It's Wine-Thirty!

More cooking

Not much has been going on here.  I've been busy with work; no necessarily the type of busy that makes money right away, but busy just the same.

When I haven't been working, I've done a bit of cooking.  Last night's meal was Minnesota Wild Rice casserole .  My mom used to make this for us when we were kids.  She got her recipe out of a magazine, and I found mine on the web.  It's a delicious, easy meal to make, and I always have some leftovers if I double the recipe.  If you like sausage and rice, you'll love this recipe!

The kids have tomorrow off from school, so I plan to spend the day relaxing with them, and possibly digging out my spinning wheel and some fiber.

And in case you thought I had completely forgotten about Saturday Sky, I actually did take pictures of the sky on Saturday; I just never got around to posting them.

Are these clever or what?

I saw these after a member of the Variegations posted asking if any one knew how to make these Knit Night Cupcakes.  After searching around, the author put a tutorial on her blog.

I wonder if maripan holds up in the warmer months?

I'll post more this weekend.  I'm out straight with work, and shouldn't even be checking out things like this, but a diversion once in a while is nice.    :)

Pho?

Today has been an interesting day.  I worked this morning, and met my husband for lunch this afternoon.  We had some errands to run up town, and decided to have lunch at a restaurant that specializes in Pho (rhymes with "duh") rice noodle soup. 

I love soup.  I'll eat almost any kind of soup, especially when I am starting to feel like I'm fighting a cold (which is getting worse as the day goes on).  I selected a soup with rare steak, onions and green onions (all of the other soups either had tripe in them, or squid, and I don't like either one of those things).  I figured, how can I go wrong with this?  But I wasn't aware that Pho has chinese five spice powder in it.  There are few  herbs and spices that I don't like.  Infact, I love putting herbs on my fried egg whites, or just about anything.  But Chinese five spice powder and cardamon are two spices that give me a headache.  So by the time we left the restaurant, I had a headache, and as the day has worn on, I'm starting to feel like I'm really getting a cold.  Ick!

The only plus side to all of this is it will allow me a chance to rest and keep working on the Ribby Cardi for tonight.   I finished the back last night, and started on the left front piece.

I only hope that the Airborne I'm taking will kill the cold so that I can make 24 cupcakes for Nathaniel's kindergarten class to celebrate his birthday.  I can't believe that he'll be 6 years old tomorrow!

And she cooks, and she cooks, and she cooks some more!

Yes, my life has revolved around cooking.

The last few weeks (aside from having the flu, and then catching a cold right after that), I've been baking up a storm, and making all kinds of goodies in the kitchen.

I made a Georgian Chocolate Pound cake on Monday, which the boys just finished off this morning. 

Last night I made clam chowder, from the Sconset Cafe, on Nantucket.  I tried this chowder back in '92 when I shared a house on the island for a summer.  It was and still is, the best tasting chowder I've ever had.  It isn't gluey like so many "chowders" that you get in restaurants, but is light with a wonderful clam/herb flavor.  I have enough for left overs tomorrow.

And this morning, I made Taco Soup, from a recipe I found off of Food Network.  The soup is very easy to make (let's face it, canned beans, corn and chili's don't take long to open <g>), and it is tasty too.  Boo and I had some for lunch this afternoon.  The recipe makes a very large stockpot full of soup, so don't plan to make this unless you want a lot of leftovers.

And a small portion of this afternoon was spent making 45 rose buds for the wedding cake for Tuesday nights class.  It is part of my final, and having missed the last two classes due to illness, I'm hoping I can pull this off.   Working with the fondant was interesting.  It dries very quickly!  So I had to work extra fast getting those buds done.  And then the fondant also doesn't taste very good.  It is Wilton's fondant, and I've been searching the internet, looking around for some from Ateco, but I can't find any stores in my area that sell their fondant.  I really want some vanilla and chocolate fondant.  I saw a clip today on how to make a marblized fondant, and I'd really like to do that for my class.   

I'm sorry that I don't have any pictures for today's post, but my camera hook-up for the computer bit the dust, and DH is using his at this time, so we'll be without photos today.  But maybe tomorrow, I can take pictures of the rose buds as they continue to grow.   :)

Baaaaa

Thanks to Christine, I now know that I can make a sheep from Wilton cake decorating. 

Isn't that cute?  Maybe I'll have to do a sheep wedding cake for my final at the end of January.    ;-)

I wanted to show you this  cow cake too.  Isn't it cool?

And, (drum roll please!), I picked up a part time job!  YEAH!  I was hired over the phone after they saw my experience in customer service.  How cool is that?  I can even decide what events I want to work.   This is like the perfect part time job for me; not too many hours so that I'm working every night, but enough for some extra money each week.

Ta-Dah!

I have successfully completed Course 1!

We learned how to make roses last night in classs, and these were the ones that I made.  I was able to get most of the cake put together last night (it was already frosted when I took it to class), but I did get the roses and leaves done at class.  My small flowers weren't hard enough to put on last night, so I just finished adding them a few minutes ago.

We'll be cutting into this tonight after dinner.    :)

My next class starts next Tuesday; we'll be learning how to make more flowers and basketweave.

Wah - Lah!

I wanted to show of my latest creation.  I'm taking a Wilton's Cake Decorating class at Michael's in Hadley.  Our homework was to bake a cake and frost it.  In class, I made the rainbow.   We also learned how to make stars, and write with icing.

I'm finding this class to be a lot of fun.  I'm taking it with my friend Alicia, who used to be the kid's preschool teacher.   It took longer to make two batches of the cake decorating icing than it did to bake the cake (and yes, it is from scratch; it is a black devils food cake with the recipe from my 1958 Betty Crocker cookbook).  The kids were pretty impressed with it when I brought it home from class last night.  And even happier when they got to eat cake for breakfast this morning.   :-D

Next week we learn how to make roses, clowns and other flowers.

Be careful what you wish for...

:D

Actually, I can't complain.  I've been wanting to get a lot of work lately, and last week it happened.  I even had a trip out to two different towns in the Berkshires for work, and it is all good.  More work means more money, and right now, with DH still unemployed, that is always a good thing.

However, I did have to give up going for a hike with my husband and kids yesterday in order to finish a job, but hey, it was for a good cause.   :)

Anyway, I've been out and about.  But not slacking off.  Last week, I spent a lot of time baking.  On Saturday, the 28th, I made cranberry orange muffins, with fresh cranberries and freshly peeled orange rind.  Sunday, I made cheese and sausage muffins.  These were like eating a complete Sunday breakfast in one muffin.  My youngest son Nathaniel (a true foodie in the making) said that these were the best muffins ever.  Tuesday for Halloween, I baked 48 mini-muffins (chocolate-cola flavored; not as bad as they sound, but a bit more dense than I would like).  I really only needed 24 for Calvin's class party, but DH thought that Nathaniel's class was having a party too, so I just made two batches.  I will say that there is something wrong with having to go to Walmart at 7 a.m. just to buy a mini-muffin pan.  And even though I'm a morning person, I'm not a psycho morning person like some of the sales clerks I saw at Stop and Shop.  Scary!  Wednesday was a box of Trader Joe's truffle brownie mix (yes, I baked box brownies).  But I did put them into the mini-muffin cups, which made things fun for the kids.  Thursday and Friday were just too busy to do any baking, but Saturday was different.

I had my knife skills class over at Lamson and Goodnow in Northampton.  Wow!  I learned so much in such a short time.  I was making fine dice within 20 minutes of learning proper techniques for holding the knife, what type of knife to use for what jobs, honeing the knife, and we even boned a chicken breast and filleted it.  I was feeling rather confident by the time the class was over, and purchased a boning knife to add to my growing collection of Lamson forged knives. 

And to help my neice Megan, I took Flat Stanley to cooking class with me.  On the way to our class, I saw that our local fire department was conducting a training exercise by burning down an old house.  Here is Flat Stanley and I checking things out:

   

We arrived a bit late for class, but our instructor Robin was very nice about it.  We learned how to dice, jullienne, chop, hone the knives, proper care techniques and even how to bone a chicken breast.  Here is a picture of Flat Stanley and Robin. 

Since Sunday was a work day for me, I spent most of the day at the computer, except for 2 hours watching Top Chef late in the afternoon.  I know, it is a reality tv show, but I'm hooked on cooking shows and this one is a lot of fun to watch.  Plus, Bravo makes all the recipes available on their website, and some of them look really good.  Cliff's fish sticks and mac and cheese recipe look like one I'm going to try soon.

Anyway, here is the recipe for the sausage and cheese muffins.  Remember that these are very dense, and filling.  You might want to freeze any remaining muffins for the following week to reheat.

1 lb. of good quality ground breakfast sausage

1 small onion, chopped fine

2 cups all purpose flour

2 Tbsp superfine sugar

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

3/4 cup milk

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

Heat your oven to 375 degrees.  Grease or line a 12 cup muffin tin.

Cook the sausage over high heat until cooked through and golden, about 10 minutes.  Break up any large pieces into smaller pieces with a wooden spoon.  Remove the sausage from the pan and drain on a paper towel.  Add the onion to the pan, and cook until soft, about 4 minutes.  Remove the onion to a plate and set aside.

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.  In a separate bowl, mix together the milk, egg and melted butter.  Add the egg mixture all at once to the dry ingredients, together with the cheddar cheese, sausage and onion.  Mix briefly until just combined.

Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups dividing it evenly.  Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes or until well risen and golden.  Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.  These muffins are best served warm.