>I am busily making my menu for Thanksgiving, and I want to make the same stuffing I made last year. See, two years ago, this stuffing had major potential, but the chestnuts got overcooked. Last year, I think I solved the chestnut problem and I was so happy that all I had to do was turn to my blog to find out exactly what the solution was. Sadly, all there is is a list of things I really need to get around to blogging about, like my stuffing solution. GAH! So I guess I have to solve that problem again this year.
I love how Lucy’s tail starts wagging at the end. And about the cake… It was dry. I decreased the baking powder (3 teaspoons instead of 3,5) and the sugar (buy 1/4 cup out of 3 cups or something), but I didn’t increase the liquid. Maybe that was the problem. I was pretty sad about it, but it didn’t stop my from having cake for breakfast the day after Jack’s birthday.
>Jack is really on a roll these days. I have been saying that he is at the peak of the terrible twos, and I can only pray that I am not kidding and/or jinxing myself.
Today he turned down homemade pancakes in favor of a piece of toast. Who does that?
>Dave and I drove across a part of the South together on our first vacation about 16 years ago. We stopped at a roadside stand and bought a peach that I can’t really describe. I mean, I could, but what I am going to do? Use a bunch of adjectives like sweet, juicy, sticky? Isn’t it enough to say that I remember a specific peach from the summer of 1994?
That we both remember it.
Speaking of things that are really sweet, you can thank me for not going off on a “peach as metaphor for young love” tangent here. Instead, I will say that I could write a book about that trip, or a screen play for a road trip movie starring Ellen Page as the young MetaMegan and James Franco as Dave. (I know… I let Dave cast his character.) So the fact that we both remember that peach, ok, you get the point.
And the point is, we stopped in Palisade on our way home from our vacation and bought a half bushel of peaches. I had spent the entire vacation reading The Blah with the Dragon Blah and Little Bee so the magazines that I had been hoarding to read on vacation were untouched. On the drive home, I ripped out all the peach related recipes and we found some winners.
Then I also froze and “canned” some peaches, but that’s a story for another post. What I wanted to share was that Luke and Jack were supposed to go to the RV with Grandmom and Grandad in the middle of this peachy time, and they were acting reluctant, and I was encouraging Dave to just go with them and leave me all alone. Dave thought about it for a full minute before he sighed and said, “I can’t go. I’d miss the peaches.”
>A miracle happened today: my camera, memory card, battery and laptop where all in the same place at the same time. Also, I felt like blogging. This has been a crazy year, and it’s been difficult for me to be hilarious. I do, however, have a lot of material for my tragic memoir, which by the time I write it, will be tragically hilarious. But MetaMegan has been suffering, as I am sure dedicated readers have noticed.
Enter MetaMegan 2.0. I have a lot of exciting things planned for the rest of the year. I am sure many of them will turn out to disastrously, which will make for some good blogging.
Take our impromptu Saturday night dinner party! The pizza was in the oven when lightening struck and the power went out. It came back on right away and I said to our guests, “I hope we don’t have a crazy hail storm like we did that other time you guys were here. Ha ha ha ha ha.”
After I watched the hail for a really long time, I said, “THE PIZZA!”
The pizza wasn’t burned because when the power went out the oven turned off. Sigh. I turned the oven back on and thought, “I’ll just switch the bottom pizza with the top pizza while the oven heats back up. Except the bottom pizza (barbecue chicken) had sort of expanded beyond the pan, and grew around the oven rack. So when I pulled it out, half the pizza stayed in the oven. AAAHH! Pizza Disaster! I threw the pan on the counter to try to get the rest of the pizza out and in the process knocked over my wine glass, spilling wine across the counter and down the other side. My guest took off running, I assumed to laugh in the other room so as not to be rude, but actually it was to start cleaning wine off the wall across the room.
Since the oven was so cool by now, it was easy to get the rest of the pizza out and reassemble everything with delicious results. I’m on the come back trail here!
>This month’s Martha Stewart Everyday foods had a recipe for a doctored up graham cracker that reminded me of cookies my grandma used to make. I think I had the recipe once, but I was horrified by how much butter the recipe called for, so I never made them. Or maybe I am thinking of her pita chips. Mmmmm. My grandma made me a bag of both of those treats to take in the car when I moved with Dave to Colorado almost 15 years ago, and that was the last time I ever ate them. I think they may have made it as far is Iowa, but probably not.
I wish I could link to the Martha recipe, because I am feeling too lazy to type it up, but I don’t see it on her page yet. My grandma’s recipe was butter and sugar baked into graham crackers, with chocolate chips spread over the top when they come out of the oven. Martha’s had toffee chips too, and almonds, and sea salt. I screwed up the recipe by using heath chips instead of toffee, and chocolate chips separately, but they were still really good. I am thinking of making them again, but just trying to recreate my grandma’s version. It’s going to be hard to skip the salt at the end though, I have been loving sweet desserts with a little salt lately.
>Luke’s birthday celebration began a few weeks ago at the Monster Truck Jam. And if you ask him about it, make sure not to call it a Monster Truck Extravaganza, or a Monster Truck Rally. It’s a MONSTER TRUCK JAM!!!
Then poor Luke had to begin the extremely long process of waiting for his presents to be wrapped. (Note to people who send unwrapped gifts and then ask me to wrap them… I don’t do the best job sometimes.)
It took a really long time, and Jack had a major meltdown when he found out he wasn’t going to be opening anything. So I had to wrap a box of hot chocolate so he’d have something to open. Luke got very tired of waiting. Lucy tried to make off with a gift.
After that, Luke pretty much played with his presents for the rest of the day while I was in a baking frenzy. I baked a cake for his birthday dessert, cupcakes for his school party and pizzas for dinner.
More about the triple layer fudge cake later – but do I look like the mother of a 7 year old? No, I didn’t think so.
And the cupcakes were “orange cream soda with chocolate straws.”
He had a pretty good day, I think. I told him now that he is 7, I am just going to start calling him “Seven”. You see, John Elway was under consideration as a name for Luke when I was pregnant, and we were going to use 7 as a nickname. If you know Luke, you will know that he did not find that story amusing at all.
>Possibly inappropriate to misappropriate Senior Dylan’s music to discuss changes to my blog. But that song is in my head, so there is no other title forthcoming.
So! I backed up MetaMegan, removed the Jack Stats (not updated in the past year) removed the Longest Stretch of Sleep for Mommy section (it was that or start updating it with how long Lucy is sleeping, and that is just depressing.)
I also changed the background, and added a Followers section on the bottom right. Lastly, I am now not allowing anonymous comments any more (sorry Dad and Ellie) because I started getting spam in the comments. Boo! I hate that word verification, it makes me feel like I don’t know my letters because I pretty much always get it wrong the first time. But what else can I do? Allow spammers? Nooooo!
OH! And I added a search button, for all those times when you think, what was that bon mot/recipe/anecdote that was so wonderful that I sort of forgot it? No? OK, well I will use it, I am sure. For when I finally get around to writing up my Thanksgiving dressing recipe. Next Thanksgiving, I won’t have to search and search through November and December 2009 wondering where it is and how I cooked the chestnuts. I’ll just use the search and find it right here in February! (Ok… probably March.)
And now for the super bowl menu: Honey Barbecue Wings Hot Wings Spaghetti Sauce with Whole Wheat noodles Homemade Bread Guacamole and Chips Brie and Crackers Chex Mix (Dave’s recipe) Veggie tray.
MetaMegan 