Alphabet Soup

First off, I have to tell you something you may or may not already know.  I have a trouble-maker.  Yes; yes I do.  Do not let his cuteness factor fool you.  He is a bona fide trouble-maker.  He's either going to turn my hair gray, make me pull all my hair out, or possibly both.  We're talking about the Sprout here. This shirt says it all.  Now, you are probably wondering what this has to do with Parmesan tilapia, right?  Well I'll tell you.  Right when the dish was ready to come out of the oven, I walked over, camera in hand to take a picture as I was pulling it out.  And I discovered that someone had managed to turn the self-clean cycle of the oven on.  And that the door to the oven was locked.  And I couldn't get it unlocked.  And the fish was still in the oven.  I managed to cut the self-clean cycle off, but the oven door was still locked.  I had no idea you could even turn the self-cle...

I have a confession.  I love butter.  Since I also love to bake, I try to keep a hefty supply of butter on hand at all times.  However, over the last few days, I managed to run out of butter!  I was ready to declare a state of emergency.  Well, ok, technically I had half a stick left, but that's just not nearly enough. When D sent me a text earlier this evening that he was about to head home, I asked if he would be willing to stop and pick up some butter.  Yes, I asked him to go to the store just for butter.  I wanted to make biscuits to go with supper!  Anyway, here is the text conversation that followed.  It amused me. Me:  I don't supposed you'd want to stop & get me some butter, would you? Him:  I could.  What type? Me:  Unsalted sweet cream.  Land o lakes or challenge brand. Him:  Ok.  How much? Me:  2-3 lbs. Me:  Just please make sure it's UNsalted.  :-) Him:  Holy $#%@ Me:...

No, this  is not some sort of weird April Fool's Day joke.  You really are viewing an actual blog post from me!  :) I mentioned before that we've had a lot of changes hit recently, and that we are homeschooling our 9 year old Munchkin.  We've been on that adventure for a little over a month and it is going quite well!  It is definitely a work in progress and we are certainly learning as we go, but for the most part we are all enjoying it. During the last month, the Sprout turned 3.  Three years old!!  Can you believe it?  We had his party at home, a Toy Story 3 theme of course.  I had all these grand Martha Stewart-ish plans, but forgot that I'm me, and ran out of time to get them all done.  However, I did get some "3" cookies made and decorated and was pretty proud of myself.  It was something new for me -- I'd never decorated cookies like that before.  I'd always wanted to, I just never had!  They may not look ...

You may have noticed that I've been absent from the blogging world for a few weeks now.  Without going into too many details, we've had some changes going on around here and are embarking on a new adventure with our 9 year old. That's right.  We are now homeschooling, at least for the rest of this semester.  It has been a challenge, be sure, but I have to admit that I'm really enjoying the extra time spent with him.  I think this new adventure will be good for all of us, in a lot of ways. So that's why I haven't been around as much lately.  I've been spending more time and attention on my family, and less on taking pictures of food.  :)  I do miss it, and hope to be around more often soon. 

Hey everyone!  I'm guest posting over at Frosting for the Cause today, and I made moon pies for the occasion.  Check it out!! Update 8/18/13:  It seems as though the Frosting for the Cause website is no longer up :( However, I have reposted the story and recipe HERE .

It's almost amusing to talk about the snow day we had a couple of weeks ago, considering that the temperature the last few days has been in the 70's!  Crazy, I know.  But anyway, we had a snow day at the beginning of the month.  Well, honestly, it was more of a snow-covered-ice with sub-zero windchill day.  The schools closed.  My husband even stayed home from work!  So, of course I wanted to bake.  And bake I did! I was able to cross making challah bread off my learn-to-do list , which was awesome!  My loaf of bread certainly wouldn't win any beauty contests, but it definitely tasted good.  I used this recipe from Red Star Yeast  (which I love by the way!), and I would use it again.  I mixed it up in the bread machine, then shaped it by hand and baked it in the oven.  I must make challah bread more often!! I also tried the Baking Illustrated chocolate chip cookies via Brown Eyed Baker .  I don't know...

Sometimes it's the simple things in life that are the best.  Like French bread pizza.  So quick and easy to put together.  And yet so good.  I had originally planned on making homemade pizza for supper on Monday, Valentine's Day.  But it was Monday .  Who had the bright idea to make Valentine's Day on a Monday?  I mean, seriously.  So, when I made a quick grocery store run earlier in the day I bought a loaf of French bread and decided we would go that route.  And get this, the bread was the only thing I had to buy.  Everything else was already in my pantry or fridge.  That means this meal only cost me 95 cents.  That's right.  Less than a dollar...if you only count what I had to buy yesterday.  :)  Even so, counting everything I used for it, less than 10 bucks, easy.  Random, but the bread came off the "day old" cart.  My mom used to call that the "used bread".  Honestly.  And the bre...