The cake contest

Mullet cakes, squished cakes, burning cakes.  This is the annual 4th of July cake contest!

Welcome, welcome to the annual Family 4th of July cake contest.  For the last number of years, Molly, her mom and her siblings (and their spouses) have taken part in this tradition.  This year was an especially good year.  The best so far.

First we have the " 'Merica Mullet" cake.  Liberty in the front, Freedom in the back!  Yeah, baby!

Next we have Big Tex.  For 60 years, Big Tex stood in the heart of Dallas Fair Park, welcoming all who entered the huge state fair.  Sadly, last year, his 60th birthday, he burned to the ground.  Here is a cake honoring the great Big Tex.

"Houston, we have a problem."  No, it wasn't Neil Armstrong who said that, but you know he wanted to when he saw Darth Vader pop out from behind his space craft.  "Houston, we've got an alien with a mask and a red pointy light standing next to the rover!" 

Next we have a homage to a great American tradition - hot dog eating contest.  Looks like he had a few too many.

And finally we have the beloved Texas road kill - an Armadillo.  No trip through Texas is complete without seeing one of these babies on the road.  No one in Texas has ever actually seen one of these things alive.

And that's it, folks.  Which cake will win?  Who do you vote for?

Let the canning begin!

I was very busy today.  I canned 2 jars of salsa from our homegrown tomatoes!  The funny thing is, I can't stand the touch or smell of any of the ingredients.  I don't like the texture of tomatoes and my eyes are still burning from the two onions I chopped, even though it has been more than 12 hours since I made the salsa.  However, I do like the smell of the cilantro I used.  The cilantro was grown in my herb garden.

I mentioned we had  two cucumber plants come up on their own this year.  They have produced at least 10 beautiful cucumbers and they aren't done.  This picture is from last week, when we first started harvesting from the garden.  There are also some pea pods.  Hubby cooked and ate those today.

We still have a ton of pickles that I made last year, but I didn't want this years cucumbers to go to waste, so I tried a new recipe tonight and made crispy refrigerator pickles.  They are cucumbers, garlic, dill, lemon juice and cold water.  We'll see how those turn out...

This is the jelly.  You can see the lovely colors.  The pink one is, of course, watermelon jelly.  The second is cover jelly and the third small jar is chamomile jelly.  Aren't they lovely?

Summer garden

We have a garden again this summer and it has been great.

I wrote back a bit about my herb garden and the things we have planted.  Here we are a month later and I thought I'd update.  But no pictures.  I've been rather lazy about the camera lately and my computer isn't reading my camera's card.

I've made three kinds of jelly this season:  watermelon jelly, clover jelly and chamomile jelly.  The clover was made from the billions of clover flowers growing right here in my own yard.  The chamomile was made from the chamomile flowers in my herb garden.  (I bought the watermelon)

The clover jelly is a light golden brown and was so delicious.
The chamomile jelly is almost clear, but with the lightest hint of golden color.  It's lovely, but I haven't tried any yet.
The watermelon jelly (more like a jam really, as it has some texture) is the loveliest pink.  It is tasty, but a little odd to taste watermelon in jelly form.

The funny thing is, I'm not a big jelly eater, but I love making the jelly.  Once we make it through this jar of watermelon, we'll open a chamomile next. 

Our garden has about 20 tomato plants.  Every plant has several tomatoes, and they are just now starting to turn red.  I picked four yesterday.  We didn't plant cucumbers, but we've had two volunteer plants come up and they are producing beautiful cucumbers.  I've picked four of those.  I'm not planning on picking this year.  We've still got about 80 quarts of pickles from last summer.

We have one strawberry plant that has produced 3 strawberries.  They are kind of little, sad, withered things, but I hear it takes a year and a half for them to really get established. 

So, this is our gardening/preservatives successes so far for the year.  I'm looking forward to more as the summer continues.  With the many tomatoes I hope we will get, I'll make the Hubby a lot of salsa and I will try my hand at tomato sauce for pasta.

Chocolate Covered Bacon.... wait, what?

There had been a party at my husband's work the other day.  He got to try chocolate covered bacon.  When he came home and told me, I couldn't believe it.  It sounded just wrong.  What's more is he said it wasn't bad.

How can that be?

That night we grilled burgers.  I had a pack of bacon and I fried it up to have bacon burgers!  Hubby mentioned to the kids about chocolate covered bacon.  They wanted to try it.  I pulled out the chocolate almond paste, melted a few chunks and we all had our try.

It wasn't bad!  Almost like a chocolate covered pretzel, sweet and salty.

