Gummy McGee

Blockette finally lost her other front tooth this morning. 

It's about time too. The darn thing has been mildly wiggly since Christmas. 

 It was only attached on one side this whole week, but was very painful for her to wiggle it.

Her tooth was bothering her so much last night that I finally put some orajel on it, 

in hopes that it would lessen the pain (and whining.)  

This morning Mrblocko and I were awoken to the dulcet tones of how much her tooth still hurt.  

She left our room to get ready for school 

and not a minute later she came rushing back in...

tooth in hand.  

She was so proud to show off her gummy smile to all her friends at school!

Crazy Hair Day

Over the past few weeks Blockette's class has been doing a theme for every day. 

The other day was "Wacky Hair Day.  

I did the wackiest thing I could think of...Bantu Knots.

Blockette kept saying she was Madusa's little sister.  

She hissed and turned me to stone throughout out entire walk to school.

And here's what it looked like when I took out the "knots":

 Lots and lots of curly waves!  

When Blockette saw herself in the mirror she exclaimed, "I don't even look like myself!"

 Now if I could only figure out how to do this on my own hair!

Thankful Thurs #22

1. The tiny stingy bug nest I found under the daffodil leaves was vacant.

2. I got all the plants my uncle gave me in the ground.

3. My pepper plant has a tiny green pepper on it!

4. Hanging out with friends.

5. Helping out at church.

6. Getting everything we needed to get done over the weekend.

7. While dinner wasn't great it was still edible.

8. The second dinner in two days didn't turn out how it was supposed to, but it still tasted amazing.

9. It's been cold enough to do some baking.

10. My husband was very understanding when I freaked out in the middle of the night from some dumb show we watched before going to bed.

Quick Maple Molasses Bread

I was in the mood for some bread the other day, but I wasn't in the mood for expending a lot of effort, or even waiting for the dough to rise. This recipe from Cookie and Kate for quick molasses bread seemed like a splendiferous way to solve my lazy bread hankering dilemma.

This bread uses a liquid sweetener like molasses, maple syrup or honey.  As luck would have it, I had exactly 1/4 c molasses and 1/4c maple syrup.  I threw caution to the wind and used them both.  The resulting bread had pleasing hints of both the molasses and the maple, neither of which were too overpowering.

I also used half regular yellow cornmeal and half polenta/grits.  No special reason why.  I just wanted to play around with the texture of the bread.  The coarser grind of cornmeal was an interesting addition, but next time I think I will stick with the regular cornmeal.  At times I thought the bread was just a tad bit too gritty.

Surprisingly, this bread was super moist. It actually got moister the second day. That sort of weirded me out. I mean isn't bread supposed to get dryer with age? The bread was almost sticky on the top and I was worried that it would be a mass invitation for a mold rave on my tasty bread. So, after slicing off some bread for breakfast on day two, I left the bread uncovered for a few hours, then I stored the loaf in the fridge.

The fridge did help dry out the bread, but not so much that it became dry and crumbly.  They held their sliced shape very nicely.  You could eat a piece without worrying that it would fall apart in your hands, which is always a bonus with leftover quick bread.

I would totally make this recipe again, lazy bread cravings or not.

Quick Whole Wheat Molasses (or honey or maple!) Bread from Cookie and Kate
Oil or butter for greasing pan
1 1/2 c milk and 2 T cider vinegar (or 1 2/3 c buttermilk/plain yogurt) (I used milk and vinegar)
2 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour (or regular whole wheat flour)
1/2 cup cornmeal (I used half grits/polenta and regular cornmeal)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup molasses (or honey or maple syrup—anything but blackstrap molasses)

Heat oven to 325 F. Grease an 8"x 4" or 9"x5"loaf pan.  If using buttermilk or yogurt, ignore this step. Make soured milk: gently warm the milk gently (1 minute in the microwave will suffice) and add vinegar. Set the soured milk aside.

Mix together the dry ingredients. Stir molasses (or honey or maple syrup) into the soured milk, buttermilk or yogurt. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir just until combined. Pour batter into a greased loaf pan.

Bake until firm and a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, 45 min to 1 hr. Allow bread to cool in pan 15 min, then invert onto wire rack. Loaf will be easiest to slice when completely cool

Cheesy Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole

What can I say about this Cheesy Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole from Picky Palate? It was the best thing I've made in a long time, and that is saying something.

It was one of those dishes where I could do all the prep work ahead of time and toss everything together a half hour before we wanted to eat.  Of course you could do it all at once, but I like to do a little bit of this and that throughout the day if I can.  

The only bad thing, and it isn't really bad, was that the leftovers didn't taste nearly as good as the casserole straight from the oven. 

I think that the health factor of this dish could be bumped up by adding a cup of quinoa and some defrosted frozen corn, peas and green beans.  But it doesn't "need" anything else.  It's a tasty treat as is.

Oh, one more thing.  With all that cheese, the casserole came out of the oven just bubbling with the oils that had separated from the cheese.  If you are like me, that will totally gross you out.  I was able to soak up almost all of the oils by placing a paper towel on its edge in the oil.  The oil will wick itself up the paper towel.  Voila!  Ick is gone and family is happy.

 

Cheesy Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole from Picky Palate
3 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 med onion, finely diced
3 stalks celery, finely diced
3 carrots, peeled and diced
2 T fresh minced garlic
2 C shredded, cooked chicken breast (I used leftover shredded BBQ chicken)
2 C steamed white rice
2C prepared wild rice ( make mine in the crockpot)
1 t kosher salt
1/2 t black pepper
1/4 t garlic salt
______

Cheese Sauce
4 T butter
1/4 C flour
1/4 t kosher salt
1/4 t black pepper
2 C chicken broth
2 C plus l 1 1/2 C shredded cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 350F. Heat oil into a med pot over med heat. Saute onion, celery and carrots until softened, about 10 min. Stir in garlic and cook for 1 min. Stir in chicken, both rices, salt, pepper and garlic salt. Reduce heat to low.

