box Treats

Remember the Hostess SnoBalls of your youth?  I used to love those things so when I saw the recipe for Pinkies Chocolate Lunch Box Treats in The Back In The Day Cookbook I knew I had to try them.  I've had the book since Christmas but hadn't gotten a chance to try anything from it yet.  I think I baked far too much at Christmas and I was kind of done with cake for a while.

I even had the coconut extract that it required so I was good to go.  There are a lot of steps but it's not a hard recipe even though it does take a while.  The cupcakes were so good that I'll definitely use that recipe again.  I made the icing/filling which is an odd recipe with a cooked milk/flour slurry that you beat into butter and powdered sugar.  It does make a nice fluffy icing however I do have one problem.  I found that I really, really, really don't like coconut extract.  Who knew.  I don't think I ever used it before.  Also, they call for powdered food coloring which I didn't have but I used regular red liquid food coloring and shook up the coconut in a plastic bag until it was pink.  It worked pretty well. 

You have to remove the cupcakes from the paper liners and dig out a small hole in the middle for the filling. 

Mine weren't all that pretty but that's ok because you cover them in icing and coconut anyway.  So you pipe some icing into the holes and then you are supposed to refrigerate them but I didn't because I'm impatient.  Then you ice the whole outside (except for the bottom) and dunk them in coconut.  Place them nicely in a cute cupcake liner (that you can't see in this picture) and they turn out like this:

They look like what they're supposed to but I couldn't get past the coconut flavoring.  Frank and Dylan both liked them but I ended up making some plain vanilla buttercream and filling and icing some with that and topping them with coconut.  The cake was delicious and I'll definitely make them again but with just vanilla flavoring.  I think the coconut on the outside is enough.  Or maybe I just bought a dud bottle of coconut emulsion.  It's long gone now.

I'm looking forward to trying something else from this book.  During a lovely bout of insomnia last night I reserved four new cookbooks from the library so we'll see how that goes too.  I might actually find something else exciting to make.

Dr. Seuss's Birthday

When your dh teaches 4th grade, Dr. Seuss is a big deal.  In previous years he's done door decorating contests which I had lots of fun with.  This year they are doing stuff but nothing that I could entertain myself with so I had to come up with a plan on my own.

I googled Dr. Seuss cookies and found this.  I couldn't find neon food coloring but they turned out cute anyway.  I really wanted to do some royal icing decorated cookies and I found lots of lovely examples but the time constraints just wouldn't allow it so I went for these instead.

I used Georganne's (aka LilaLoa) vanilla variation recipe that you can find here.  It worked really well.  I didn't chill it first and used about 4 cups of flour.  Also I only used vanilla extract because that's what I like.

Anyway, here's the recipe:

The Vanilla Variation

from LilaLoa

 

1 cup butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

4 (or 4 1/2 cups) flour

Cream the butter and the sugar together well.  Add the eggs one at a time and mix well.  Add the vanilla.  Add in the salt and baking powder (which I think I used baking soda this time by accident and it worked fine).  Mix.  Add in the flour.  If you are using the dough right away you can add the whole amount of flour.  If you are going to chill it, stick with 4 cups even if it's a little sticky.  It will depend on the weather, the season, lots of things.  I used only 4 cups and used the dough right away and it was fine.



Separate the dough into however many colors you want and dye it with food coloring.  Using gloves is smart unless you like rainbow colored hands.

Pinch off a small piece and roll it into a ball.  I got about 25 or so from each color.  My purple looks brown in the picture.  It's not.  It's ugly purple.  I should have gotten a mixing chart out but I just squeezed in some red and blue and got a moderately unpleasant looking purple.  I doubt the 9 year olds will mind.

Take one ball from each color and make a ball, then start rolling it out into a snake like log.  Make note of the greasy fingerprints I've managed to put on my counter top from doing this!

Coil it around in a circle and place it on a baking sheet.  Leave a little room in between because they kind of puff up a bit. Bake at 350 for about 12 minutes.  I put the timer at 10 and kept my eye on them. 

The original idea I saw had sprinkles around the outside and while I did that they kind of ended up baking up underneath the cookie so they were unnecessary in my book.  I'll leave them off next time.  It might be nice to dip the rims in melted white chocolate and then dip them in sprinkles if you really want something like that but I lacked the time and the inclination to do it but it's an idea.

Also, after doing a whole tray with the bigger balls, I decided to pinch my colors in half and them put them together in a ball.

I liked the look I got with this better.  More variation in color.

Here's what they looked like when I got done.

They're colorful and Seuss like.  See how the sprinkles are?  I don't like that part but the rest is ok.  Plus I had fun making them.  We'll see how they go over.  And I promise the purple is prettier than it is in the photograph.