My 12 year old son thought he was in heaven.  He has found his new favorite food.  Good thing I don't buy bacon often.  So, if you should ever get the opportunity to try chocolate covered bacon, go for it.  (In small chunks, obviously.  Don't go for an entire strip.)

picture: Choclate Covered Bacon from My Kind of Cooking

Pizza Cereal

The other morning, my three year old asked me for pizza for breakfast.  We didn't have pizza.  She asked again for the breakfast pizza.  I had not made a breakfast pizza.  Frustrated with me, she showed me what she wanted - Honey Combs cereal.

Yeah, I guess it kind of looks like little pizzas.  So now, when I list the cereal choices to her, she gets to choose between cocoa bombs, pizza cereal, or the stuff in the red bag.

What to join us for breakfast?

Birthday cake disasters

I've got many friends who, on their blogs or Facebook page, post pictures of these amazing cakes that they made for their children's birthdays or a friend's birthday.  It is simply incredible and some of them are a work of art.

Then, there are my poor cake decorated deprived children.  They have a mom who is seriously handicapped at cake decorating.  Seriously!!!  It wasn't always this bad, but it seems each cake I make just gets worse and worse.  Here is the most recent cake disaster:

Yeah, I know.  That's bad.  I don't even want to tell you what it makes me think of.  So, I made the cake, like normal.  After it was completely cooled, I took it out of the pan.  Well, it broke into about three pieces when I took it out of the pan.  Then I tried to ice it.  It just crumbled.  I've never had a cake do that.  NEVER!

Thankfully my son was very amused and forgiving of his mom's incredible lack of decorating talent.

This was my daughter's cake last year.  The two round cakes didn't sit well on top of each other and the top of the cake kind of slid off the bottom of the cake.  It was a mess.  She was forgiving as well.

Hey, my cakes may be ugly, but they are tasty.  There is nothing wrong with the way the cake tastes and that's the most important part.  Right? 

My husband an two older sons don't even bother asking for a cake, they want cheesecake and I can make some killer cheesecakes.  They are yummy!  This year, after seeing her brother's cake disaster, my daughter asked for ice cream instead of a cake.  Smart girl.





Canadian Style Mincemeat

The Hubby is a big fan of mincemeat.  Every Christmas season I make him a mincemeat pie.  I buy the brown goo in the big jar and pour it into a pie crust.  He is the only one who will east it.  I like it for maybe two bites and I'm done.  The flavor is just odd to me.  This year I thought it might be fun to do something different.  So, I was searching for mincemeat recipes and came across one that looked tasty.

It is called Canadian style mincemeat.  I don't know if it actually the way they eat mincemeat in Canada or if they get the brown goo in a jar like we have in the US.  Perhaps someone just called it that for fun and it has nothing to do with Canada.  I don't know.  If any friends from Canada can solve this mystery for me, I would be so grateful.

Well, whatever it is called and where ever it hales from, it looked good and I decided to try it.
It is apple cider, cranberries, craisins, apples, raisins, and spices.  It all gets dumped together into a pot, cooked, mashed and then stored in jars.

Simmering in the pot.  It smelled as wonderful as it looks.  Apples, cranberries and cinnamon. 
That's an amazing fall aroma.

Canned into jars.  It looks pretty.

Once I had this delicious concoction made, I had to try something with it.  I found a cookie recipe.  It's basically a sugar cookie with the mincemeat inside.  I used a heart shaped cookie cutter.  They turned out so very yummy.  These little cookies are perfect for an evening treat.  I heated up some apple cider to drink with my cookies.  If there are seasons in heaven, this is what you would eat in autumn in heaven.

Delicious little cookies

So there it is, Canadian style mincemeat.  I'll be making more of this stuff.  When the holidays are upon us, I'll make a pie with it.  Ooo, it will be so good.

Happy Hobbit Day

I have the greatest sister in the world.  I love to laugh and that is good because I laugh my hardest when I’m with my brothers and sister.  There was one week about seven years ago when my sister came to visit.  My hubby was out of her town.  She left her hubby at home because he was working.  It was just her and me (and several children).  We laughed.  I can’t think back to that visit without laughing.  The week involved stories about piñatas,  electric screwdriver home improvement projects, a noise at the side door late one night, and a day at a children’s museum where she and I had more fun than all the children at the museum.

My sister can do a dead-on Katherine Hepburn impression.  She calls me on the phone and suddenly I’m speaking to Katherine Hepburn.  Dahling, you will never know the amusing things we have to say to one another.

Yesterday, Katherine Hepburn, I mean, my sister called me and we discussed making seed cake for the day’s Hobbit festivities.  She told me a story about her husband and a party with his family that had me rolling on the floor with laughter. 

She is an awesome mom too.  She sings crazy camp songs and speaks in fake English accents to annoy the heck out of her children.  I wish I were as awesome as her.