To prepare cheese sauce melt butter into a med saucepan over med high heat. Whisk in flour, salt and pepper then slowly pour in chicken broth whisking continuously. Whisk until thick and nearly boiling then stir in cheese until melted. Pour cheese sauce into rice mix then transfer to a 9×13" dish. Top with additional cheddar cheese and bake for 25-30 min or until cheese is melted through. Serve.

Frosting Creations - Two Recipes

At the beginning of May I won this super cool haul of Duncan Hines Cake and Frosting Creations.  Our church had a bake sale to raise money for Relay for Life, and I thought this would be great to make some treats using my winnings.

The first thing I made were cake mix cookies from the Duncan Hines website.  The original recipe calls for a cherry vanilla filling packet and dried cherries.  I used the orange creme flavor mix instead and switched out the dried cherries for extra white chocolate chips.

I liked how they turned out slightly orange-y colored.  They tasted very orange creamsicle-like.  I sampled quite a few before packaging them up for the bake sale.  Quality control is the most important part of baking.

The other thing I made with the Frosting Creations goodies was cherry vanilla cola cakes, again from the Duncan Hines website.

I had seen this supposed cupcake baking trick on Pinterest.  As this was for a bake sale, I thought it would be a great time to see if I couldn't get a nice round dome on the cupcakes.  Everyone likes a pretty cupcake!  The prettier something is, the better it seems to sell.

Yeah, I'm here to tell you, that trick does NOT work.  If anything, it made the cupcakes even flatter than usual!

NOT. COOL. PEOPLE.

Luckily, I remembered I had these plastic punch sized cups in my pantry.  I took the wrappers off the cupcakes and placed the cupcakes inside the punch cups.  I put the vanilla cherry frosting creations into a large zip bag and piped it onto the cupcakes in the cups.

This worked out great until I realized that when you pipe frosting, you use twice as much frosting as you would if you just spread it on with a spatula.  Doh!

So I frosted the other half of the cupcakes with chocolate marshmallow frosting creations.  

My logic is that marshmallows go with everything.

These are the marshmallow ones. You can tell this because they have marshmallows on them. 

 See how fancy that is?!

FANCY!

The cups actually turned out to be a good idea.  I brought forks so that people could just eat them right away if they wanted to. People actually thought I did it on purpose. Of course I didn't correct them.

So what do I think about the actual Frosting Creations?  I got a bit freaked out when I was mixing the powder into the unflavored frosting base.  The powder had this weird chemical smell and the frosting was sticky and stringy.  There was one brief moment where I thought I was going to have to make a mad dash to the store for different frosting.  I made my husband test taste the frosting first.  When he didn't fall over and proclaimed it to be tasty, I tried some myself.  It tasted just fine!

I was glad that I had already decided to pipe the frosting on the cupcakes at this point.  With how stringy the frosting was, I would have made a huge mess trying to apply it with an offset spatula.

In my search to find something to make for the bake sale, I found quite a few recipes that I'd like to make.  Most of them just use the frosting and the mix in, and aren't cake at all!  As I have two cans of frosting and only one mix in left, I'll probably have to go out and buy some more Frosting Creations to try them all out.

Have you tried Duncan Hines Frosting Creations yet?  If so, I'd love to hear about what you made and how it turned out for you.

Crockpot Corn Chowder

My mom used to make this awesome corn chowder when I was a kid. It started out with cooking some bacon up and then cooking a whole mess of onions in the bacon grease. How could you ever go wrong with a recipe like that? You can't. It is a scientific fact that cooking something in bacon grease will make it better. I'm pretty sure bacon grease could solve world peace if we let it.

But I digress. I found this recipe for corn chowder in the crockpot from Real Mom Kitchen when I was looking for recipes to make from the leftover ham from Easter. I didn't expect it to be exactly the same as my mom's because, well it has ham, not bacon. But bacon and ham are kissing cousins so I was positive it would be close.

So I'm crockpotting away and I give the soup a taste test to see how things were brewing. Hmmm. Something was horribly tragically wrong! This didn't taste anything like my mom's chowder. Then I had a hand smacking the forehead moment. Duh. It's because there aren't any onions in this recipe you goof.

Lickety split I chopped up two small onions and cooked them until they had just started to turn light brown. Then I tossed them in the slow cooker. I thought that the soup could use a bit more corn, so I added a few handfuls of frozen corn to the mix. And then, just for kicks, I shredded up a large carrot for a hint of sweetness. I let the mix continue to simmer in the crock pot for another hour or so until we got hungry.

Yeah. That was more like it. Almost nearly exactly like my mom's, but not. Cause, well, no bacon. But I have proclaimed it good, so there you go.

Crockpot Corn Chowder adapted from Real Mom Kitchen
2 (14.75 oz) cans creamed corn
1 (10 3/4 oz) condensed cream of mushroom soup
2 1/2 cups skim milk
1 cup diced ham
2 cups frozen southern style hash browns (I used shredded because that's what I found in the back of my freezer)
2 Tbsp butter
salt and pepper to taste
2 medium to small onions, sliced in thin half moons
2T oil or butter to saute onions in
1 large carrot, shredded
1 c frozen corn

Saute onions in butter.  Place creamed corn, cream of mushroom soup, and milk in a crock pot. Whisk until soup is well blended into the mixture. Add remaining ingredients to crock pot and stir well.
Cook on low for 4 to 5 hours, stirring occasionally. You can add more milk if needed when finished cooking to reach desired thickness. (you can add the onions, carrot and frozen corn later if you choose, or dump it all in at the beginning.)