Cornbread Aftermath

Daniel made the corn bread to go along with dinner tonight. He did it all by himself. (I'm sure it tastes fine.)

I was a little surprised at the amount of measuring cups it required to get all the ingredients into the batter. I didn't realize it had that many ingredients! (I'm sure it tastes fine.)

Here are the dishes he left on the counter when he was done. I'm guessing (hoping) that the mixing spoon is in the sink. It obviously isn't Daniel's night for dishes, or he might have been more conservative. Then again, it probably wouldn't have mattered.


The cookie sheet is not part of his mess...it's part of mine. ;)

I can't wait to try some of that corn bread! (I'm sure it tastes GREAT!)

Playing in oatmeal

Since Sarah hasn't been feeling well, I haven't been getting much done. And I'm about at the end of my patience with handling a cranky toddler. So when I was trying to make dinner while also making a batch of bread (yeah, it wasn't the best time to do that), I reverted to the oatmeal trick.

It's fun to play in and completely edible. And not very hard to clean up - very important when turning it over to a 19-month-old. Sarah got at least 20 minutes of fun out of this activity and I got to make dinner without her hanging on my legs. Her fun ended when the older kids came in from whatever they were doing outside and started taking over.

Please try to ignore my obnoxious voice in the video.

FOOLish

I've been missing! Actually, I've been in Chicago. There will be more on that another day.

But today was April Fools' Day. And what a day it was!

Here was one of the biggest jokes played:


We drove home in a blizzard last night. The snow (magically) stopped at the state border, but it caught up with us today. The kids made several large (3-4 foot diameter) snowballs in only a few seconds. They were in heaven.

Then Daniel got one of his bright ideas and Chad's hand saw.

A snowball wedge anyone? You may notice Daniel's lack of winter gear. That's the foolish in the April Fools' day. I would say it's his age, but I rather think it's just him.

Because we were out of town until late last night, my April Fools' Day (from now on, it will be AFD) planning was poor. Actually, I forgot all about it until earlier this morning, I think. Last year, we were visiting in Utah and I had to resort to pouring chocolate milk on the kids' cereal. There was even less planning then. Two years ago, I went all out. (Read about it here, but scroll down most of the page to find it.) Today I found some good ideas that didn't require much work or planning.


We had cake for dinner and baked potatoes for dessert.
Leah referred to the cake as "healthy cake". She just didn't know exactly what it was...until we cut into it.

It's meatloaf layers and mashed potato frosting with cherry tomato strawberries and ketchup writing. It was very yummy! We also had salad.

Daniel was not enthusiastic about his dinner.

We hinted about dessert enough that he finally choked it down...mostly.

Dessert was vanilla ice cream, shaped and rolled in baking cocoa powder, with a dollop of whipped topping sour cream. It wasn't until the kids actually dug into their potatoes that they realized it was ice cream. :)

This was a lot of ice cream to eat in one sitting! And I think I've had enough cocoa powder to last me a little while.

Here was one of the potatoes before I started peeling. I almost felt sorry for this guy! He looks like he knows what's coming. Those eyes came off nicely under my vegetable peeler. I thought it was a very appropriate potato for the occasion.

Sarah sat in the high chair and played with her tray during dinner. What a cute girl!

Now, Easter is officially the next holiday. I boiled 3 dozen eggs this morning. We'll probably decorate them tomorrow night. I also got out the Easter bin to take a mini inventory. I found another AFD surprise inside:

Somehow, we missed this little fellow in one of the Easter baskets last year. Two peanut M&Ms sat out in the garage for a year. If I was about 30 years younger, I'd probably eat them anyway. They've surely melted and frozen a time or two. Yummy. I threw them out; Joseph cried.

And speaking of Easter...the girls wore their dresses to church on Sunday. Leah's holding her matching purse, but you really can't see it against the dress. Joseph is missing a shoe as a result of a tantrum at picture time. What a great-looking bunch of super kids!

Yeast and Potatoes

Sunday, as most of you know, was Fast Sunday. Fast Sunday always means a very hungry Chad and for some reason, anything I make for dinner seems gourmet. (I need all the help I can get!)

