This Monday…

My son is recovering nicely from his surgery!

I exercised!

The sun is shining!

The breeze is blowing!

I made this recipe from Puna, with the deletion of the cinnamon and the addition of blueberries, and everyone loved it!  Thanks, Puna!

The Pet Parade is this Friday, 7/30/10!

On the other hand…

Since I downloaded an update to my computer security, my computer keeps freezing up and it won’t accept any photos from my camera.  I need to find a remedy to this before Pet Parade day!

Has your week started off okay/great/stinky/sick/amazing?

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D at Quick and Dirty Meals posted this recipe for ‘Smore Krispies last week.  It sounded great, so my youngest son and I gave it a try.  I am not really a fan of Rice Krispie Treats, but I loved D’s ‘Smore Krispies!  My kids thought they were great, too!  They are really quick and easy to make and the measuring and prep work is easy and very kid-friendly for children way younger than mine.  Just make sure an adult does the marshmallow melting.  Yummy!

I found out through Karen’s blog that the Houston Museum of Natural Science has a Corpse flower named Lois that is about to flower!  You can go and check out the museum’s live feed of Lois, follow Lois herself on twitter and keep up on the developments on the museum’s blog!  The twitter feed is pretty funny!

Happy Wednesday!

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Angela and Stephanie reminded me that I should share my aunt’s recipe for anise cookies that I mentioned in my Monday Memories post a couple of weeks ago, so here it is!

This is the full recipe which makes approximately 12 dozen cookies. That’s way too many for me, so I always cut the recipe in half!

Anise Cookies

Cookie Ingredients:

• 6 cups all purpose flour
• 6 tsp. baking powder
• 2 sticks butter or margarine
• 8 eggs
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp. anise extract (This amount makes the cookies very lightly anise flavored. You can change the amount to suit your taste.)

Frosting Ingredients:

• Confectioners sugar
• milk or water
• anise extract

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine dry ingredients. In another bowl beat butter and sugar together. Then add oil, extract, orange juice and eggs. Mix together. Combine dry and wet ingredients.

Shape teaspoon size balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten slightly.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 7 to 10 minutes

When cookies are cool frost with a mix of confectioners sugar, milk (or water) and anise extract. Top with nonpareils.

My notes: As I said, I always cut this recipe in half. I also don’t bother with shaping the dough into balls, I just drop rounded tsps. of dough onto the cookie sheet.  I only frost some of the cookies because I like them plain, too.  I used about 1/2 cup Confectioners sugar with about 1 tablespoon milk and a couple of drops of anise extract.  I think that amount frosted about 12 cookies.

I hope you enjoy these cookies!  Let me know what you think if you try them!

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My bread machine is getting quite the workout this week.  Last week, too!  It started last Tuesday when I made a bread machine Stollen for my husband.  I made it two days before Christmas, just in case it was horrible.  Then, I would have time to make a real Stollen with a recipe that the sweet and lovely Christina gave me!  My husband loved the bread machine Stollen, so I’ll try the real recipe when I’m feeling really confident.  I need a lot of confidence to make a bread by hand!  Next, I made pizza crust on Christmas Eve.  We had a very unconventional Christmas Eve dinner of Shrimp Cocktail and homemade pizza!  They were both really good!  Yesterday I made Adobe Bread.  Proof of our living in the computer age, my youngest son jokingly asked if it was (Adobe) Photoshop bread!  Today, Cinnamon Raisin Bread is what’s baking!

I love the smell of bread baking and even the yeasty smell when the machine is kneading the dough!  I’m enjoying my time this week with my kids being on vacation from school (although my 8th and 11th graders still have homework!)  I love baking when my kids are home because I know that one day they will smell cookies or bread baking and it will remind them a little bit of me and their childhood and love.

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Pumpkin Cake

Cake Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Frosting Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 1/4 cup cream cheese
• 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9 inch square pan.  (I don’t have a 9″ square pan so I used a 9″ round.)

1. To prepare cake.  In a bowl with mixer at medium speed, beat sugar and eggs for 2 minutes.  Beat in pumpkin and oil.  At low speed, add flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Beat for 1 minute.

2. Pour batter into your prepared pan.  Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  (Mine took about 35 minutes.  Maybe this is because I used a round pan.)  Cool cake in pan on a wire rack.

3. To prepare frosting: Beat confectioner’s sugar and remaining frosting ingredients for 2 minutes or until fluffy.  Frost cake when cool

This recipe is so easy and quick and the cake is really moist and delicious.  I don’t really like pumpkin pie, but I love this cake!  You don’t even need to frost it.  My daughter likes it better without the frosting!  Oh, and it smells divine while it’s cooking.  Yum!

