Chocolate Cake and Snotty Noses

Made chocolate cakes for baking day. Nothing special, just the mixes from the box, but a good start up to get us back into the swing of things. I'll let their mothers decide to buy frosting or drop vanilla ice cream on them. I'm feeling a little lazy today.

****

This weeks winner of the "Whole World is Going to Hell in a Fed Ex Envelope" award:

Just heard the title of today's episode of Max and Ruby. It's called "Ruby Scores".

I can't even bring myself to finish the joke. Too easy.

Almost as easy as when Elmo visited (and I kid you not) the "Skin Channel". That one required a carpet cleaner to clean up the mouth full of coke I spewed across the room. Just what are the folks at PBS thinking these days?

****

Between Squizzle and Bub, I have emptied an entire box of tissues in less than two days. I cannot believe how snotty these kid's noses are. Ford Motor Company should take lessons on production efficiency from the booger assembly lines found in the noses of the under three crowd. Output, output, output.

I'm not a germaphobe (I often wonder how people survived before the CDC told us we should all be dead), but even I've been soaking my hands in anti-bacterial hand sanitizer. And since it's grossing me out, it can now gross all of you out as well.

****

A couple of important Blog Milestones are coming up. We are currently at 595 visitors, so six hundred should happen by the end of the day. Hurrah!! So many poisoned minds...

Second, this represents the 95th post on the blog so by the end of the week, we should have post number 100. Woo Hoo!! So much poison for so many minds...

Next, I think I want to have a membership drive to boost the number of followers. We've been stuck at 22 for a while now even though I know there are more who read. Perhaps we should work up some official "Destroying Angel Membership Cards" or get some "Fatdaddy Secret Decoder Rings" or something like that to entice new followers.

Never mind.

****

Squizzles gets new teeth!

Yeah. And it has not been pleasant for him or me. Since the Boss has to work all day, I volunteer to take the night shift when kids get sick or whatever.

Squizzle has some bigger teeth coming in on the back bottom of his mouth and it does not seem to be a happy thing for him. On Sunday night, he slept from ten until one and then woke up screaming. He kept screaming until three thirty or four.

Then on Monday night, he didn't bother trying. He just started screeching at around eleven. I took him upstairs so he wouldn't disturb the Boss. By midnight I dosed him up with infant pain reliever and sat on the couch while he dozed on my lap until three. Then he woke up screaming and did not go back to sleep. At all. Around five, I was pretty sure why mother tigers sometimes eat their young.

For those of you that have not seen "Anchorman" (probably most of you), the sportscaster comes into work after a bender and says "I woke up in some Japanese family's rec room, and they would NOT stop screaming!"

For most of the early morning Tuesday hours, that line kept going through my mind. "I woke up at three A.M. with a teething toddler who would NOT stop screaming!" I mean, I know he's in pain but does that mean I have to be in pain too? Sharing is for things that gross you out like snot stories...

...Never mind. I'll stop complaining. (For a sentence or two)

So last night I came loaded for bear. Anbesol, children's pain reliever, frozen towel to chew on...I was ready. I hit him with a dropper of pain reliever, and he fell asleep in less than ten minutes. And slept the rest of the night.

Fatdaddy luck strikes again. Closing the barn door after the cow gets out.

What are ya gonna do?

Your Taste is All In Your Mouth...Or Is It?

Aunt M and Uncle J came over for dinner last night.

Instead of drawing for gifts, we kids have spent the last few Christmases drawing for treats. The rule is you can only spend 20 bucks, packaged or homemade. This year we swapped treats with Aunt M.

On New Years Eve, she brought us enough ice cream to build an igloo and enough toppings to paint its walls. In return, the Boss busted out her sweet and sour meatballs, fried rice and egg rolls.

Now, I don't mean to brag (yes I do), but there is a reason that the talking scale starts to scream when it sees me coming. I would not be pushing three and a half bills if the Boss was burning toast and salting the kool-aid. In addition to being smart,beautiful, and the mother of my children, the woman can FLAT OUT COOK!! And sweet and sour meatballs are one of her "show off" meals.

They are AWESOME! Ask Aunt M, she'll tell ya.

Anyway, sweet and sour meatballs means leftover white rice in the fridge this morning and that means I made one of my specialties. Rice and raisins.

So easy a cave man can do it. Put the rice back in the rice cooker and cover it with milk. Dust the top with cinnamon and a sprinkle of nutmeg. Add a couple hand fulls of raisins (stale raisins actually work better than fresh ones), a cap full of vanilla and enough sugar to make Bob and Jillian devote an episode of "Biggest Loser" to calling you "The Great Satan". Turn the cooker back on and wait for the click. Pour cream or more milk over each serving to cool it off and watch your belt burst.

