She Knits Shizknits

sunday breakfast

"Mom is great! Gives us chocolate cake!"

Well, it wasn't actually chocolate cake, but it WAS cake for breakfast. We had our first annual school carnival on Friday and Monkey Boy won a cake in the cakewalk. There were dozens of beautiful homemade cakes and which one did he pick? The pink one with frosting so yellow that someone asked me if it was mustard! It didn't seem to matter to the small men- they asked if they could eat it for breakfast this morning so I said Yes.

That's what happens when momma walks a 5k, goes out to dinner with friends and wakes up at 8am on Sunday with no idea what to make for breakfast!

 

twee!

Valentine's Day = lots of cooking for me...check out these cute heart lollipops I made for the boys to give out:

I don't recall where I saw the idea, but it's basically two mini candy canes heated in a 350F oven till they *just* soften. Poke the lollipop stick into the base and use your fingers to very gently mold the stick in place. Let cool briefly, then fill with edible candy melts. Easy peasy!
We used bookmarks from Living Locurto as tags,  though I changed the pink bookmarks to blue per Monkey Boy's request (because boys can't give out pink bookmarks, dontcha know!).

 

For our Valentine's Day Dinner we decided to eat in. It's just too much trouble to go out and fight the crowds. So I made filet mignon + seared sea scallops served with rice and mushrooms/zukes tossed with butter and garlic. Super yum! 

What did we have for dessert? Well check out my new kitchen gadget: a mini donut maker!
This thing makes THE.CUTEST.DONUTS.EVAH.  I used a recipe I found online and whipped  up 20 donuts in about 20 minutes. A simple sugar glaze was the vehicle for lots of sprinkles...

Aren't they the most twee things?!?  I'm dying to try some chocolate ones...or maybe plain with chocolate ganache....or chocolate with powdered sugar...Oh dear, I might have to buy some elastic waist pants!

coconut cake!

We were in the grocery store a few days ago and the small men pestered me to buy a whole coconut. They really wanted to break one open and see what it looked like inside. Since the store had whole coconuts on sale for 89 cents a pound, we bought one and took it home. The Dearest helped break it open with a screw and a hammer.

We used the screw to poke a hole in one of the 'eyes', draining out nearly 12oz of fresh juice. Then we wrapped the coconut in a towel and each took a turn smacking it with a hammer. It was like our own little pinata! After a few good whacks, it broke open and we pulled out the 'meat' inside. The Dearest spent nearly half an hour cutting the meat into chunks, which we all nibbled on for the rest of the night.

Of course there was way more meat than we could finish so I decided to make a coconut cake. I found a yummy recipe here, and followed it to produce a delicious mini-coconut cake. A full sized cake sounded like too much so I used 6-inch round pans, cut the recipe in half and used a cream cheese frosting that I made with coconut milk, powdered sugar and coconut extract instead of vanilla extract.

The cake turned out so yummy! It's not too dense- the Dearest says it reminded him of angel cake in texture. And the cream cheese frosting was just right. With a cup of tea or coffee, this was fabulous!

And I'm loving my new mini cake pans....the smaller cake is easier to store and we manage to eat it all before it goes stale. I bought pans similar to these at my local craft store. They are 6 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep.  They also had square mini pans and I might have to pick up a couple of those too. The mini-sized cakes are too cute! I can see that I will be making a lot of them in the future!

cough cough cough hack cough- homemade cough remedy

The small men are suffering through another wintertime cold; this one seems to be mostly about the coughing. Little Man spent half the night doing this: cough cough cough *pause* cough.  Poor thing. He woke up this morning and said he couldn't sleep very well, and his back hurts from all the coughing.  Luckily it's a dry cough and it seems a bit better today.....but now Monkey Boy is coughing too. Both of them were complaining of headaches over the past couple of days but I thought it was just because we have been staying up late (Pajama Party, anyone?) and they have been super busy.

Evidently not; I talked to a friend and her kids have the same thing: a dry cough, headache - but no fever- tiredness and lots of time spent being cranky on the couch.

*sigh*

Oh well, the coughing has given me a chance to try out honey has a natural cough reliever. Normally I just give it straight (the kids get a 1/2tsp straight out of the jar) but then I thought it might be good to thin the honey and add some lemon.  I found a couple of recipes online that involved mixing the honey and lemon juice with warm water to create a cough syrup. Those looked good, but then check THIS recipe out:

ITALIAN COUGH SYRUP
Read more about it at www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1818,157175-235203,00.html Content Copyright © 2011 Cooks.com - All rights reserved. 1/2 c. whiskey 1/2 c. honey Juice of 1 lemon In small jar mix whiskey, honey and lemon juice. Take 1-2 tablespoons every 3-4 hours. I can't promise it will get rid of your cough, but it sure tastes good!

I'm going to make this one and see how the small men like it....though I might just have to have a nip first to test it out myself. :)

Monkey Boy's PJ party!

