What-What?! Week of May 1st

Happy May Day!

This week... could have gone better.  I was rear-ended on Monday morning going to work, and while it wasn't bad or anything, and the car is still fully functional, it sucks.  I love my Subaru, and now it is crunched. :(

Not too much else going on.  I spent most of the week at work coding, which was nice.  It's nice to fix problems, rather than just finding and examining them.

Other than that, the husband did some science with Ozzy:

A simple vinegar and baking soda reaction.  Ozzy was really excited!

Food Review:  Red Rose English Breakfast

Yesterday, we went to the grocery store and needed tea.  We saw this and were surprised; Red Rose has fancy teas?

So we got some.

And it's pretty much Red Rose fancy tea.  It tastes like the regular Red Rose, just a bit different.  Not too different, but then English Breakfast is a pretty basic black tea to begin with.  Delicious with some Biscoff cookies; we'll probably be buying this one again.

What-What?! Week of January 26th

Friday, my husband decided to start a blog, The Wizard's Rambles.  You'll find the picture of Saffron's finished Battlemech, which I posted the in-process shot of on Art Thursday.  He just started it, so it's pretty basic right now.

Food and Cooking:  Silicone Muffin Cups Review

For Christmas, I was given two different sets of silicone muffin cups, and having had used them for about a month now, I thought a review was in order.

I have to say, these are so great!  I like that I can pick up each cup individually and fill it, bringing the cup to the batter, rather than the other way around (I always make a mess getting the batter into the cups).  The muffins bake up well in the cups, and the cups themselves store easily in one of my kitchen drawers.  And while Ruffles should have ridges, silicone muffin cups should not; the little ridges on the side of each cup do make them difficult to clean.  I use paper cups when I make muffins or cupcakes in these, which is somewhat annoying, but I was using them with the conventional muffin pan anyway.

To avoid the cleaning issue, I suggest either using paper cups like I do, or buying ones that have fewer or no ridges.  The best I could find on Amazon were these ones made by Freshware, as seen above.

Cooking:  Oven French Toast with Creamy Peach Filling

This is a great breakfast or dinner.  Make it the night before for breakfast, or the morning of for dinner.  The filling and cutting up the bread can be made a day or two ahead of time, to make assembly quick.

Ingredients

Filling:

• 2 small cans Peaches
• 8 ounces Cream Cheese, softened
• 3 tablespoons Sugar (granulated or brown)

French toast:

• 1 loaf French Bread, cut into cubes
• 8 Eggs
• 1/2 cup Milk
• 1 tablespoon Vanilla
• Dash of Salt
• Cinnamon
• Nutmeg
• Butter or cooking spray

Drain the canned peaches, reserving 1/4 cup of the liquid.  Mix peaches, cream cheese, sugar together, mashing the peaches as you go.  If it seems too thick, add some of the reserved peach syrup.  Set aside.

Grease a 9 x 13 pan.  Do NOT forget this step.  It doesn't matter what you grease it with, be it butter, cooking spray, or the tears of your enemies, but grease it.  If you forget, you will be stuck at the kitchen sink for hours, wondering where your life went so wrong.

Anyway.

Beat eggs, milk, vanilla, and spices until well mixed.
Put half the French bread cubes into the pan, top with the filling, then the other half of the bread cubes.  Pour the egg mixture evenly over the pan.  Cover with plastic wrap, then put in the fridge for 8 hours or overnight.

When ready to cook, pull the pan out of the fridge and set the oven to 350 degrees.  Cover with foil, bake 45 minutes, uncovering for the last 15 minutes.  Enjoy!

What-What?! Week of October 13th

This week went well -- had some bumps at work, but thankfully nothing huge.  The husband has this weekend off, which he's using to spend some one-on-one time with the older kids.  It can be difficult to find time for that, so I'm glad he has the opportunity.

Cooking: Simple Candy Apples


One of the highlights of this week was making candy apples with the kids. It was a simple project, and nice because it could be scaled down to just four apples, enough for each child to have two.

Materials

• Apples
• Candy melts
• Popsicle sticks (we used plastic knives)
• Toppings like sprinkles, nuts, chocolate chips, etc.

First, wash and dry the apples thoroughly, then insert the stick into one end.  Prepare a pan for the apples to dry on by placing some wax paper on it (butcher paper would also work well here).  Put toppings into bowls for easy dipping. Put the candy melts in a deep bowl, and melt in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds until smooth.

Dip the apples in the candy melts, covering completely, then dip or sprinkle toppings onto apples.  Place on prepared pan and wait for the candy melts to harden.  Enjoy.
 
We did!

Food Review: Starbucks Chocolate Chai Latte

The husband and I tried this chocolate chai lattes, and were really disappointed. My husband and I agreed that they were just too sweet, which is pretty common with Starbucks, unfortunately. I liked the spiced chocolate taste, but my husband thought that it there was too much ginger. Normally I abhor ginger, but in this instance, I thought the chocolate offset the spices nicely. However, the whole thing was ruined by the sheer sweetness of the drink. Needless to say, we won't be buying them again.

(img via polyvore.com)

What-What?! Week of July 28th

This week, my eldest ruined my couch.  Then my youngest threw himself off of it.  We no longer have a couch, and I'm not sure what we'll replace it with.  Possibly floor cushions, or bean bag chairs.  Maybe we'll make the living room into a giant ball pit?  It'd keep the kids busy, that's for sure.

News: Firefly Videogame Announced via Kotaku
I like Firefly.  I named one of my children after a character from it, I have a rare piece of paraphernalia from the original fan ‘site (that Nathan Fillion frequented, oh yeah!), and so on.  However, the headline that most summed up my feelings about this game was: “Firefly is Getting a Video Game, But Not the One You Want”.  This will be a multi-player online social game specifically for cell phones and tablets.  The setting of Firefly would make a wonderful action roleplaying game, a first-person shooter, even a card game, but not this.  While there is the possibility of this social MMO being good, it’s pretty slim – Fox never understood Firefly before, and it doesn’t look like that’s changed much.

Product Review: Chex Vanilla
My family eats a lot of cereal, and that’s actually one reason that we tend to eat new cereals as soon as they come out – through coupons and sales, these new varieties are usually what I can get the cheapest.  This past week, I bought a few boxes of General Mills’ Chex Vanilla, because the other specialty varieties of Chex we’ve tried (Apple Cinnamon, Honey Nut) have both been pretty good.  The first bowl of this Vanilla variety I had blew me away.  It is so sweet.  Looking at the nutrition label, this is what I found: 8 grams of sugar for a 30 gram serving.  Cheerios have 1 gram of sugar for about the same serving size.  Eating this dry is like eating “puppy chow” – you know, during the holidays when you douse cereal with chocolate and powdered sugar.  It’s not bad if you consider it as an indulgent snack, rather than a breakfast food.  However, the vanilla flavor is sadly lacking, so mostly it just winds up being sweet.  Overall, I think General Mills had a miss with this one.

Review:  Captain Bogg and Salty’s Emphatical Piratical via Amazon
Emphatical Piratical is Captain Bogg and Salty’s most recent album, self-published in 2009.  Unfortunately, there is little on the internet available for this band, so I actually had to buy the album (spend money, what-what?!).  The husband and I really liked this album, and my children very much liked it as well, though I will say that I probably wouldn’t have bought it if I’d heard it first.  It is kind of odd, but entertaining, mildly historical, and a good, fun romp.

Luckily, I was able to find the song Emphatical Piratical on YouTube, though without a video:

At this point, I would like to point out the word “paralogical”, which means:

Paralogical:  Of or relating to a form of reasoning that does not conform to the rules of logic.

I think that this term is itching for a comeback in modern use.  I hereby pledge to use it more often in my everyday speech.

The other song I found on YouTube is from their 2005 album, Pegleg Tango, titled “Pieces of 8ight” – my kids especially liked this video.

If you imagine a hybrid of these two styles, that’s about what the rest of the album sounds like.

Portland’s Pirate Festival
In researching Captain Bogg and Salty, I stumbled upon Portland’s Pirate Festival.  Most years, it is a fine festival full of music, and so on.  However, this year the event has been canceled, due to a member of the crew passing away, and the group’s replica pirate tall ship (the Royaliste) having had been almost completely destroyed by the Portland Sternwheeler (though these events were not inter-related).  The group has my sincerest condolences, and I hope they are able to repair their ship.  They are planning on having the event next year, which I would love to attend, though that will have to wait until the children are older.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to work on my scone recipe (kept forgetting to buy flour), but hopefully I’ll be able to work on it this coming week.