When I was in Taiwan, I lived on the stuff. The perfect missionary breakfast. High energy, low effort, and if you'll pardon the understatement, plentiful ingredients. You can also do a version with cocoa powder and chocolate chips, and once I made a holiday version that replaced the milk with egg nog, the raisins with cranberry raisins, and added the zest and juice of one orange. But it's hard to beat the original.

That's why I was surprised when Reaggers refused to eat hers this morning. From the time her mom drops her off until she gets picked up, the child wants to eat. But when I handed her a bowl of rice and raisins, she turned up her nose at it and refused to take it. She would not even smell it.

What the heck?

Last night her mother called me. I asked how Bub was feeling since when he was here yesterday he had gotten into some Reese's Pieces. Not good for a kid with peanut allergies (see previous postings). She said Bub was fine. I told Beak that I didn't like to fix peanut butter sandwiches for Peff and Reaggers anymore for fear Bub would try to steal a bite.

Beak said it was OK and then told me that this was why she was calling. She had a bloggable story about Reaggers and peanut butter. It seems they were watching TV when someone said that chocolate and peanut butter was the perfect combination.

Reaggers took umbrage with this and said that it was NOT the perfect combination. Beak, knowing the answer already by sad experience, asked Reaggers what she thought was the perfect combination for peanut butter.

Without hesitation, Reaggers shouted....

...."Ham!"

(shudder)

Apparently, the child really, really likes peanut butter and ham sandwiches. But not rice and raisins.

Yeah. I know.

Whoever first used the insult "your taste is all in your mouth" never met my niece.

He can find her on EBay.

Chubby Bunny Cookies

When I was a 17 year old punk I once went to a Young Men's activity where we played a wonderful little game called "Chubby Bunnies". We had two large bags of giant marshmallows, and the object of the game was to put a marshmallow in your mouth and say the sentence "I am a chubby bunny". Whoever could say the sentence coherently with the most marshmallows stuffed in his pie hole was the winner. After about 5 a piece, things started to get....slobbery. The Young Men's leader had a wife who had a thing about teenagers drooling on her carpet (there's no accounting for taste), and provided us with a cookie sheet to catch drippings and expectorated marshmallow goo.

When we got done we had this incredibly disgusting tray of ooze. Someone (It wasn't me) got the brilliant idea of turning it into Marshmallow Crispy Treats. This was the extent of our baking prowess at the time, most of us having spent the semester of home-ec that is required to learn to make Orange Julius and Marshmallow Crispy Treats.

Once we got started, though, it was (as all church related youth activities tend to be) all downhill from there. The inevitable dare, double dare and triple dog dare insult matches took place until someone (I'm not going to say it wasn't me) got the clever and amusing idea of taking them to the church where the Young Women were meeting. "They'll never expect it, 'cause they aren't brownies!" said an anonymous moron (who may or may not have been me). No youth in Utah would eat a brownie back in the ancient days of my youth as someone had discovered you could make them with chocolate ExLax. We were a little meaner back in the pre-political correctness days.

Now this wasn't entirely as mean spirited as it sounds. Looking back, I think it was a really pathetic attempt at flirtation. You know, show them how clever we could be, demonstrate our domestic skills, (good thing I practiced those, huh?), let them see our thoughtfulness, that sort of thing. Come to think of it, it now makes sense why none of the ward girls wanted much to do with us.

Our wet blanket leader heard our devious plot and put the immediate kaibosh to it. He threw them away, making them at the same time both more unavailable and more desirable to give as "gifts". I still wonder if we'd have gotten away with it if we'd just....

Never mind. The reason I retell this saga of lost youth is that today is baking day! We made peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses smashed into 'em. Now Bub has a peanut allergy. It gives him what the Chinese call "hot stomach". And the last thing in the universe that I need right now is to be potty training a child with "hot stomach". So Bub was not allowed anywhere in the vicinity of the dough. Instead I put him to work "peeling" the Kisses of their foil wrappers. After a moment of supervision to make sure he had it down, I went back to mixing dough.

When I checked up on him a minute later, I caught him popping a kiss into his mouth.

"Don't eat that!" I hollered. "Those are for the cookies!"

Being a diligent and obedient tot he pulled it back out of his mouth and attempted to drop it back into the bowl of peeled kisses.

