Working with fondant

I made M2's cake for the party yesterday. I made and used fondant to cover the cake, which was a first for me. I'd never made or worked with it, so the whole time I was making the cake, I was sending up prayers to every deity I could think of that the cake didn't wind up a flop. If that had happened, I would have had to make an emergency run to the grocery store for a store-bought cake, which would have absolutely devastated my little girl. She had drawn a blueprint of her cake at school and brought it home to me weeks ago.

Failure was not an option.

I made the fondant first, a day before I made the cake. I have now learned that making this much fondant may have been overkill, but after reading forums about the devastating mental effects of trying to color-match fondant later in the game, I figured overkill was preferable to that scenario.

I made marshmallow fondant, since the flavor is supposed to be better than traditional cooked fondant (I wouldn't know, so I was going on blind faith), and it was pretty easy to make. 16 oz. of mini-marshmallows mostly melted in the microwave, a few tablespoons of water, any coloring that you want, and about 2 lbs. of powdered sugar. Coat your hands lightly in shortening and knead till your arms are sore.

Then knead a little bit more, just to cover all the bases, especially if you're new at this and relatively paranoid.

Next comes the cake(s):



That was the easy part, making and leveling off the cakes. I probably could have done that much in my sleep. Not that I did. But I probably could have.

I covered the top layer first, because it was smaller. I coated it in plain white buttercream icing before covering it with the fondant, because the fondant has to have something to stick to. And the smoother you make the buttercream, the easier it is to smooth your fondant.

I may have agonized over the smoothness of my buttercream for an inordinate amount of time.

I may have OCD.

Rolling out the fondant was another adventure. I got one of the extra-long fondant rolling pins and some rolling pin guides to help me out, because I didn't want the hassle of trying to get it rolled exactly even and then having one guest get 1/8" of fondant on their piece and another person get stuck with 1/4". That wouldn't have been a good thing. And rolling pin guides work remarkably well.

Fondant, on the other hand, is HARD to roll out. After my hands got tired, I *may* have used my forearms to keep rolling, and my forearms *may* be somewhat bruised after all this work.

Just sayin'.

But! I got them covered, I got them stacked (with cake pop sticks cut into lengths as dowel rods - because I didn't think of buying actual dowel rods beforehand - and a piece of cake display tray cardboard cut into a heart shape underneath the base of the top layer to help keep it all steady - and it worked!), and I got it all moved onto the foil-covered display board with only minimal mental anguish.

I think Oz was very grateful that it went so smoothly. He knows I tend to get a little bit worked up over these things.

Finally, it was time to decorate, and that was the easy part! The fondant took the buttercream beautifully, and it was actually fairly easy to wipe off any minor mistakes that were made, which was a bonus. And adding the flowers on the sides of the cakes allowed me to cover up any minor imperfections in the fondant.
And so, on that note, I think I might actually work with fondant again!

Wonder what M1 will want for his birthday...?

Party day! *sniff sniff*

My girly-wirly had her fifth birthday party today. She has some very dedicated friends. I know this because, for the second year in a row, I managed to schedule her birthday party during the only snowstorm in March.

I'm THAT good.

But we plowed ahead, nevertheless, figuring that if we planned it, they would come.

So I decorated (supervised by the small girl attached to the head you can see part of there at the bottom).


And I decorated some more (Oz helped, too!)

And I made the cake (that post will come in a day or two).
And, thankfully, people did show up. Lots of them. M2 was in her element. People. Lots of them. I think she darn near died and went to heaven. She promptly hauled everyone back to her room and M1's room and shut them in closets.

Well, some of them. And to be fair, the ones who were shut in closets were typically there voluntarily.

It's kind of like watching circus clowns, only with small children. Amazing how many of them can fit comfortably inside M2's tiny little closet.

But after a while, I rounded up all the munchkins and sat them down for an art project. I had originally planned to have outdoor activities, but those ideas kinda got cancelled for me, so a panicked run to Michael's netted me a bunch of $1 wooden crafts (heart-shaped boxes for the girls and wiggly snakes for the boys) ripe for painting. Armed with dropcloths, paper towels, and lots of courage (and drafting parental supervision along the way), we painted. I had, in my house, 13 children simultaneously painting. And we only had two incidents, one being my daughter painting her own dress. The other involved a boy and a sock.

That's collateral damage I can live with.

I would have taken pictures of their beautiful creations, but the camera battery had decided to tell me it was running low just as I was taking the picture of the decorated table, and I figured that the cake shots were better than the craft shots and that extra few minutes of battery charging time was worth it.

I think I made the right decision.

We had lunch, too, beautifully catered by Chick-Fil-A and their party trays that Oz graciously went - in the snow - and picked up. And I made fruit salad. And we had pink lemonade. And nobody spilled anything, and the children all ate happily, and the adults all ate happily, and all was right in the world. I think it was the most hitchless party I've ever held.

Lunch was, naturally, followed by CAKE TIME!
Don't you love my daughter in her strappy little sundress with 2 inches of snow through the window behind her? She loves central heating; she just doesn't know how much.
I plan to blackmail her with this photo some day. She'd probably die now if she had seen it.

Which is why she hasn't.
It was interesting to watch her open her gifts. I heard noises come out of the girl that I haven't ever heard out of anything other than those hens that you get at the Fourth of July. This was one of the items that caused such a shriek. Tom & Jerry movies were another. She got excited about everything, for which I was very grateful, because sometimes trying to get her to be thankful and happy for gifts is like trying to get a turtle through a crosswalk at rush hour. It can't be done without a lot of mental and physical anguish on everyone's part.

She even went and said thank you to everyone individually when she got done.

This picture - please ignore my husband face-down on the carpet in the background... he had a nap attack that just couldn't be stopped - shows the only casualty of war from the day. M1 and one of his best friends were play-fighting with swords, and M1 got lightsabered right on the side of his nose.

I'm trying to decide if he'll have a black eye tomorrow or not. It's been about 8 hours, and he says the spot "itches."

Boys.

Dinner Extraordinaire

M1 made dinner for us last night. He occasionally does this. He likes to cook and has since he was teeny tiny. I used to just let him do things like stir together cold salads, but he's tall enough to reach over the counter and stovetop now, and his hands are big enough to hold knives (though I'm still selective about what he chops), so sometimes I let him cook.

Last night, his menu sounded delicious.

We started by making the dessert, since it had to chill in the fridge.


Looks gorgeous, doesn't it?

It tasted completely nasty, though, and that was NOT the boy's fault. The whole recipe was a disaster from beginning to end. I had my doubts but figured that people who make Disney cookbooks actually used real people instead of lab rats to test the food before they published.

I may have been wrong in that assumption.

But he worked hard to make it, and I am still very proud of him.

The rest of the recipes came out of this cookbook that he got as a gift a year or two ago. He really likes it.

He wanted to make these:

and these (which I may have had to help with because by the time he got the carrots peeled, there was only 15 minutes left on the meatloaf timer and I needed to expedite the process):

Here's a cute little video of the meatloaf-making process. I'm a "mean" mom and make him do all the work himself where he's able. Please ignore the attention-seeking girl in the background who is wanting photos and videos taken of HER. She does like to be in front of a camera.

And then he filled the muffin tins and cooked the meatloaves and served them, and all (except the bizarre dessert) was good!


My boy is getting too darn big.

So is my girl. Birthday party pictures impending... along with snow pictures. Also bizarre.

Tea party!

I don't really have any pictures from the tea, mostly because A) I don't ever remember to take pictures and B)... OK, nope, there is no B. I'm just not a good blogger that way.

I have these teas about twice a year. Sometimes it's a Mother/Daughter event, sometimes just moms. This time it was just moms. I also have to limit it to a dozen adults because I break out the good china!

