More Cakes and of course Pies! November 27, 2008

Our old Cub Scout pack did an annual cake auction in which the boys auctioned off their own cake. Our new Cub Scout pack does an annual cake walk. We stuck to our old Derby car cake pattern since the people here haven’t seen it before. Last year’s cake did turn out better.

As it turns out, we made a good choice because we took first in the Best Cub Scout Theme cake.

Here is the cake that Jack chose from the cake walk. It is very clever. The turkey bodies are made from chocolate covered cherries. It is VERY chocolatey. Jack is wearing his prize for having brought the coolest cake.

I must say it was very exciting to see the many different cakes that were brought to the cake auction. I can’t believe I didn’t bring the camera. Next year I’ll know better.

Last night I was busy baking new pies. Two years ago was the first time I made a pecan pie which is crazy because I will forgo calories for days to eat pecan pie! I had no idea it was so easy to make! This year I tried a new recipe – chocolate pecan pie. I only had 3 of the 4 eggs, but it still congealed. Here is the before and after….I cannot wait to dig in today.

I tried a new apple pie recipe as well. I’ve been baking an award winning sour cream apple pie for years, but thought a new pie was in order. (The recipe is not my award winner.) I tried an apple cream pie this year. It looks yummy!

Now that I am looking at this picture, a few nuts would have been really good thrown in there as well.

We are heading down the road to Aaron’s parents house today. I’m going to work hard to NOT eat so many black olives before dinner to make myself sick. Once I start, I just cannot stop it seems. Actually, having them touching green olives would be enough to make me stop eating them.

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is on. It is not as good as I remember as a kid. The floats are cool, but all the dialogue and stupid performances are annoying.

Infomercials & Birthday Cakes November 13, 2008

Jack watched the Nuwave oven infomercial this morning and is absolutely convinced that we should buy it. Why?

• Oh, mom! It only costs $39.99!
• You can ask the operator for a bigger one that can cook a 16 pound turkey for a WHOLE family!
• It cooks without fat and….I think, calories.
• It cooks fast!

This past weekend we celebrated Troy’s 11th birthday.

We incorporated castle Lego’s into the cake this year. I wanted to use writing that was “medieval-esc”. I knew my hand wasn’t capable of such a feat. So, I opened Word, typed Happy 11th Birthday, Troy! and found a font that was medieval-esc. We don’t have a printer, so I increased the view to 100% and traced the words onto a sheet of paper. (Clever, I know!) I then used an exacto knife to cut out the text from the paper so I had a template. I then set the paper on wet frosting and filled in the template with red sugar. Unfortunately, the frosting had to be wet to make the sugar stick to it, but it also meant the frosting stuck to the paper as well. All in all, I think it turned out pretty well. Certainly better than my attempt at writing it with frosting.

Here is a picture of the chocolatey carmel popcorn that Jack and I made the other day. The recipe came off the bag of carmels. It was good, but Jack and I both agreed it was too much chocolate.

I ate most of this popcorn.   I should be trimming back for the holidays, not splurging before they begin!

Here is a picture of a twenty minute meal from scratch – crepe pancakes with sauteed apples. I made it for dinner tonight. I cut up three Braeburn apples and sauteed them with butter and brown sugar. Yummy!!

Secret Codes and Bloody Toes November 5, 2008

Jack and I worked on Cub Scout stuff tonight. One of the elective activities was on secret codes. They had two separate codes – one in which all the letters corresponded with numbers and another with the alphabet written backward. The activity had examples and then a code for him to break using each of the codes breaking solutions.

As Jack started doing the activites, he said, “This is SO COOL!” (His eyes were also bugged right out of his head.)

I was surprised that Jack was not aware such a thing could exist. Here is what I can see happening:  he writes a story using the code but forgets to make the solution FIRST. In other words, he selects a jumbled mass of letters, then has to work backwards to make it work.

I guess time will tell!

I’ve been working over the last, oh, three weeks on breaking another, less fun code at my house. I’ve actually been trying to break this code for years and just when I think I’ve got the highest frequency of letters figured out, it becomes glaringly apparant that I am way left of center. So lately the code has become magnified in importance which is indirectly correlated to my ability to read the code.

You know when you hurt yourself, REALLY hurt yourself, and the only way you know how bad you’ve hurt yourself is the lack of immediate pain. You want to think that you got lucky and it isn’t going to really hurt, but you know it is going to be excrutiating. Breaking this code is beginning to feel like that – futile to avoid the onslaught of mind-numbing pain shooting up from your point of injury.

Once my cat Earl was on bedrest for 4 weeks because of a slipped disk in his back. (Yes, such things can happen!) We had to keep him in isolation in a room with nothing higher than a few inches so his back could heal. At night, I would go in and lay with him for awhile before I went to bed. One night I went into the dark room and forgot the metal bedframe was on the floor. I rammed my foot into it and nearly broke my big toe. In the pitch black darkness of the room I thought I didn’t hurt myself that bad since I couldn’t feel any pain. I hobbled over to the lightswitch and flipped it to see blood everywhere. The pain was immediate, intense and overpowering as soon as I saw it. Of course, I was alone at home at night in Fairbanks during the winter. I couldn’t drive, so I called a nurse I knew who told me what to do. In the morning, I went to the hospital.

So, my ability to break this code is sort of turning out the same way except for the nurse and the hospital. Mainly it is the immediate, intense and overpowering pain.

Voting…in Alaska November 4, 2008

I checked my old college hometown newspaper, the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, tonight and this was the picture on the front of the online version tonight at 10:00 pm CST. Here is a polling station which I think is just grand! I’ve NEVER seen a polling station like this outside of Alaska. The picture says it all.

Take another look at the picture just above the ballot intake machine. I don’t think it is Sarah Palin.

Obama was just declared the next President!!! Whooo-whoo! Although I do think with a Democratic Senate, it is going to be a difficult road to hoe.