"Argghh!" I said, eloquently stating my feelings as I snatched the bowl away. I checked the bowl for soggy Kisses and found none; but the point is (and I know I have disappointed my favorite Auntie) that I can't be entirely certain that these cookies have not been "Chubby Bunnied".

I'm sorry. Bub is sorry too. But we will make it up to you soon. I'll start right now by not writing a joke that is both really funny and really gross, even though I want to and that way I won't ruin your appreciation of these delicious cookies.

Now I've got to go, the boys just found a bag of large marshmallows. I'm not kidding. I wish I were.

PIctures: Pumpkin Cookies

Just realized I never posted about the pumpkin cookies last Wednesday. They are really easy. Mix one big can of pumpkin with two packages of spice cake mix, add chocolate chips and spoon it onto a greased cookie sheet. So simple even we couldn't screw it up. There's a bonus pick of my mashed potato assembly line. Fifty pounds of spuds mashed into 4 crock pots. How Irish can I possibly get?

Next Week's Treat Poll (And a Possible Prize!!)

Once that we have finished with the spectacular Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies tomorrow, it will be time to figure out something else for next week. Since I have no preference at this point, I think it might be interesting (Is that the right word?) to turn the options over to the readers. I'll give you all until Friday to submit an idea in the comment section, and we'll use suggestions for the poll options.

Then, we'll cough up a plate of the winning goodies to whoever suggested them (*New York, Georgia and Virginia residents may want to defer the prize, some things don't mail very well).

We are an adventurous batch, we'll try baking anything, but I am not coughing up cash money for caviar stuffed, saffron coated, shark fin. I'll cook it if you want, but you will have to provide your own ingredients if it wins.


So pick your favorite treat recipe and put it in the comments. But hurry, Friday at 10 pm Mtn will be the deadline.

Pizza

Sorry that the post on baking day is one day late (I know you are waiting with baited breath), but my Internet provider had some goof up or another (there's that techno-crap again), and I couldn't log on until this morning. I think it went pretty well. Beak brought about thirty pounds of fruit, so there was plenty of topping.

I mixed up a batch of sugar cookie dough (already posted) and I was thinking that I'd use a cookie cutter to cut out big circles, but I couldn't find my big cutter. Inspiration struck and I thought it might be fun to cut the cookies into triangles like pizza slices. They looked much better than regular mini pizzas, I thought.

For sauce, we mixed a package of cream cheese, a jar of marshmallow fluff, a half jar of strawberry jam, and however much strawberry Quick the kids wanted to squeeze in the mixing bowl.

I set up the card table, covered it with paper, sauced a crust for each of them and turned them loose with the toppings in the middle. They could choose from banana, pineapple, peaches, frozen berries, melon balls, grapes, and kiwi fruit. The Boss got the clever idea of dropping red and yellow food coloring into a Ziploc full of coconut and letting the kids shake it up. It looked for all the world like that yellow and white shredded cheese they sell for tacos and pizzas.

Squizzle sat in his chair and ate his cupcake until he passed out, amid a giant mess. Fortunately, he slept long enough for the kids to finish their pizzas so I could clean the kitchen up a little and get them settled down before I had to go hose him down.

One mess at a time, One mess at a time, One mess at a time......

Only two really good keepers amongst the Runts chatter.

Motor asked Peff to "Pass me the key weed, please." I can only assume that he meant the fruit and was not orchestrating a drug deal with Peff.

Peff had another one (he is his father's son), at one point declaring, "I'm going to make another slice just like that one, except different".

Perhaps I ought to stop letting him watch Bill and Ted.

Enjoy the Pics.

Nice Cupcakes!! (Snicker)

The Boss is home from her inspection and she passed with flying colors! I followed through and made her some cupcakes and further offered proof of my adoration by adding mint to the chocolate cupcakes and the frosting (Blechhh!), which is her favorite.

I'm not going to post the recipe, you can read the box better than I can. I did get some pictures and a few more good lines from the kids.

The best of which are:

Reaggers: "What's inside this egg shell?"
Fatdaddy: (long pause) "Roast Beef"


Or

Reaggers: "Who was on the phone?"
FD: "Aunt M."
R: "Oh, I just love Aunt M. I could hug her and kiss her and love her all day long."

Or

FD: "Please do not throw packages of cake mix at one another."

And my personal favorite:

R: "Can I have a cupcake now?"
FD: "I don't think your momma wants you to eat a chocolate cupcake in your pretty white shirt, but I'll let her decide."
R: "Mom, can I have a cupcake?"
Beak: " I don't know..."
R: "Uncle Fatdaddy said yes."

