It’s Daring Bakers Challenge time!

This month’s Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. She chose gluten-free (or not) graham crackers and Nanaimo bars.

This sounded like the perfect challenge for me, as the graham cracker recipe was from 101 Cookbooks, which I believe I’ve mentioned before as one of my favorite food blogs. I’ve been meaning to make it, and here was the perfect excuse. The Nanaimo bars sounded intriguing, and when someone posted a Weight Watchers recipe for them, I was over the moon.

So, here’s where I went wrong. Instead of doing the work well ahead of time, I procrastinated, working on slippers, the afghan, a dress, some nightstands, and all sorts of things that did not involve baking graham crackers. Time came and went, and before I knew it, it was today. I got up from watching the State of the Union address, started to make dinner, and suddenly realized that today is the day I’m supposed to post the outcome of my DB challenge. It’s 8:30 p.m. by this point, and I’m short a couple of ingredients. What do I do? I fudge it, get in a hurry, and forget a vital step.

Here’s the Weight Watchers recipe:

Nanaimo Bars

POINTS® Value: 3
Servings: 16
Preparation Time: 18 min
Cooking Time: 60 min
Level of Difficulty: Moderate*

Sweet, crunchy and delicious, this treasured Canadian dessert keeps well in your fridge for when chocolate cravings soar!

Ingredients
1 cup(s) graham cracker crumbs
2 Tbsp chopped walnuts
2 oz milk chocolate chips
1/8 cup(s) packaged shredded coconut
3 Tbsp reduced-calorie margarine, melted
1 oz fat-free sugar-free instant vanilla pudding mix
1 cup(s) fat-free skim milk
5 oz lite whipped topping
4 oz semisweet baking chocolate
1 Tbsp reduced-calorie margarine
Instructions
Line bottom of an 8 X 8-inch baking pan with parchment or waxed paper.

Place graham cracker crumbs, nuts, chocolate chips and coconut in a food processor; pulse until combined and then add melted margarine. Stir together and pour into prepared baking pan, patting down crust evenly on the bottom; place into freezer for 10 minutes. (Note: If you cannot find graham cracker crumbs, crush 6 whole graham cracker sheets into crumbs in a food processor.)

In a bowl, whisk together pudding mix and milk until firm; add in whipped topping. Spread evenly on top of chilled crust and place back into freezer for 45 minutes, or until firm.

Melt baking chocolate and 1 tablespoon of margarine in a small saucepan over low heat; stir and set aside until luke warm. Pour and spread over pudding layer and place into refrigerator until set, about 5 minutes. Cut into 16 bars and serve.

*I’d go so far as to say this is a very easy recipe, which is what makes the following just that much more embarrassing.

I didn’t have graham cracker crumbs. I didn’t make the graham cracker recipe. What to do?

Oh, yes. Raid the kid’s snack shelf.

Thanks, Elmo!

Pretty tasty little things, I might add.

So, I pretty much followed the recipe, but substituted pecans for the walnuts (because I had pecans, not walnuts), used unsweetened dried coconut (don’t have the sugary stuff), and used only dark chocolate (because I hate milk chocolate).

The crust is perfect, and actually so good that I plan to use it in a future cheesecake recipe. The pudding filling? Lovely. The topping?

This is where it gets dumb. I sort of got in a hurry, as I was making this at the same time as dinner. I melted the chocolate in the microwave (don’t remember where I learned that trick, but I love it), and as I was pouring it over the frozen filling, I thought to myself: “wait a minute; how am I going to cut this?”

Duh. Sort of skimmed over that whole “add some butter to the chocolate” thing, and had my common sense shut off.

The result?

Please ignore the chocolate on my fingernails. There was barely time to lick it all off.

Well, let’s just say it was sort of a mess.

A delicious mess, though! It sort of tastes like a big frozen s’more. In the best possible way.

I wanted to get picture of D cutting through the chocolate armor when he went for seconds:

Me: “Babe, let me get a picture of you cutting the chocolate.”

D: “Okay, but don’t show my face.”

Me: “I won’t! I’m just getting a picture of the trouble with the topping.”

D: “Well, hurry it up! I want to eat it! …uh, before it melts.”

We ate enough of it that I’m relatively sure I completely blew my points for the day.

The aftermath

I’ll be making it again, though. Next time, I’ll make the graham crackers. And more importantly, next time, I’ll remember the butter in the topping so I can try it as a bar instead of eating it with a spoon!