This is my great-grandmother's china. It's nearly 100 years old - will be in 2017 - and was a wedding gift to her from her family in Germany when she and two of her brothers got married on the same day in a massive triple wedding in Kansas. It's not expensive china, but it's really pretty and has survived very well, obviously. It's a setting for 12. I don't see the need for it to sit there unused in my cabinet, so I get it out for my teas. I think my great-grandmother would have liked that.

I make quite a bit of food for my teas. I always make pavlovas - usually two of them. If I didn't, I think several folks would be sorely disappointed! Everything else varies. This time I made lemon squares, snickerdoodles, a pumpkin roll (jelly roll with pumpkin in it and filled with cream cheese frosting), and a French silk pie (that Oz was QUITE upset that he wasn't getting to taste test).

Then I made a little something for each lady to take home.

The attached silverware is a knife to cut the fudge with.

I love having my teas. It's the perfect excuse for us ladies to escape on a Sunday afternoon and come vent and eat desserts together. I see why the Victorians loved it so much! I'm already thinking about having another one in September. Maybe we'll include the kids.

Then again, maybe not. :)

Cabin fever

My husband caught cabin fever the other day.

So he talked me into getting a new one.

Not a log cabin, thankfully.

A car cabin.

Meet the car, a 2009 Chevy Impala LTZ.

It's a nice car. It really is. But when someone tells his wife that car buying is not in the plans for the weekend and then he drives home a car for a test drive (while said wife is PMSing), one should not expect a happy little response.

I'm just saying. Consider it my public service announcement for the week. It took some convincing to talk me into letting him get this car. I hate car payments.

But it is a nice car, and we did get a decent price on it. And now Oz has a vehicle with a working air conditioner and a working heater and which isn't going to OVERheat on the highways, all of which were problems that his truck had been having. He's elated.

I think he also likes the fact that it's a bit sporty-looking and has lots of gadgets. Since he's grown a moustache and goatee and gotten a younger-looking haircut (and is a self-proclaimed gadget whore), I think the car fits his new self-image... even if *I* am the one who made him grow the facial hair in the first place.

I have also been relieving some cabin fever this week.

Spring is in the air! It's 63 and mostly cloudy outside right now, which is warmer than it's been in months, and even the birds are having a day out.

It's not often that the neighbors get geese. Usually they land on our pond or on the pond of the folks who live cati-cornered from us, neither of which are good places for me to take pictures. So I had to snap this shot.

M1 and I are having a worm hunt on Tuesday. It should be all sorts of fun.

Off to go start prepping dinner now. Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and blackberry cobbler.

My man is extremely spoiled.

Fun with bacteria

One of the curricula that we're using for science has a LOT of fun experiments in it. Some of them are a bit in-depth, and a few are just too plain complicated, but sometimes the perfect experiment come along, and you just have to carpe diem.

Recently, M1 was studying all the different kingdoms of organisms, and that included studying eubacteria - the bacteria in the air that we breathe, live with, and otherwise cohabitate with every single day.

The experiment?

Grow bacteria.

We used the recipe in the science book to make a beef-broth/sugar-flavored gelatin and let that set up in foil muffin cups.

Then, we experimented. One of the muffin cups was the control, one was rubbed all over with a dirty finger, one was licked, and one was rubbed all over with a freshly washed finger (the same one).

The cups were placed an empty dresser drawer in M1's room, and we waited.

Oh, and we made our hypotheses. M1 actually thought that the clean finger would be the cleanest, followed by control, dirty finger, and that his tongue would be the grossest.

And I completely agreed with that tongue bit.

Here are the results:




I can only guess that his tongue was extremely dry when he licked this, because clearly it's at about the same level as the control.

So our results were a bit unexpected. I simply explained to M1, though, that this is how the scientific process works and that's why you have to have a procedure you can replicate!

