Lovely weekends

I've been feeling very much a homebody lately.  I've always enjoyed relaxing time at home, but it comes in phases (wholly depends on how much traveling I've done).  For the last year, we've traveled quite a bit; Boston for a wedding, holidays at parent's houses, trip to Cuba, preparations for our wedding in Rapid City (takes the cake for busiest time of year), honeymoon in OR, & Steve's cousin's wedding in Sioux Falls...and various other short trips thrown in there.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE traveling, but it can take a toll.

I've been stubborn about being home on the weekends recently.  Not necessarily everyday, all day - going out for a drink with friends is fairly common on the weekends - but I love getting off work on Friday & knowing I have a weekend filled with sleeping in, running, naps, working in the yard, baking, cooking, eating, drinking...

This weekend was one of those weekends.  :)  Saturday was rainy & cold, but I can't say I got much done.  Sunday was a different story.  Baked two loaves of pumpkin bread, cooked a batch of tomato sauce, prepared ingredients for French bread to begin rising on Monday morning, re-potted several indoor plants, & cleaned the chicken coop to prepare it for winter.  Success!  It helps the weather was fabulous on Sunday...sadly, probably one of our few nice days left for the year.

What's this? A blog?

It's been awhile since posting...and for that, I apologize.  It's been a busy summer - to say the least.  Here's a quick recap:

We got married....

I love that our first dance picture so closely resembles our cake topper

We've continued to work on the yard...

This area of the yard does not grow grass very well (so abundantly obvious in this picture), so we're working on maintenance free landscaping (note the rock path, the mulch, & addition of native, drought-tolerant plants).  The V-section between the slate path & the sidewalk will probably slowly become grass-free.  Our plans include semi-permanent "hot boxes" (small moveable "greenhouses" that we'll make using old windows from the house) & continuing to add the maintenance free landscaping.  A work in progress...

We've continued raising our four chickens...

The coop (with hops sitting on top of the weather proofing tarp)

The girl(s) have made us proud & begun laying eggs...  

(At this point we don't know who is laying the eggs, but we're almost positive it's Fenway, the Plymouth Rock White.  The pattern tends to be one egg every other day, although we had two days in a row of eggs.  They're small, closer to the size of a medium egg in the store, but delicious!)

We've been canning...

Apple sauce (with apples from a wild apple tree on one of Steve's project sites) & strawberry apple sauce

Canned peaches & peach salsa (not pictured)...

And chokecherry jelly from the abundantly wild chokecherry bushes around town...

And of course, we've participated in numerous races, both around town & outside the area.  (Sadly, no pictures of those at the moment)

That's our life in a nutshell for the past few months.  Regular blog posting shall now resume!  :)

Where does the time go?

I haven't been great about posting.  One would think with unemployment I'd have all sorts of free time, but my schedule at the Y is extremely spread out, so I'll teach a class, have one- or two-hour break, teach another class, etc.  It can get old, but at least they're paid hours.  Needless to say, those one- or two-hour breaks get eaten up pretty quickly.  One of these days I'll get back into a full-time job with a regular schedule...

Until then, I find myself regularly checking blogs.  One blog I've recently discovered & check obsessively is Refrigerator Soup.  It's a blog which features new recipes everyday - they're only requirements to be featured on the site are "great recipes accompanied by great photography."  They keep their displays limited to 40 per day to ensure the recipes will be displayed for a decent amount of time.  Looking through the various recipes, you'll see submissions by blogs from all over the world - fantastic!  Lots of variety too - if you like vegan, raw, gluten-free, whatever, you can probably find it here.  If you like to cook, bake, or make a mess in the kitchen while pretending to be a "cook" or "baker" (that's my forte), check out this website.  It's a great way to find new recipes & stumble upon recipe blogs that you may find becoming a personal favorite.

It's the site that brought me to a recipe for the breakfast pastry I'm shown making in the top two pictures.

Banana syrup(!?) and Tiramisu

I was at the store recently & happened upon this:

Banana syrup??  I was skeptical at first, but I read the ingredients list: white grape juice concentrate, banana puree, and xanthan gum (thickener).  I love bananas & thought this stuff would be excellent on pancakes (or ice cream!).  So I purchased said banana syrup, excitedly ran home, & the next morning whipped up some pancakes to try with banana syrup.  Below is the final product:

It was delicious!  I heated up the syrup & poured it over the pancakes, topping off with some walnuts.  Very tasty & a great way to add a lil' something different.

My next adventure was tiramisu for a beer-tasting party at a friend's house.  I found this recipe & decided to give it a go.  Steve had the excellent idea of replacing the coffee with his recently kegged homebrew stout - what an excellent idea!  We were going to a beer-tasting, so it was only appropriate to bring a beer-inspired dessert.  I also managed to find mascarpone & lady fingers at Safeway.  In our podunk town of Sheridan, WY, I was mighty surprised.  Especially for the mascarpone find.  A few pictures from the making (of course I forgot to take a picture of the final product, although it looked like the exact same as the website):

I think the lady fingers kind of look like fat worms in the top picture.

Close-up of second layer of ladyfingers before last topping of the mascarpone mixture (which, by the by, is de.li.cious.)

As our "kids," the pups get to help clean the beaters every so often.

Yum yum yum.

Overall, I was very happy with the recipe.  Guilty side note:  I ended up doubling the amount of the cream mixture but used the same size pan.  :)  Let's just say I didn't feel the first layer was quite enough, so I kept adding more until I had to make a whole other batch of the cream.  Also, you'll see I was using a springform pan.  Not for any particular reason other than I don't have any baking dishes.  Note to self: put baking dishes on wedding registry.

The only complaint I have stems from the lady fingers & I'm almost 99.9% positive the issue came from the quality of lady fingers.  I think they weren't great quality - they already looked wilted &; pathetic in the packaging.  Instead of blending seamlessly with the cream mixture, they kind of tasted like soggy cake & I barely dipped them in the stout/Irish cream mixture.  They definitely should not have tasted as soggy as they did after such a quick dip.  I'm fairly certain a better quality lady finger - one a bit drier & perhaps less "puffy" - would do the trick.

However, this dessert was very easy to make, and that, I like.

Rainbow Cupcakes, take two

As you might recall, I attempted rainbow cupcakes a few weeks ago with little success.  I decided to give them another go for a New Year's party.  Again, I used this batter recipe, but also tried the frosting recipe.  As you can see below, even trying a new technique with the batter (completely covering the previous layer), they didn't turn out as it shows on the website.  However, they did turn out better looking than the last round. The frosting, on the other hand, was a smashing success!  To keep the frosting festive, I followed the frosting technique from here.  Everyone at the party loved the look of the cupcakes.  I'm not sure if I'll continue trying rainbow batter, but the frosting is definitely to be used again.