It’s raining in San Diego. It’s been raining all week, and we’ve had hail several times. This means that Ada and I have been trapped in the house for days now, and we’re running low on new things to do that don’t involve making a huge mess. This probably means that tomorrow, we’ll be making  a huge mess. Here’s hoping the skies clear up soon!

In the meantime, we’ve been trying to stay warm, cozy, and dry. Work is progressing nicely on the afghan (Ravelry), and I’ve been spending many of my evenings hunkered under it and a finished blanket. I’ve also been wearing the soles out of my favorite house slippers:

They’re not heavy on the padding, and they attract cat hair like crazy (which may be a bonus, depending on how lazy you are about your cleaning), but they’re pretty cute, just warm enough for the weather, and give me a nice dose of color on a grey day.

Here’s how to make a pair of your own!

These slippers are a modified version of the Branch Slippers on MarthaStewart.com. I thought her version was a cool idea, but the execution was a little matronly for me, so I changed it up a little bit for mine. Go check out her version, then follow the sizing chart to figure out what size to print the pattern.

For this tutorial, I’ll be using red felt for the outside of the slippers, blue felt for the inside, and I’ll add another layer of fabric to the inside soles to fancy things up a bit (and increase their durability a bit).

I traced mine onto pattern vellum; not a necessary step, but it may come in handy later if you want to fancy up your slippers

On the upper pattern piece, measure 1 1/4 inches from the inner edge at the toe, and make a mark.

Then, fold that piece in half like so:

Draw a line from that dot to the side, marking the new shape of the pattern.

Cut along the line you drew, then unfold your pattern piece.

Prep your felt. I used HeatnBond to stick my pieces together. This stuff is great, cheap, and available at Joann Fabrics.

Adhere it to the felt you plan to use for the outer layer of the slippers. Leave the paper backing on the adhesive for now.

If you’re going to add fabric to the inside soles of your slippers, then you’ll need to stick some HeatnBond to the felt you’ll be using as your slipper sole inner layer.  Let it cool, then peel the backing off.

Adhere your fabric to that felt, then cut out the following pattern pieces:

2 uppers of the outer felt (with adhesive)

2 uppers of the inner felt

2 soles of the outer felt (with adhesive)

2 soles of the inner felt (with or without decorative fabric bonded to it)

Get out the sharpest, tiniest scissors you’ve got.

Use them to cut out a silhouette in the top of each slipper.

Adhere the outer felt uppers to the inner felt uppers.

Get your sewing machine ready:

You’ll want to use a heavy-duty needle for this, as you’ll be sewing through several layers of felt at once. I used a 110/18, which is probably a little stronger than necessary, but I really, really hate broken needles. Wind a bobbin with the color of the inner felt, and thread the machine with the color of the outer felt. Set your stitch to zigzag, your tension low, and your stitch length to zero to start the heel with a bar tack:

Position the heel of your upper as shown in the photo below.

Start the heel with a bar tack, then adjust your stitch length to 2, zigzag back and forth across the heel, pressing the pieces together as you go, and finish with another bar tack.

it ain't perfect, but it'll do.

When you’re done, the heel should have a nice curve to it:

Stitch up both heels.

Now we attach the uppers to the soles. This part can get a bit fiddly, but I’ve found that if you tack the center of the heel in place, then the center of the toe and work your way back along either side, you end up with a pretty good result.

Doesn’t look like much yet, I know. Stitch the upper to the sole, with a 1/4″ seam allowance.

You see that gizmo there? I can't stitch a straight line to save my life. That's a little magnet that sticks on your machine to keep your seams from going all wonky. Best. Gizmo. Ever.

And voila! You have some cute little slippers!

At this point, you could add a non-slip texture to the bottoms of them with some puff paint (though that means no sliding through the house Risky Business style), or you can just put ‘em on and go show off your crafty skills!

I think I’m going to play around some with the idea of adding more padding to the soles on these with the next version (I’ve got a lot of polar fleece scraps to use up), but for now, I’m loving these just the way they are!

Oh, thank goodness for long weekends! D got today off, and the Bee and I couldn’t have been happier about it!

We got a fair amount accomplished this weekend, including:

Some work on an afghan

A LOT of work on an afghan

Some exercise

Some relaxing

Baked cinnamon rolls from scratch (the recipe will be in an upcoming post)

And a bunch of other stuff. Set a date for a friend’s baby shower, got some plans made for our trip to Germany in May, I finally finished those nightstands (but you’ll have to wait to see them), cleaned the craft room. Please note the colorful addition to our living room, btw – that foam alphabet mat has saved Littlebee from many a concussion, and us from many a worry. I would really like to find someone that manufactures those things to talk to them about a line in designer colors, though (much as I love the odd mix of primaries and pastels in our otherwise mostly-mid-century living room…::shudder::). It’d be nice to have them in a houndstooth check or even a taupe.

But I digress.  What I really want to tell you about is this tasty thing:

Inspired by Heidi Swanson’s okonomi recipe (we make her version pretty regularly), this was meant to be a convenient way to use up a bunch of leftovers, and turned out to be pretty mind-blowing.

Here’s what you need:

2/3 c. whole wheat flour

a pinch of salt and pepper

2 eggs, beaten

two leaves of chard

one small head of cabbage (or half a large head)

a couple of green onions

four slices prosciutto (optional – leave this out for a still-tasty vegetarian entree)

a hunk of parmesan reggiano (stravecchio, if you can find it – the crunchy quality of it is really stupendous)

cooking spray (or olive oil, if you’re not doing weight watchers – I prefer the olive oil)

Get all your ingredients together:

Wait a second. There’s something missing.

That’s better!

Okay. Get ready to cook.

Shred up your veggies (I used a food processor, and didn’t take pictures of that step, because it’s really self-explanatory and not all that attractive). Put your flour, salt and pepper in a big mixing bowl.

Stir the eggs into the veggies until everything is coated evenly.

Heat a frying pan on medium heat, then spray or coat with oil. Press the veggie mixture down evenly across the pan.

Cook until fragrant and the pancake slides easily in the pan.

Slide the pancake off onto a plate.

Invert the pan over the plate, then flip the whole thing.

Now your great big pancake has flipped in one piece, and people who see the finished product will think you are some sort of pancake wizard.

cook until done, then slide off onto a plate and garnish with tasty cheese and/or meats.

I was starving and ate half of the pizza for 7.5 weight watchers points. A reasonable person would have been full and happy with one quarter of a pizza, for 3.5-4 points.

The Bee took a cruise down the sofa the other day where she didn’t use her hands. Technically, I think that’s what we call “walking.” She was leaning up against the sofa a lot, though, so I’m not ready to start using the “w-word” yet.

She’s also discovered the joys of hugging. I’ll have to see if we can get video footage of this, but for now, I’m absolutely beside myself every time she crawls up to me, pulls herself up by my shirt, then wraps her little arms around my neck. She’s going through a bit of a clingy phase, so she does this every three to five minutes, but it doesn’t get any less cute.

Hi all!

Well, I completed my first Daring Cooks’ challenge, and while I actually made the recipe last month, I’m a day late posting the results. There’s a cold going around our house again that makes me feel like a bomb went off in my forehead. I can’t promise anything too witty, but I can promise you an honest review of the recipe, and there’s a Daring Bakers’ challenge on the way later this month, so fret not!

The January Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by Cuppy of Cuppylicious. You can get the recipe HERE.

So, my thoughts? I’ll admit I was immediately suspicious when I noticed that the recipe included cumin. I’ve made satay in the past, and the marinade has always been made of soy sauce, sesame oil, fish sauce, ginger, garlic, coriander, and sometimes lime juice and green onions. NEVER cumin. Cumin is for Indian, Mexican, and chili. Not Thai.

So, was my suspicion well-founded?

(please excuse the crappy lighting)

Well, yes and no. Yes, in that this recipe didn’t in any way resemble any Thai food I’ve ever had, and no, in that it was still pretty tasty, once I got the word “Thai” out of my head. Cuppy mentioned that she’d designed this recipe for people who were unfamiliar with Thai, or who got turned off by fish sauce (btw, if you don’t know how fish sauce is made, I’d like to suggest you not look it up. I came *this close* to avoiding it altogether when I first found out!), and I think she succeeded in putting together a good dish. If this were your first encounter with “Thai,” though, you should expect to be very surprised when you go to a Thai restaurant.

The other upside? I used the Weight Watchers recipe builder to figure out the points on these, and they worked out to 2.5 points per skewer (including peanut sauce)! I might have to do some satay again soon!

For a recipe more to my tastes, I’d like to suggest something along these lines (CLICK HERE). Not sure if I’m breaking a rule by posting it, but there you go.

