Saturday, March 06, 2010

Life Strikes Again

Is it March already?  Holy crap that was fast!  Well, February is the shortest month...  *shrug*

I tried a few new recipes this month... and promptly made plans to change them up a bit to suit my needs.  *smirk*  Did you expect anything less from me?

After seeing these little gems on a food network show (can't remember which one... I watch 'em all!) I just had to try them out.  Doughnut Muffins!  I was so excited!  Gathered my ingredients, followed the instruction carefully... yea... I didn't bother to take a picture...  While the flavor was ok (kind of reminiscent of corn bread at first... Hubby said the same so I know it wasn't just me) the muffins themselves fell apart.  I greased and floured those pans to death... when it came time to take them out, the tops just fell right off.  Next time (and yes, there will definitely be a next time... these were good, just not great.  I have plans to make them great!) I'm thinking of adding a bit of vanilla to the dough...  and maybe using some brown sugar as well as white sugar...  see where that takes the flavor.  Now the instructions said to fill those muffin cups up to the top with about 1/2 C of  dough. I think I'll cut that, not quite in half, down to a little less than 1/3 C of dough...  My doughnut muffins had some huge muffin tops, not like the ones in the picture on the recipe page.  I think without the top being so huge, they'll stay together better.  They weren't a total wash...  I put all the pieces into a ziploc bag and we ate them just the same.  Now that I think about it, I'll prolly cut the recipe in half too... it originally makes 2 dozen large muffins.  We're only a family of four so we don't need much more than that.

I also made Ina Garten's Pesto the other day for a Spagetti Dinner the Rec Department hosted (yay for supporting local programs!).  Super Yum!!!  OMG this was soooo stinkin' good!  Next time I'll add a little more pepper, and maybe some extra garlic, but that's just a personal preference.

Another reason I haven't blogged here much... we have a new addition to the family!  Meet Jack, our Shih Tzu puppy!

Meet Jack


Now I've already gotten plenty of "That's not a REAL dog... he's just a barking cat!" or "Put a stick on him and you've got a great dust mop!"  Seriously?  Jack is P-E-R-F-E-C-T!  He's uber cute, very quiet and well behaved, low maintenance, less expensive than a larger breed to purchase and care for, incredibly loving and affectionate (nothing brightens you up at 4:30 in the morning when you're oozing down the stairs to bring your Hubby to work like a small ball of wiggling fur that is just DYING to see you!), and is happy living the quiet life.  We don't have a yard for a large dog to run around in... hell we don't even have a large house.  So, to all of you that have picked at my puppy, or the breed because you think they aren't real dogs...  Bite Me!  Grrrr...  ;)

And, sadly, I have decided to remove all of the pictures of my children from public view.  In the past I've put up their pictures, but not their names.  =/  So, if you happen to be flipping back through my blog and find the big white empty picture square... you'll know why.  I spent the better part of three hours on flickr changing the permissions on all of my photos that included my children.  I went through them, one by one by one by one...  I have almost 3,000 photos.  It seems that there's a new feature over on flickr called Galleries.  You can add any picture you find on flickr to a gallery of your creation, sort of like collecting your favorites all in one place so you can come back to them any time you like.  Well, some guy that had absolutely no information on his profile page (and I mean none, no name, age, location, occupation) decided to create a gallery of "Beautiful Boys."  All of the pictures included were of very young looking boys with longish hair...it just gave me a bad feeling in my stomach.  And, as if that wasn't enough, the same mystery man created another gallery just for pictures of my son.  That's it... That's All...  I was mad, and still am actually.  Why can't I safely show off pictures of the two best things I've done with my quiet little life?  I mean, if you're proud of something, you want to show it off... yes?  Why do I have to hide my children away from the world?  What happened to the way things were when we were kids?  The whole thing has just left me with a very sour taste in my mouth...

So... in short; the muffins need a bit of work, the pesto was excellent, I luff my new puppy dearly, and my kids will no longer be a part of the interwebs...

Happy Blogging!


No comments: