Nice, slow weekend

It is Saturday afternoon and we are enjoying a slow, do-nothing day. We met friends for a nice dinner last night, THANKS MOM!, and bear woke up right as we got in at 11pm. He had a bottle and went right back to bed until 8am! Delightful!

Now, C is mowing the lawn with Abbey and Bear is settling in for a nap. We just got back from the grocery store. We got all the fixins to try out this Cooks Illustrated test recipe. It is called Tinga, Mexican shredded pork. I am going to make red chile rice with black beans on the side. Stay tuned.

On the way back from the store we were almost run off the road by an overly aggressive moped driver. Wild huh? Ever heard of that? Maybe no one told him mopeds aren't in the same class as beefy harleys. I almost put "aggressive moped man" in the same class of driver as "Man in a Mini-van" but presumedly this guy CHOSE the moped where men driving mini-vans I seriously doubt were given a choice. Hence, why they drive their windstar like it's a mustang, which mustang it aint.

btw - those who are curious... no cavities!

Recipe Tester!

Yep that's right! I am officially a recipe tester for Cooks Illustrated Magazine. I'm excited but truth be told the regular emails they send me asked for volunteers so it isn't like I had to prove I could cook or anything. What's the recipe? If I told ya - I'd have to kill ya.

Speaking of cooking, last Sunday I went to see Julie and Julia with my mom. It was very cute and definitely one of those "why didn't I think of that!" kind of ideas. So simple - cook through the entire Julia Child cookbook and blog about it. I'll say though I'm not that into French cuisine so that particular book would be tough for me to stomach. I could easily blog about our adventures making pizza! Yesterday and today we had pizza. We used our sauce with onions and turkey pepperoni but were short on time and used Boboli crust. sigh. Just not enough hours in the day - and if there were I would be sleeping instead of making a fresh dough ya know!

These days I'm happy if I cook period. The last couple years I've been more into the buy a ton of something from CostCo and make lots of dishes and freeze them. For example Saturday I bought over 6 pounds of ground beef and make nearly 30 hamburgers. As I shaped them I put little squares of parchment paper between them on a cookie sheet. Then I popped them into the freezer (on cookie sheet andstill raw) until they were firm enough to stack in gallon sized freezer ziplocs. What's great is they go straight on the grill frozen and cook up pretty quick. Yep, I'm officially a mom with little time. Where's my station wagon?

Tomorrow - the dentist! I plan to pray to the tooth fairy that I don't have any cavities.

Whoopie Pies!

Today we went to friends for a BBQ and brought dessert. We made whoopie pies. They are two mini-chocalate cakes with a marshmallow like filling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whoopie_pie

The recipe we used was from Cooks Illustrated. The filling called for butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and fluff. Yes FLUFF! I never thought I'd ever make anything that called for fluff. Oh well, never say never.

They are a wonderful gooey mess. I have never had one nor eaten one before and it was goooooood. They turned out to have a diameter of about 4 inches so we cut them in half but they were still really rich and quite an investment. They reminded me of suzy q but the filling is much richer.

This got us reminiscing about other grade school lunch treats. There's the twinkie, naturally, but I was never a huge fan cuz they are spongy. I definitely loved ho-hos and ding dongs and those yummy zingers. mmmm lemon zinger. I can't remember when the fruit rollups came out but those were so yummy and fun. My sister and I loved Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies the best.

That got us thinking... the filling was very similar to the oatmeal creme pie. So all we would have to do is make oatmeal cookies and the filling and voila homemade oatmeal creme pies. mmm someday.