I’m looking forward to the next Daring Cooks’ challenge, and hoping that these challenges will prompt me to delve further into some cooking techniques I haven’t fully explored, taste some new flavors, and help me to think creatively about our family’s menu.

Hi all,

Nothing too exciting to report, but our day-to-day makes me pretty happy, so no complaints, either.

Today, Ada helped me with the mail:

It’s amazing how big she’s getting and how well she stands up; it won’t be long before she’s running all over the house!

Please note the amazing foam flooring – a gift from my mom on her New Year’s visit. Ada couldn’t be happier about the extra padding all around her favorite places to play, and we couldn’t be happier about being able to give her some space, now that she’s got a little padding to fall on.

I made one of my favorite dishes of all time for dinner:

The secret to this one is to use the juice of a whole lemon, and to use these olives:

Yum!

The best part? I’m on Weight Watchers now, and the giant bowl of chicken-potato-olive-artichoke deliciousness was only eight points!!

Today’s resolution moves?

For D: I got up and did all of the baby nighttime teething maintenance so that he could get a full night of sleep for once (how amazing is my husband that more than half of the time, he beats me out of bed to check on the Bee at night?)

For the house: eh, I didn’t get those nightstands done yet. I did some laundry. I did the dishes. I made the bed. I’m calling it a win.

For me: Nearly finished with a bunch of baby-proof jewelry. Since I’ve lost a few necklaces to Grabbypants McGee (read: Ada Bee), I’ve been brainstorming on what I can make that’s still modern and stylish, but strong enough to handle the abuse our 22-pound (!!!) eight-month-old throws at everything I wear.

I started making a necklace for my nephew’s girlfriend for Christmas, and viola! It hit me! I could make this same thing for myself, fasten it with ribbon, and not worry about it when Ada wants to use me like a human jungle gym.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

necklace

pretty slick, eh?

bracelet . there's a necklace to match, too!

bracelet

I’m not usually one for large chains, but I think the crochet really makes it something special, don’t you agree?

That’s enough for now. Goodnight!

Okay, I know everyone thinks their kid is the next Albert Einstein, but really, I’m pretty sure ours is.

On Monday, I sneezed and she copied it. I said “oh, you’re so silly! I love you!”

…to which she said “I love you!” (well, really, she said “luhyoo,” but I’m satisfied)

Tuesday and Wednesday were just generally awesome, and the Monday story doesn’t really have anything to do with anything other than to brag that our eight-month-old tells us she loves us.

Today, though! Oh, today! Today she started playing peek-a-boo on her own!! Seriously! I wish I had footage – I’ll get some next time. She holds a towel up in front of her face until you ask “Wheeeeeeeeere’s Ada?” at which point she throws the towel down and giggles! Oh, baby genius, I love you like mad.

Today’s actions:

For the house: I washed quilts. They needed it. I’m getting a head-start on spring cleaning. Oh, and D’s work gave us a belated baby-warming gift of a free housecleaning. This means I’m giving up dusting in expectation of becoming a lady of luxury. At least for a day.

For D: I baked bread and made butter (in a jar! how very elementary school!). Helperbee and I took it up to him at work as a surprise, and it sounds like it was promptly devoured by his coworkers.

Such a tasty spread!

We’ve been baking bread a whole lot around here, especially because our fabulous family got me a copy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and a bread cloche. This is a heady combination, folks. I’d like to attest that not only does it really take LESS than five minutes of actual work to make tasty, tasty bread, but you get crusts like this:

homina, homina

And for me? I got some work done on a little piece of jewelry. I so rarely make things for myself, and I’m excited to give myself a little present. Oh, and strawberries are in season again (how I love living in Southern California), so I pigged out on cornbread with strawberries and whipped cream. Sooooooo not Weight Watchers-friendly, but I’ll hit the gym tomorrow to make up for it.

So that’s it for the day! Oh man, and me with a whole hour to go before bedtime? Maybe I’ll head out and finish those nightstands I’ve been putting off for a month. Is that another “me” thing? I am on a roll!!

Hi all!

We had a nice long Christmas vacation, and while I’m sorry to have left you for as long as I did, I’m glad to have had the time to focus on family and trying to get the house back in order after the handmade holiday shenanigans that went on all through December.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the only place in my house that was not an absolute mess on December 26th:

Additionally, you may see less of me on here for a while because we’re down to one computer in the house at present, and that somewhat limits my blogging time. Pray for our sanity, people.

