BIIIIIIIIRTH MOOOOOOONTH!!!!!

Clearly, I have not been my usual blogging self.

Otherwise, I would've announced in March that Birth Month was approaching. On April first, I would had announced that Birth Month had officially begun. I would've started planning my birthday party right then, instead of leaving it until four this morning.

What do you think of a game called "Pin the peace sign on the Asian"?

Because at 4:15 this morning, it sounded pretty awesome. So did a carrot cake with maple-cream-cheese frosting, jalapeno popper stuffed pretzels, and my own cupcakes (which reportedly taste like a Snickers, although they contain not a whit of that candy bar).

Just sayin'.

I'm already nervous about trying to get people to come to this since I'm not up in Logan anymore. But that's what Facebook is for!!! A mass invitation two and a half weeks in advance! YAY!

Look what HAPPENED to me. It's a Birth Month miracle!!!

But first on my activity list for Birth Month is dinner with a friend tonight. A gypsy photo shoot tomorrow. Then a 10-mile race on Saturday. Maybe I will make a t-shirt that blares "BIRTH MONTH" to everybody. Just so no one is confused.

What else should happen at my birthday shindig?

How should I decorate?

What should we do?

Crafts and Cooking.

Well, earlier this week I played with Mod Podge, cardboard, and magazines.

Last night I played with lard, flour, and molasses. And later today, I will play with pumpkin cake and cream cheese, because tonight, we're having a Harry Potter Dessert Party. (More on that later).

So let's just see what I've made this week (all pics taken with Photo Booth so excuse the quality):

CapriSun box, cardboard, recipes and pictures cut from magazines, 

and an oatmeal container...

And I've got a place to put extra long utensils and to put all my letter-writing supplies!

Here is a treacle tartlet for Harry Potter night.

(Yes. It's on a Chinese plate, on my purple bed. Whatcha gonna do 'bout it?)

You can find the recipe HERE at Bakingdom. I ate one. It's delish.

PS. Project Pen Pal is a great success folks! I got lots of requests for letters, and it's been wonderful. It's kind of amazing therapy. :) I'm sorry if it's a bit slow. I write a letter every other day or so, so as not to get burned out, but it's also really important to me to write something personal and with a lot of thought. I will get to everybody, I promise. So if anybody new wants to join the fun, shoot me your street address in an email, and you will get a letter from me! 

PPS. What do you think of my new header? I was bored, haha. I enjoy it, but I will admit, it's way stupid. :)

Cake Wrecks

Have you seen this website?

If you haven't, you must. Right now.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com

Kate showed me THIS POST and we died laughing. You will too. Promise. It's "a tale...of where you came from."

What's Cookin', Wednesday?

Oh my, Sunday evening was frustrating.

I had these oranges that I've had sitting in a bowl for weeks, because even though I love them, I have a hard time eating them sometimes. I also had some leftover orange juice in the refrigerator. So I thought I'd bake a cake.

This Week's Kitchen Adventure:

Ruby Grapefruit Cake [original recipe found here]

This cake comes to you from Not So Humble Pie. Love that blog. She's so science-y, and a great mom, and a most fabulous cook. Check it out! 

As you can see, the recipe originally called for grapefruit, but you can substitute any kind of citrus, so I used my oranges and orange juice. For the syrup, I used a little less than a cup of orange juice and made up the difference with lemon juice. Then I added half of a 1/3 cup of sugar to the 2/3 sugar already called for. I didn't end up making the icing, cos it was already very sweet, and what's the point of icing a cake that ended up looking like this?

If you can't tell, it fell. I was so upset. To the point where I had to tell my Mom that I had to hang up, because I was about to cry. I know. It's just a cake. But when I barely have time to do anything other than homework and work, to bake a cake and have it fail like that was like unto heartbreak.

But that didn't keep me and my roommates from devouring it by the next afternoon.

It was absolutely delicious. 

Guest Post on Bittersweet!!

Everybody, everybody!