We celebrated MB's 6th birthday with a Perry-themed Pajama Party (Perry is the platypus from Phineus and Ferb). Somehow I had invited 13 kids....oops! We were able to entertain all the kids for two hours...we had the Wii set up so they could play Mario Cart upstairs. Downstairs we had pillow cases for them to draw on and paint (those were the party favors).... Or they could hang out and watch a movie and eat some sugary snacks.

Most of the kids went home around 8:30pm, but a few were invited to stay over night. The sleepover went pretty well- we managed to get the kids all asleep by 11:30pm (tho the Dearest did have to sit with them in the loft and use his "daddy voice" once or twice to quiet them down). And they even slept all the way through to 7am this morning without a peep!

Monkey Boy had specifically asked for a Perry-shaped cake and after finding this tutorial at Dabbled and decided to give it a try. My multi-talented friend Lanya came over to help, since I had never worked with fondant on a cake before. She showed me how to knead in the color (hmmm...actually I think she did all of that herself), and how thin to roll out the fondant. Here's our process and the finished result:

A slightly better photo of the finished cake (click for a bigger photo and notes): The kids loved it, especially Monkey Boy! He was super excited to "eat Perry"....working with the fondant wasn't as scary as I thought. Lanya even suggested a marshmallow based fondant that I actually liked the taste of (I'm not usually a fan of the regular fondant).  So I might be making more cakes with fondant in the future.

All in all, a succesful party! And look at the 'day after':

This is what I found when I came downstairs around 4pm. Evidently, Monkey Boy told the Dearest "I'm not going to let you go to sleep, Dadda!"  Oops!

the last week of 2010

The last week of the year is always a rush- with Monkey Boy's birthday falling a few days after Christmas, and readying ourselves for the New Year's celebration, I often feel like I"m running behind as soon as I get out of bed in the morning.

We usually don't have a big party for MB's birthday till later in January, mostly because school is out of session for two weeks before the holidays, and really....not many people want to attend ANOTHER party after Christmas and before NYE. When I asked Monkey Boy where he wanted to go for a birthday lunch, he said Sonic! He really wanted to have the guys rollerskate the fries and food to our car, and he was looking forward to a shake. Unfortuately, it was raining when we woke up that morning so we went to our favorite sushi spot instead.

I love this photo of the small men- they were running around being silly as we waited outside the restaurant and they paused just long enough for me to shoot this.

Finally six years old!!!!

MB shows off one of his favorite sushi rolls- the California roll

Little Man loves tuna handrolls.

When we got home after lunch, MB finally got to open his birthday gift. He was super excited to finally get the Lego Firestation- can you tell????

 

The next big day was New Year's Eve....our wonderful friends Kirk and Penny invited us over for a special NYE dinner, all cooked by Martin (below in the chef's coat). Check out the spread!

OMGosh it was all so delicious...we started out with a ton of appetizers including beef tartar, which I've always wanted to try but been too cowardly to actually order in a restaurant. But when Martin said he had ground the meat himself, I figured "what the heck"....and it was really really good! In fact I ended up eating three pieces and only stopped because I knew we were in for a lot of amazing food: Alaskan king crab legs with garlic butter, luscious lambchops, beautifully cooked filet, and all the accompanying sauces and side dishes. Everything was so scrumptious- good thing we paced ourselves by starting apps at 7pm and not sitting for the main course till 10pm! 

Martin delegated some of the work to us onlookers, but he did the majority of the prep and cooking. It's eye-opening to watch someone who has had real culinary training; I love watching Top Chef and cooking shows, but to see the prep work in person was a whole other matter.

And what were the kiddos doing while we adults ate and drank (and drank)?  They were all playing Wii and Nintendo DS upstairs. Amazingly, every single one of them made it till midnight, though there were a lot of big, glazed eyes. And about 10 minutes later, Monkey Boy crawled into the Dearest's lap and fell asleep instantly. Little Man made it till we got into the car for the ride home, but within a few minutes of driving I looked back and he was passed out.

All in all, a busy and fun week...Now to see what 2011 has in store for us!

whew, I'm glad it's christmas break!

Wow, the last two weeks have been crazy around here. Between volunteering at the elementary school, shopping, and finishing up my gift-baking, it's been busy, busy, busy.  But, here are the fruits of my labor for the past 10 days:

 

Homemade vanilla syrup, and apple rosemary marmalade.  The vanilla syrup is delcious in coffee, or over pancakes. The marmalade is outstanding on savory meats like pork and chicken, but it's also quite good spread on a thick piece of buttered toast. I hot-water processed both of these so they are shelf-stable.