Here’s a rundown of our Christmas, in pictures:

I know I promised tutorials and pictures of all of the wonderful handmade gifts, but in the excitement of finishing them, I forgot to take pictures, and the lighting was bad on Christmas day. You’ll have to live without them for now (though there are a couple of things I’ll make more of, so you can look for tutorials on them in days to come). My New Year’s resolution is to let myself get away with things once in a while, so I’m letting myself off the hook for this.

My other resolution: each day, in addition to everything we do for Ada, I’m going to do one thing for D, one thing for the house, and one thing for me.

Today’s gift to myself was a trip to the pool with Swimmerbee in her new swimsuit. How was that a gift for me?

Look what I got to look at the whole time!

Happy New Year, all!

Hi all,

My apologies for the long hiatus. We had an excellent Thanksgiving vacation, and I have a lot of photos I’d like to share, but we seem to be having some difficulty with the computer that has the memory card reader built in. There is a backup card reader somewhere, but I haven’t the foggiest where, so until we get the issue resolved, I’m going to hold off telling you about the trip, other than to say that Ada is a lucky little bee indeed to have the family she has.

In other news, shortly after coming home, Littlebee caught her first cold. It was heartbreaking. You’d think that after all the time we spent in NICU with her as a little one, we could handle the sniffles, but we know her better now, and we’ve gotten accustomed to being able to fix whatever is upsetting her.  It’s tough to watch your little one gurgle and sniffle and choke and not be able to make it all better. We used that sucker-bulb thing, and it made her furious. We propped her crib mattress up at an angle, which worked beautifully until she woke up and wiggled until she was trapped at one end. We ran the vaporizer constantly, went through a whole box of tissues, and did our best to comfort her when she was so congested she couldn’t eat (it’s pretty tough to get a decent milk meal when you can’t breathe through your nose). We worried and fretted and she just smiled and giggled through it all! It’s funny how much more miserable we were than she was.

Now she’s better, has mastered sitting up, has a clearly visible tooth (though I haven’t had any success taking a picture of it yet), and is back to tearing through the living room at breakneck speeds. Today, she stood up.

That’s right.

She was sitting up by the coffee table, bouncing up and down while holding on to the table’s lower shelf. This caused her to bump her head over and over on the underside of the table, so I figured I’d do her a favor and move her before she got hurt. I sat her over by the sofa, and showed her it was just as easy to hold onto the sofa, but less likely to cause brain injury. She happily bounced up and down there for a few minutes, then slowly pulled herself up to a stand. I would have taken pictures, but a) was afraid to leave her unattended with her sweet little head that far off the ground, and b) would not have been able to share said pictures with you anyway, dear reader (please see aforementioned computer woes). She stood for a few seconds, then sat back down and did laps around the living room.

Aside from chasing Speedybee, we’re working very hard on a handmade Christmas. The stores out here started playing holiday music on November 1st, and we decided that was the last straw. We’re not participating in shopping madness this year. Instead, we’re trying to make everything by hand.

Unfortunately, I can’t share the details of these projects with you, as their recipients read this blog. Suffice to say that after the holidays, there will be a lot of tutorials up. I’ve drafted up some pretty awesome gift patterns, and D’s working on a couple of cool electronic gifts for our nephews.

We put up our tree on Saturday. We have a cozy little house, and every year, we fret about where to put the tree/how large it should be. This year, D was doing a bit more fretting than I was, so I handed complete control over tree selection. He came back with perhaps the loveliest 7-foot tall tree I’ve seen (again, pictures to come; it’s disheartening to type that over and over).

Well, I’m having a hard time feeling motivated to continue this any further without any visual aids, so I’m going to stop right here and say that I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you here tomorrow night.  Hopefully with photographs.

Well, all, I must apologize for the delayed return to the blog.

Somewhere, between the family visits, plane trips, baby showers, and more family visits, Littlebee caught her first cold.

It’s a doozy.; the poor thing is so stuffed up she can’t breathe through her nose, which means that she can barely eat, and that she wakes herself up constantly during the night as she spits out her pacifier to breathe through her mouth, then realizes that the pacifier is missing and cries for it.

It’s a full-time operation to keep the baby hydrated and free of boogs,  her vaporizer full and stocked with inhaler fluid, and my heart from breaking as she cries and there’s no way I can explain to her that this will pass soon.

To top it off, she cut her first tooth last week, and there seems to be another on its way in.

When it rains, it pours. Think of us, and I’ll see you when things are a little happier around here.