Today is a special day, 

because Rickers has so kindly invited me to post on his most fabulous blog!

Please come over and support him and me,

and leave him a comment.

I'm posting about Glee,

if that gets you excited.

More specifically, 

Brittany.

Also,

sugar cookies.

:-)

I Feel Special!

Rickers totally gave me a shout-out on Bittersweet yesterday!! Read his latest post here.

I feel like such a ROCKSTAR.

Because I've unfailingly stalked that blog since December.

I think.

A loooong time.

PS. Those of you who live in Utah, the place that makes the pie/cake shakes is called Sammy's. It's in Provo (27 North 100 West), and it is sooo delish. But I get inordinately angry and annoyed when I go there, because 98% of the patrons wear BYU t-shirts. Haha.

What's Cookin', Wednesday?

Summer is garden season, y'all. At my house, we have one. Nothing is better than garden tomatoes, but since those aren't ready, let's go for zucchini. Mmmmmm... yummy plain, yummy sauteed, yummy in bread, yummy, yummy.

Know what else is yummy? Chocolate cake. Know what's yummy in chocolate cake?

Zucchini.

Like, for reals.

Which brings me to...

This Week's Kitchen Adventure:

Chocolate and Zucchini Cake [recipe found here]

I've made zucchini bread before (PS. it's delicious!), but I wanted something a bit more dessert-ish this time to make Rick happy. He has a terrible sweet tooth, as you can see by his blog. So, I was a-surfin' the net, and what should I find, but a blog called Chocolate & Zucchini?!! Surely they would have something dessert-ish with a title like that. Yessiree-bob, they did!

Then I thought, "Well, hey! I've got zucchini in the garden. Heaps of it. I won't have to go to the grocery store this time, cos I've got all the stuff at home." Turns out I had to go buy eggs anyway. You can't grow those in gardens. Just so's you know. Cos eggs come from chickens, see? All we have is my little brother's puppy and a couple of fish. Useless things.

This is our zucchini patch:

This is a zucchini before you pick it:

Cool, huh?!

Important!! Slice zucchini in half length-wise and use a spoon to scoop out the seeds before you grate it. I got halfway through grating it when I realized what a mistake it was to skip that step. (Which, by the way, they did not tell me to do in the recipe, but I should've known to do it anyway.) It wasn't my fault though! I was watching Gerry Butler sing his guts out in Phantom of the Opera, and I was kinda distracted at the time. But I quickly mended my ways.

It should look like this before you grate it:

In the recipe, it says you can substitute oil for butter, which I did. I wish I hadn't. I know it would've been better if I had used the butter. But I forgot to put the butter out to soften, and did I want to unwrap it and nuke it for a few seconds in the microwave? No, I did not. That's how lazy I am. However! I was innovative in other areas. My brother had a bag of white chocolate chips that he let melt into a lump in his car. Silly boy. So I stuck it in the freezer, pulled it back out, chopped it up, and used those instead of plain chocolate chunks. Mostly because I didn't have plain chocolate. 

Also, for whatever reason, I didn't have a 10-inch pan, nor did I have an 8 1/2-inch square pan, so I used a half sheet pan, and cut the cake into small squares. It only took 20 minutes to bake (instead of the 30-40 minutes estimated for the other pan sizes), but I think you could bake it for as little as 15 minutes. It was a little dry when I tasted it. Partly because of the no-butter thing, and partly because of how long I baked it. But after I covered it, it moistened up a bit. And the white chocolate in it was RAD.

Super delicious, folks! You can't even tell there is zucchini in there. Not in the texture, not in the taste. Next time, I think I'll add a 1/4 cup more cocoa, or melt up some semi or bittersweet chocolate and mix it in. I would've made frosting, but I didn't have the stuff for it. Plus, I'm technically trying to stay away from sugar and sweets, but I ate like seven pieces last night (not to mention all the junk I ate at Matt's wedding). Hello six-mile run today!! 