Can't live with 'em, Can't sell 'em on EBay. What ya gonna do?

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup butter
1 cup Crisco
(or 2 cups of one)
1 1/2 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cup brown sugar

4 eggs
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 tsp Almond or Mint extract

5-6 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt

1 bag choc, peanut butter, butterscotch or white chocolate chips

Cream the butter, Crisco and sugar in the mixer. When well blended add the eggs vanilla and almond or mint extract.

In a separate bowl mix the flour, soda and salt.

Turn the mixer on low and add the flour mix in about a cup at a time. Dough should still be a little sticky when ready.

Stir in chips by hand, roll dough into balls a little smaller than a ping-pong ball. Bake in a preheated oven at 375 deg for 8 to 10 minutes.

Like the sugar cookies, less is better. Pull them when they first start to turn a little dark and they will finish browning on the cooling rack. One of my all time favorite things to bake.

How Much Fun Is Too Much Fun?

The oven is off and the great chocolate chip cookie bake off is over!

Last night I got a call from one of my good friends in the ward. He had a work thing this afternoon and needed a babysitter for his kids, a boy (5) and a daughter (3).

"Why not?" said I. "Bring 'em on over, the more the merrier!" Of course that meant that from 8 to 1 I had Squizzle, Peff, Reaggers, Bub, Motor, and my buddy's two. If nothing else it'd supply me with some stories.

Seven dwarfs(do NOT call me Snow White), all under the age of five. And hey, since it's Wednesday,it's baking day.

Who wants cookies?

First, let me explain the logistics of this little disaster in waiting. Have you ever tried to wash seven kids hands and then monitor them to make sure that fingers do not go into noses, mouths, ears or elsewhere? It took ten minutes just to get that done. I quickly came to the conclusion that it was best to do this in shifts, so I sent Pef, Motor, and Bub to watch cartoons while the baby sat in his high chair and the other kids helped measure, mix and roll. Then when it was time for the next batch, we switched.

I think I kind of hurt Motor's feelings a bit. He is used to getting to do a lot more than today, and he told me he was feeling left out. I felt bad and promised him that next time there would not be such a crowd.

I kept a piece of paper and pen handy, because I knew I was going to get some gems and I was not disappointed. Here are some of the better ones:


Reaggers: "Bub is eating the butter!"

(He really was. He had unwrapped a stick and bit the end of the cube off. Probably at least a tablespoon's worth.)


Neighbor Boy: "Fluffy flour equals fluffy cookies!"

(And that, my fellow chefs, is why we sift the flour. Bet you didn't know that. I didn't.)


Neighbor Boy quote #2: You can't eat that dough, there's raw eggs in it!

(At this point I'm really glad I made everyone wash their hands. What do five year olds know about food safety? I guess a lot. Where do kids this age learn this stuff?)


And last but not least (In fact, my favorite line of the day)

Peff: "Don't call people names, you Nerd!"


How am I supposed to respond to that?


Then, when I was cleaning up the dishes, Peff and the neighbor girl were jumping off of the love seat (how many times do I have to say "stop that"?) and Peff head-bonked the poor girl. She got a little bit of a nose bleed, so I brought her into the kitchen, cleaned her up and asked what would make her feel better.

"Drink" she said.

That's easy. "Milk or water?" I ask.

"Milk"

"OK. Let me pour you some." I opened the fridge and she saw a bottle of root beer on the shelf next to the milk.

"No! Root beer! Root beer! Root beer! Root beer better!" she shouts.

It was like someone shouted "Free Clearasil!" at a Poindexter convention. All of them, and I mean all of them, were instantly in the kitchen begging for root beer.

And that's how an entire 2 liter of root beer found itself emptied into the gullets of seven dwarfs. It was worth it.

I'm so glad I get tomorrow off. Enjoy the recipe, I'll post pics if I can find the cable that connects my camera to my laptop.

Sugar Free Lemon Meringue Pie

Ingredients

Filling
1/4 c cornstarch
2 T flour
1 1/2 c Splenda sugar substitute
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 c boiling water
4 eggs, separated (save whites for meringue)
1/3 c lemon juice
3 T butter
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1 9-inch baked pie shell

Meringue
1 T cornstarch
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 c Splenda
1 tsp vanilla
4 egg whites from above

Directions
Mix cornstarch, flour, Splenda, and salt in top of a double boiler. Add boiling water and blend with whisk thoroughly. Cook over boiling water, stirring constantly until mixture is thick and clear.