This past Sunday, I was giving him the directions to get some rolls started when he got home from church. (I stay after for choir because although I am released from directing it, the memory of begging more people to join keeps my attendance up.)

I thought I was writing down very good instructions for the rolls. Unfortunately, I must have assumed that Chad could read my mind. I didn't even think to tell him that the yeast in the fridge isn't labeled "yeast" and he opened a new package.

I buy the SAF yeast that's in those big square packages at the grocery store. It's vacuum sealed and expands a bit upon opening...something else Chad didn't know (but does now).

So when I got home, Chad mentioned that there had been a bit of a yeast explosion. We probably lost about a 1/4 cup of yeast (or so). There was still quite a bit on the counter and floor. If I cleaned a little deeper, I'd likely find more.

Today, I was getting potatoes out of the bag to wash for dinner. The potato bag had been sitting on the kitchen floor because we're too lazy to walk it back down to the store room. When I picked the bag up off the counter again, I saw a few little piles of yeast. I was thinking he must have really had a big mess to have gotten this much yeast on this counter, too!

Ahh...now I see! The yeast is IN the potato bag. Wow. He really did lose a lot of yeast!

Oats

When I need to work in the kitchen and can't get Joseph to stop "helping" me, I put a little dry oats into a container or two and give him some measuring cups/spoons to play with.

He loves to play and leaves me alone long enough to finish what I'm doing. It does get all over of course, but it's not a wet or sticky mess and I can usually scoop most of it back into the container. The rest just gets swept up and thrown away, but that usually less than 1/4 cup.

Unfortunately for Joseph, he's not the only one that thinks it's fun to play in the oats!

Well Done!

Not really. I spent some time baking today. I didn't have the greatest results. I was working on formatting pages to print my blog (more on that another time) and watching an ending eBay auction at the very time my 5 loaves of bread should have been coming out of the oven.

As it turned out, I lost the auction and now get to cut the crusts off my bread or pay to have the family's teeth capped. Those are some very dark brown loaves of bread.

But that experience wasn't enough for me.

It's Joseph's b-day on Friday and I was baking his cake. I started it too late, which is the real problem. It's a big cake pan and had two cake mixes in it. I needed to leave for a doctor's appointment and the cake was still very jiggly in the middle. So I turned the temp down to 300 degrees and left a note for Daniel to turn the oven off when he got home from school - 40 minutes from then.

I tried calling Daniel from the doctor's office. I was calling to him through the answering machine but had to hang up when he didn't pick up. He said he heard me but couldn't find me! When he checked the garage and saw that the van wasn't there, he figured he'd imagined it. I finally did get him to answer the phone a little after 4. I asked him if he'd turned off the oven. I should have taped the note to the front door or television, because he really had no chance of finding it otherwise. I told him how to turn off the oven and asked if anything smelled like it was burning. The very brown bread was still on the counter, so I'm sure things already smelled burnt anyway.

So the cake cooked for 45 minutes on 350 and 70 minutes on 300. It's not burned (I know...amazing), but it's a little dry on one side. Luckily, it's two cake mixes, so there will still be enough cake to eat.

Chad asked me tonight if I was going to do any baking tomorrow. I probably should have kicked him, but I just replied that I'd probably better not.

And the doctor appointment that we were rushing off to? Sarah and Rebekah had check-ups today. Sarah got 3 shots and an oral vaccine. Rebekah has been granted a stay until next year when she gets her Kindergarten shots. Sarah is 57% and 56% in her height and weight. Rebekah is 20% and 50%. That's better than their mother who's probably 20% and 95%. I'm trying, though. The scale was kind to me this morning. I hope I didn't ruin by eating too much crustless bread for lunch!

Using my Noodle

I went to a noodle making class this morning and made my first noodles tonight. Here are the noodles that we didn't cook, waiting to be thrown into a bag and frozen. (They are sitting in flour so they don't stick to each other.)



I ground the durum wheat and went from there. One more step towards Molly Mormon. I've still gotta master knitting.