Yeah. I know. The girl who used to DIE during the mile-run in junior high and high school picked up running this summer. What has the world come to? I run almost every day now. I ran six miles on Monday. Ran three yesterday. And my slightly protruding zucchini-chocolate-cake-cream-puff-mint-brownie tummy is saying six miles is definitely on the menu for this morning. 

I sure hope this cake is gone 

by the time I get home from that jog.

What's Cookin', Wednesday?

On Friday night, I went and ate where I work, because it's cheap. Yay, employee discounts! One of my coworkers liked what I was wearing (cos we never see each other in street clothes), and she asked me if I "was one of those super colorful types." I looked down at myself. I was wearing pink, silver, and gold embroidered flats, blue jeans, a hot pink belt, a purple shirt, a multicolored long necklace, and I'm sure I was wearing bright earrings. Then she reminded me how I wore a yellow headband, pink earrings, a turquoise hair tie, and a purple ribbon a few days before.

I laughed.

I guess I am.

I'm a pretty colorful person.

I love wearing them and I love seeing them.

Especially on rainy days up at school.

That's when I wear every color that can possibly go together. 

And I love eating colorful things too.

Which makes...

This Week's Kitchen Adventure:

Mango Slaw with Cashews and Mint [recipe found here]

Um. So, so, so delicious. I couldn't get enough of it. It's so crispy and light and refreshing, with such an amazing tangy bite to it. A perfect summer snack! Smitten Kitchen is one of my favorite blogs to read because even though there are plenty of baking recipes, there's such a variety of other things to make. I've got my eye on so many other recipes. Definitely check it out!

(See the pretty colors?!)

I've decided you need colorful tools to match your colorful food. Remember my purple knife? Well, I bought a cheap little mandolin grater to match it.

But I ended up using only the knife, because the mangoes were a bit too ripe to use the mandolin grater. Oh well, I can still use it for other things. And for whatever stupid reason, the red bell peppers were out at the store, so I bought an orange one. Who runs out of red bell peppers?!! I ask you. I also added a tablespoon of lemon juice to the lime just because I felt like it. 

And boy, did I snack on those cashews. 

Mmmmm... my favorite!

(Drooling just thinking about it!)

What's Cookin', Wednesday?

I have decided to put my obsession with food blogs to use. 

Here is the goal for the rest of the summer, 

and, hopefully, the fall too:

Bake or cook something new every week,

and tell you about it on Wednesday.

Just because it sounds cool to do it on Wednesday.

Deal?

Don't worry, I'm no foodie,

but how will I ever join the Cult of True Womanhood

if I don't learn how to cook?

This Week's Kitchen Adventure:

Strawberry Bread [recipe found here]

Yesterday (Tuesday) found me washing dishes and remembering that we had several cartons of strawberries that were about to give up the ghost. So I decided to salvage what I could and make this recipe that I had bookmarked for quite awhile. My Baking Addiction is a great blog. I'm addicted to reading about her addiction. Convenient, isn't it?! Intriguing recipes, lovely pictures, and an easy-to-use format. Good stuff!

Anyway, I doubled the recipe, and, instead of leaving all the strawberries chopped, I mashed about a third of them, so the strawberry flavor would infuse the batter as well. It turned out beautifully! The result was a super moist and dense bread that was almost like pound cake. I served it to Grandma, the family, and my friend Marie, with little packets of honey butter (that often find their way home from work in my apron. Oops!) Huge hit! I'm not quite the failure in the kitchen that I thought I was! (Just kidding. I make a pretty mean banana bread.)

(I'm no photographer, nor do I pretend to be, but this is what it looked like)

I think I'll make a couple changes the next time I make it. I'll add at least a cup more of strawberries and toss them with some flour so they won't sink quite as much. It's delicious just warm with butter, but if you wanted to be fancy, you could always make a nice vanilla frosting or glaze.

I wonder what it would taste like if I combined the strawberries with mashed and chopped bananas.... hmmmm.....