Beat egg yolks and stir in a little of the hot mixture to temper. Pour back into double boiler and cook two minutes longer, constantly stirring.

Remove from heat; slowly add lemon juice, butter and lemon zest. Mix well.

Pour into cooled pie shell. Let cool while preparing meringue.

For meringue, place room temperature egg whites in a medium bowl. Beat on high with electric mixer, using whisk attachment, until frothy. Add cornstarch, cream of tartar, Splenda and vanilla. Beat on high speed until slightly stiff peaks begin to form.

Swirl over pie filling so it touches edges of crust and completely covers filling.

Bake at 350 for 12-15 min or until meringue is golden brown. Cool completely before cutting. Store any leftover pie in fridge to prevent any food-borne illness.

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

1 1/2 c. butter, softened
2 c sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
5 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Directions

Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well. Stir together all dry ingredients. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet stirring well after each addition and scraping sides of bowl. Cover and chill for 1-2 hours or overnight. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut dough into 4 sections. Work with one at a time and keep others chilled. Roll out 1/4-1/2 inch thick. (thicker is better) Cut into shapes as desired. Place on greased cookie sheet and bake 6-8 minutes or until edges are barely brown. If bottoms brown they are overdone. Less is more with these cookies especialy if you love soft sugar cookies. Frost as desired.

****** Fatdaddy's note******
Frosting these is where the fun is. Give each monkey a plastic knife and let 'em go. Just keep the washcloths handy! We made these in October for Halloween. Cut some of 'em to look like ghosts and then frosted them with white.

That was boring, though, so Motor decided he wanted to put red sprinkles on his. It made them look like CSI ghosts. White sheets with blood splatters. I should have taken pictures.

Easy Pie Crust

Ingredients

1 1/2 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c cold butter (1 stick)
2T sour cream
2T sugar (optional)

Directions

Combine all ingredients in food processor. Process until dough begins to form and will hold when pinched between your fingers. Spray a 9 or 10 inch pie pan with non0stick cooking spray. Empty dough into pie pan and press onto sides and bottom of pan. Prick with fork. For shell bake at 350 for 15-20 mins or until lightly browned, otherwise fill as desired and bake according to recipe.

Famous Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2 lg eggs
1 15oz can pure pumpkin
1 12oz can evaporated milk
1 unbaked 9-inch deep dish pie shell
Whipped cream (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Mix sugar, cinnamon, salt, ginger and cloves in a small bowl. Beat eggs in a large bowl. Stir in pumpkin and sugar-spice mixture. Can be mixed in electric mixer. Gradually stir in evaporated milk. Pour into pie shell.

Bake at 425 for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and continue baking for 40-50minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Cool for 2 hours. Serve immediately with whipped cream if desired.


******Fatdaddy's Note******
Snaked this one from off the can of Libby's Pumpkin. Good stuff. Funny story from when me and Motor and Peff baked it. We had all the ingredients in the mix master, and had locked it down while it mixed. I turned the mixer off and turned to grab the rubber scraper from Motor. I went back to the mixer and unlocked it to pull the bowl off. Except I'm blind and distracted, and instead of flipping the unlock switch, I turned the thing back on. Full speed. Suddenly.

Not Good.

Anybody old enough to remember that Danny Ainge Meadow Gold commercial from the 80's when he was making the milkshake and the kid turned on the blender without the lid? Yeah, it was about like that, except with pumpkin. I don't reccomend that particular move when trying this recipe.

Appetite for Destruction

Every Wednesday, when the eldest, Moe, and Puzey are at school, I watch my brother R's little boy (we'll call him Motor) who is about the same age as Peff. Motor and Peff look enough alike that my bad eyes usually can't tell them apart. Since they are both stuck at home while their sisters are at school, I got the brilliant idea of getting them together for an afternoon. And hey, while we are at it, why not bake some cookies or something.

While I have not yet qualified for the Darwin Award, I am currently nominated for the "Man So Dumb We Are Not Able to Figure Out How His Heart Keeps Beating" award. Two five year old boys trying to bake cookies with a blind man has provided most of the ammunition I will be firing at these Blog pages.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I started watching my little sister Beak's two kids, "Raeggers" (4) and her brother "Bub" who is 3. It has multiplied the fun exponentially!

Anyway, I am going to post the recipes and maybe some photos of the carnage....er...I mean the cuisine, in a section I like to call "Appetite for Destruction." Look for new recipes every Wednesday!!