I found these squat "widemouth" jars at WalM@rt and thought they were really cute. So I canned some of the Apple Rosemary Marm in squat jars as well as the reguar 4oz jelly jars.  I also found these cute red and white checked lids, which seemed perfect for the hoilday season.
The only drawback of the white bands was some of them got a bit rusty once I pulled them out of the hot water bath. :( If you look closely you can see a small amount of rust on the edge of the lid in the photo above. So I ended up keeping a few jars for us just because they didn't look as nice. The seal was fine, but I didn't want to give out rusty lids on my gifts.

I also made some Chocolate Toffee Brittle to hand out. The Brittle is one of those that starts with a base of saltine crackers; then you pour on caramel bake for a bit, and finally add bittersweet chocolate. During the holidays I also add swirls of red or green candy melts for a little color.

On the last day before Christmas Break, I gave both of the small men's teachers a gift bag with some of these homemade goodies in them. Hopefully they enjoy it! The last day of school was also Pajama Day, so everyone came to school wearing their PJs. The kids were all really cute, and even some of the teachers got in on the act.

Every Friday, they announce the birthdays for the next week and each birthday kid gets a special pencil from the principal. Monkey Boy's birthday falls over the Christmas break so he was quite excited to get his birthday pencil!

They were holding a "Desk Sale" in Little Man's class.  Each child would bring in some items from home and they used their Scholar Dollars (which are earned throughout the semester) to make their purchases. Evidently LM had A LOT of Scholar Dollars because he came home with a big bag full of stuff. 

Now it's officially Christmas break and I'm soooooo glad we don't have to wake up early for the next two weeks! Yay!!!!

 

 

::domestic::homemade granola

Granola is always a welcome snack at Chez Shizzknits. We like it over yogurt, with milk, and eaten straight out of hand. I have been buying Trader Joe's granola, but recently found an interesting recipe for homemade granola that looked easy and yummy.  The recipe comes from Food In Jars, and here it is....

Granola Recipe (not tripled)

6 cups rolled oats
1  cup whole almonds
1 cup pepitas
1/2 cups sunflower seeds
1/2 cup sesame seeds (lightly toasted and cooled)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cups brown rice syrup
1/4 cup honey

In a large bowl (larger than you might think, so that you have plenty of room to toss), combine the oats, seeds and nuts. You can also include flaked coconut or wheat germ (they were staple ingredients in my childhood granola, but are too “hippy-ish” for my husband). Sprinkle the cinnamon and salt in and toss all the ingredients to combine.

In a small saucepan, heat the brown rice syrup and honey until it’s warm and will run thin. Pour it over the granola base and, using a large spoon, keep turning the granola until the syrup is well-integrated.

Spread it out in your largest roasting pan and bake at 325 degrees for 30 minutes, turning it with a spatula every 10 minutes so that it toasts evenly.

Once it has browned to your liking, remove the hot pan to your countertop and let it cool briefly. Once it has cooled a bit, move it around with a spatula so that it doesn’t stick to the pan too badly. When it has thoroughly cooled, funnel it into a large jar. It will keep 2-3 weeks in an airtight jar (but rarely lasts that long in my household).

**My mods:

When I went to the store for the almonds and other nuts, they had both roasted/salted, and raw nuts.  The recipe didn't specify raw or roasted so I ended up buying the raw ones.

I added about 1/2 cup of toasted coconut flakes. Next time I might add more, as 1/2 cup didn't seem to make much of a taste difference.

I've never used brown rice syrup before and bought this brand to try:

BRS reminds me a lot of honey- very thick and sticky. It's not as sweet as honey, though, and a little more nutty-tasting.

The finished granola was really good- I didn't think the toasted sesame seeds would make that much of an impact, but you can definitely taste them. The granola isn't too sweet either. It didn't make 'clusters', probably because the recipe directs you to stir the granola as it's roasting, so we ended up with a more cereal-like consistency.

We've all been eating it like crazy, though the Dearest has suggested adding some dried fruit next time. Yum!

::domestic:: jamming

Can you believe that I've never made homemade jam or jellies?  I know, I know!  All the bread that gets made in this house and not a single jar of jam?!

Well, last week I set out to fix this oversight.  My friend Jennie and I bought some jars, pectin, and strawberries, and borrowed the Ball Complete Book of Preserving from the library.  There was a lot of strawberry mashing, boiling water, sugar, and head-scratching as we read the directions over and over to each other. But after a couple of hours, we each had a half-dozen jars of delicious strawberry jam:

I had a couple of empty jars left over, and a huge basket of blueberries, so the next day I made four more jars of blueberry jam. The process was not as difficult as I thought, and the jam is SO. GOOD. It tastes amazing!  I might never go back to storebought jams again!

frosty

Strawberries are in season locally, which means big flats of sweet, red deliciousness have been making their way into our house for the past couple of weeks. We have had so many berries that I've exhausted the strawberry pie/muffin/syrup/pancakes route and have taken to freezing the berries whole. From here, they'll go straight from the freezer into smoothies and shakes.