Alphabet Soup

Happy Belated Fourth of July everyone!! Christi and her family came over yesterday, and I decided to celebrate the occasion by baking... a lot! :) She had requested homemade ice cream. I was happy to oblige that request! I tried a new recipe, which can be a scary thing when you're having company over, but this one is definitely a keeper! A friend had shared this online article about ice cream with me, and I chose to try the Vanilla Bean Ice Cream recipe. It has some ingredients in it that I would never have thought of in ice cream - namely cream cheese and cornstarch! But they worked. With great results! If you've never made vanilla bean ice cream, you should definitely give it a try at least once - you won't be disappointed! And I can highly recommend this recipe. It is simple and easy to follow. I should also add that the size of the recipe is made for a smaller electric ice cream freezer, like the one I have . If you have a larger one, you may have to play around with d...

getting a facelift. I'm playing around with it, as you may have noticed, depending on when you've clicked on it!! :) I'm trying to create my own background, which is fun and frustrating at the same time!! To give credit where it's due, and just in case you're wondering, I've been using the instructions here , page elements from here , and this scrapbooking software. However...it's getting late, and I should really be asleep! So, while I know it still needs some work, I'm going to bed now!! But yes, I'm aware that it's not quite right... ;) Later!! Update: Ha! Harder than I thought. I've had to revert to one of the templates...for now! ;)

So, I realize that there is a certain restaurant that serves a menu item called "Spasagna" - a cross between spaghetti and lasagna. However, I have never tried it. None of my family has. I'm just throwing that out there...remember it later. :) I was watching a show on television last week and it featured an Italian restaurant owner that was making a dish that was a spaghetti-lasagna hybrid. I'm not even sure what he called it. But it looked and sounded really good. I went online to search for a recipe, but didn't find one that called to me. Many of them included spinach, and while I would like it and I'm sure Kade would, I know that the others in my household would not. So, I decided to wing it and come up with something on my own. As I was working on it tonight, Sean kept coming in and asking if supper was ready. Then he asked what we were having. I explained to him that it had all the ingredients of lasagna, but I used spaghetti noodles and mixed it all up....

What a perfect week to get back to baking! This week, Jessica of My Baking Heart chose Parisian Apple Tartlets . At first, I thought "oh no, how complicated is this going to be?" especially since I was coming off a week with sick kids. But after reading the recipe, I thought "is that all? I can definitely do that!!" It is a super simple, yet super delicious recipe! Sheets of frozen puff pastry are cut into circles, chunks of peeled and cored apples are placed on top, sprinkled with brown sugar and dotted with butter, then baked. And then enjoyed!! I will admit that I added cinnamon to the apples, but then again I love to add cinnamon to lots of things. :) I even baked ahead, making these for dessert on Sunday night. They were enjoyed by most. Sean being the exception, but take his reviews with a grain (no, a whole shaker!) of salt...he doesn't like much. I highly recommend trying these. In fact, I'll be making them again for dessert tonight. And be sure t...

Hi all! Well, yes I know. It's been a long time. I'm not even going to try to make excuses. I just haven't been able to blog like I wanted to. But I'm back. Hopefully. LOL Anyway, the last few weeks we've been eating out too much. It's just habit. A bad habit most of the time! And too convenient. Stop and get pizza on the way home from Tae Kwon Do. Stop and pick up burgers on the way home from piano. Have D stop and get burritos on his way home from work. The thing is, we're all kind of burned out on eating out. Even Sean has said he'd rather just go home and have ramen noodles. One of his favorite things, lmao. But Saturday was when it really hit us. Both boys have been sick over the past week. D and I were both exhausted. We were all hungry. And the food network had been running BBQ episodes all day. BBQ! That sounds good! Let's go pick up some! So, I went to a place we hadn't tried before...had to drive across town to ...

Growing up, my dad would often cook breakfast on Sundays. It certainly wasn't gourmet. Often, he just made pancakes from a mix, or he'd fry up some eggs and make some toast. Whatever it was, I loved it when my dad made breakfast on the weekends. When the Munchkin was little, I started cooking breakfast on Sundays, and I loved it just as much. It was usually either pancakes or waffles, as he loves both of those. I had moved past the pancake mix stage of life, but will readily admit that my fallback recipes come from an old Betty Crocker cookbook that my grandmother gave me. One Sunday while I was pregnant with Sprout, I just didn't feel like cooking breakfast. My mom picked Munchkin up a little early (he usually spends part of Sunday at my parents' house) and they stopped by McDonald's to pick up breakfast. It was all over after that. He only wanted McD's for his Sunday breakfast. At the time, I didn't have the energy to protest, so I let it go. And it...

Well, here it is. I finally just decided to throw one picture up and at least post my review. Lauren of Upper East Side Chronicle chose Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding. I was excited about it -- it sounded very good. It was...interesting. All of my testers agreed that it was good, but they've enjoyed some of the other things I've made more. I concurred. It was good, very rich, but probably not something I'll be rushing to make again anytime soon. I will say that I used challah and it wasn't quite stale, so it didn't soak up as much of the liquid as perhaps it should have. Also, I left the raisins (or cherries) out. I don't know...it wasn't bad, but it wasn't my favorite either!! At any rate, be sure to check out what the other TWD bakers did with this week's recipe (and hopefully I'll be more on time next time!!)