Anyway, back to Hobbit Day.  I fixed porridge for breakfast that only my husband ate.  I wore the closest outfit I have to a Hobbit dress and an apron.  For dinner I fixed a dinner of bread, cheese, crispy bacon, and seed cake.  Wash it all down with white grape juice.  Mmm…. A great meal.  I wish I were an elf, who floated about in beautiful homes in beautiful forests, wearing beautiful clothes, but I realized that I am a Hobbit at heart.  And I’m OK with that.

PS, Happy first day of fall!  I love fall.

The pot of water

A pot of water sits on my stove from early October to late December.

I just turn on the stove, let the flames heat up the water, take my favorite mug and fill it with hot water and chocolate powder and voila!  Hot chocolate! 

Usually we heat up the pot of water in the morning for a cup of cocoa before school.  However, I like to heat up the water at night, after everyone has gone to bed.  I sit at the computer, listen to my school's lectures, and sip hot cocoa.  It's the only way to do class work.

Prickly Pear Jelly

A neighbor down the street has a nicely landscaped yard filled with cactus. My kids have to pass it each day walking to and from the bus stop. They call it Cactus Alley. Earlier in the week, we notice their prickly pear cacti were dropping huge fruits. So last evening, Hubby and I went to meet the neighbors and ask them if they would let us have some of the fruit if they weren't going to use it. The said take what you want, so we did.

Hubby had a leather glove and a grocery sack. He picked a lot of fruit, about 8 pounds of it. We came home and I started to read about making jelly from the fruit. Hubby, meanwhile, started to pull the needles from his fingers where they went though the gloves.

I don't do jelly much, in fact, I've only done it once. I don't keep the supplies around to can things on a moment's notice. After some research, I had simple step-by-step instructions. With the use of tongs, I washed the fruit, cut them into quarters and boiled the fruit. I ran to the store for cheesecloth, lids, and pectin. I had about 6 jars without lids that were in good use condition. Last night before going to bed, I drained the juice though a strainer and ended up with a lot of beautiful orange juice.

Draining the fruit. It isn't pretty once it's been boiled and mashed.




The most beautiful orange I've ever seen. I'm always amazed at the colors in nature.


This morning, with instruction in hand, I made the jelly. I'm never sure if it works. I guess every one who makes jelly has the same worry. I'll know tomorrow by 11:00 am if the jelly set or not. If not, I guess we'll have prickly pear syrup. Isn't it a gorgeous color?



I was able to get 8 cups of juice out of those fruits. My recipe only used 2 1/2 cups and I got enough to fill 3 of the 8 quart jelly jars. I'll be doing two more batches. I need a lot more jars! I want some small jars. If this works, I want to be able to give some away as gifts. There is no way we'll be able to eat all the jelly we'll be able to make from this batch of juice. Watch out, friends, you might get a jar of Molly-made Prickly Pear Jelly for Christmas!

mmm, dessert

We were all having a sweet tooth moment yesterday. I looked through the pantry at the dwindleing supplies. I'm doing my best not to go grocery shopping this month and save money by eating what we have in the pantry. So, looking through what we had I found a can of cherry pie filling and an idea came to me - cherry pizza!

I looked up a recipie online for a sweet pizza crust and found one that was perfect. It's basically a sugar cookie recipie. I baked it for a few moments alone, then I added the cherry pie filling, some pecans, and some chocolate chips. I put it back into the oven for a few minutes to let the cherries warm up and the chocolate chips melt. When I pulled it out of the oven, I piped on some cream cheese frosting I made. Look at the result:

Wow Wee! It was good!

pumpkin time

We planted a pumpkin in our garden. Well, we actually planted 5 pumpkins, but only one germinated. We picked it a few weeks ago and it has been sitting pretty in our dining room, but it was time to do something with it. After much reading on the Internet I learned how to make pumpkin puree.

First, we start with our lovely pumpkin:


Next, I cut the pumpkin and took out the seeds and stringy innards. I saved about 20 seeds. We'll use these next year. As you can see, this pumpkin's insides weren't very orange, they were more white.


I placed the pumpkin half on a cookie sheet with some water and baked it for about an hour or more. This is the pumpkin after I took it out of the oven. It was very, very hot! It sat there for a while until I could pick it up to move it.


Next, I used a spoon to scoop out all the meat from the pumpkin into a strainer. I was really amazed at the amount of water in the pumpkin. After it drained for a while, I used a hand held blender and pureed it.


Today I took the puree and made a pie out of it. I got about 6-8 cups of puree from this pumpkin. I'm not exactly sure how much, but there is a lot. Half is in the freezer and half in the fridge. I'll be making pumpkin recipes for a while! I love pumpkin. And this one is my own pumpkin. I'm very happy and excited about the fruits of my garden!