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The way my 16 year old son is helping his 11 year old brother prepare for moving up to a 7th grade accelerated math class from a 6th grade regular one.

The extra bunches of bedtime kisses my 13 year old daughter gave me a couple of nights ago, after we had spent the day at odds with each other.

My 11 year old son creating his own recipes and trying them out each day!

Water Balloons sitting on the picnic table, waiting and hoping for at least one more hot day.

The late summer sun shining on my face.

More marshmallow roasts in our pool!

Garlic Bread fresh out of the oven!

And last but not least, Katie’s blog, Can’t Get There From Here.  When I worked on my Awards post yesterday, I meant to include Katie in the blogs that I gave out the It’s a Major Award to and when I typed my post out, I forgot to include her blog!  Sheesh.   I’m sorry Katie, because I really meant to include you yesterday.  So, here is a special presentation of the It’s a Major Award award!  It goes to Can’t Get There From Here!

“This award is for anyone who likes to smile and/or laugh, and just generally spreads that along in the blogging world we all travel in.”

Here are the rules of this award:

1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link.
2. Pass the award to bloggers who like to smile and/or laugh.
3. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Happy Love Thursday!

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The recipe.  Last week I made a pasta salad that was so delicious.  But, it was only delicious to my daughter and I.  My husband didn’t try it, which is really unusual for him.  He looked at it and said, “It doesn’t look like something I’d like.”  My 16 year old son said, “It’s grainy.”  My 11 year old son didn’t like it.  I don’t remember what he said!  So this week I wanted something easy and something that tasted like the old fashioned macaroni salad that I grew up with.  This isn’t fancy.  Here it is, my messily written recipe with the silly title, My Really Good Macaroni Salad:

Do you have a favorite Macaroni/Pasta Salad recipe? Please share it!

I hope you all have a weekend filled with happiness and love! I’ll see you on Sunday evening with Monday Memories!

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Summer Fruit Kuchen before it went into the oven

The recipe is here.  The changes I made were that I used a 9 inch round pan because I don’t have a 9 inch square pan, I used salted butter instead of unsalted, and I used two peaches instead of one peach and one plum.  Oh, and I didn’t dust it with confectioners’ sugar.  The second time I made it the blueberries were very tart and my daughter and I didn’t like that, but my husband liked their non-sweetness.  My boys didn’t eat it.  Sigh.

Baked and ready to eat!

One of the best things was the wonderful smell that filled the house while it was baking!  If you try it, let me know what you think!

We bought a lot of those blueberries, so I now have a whole bunch of sour blueberries that I don’t know what to do with.  Any ideas?  I’m thinking that I might just put them out in the woods for the groundhogs and rabbits to eat!

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Monkey’s Momma had a giveaway on her site a short while ago, and I won these books!  They arrived yesterday, perfect timing for some summer reading!  Right now she has another giveaway going on and some important information about MRSA infections (she’s a nurse, so she knows!) and she’s got a special coupon code for Invitation Monkey!  She has also just gotten her other blog, The Frugal Frog, back up and running where she will have all kinds of cool things going on!  I don’t know how she does it all!

Yesterday’s rainbow cookie?  Some of you have not had the wonderful pleasure of eating them, or have never even seen them. Yipes!  That is horrible!  They are actually three layers of cakes with jam in between the layers, covered on the outside with chocolate and chocolate sprinkles!  I printed out a recipe to make them about three years ago and never made them myself.  I am a pretty decent cook, but not a very good baker at all.  These seemed too complicated for my baking ability.  Here is a recipe at Epicurious that sounds similar to the rainbow cookies I know and love, except that the ones that I buy have raspberry jam spread between the bottom and middle layer and apricot jam spread between the top and middle layer.

And finally, sun flare. This was my best shot out of a bunch of sun flare attempts.  I like it!  It reminds me that there really is a sun above all of those raining clouds that we always have.  Every. Single. Stinking. Day.

Here’s wishing you a little sun this weekend.  Goodness knows we’re not going to have any!

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One time when we visited my husband’s older brother and his wife, my sister-in-law served us this drink.  It is wonderfully simple and so refreshing on a hot summer day.  (No, we are not having hot summer days yet.  I’m just daydreaming about them!)

Lime Ricky

• 1/6 of a lime
• about 1/8 cup raspberry syrup
• about 1-1/3 cups seltzer
• strawberry optional!

Put it all together in a tall glass and enjoy!

Oh, and make sure you sniff the limes…a lot.  I just love the smell of limes.  Looking at this photo makes me want to go and cut up another one just to sniff it.

Go on over to Kim’s Tasty Tuesday at Forever Wherever to see what everyone else is making!

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