Chocolate Sable Cookies

I've been eyeballing this recipe on the Smitten Kitchen website for a week or more and I had to wait to get my dutch process cocoa from Amazon so I finally got a chance over the weekend to make these cookies.  Why grocery stores don't stock dutch cocoa I will never know.  I'm sure I could have found it somewhere but it's easier to wait for the UPS person.

 Anyway, they were worth the wait.  I had a little trouble with the recipe and made a few changes to the original recipe.  I had to add an extra egg yolk and when that didn't make the dough come together I added two more tablespoons of butter and beat the heck out of it.  That did the trick.  I was worried the texture wouldn't be sandy and sable like but they came out just fine.

See...

I have much baking on the agenda for Valentine's day.  These were just for us but I'm making a couple of things for my husbands 4th grade class.  It'll be fun.  Maybe I'll share.

What's Next

My house and my brain are in perpetual states of "what if".  I always want to do something but I need to come up with cost efficient ways to do so. We've had tons of company lately.  Some of the sleep over variety (which was fun) and some just for dinner which was also fun.  The sleep over company made me really get my act together.  The third floor of our house gets the least amount of attention from me so I spent quite a bit of time up there cleaning and organizing and throwing things out.  We managed to score a futon frame for free and I bought a mattress from Amazon so we had something for people to sleep on.  There was no way I was taking in a second hand mattress.  That stuff just screams bedbugs to me.  Ick.  Anyway, after I got that all figured out, I started working on the ugly, gross bathroom.  I scrubbed it until it sparkled and I bought a new, non squishy, toilet seat as well as a new shower curtain and some pretty bath mats.  It still doesn't help the ugly floor but at least it's usable.

My real goal is to get a dormer put in up there but unless I win the powerball that is probably not going to happen.  Last time I got an estimate it was $12,000.  If I want the bathroom redone, which I do, it would probably be another 10k.  I think if I did redo the bathroom I would opt for a double vanity and a stall shower but all of this is just dreaming anyway.  I have two kids to put through school so it's doubtful that any of this will happen any time soon.  Probably the best I'm going to get is to paint the ugly green trim white.  That I could afford.  And maybe a new light fixture too.  

If I knew then what I know now...

Overall, I'm extremely pleased with the kitchen, but as with most things, hindsight is 20/20 and there are a couple of things I would probably have done differently.  The biggest thing is that the refrigerator area lost about 3 inches between the plans and the actual building.  Because of this, when you open the freezer door, it bangs into the wall.  Plus you can't really open it all the way which will be a problem should I ever need to pull out the bins, etc to clean.  Knowing me, that won't happen often.  The other thing I would like to have changed is that the refrigerator door bangs into the dishwasher door if it's open at the same time.  This could all have been alleviated if only I had chosen a top/bottom fridge/freezer instead of a side by side.  But it wasn't supposed to be this way so there was no way to know that.  I also would have gotten an electrical outlet in the utility closet in the laundry area.  I'm going to have it put in because you need a place to charge up the little hand held vacuum and stuff.  Speaking of electrical, I would most likely have gotten the dimmer switches over by the desk instead of by the dining area.  It's a tiny thing but I tend to use the ones by the desk more and I like to have all of the switches either up or down.  It's a stupid thing but it's my ocd tendencies! 

Probably the biggest thing is that I might have gotten tile in the kitchen area instead of wood had we known that there was going to be a threshold in the floor the way there is.  See, another thing that couldn't have been helped.  Really, the only reason I would rather have less wood is because the dog is going to wreck it with his stupid nails.  He can't walk without spazzing out and he digs his toes in and makes scratches.  Lots of scratches.  We will have to save up so that when he dies we can have the floors refinished the next day.  The living room is so bad I finally had to take stain on some qtips and paint the deep scratches because they were so unsightly.  I was thinking of getting a runner in the kitchen but it's likely he would wreck that or I'll get it all greasy from cooking.  Hard to say.  I love the wood though and I hate cleaning grout so it's probably all for the best. 

Anyway, here are some pictures from the real camera:





This is what you see when you walk in through the dining room and pantry area

  



If you turned around, this is what you would have just walked through.  Pantry on the right, powder room on the left.

  





This is the family room.  The coffee table is temporary but will probably still be there next year.

   Someday I'll hang up the pictures.  It's such a committment.

Back to School

I'm always anxious to get back to school but there's something sort of sad about it as well.  My oldest started high school yesterday.  I find it hard to believe that he's that old.  The other sad thing about school starting is that my lovely husband has to go back to work and I kind of enjoy when he's home over the summer.  There are never any dishes in the sink when I get home and all of the annoying painting gets done.  This year it was the railings on the porch.  They look really nice too.

We've really been enjoying the kitchen too.  I can't explain how much nicer it is to have space and pretty cabinets with tons and tons of storage and a gigantic island.  Of course there are a couple of things I would change if I could go back but that's a post for another day and the list is really small.