The added bonus of these results was that M1 now thinks that sucking his thumb (a bad naptime habit of his) is completely and utterly disgusting, because if his tongue is THAT clean and his thumb is THAT dirty, he won't ever put it in his mouth again! :)

Just a blurb

I want March to be an active month around here, so I'm planning ahead! (A WTM-based homeschooler doing this thing called planning? Say it ain't so!)

1. I weeded out part of the garden today. Can you believe it's time to start thinking about food? Like I ever quit thinking about food. I've run the dishwasher no less than three times since Friday night and handwashed the dishes that don't fit in the dishwasher. To be fair, 1.5 of those loads came from all the Indian food, and I also made another pavlova because I saw the Valentine's picture and got a random craving.

2. I also plan to have a mom's tea on the 14th. I hope to post recipes and pictures from the tea itself. So far, the menu includes two pavlovas (pavlova? What would the plural of pavlova be? I can't NOT make these, though. They're the selling point to get people to come), cinnamon rolls, chocolate pie of some sort, lemon squares, and fresh fruit, plus tea, of course, and raspberry lemonade or hot cocoa - depending on the weather - for those who don't like tea.

3. M2's FIFTH birthday is later this month. That just blows me away. It really, really does. I cannot believe that it's been five years since she made me so sore and miserable that I couldn't walk, sleep, or otherwise function. I was never so happy as when I woke up at 4:30 a.m. three weeks before my due date with no bag packed and realized that the little brat had broken my water. Thank heaven she's cute. ;) I jest, of course, but I *was* ecstatic to finally meet her.

4. Spring Break! M2 gets two weeks off; ergo, so does M1. We're not planning any big trips, but I would like to get to a children's museum and am contemplating a trip to Leonardo's Discovery Warehouse in Enid. I think we're also going to go up to Kansas and visit my grandmother, since her birthday is also this month. She'll be 86!

5. School stuff. I don't often get around to talking about actual school stuff, but M1 has been doing some cool things. He's conducting an experiment right now involving growing bacteria in his dresser drawer (well, in muffin cups in plastic bags in the dresser drawer), and I want to get some photos of that. Plus, now that I'm digging in the garden and it's finally warming up, we can do our worm unit. I might try to get some video of him as well, or maybe a video of M2 practicing her violin.

Now that I've put all this in writing, I hereby promise to do my best to keep my word and tell you about it all.

Scout's honor.

The Indian Feast (and other matters)

So I logged on today and realized it'd been almost three weeks since I've posted! I do apologize, but you really don't want to know THAT much about my life, do you? It's been horribly boring. Except for my friend's 40th birthday that involved a trip to Dave & Buster's and a cake that I made with a bottle of wine on the top also made out of cake. She loved it, and that was really cool, because she had had a really rough week that involved enough meds to make a druggie blink, so she needed the outing and the cake... and the gift certificate to Williams-Sonoma and the dozen or so mini-bottles of liquor that we also got her. And the pasties, but that's a whole other story.

However!

M1's been happy with school again, and this week we've been studying India, and so, in the tradition that we have around here, that means...

FEAST TIME!!!!!

Because I am the ultimate over-achiever with a horrid Type A personality, the menu read like that of a small Indian restaurant:

1. Tandoori chicken
2. Saag paneer
3. Indian fried rice
4. Gulab jamun
5. Chai

And because I really *AM* the ultimate over-achiever with a horrid Type A personality (no, really...), and I am also incredibly lazy and didn't feel like getting out of my holey gray sweatpants to make a trip to Whole Foods to find paneer and didn't decide till today that we were even having saag paneer...

I went to the small grocery store near my house where my happy holey sweatpants are socially acceptable and bought whole milk and...

Made my own paneer.

'Twas quite simple, actually.

You start with 3 quarts of whole milk and 1-1/2 tablespoons of salt...

Bring that to a happy little boil (and watch it like a hawk so it doesn't completely boil over, kill your stove and stink to high heaven like burned milk tends to do), turn the heat down, add 5 tablespoons of vinegar or lemon juice, give it a quick stir till all the curds rise to the top, and then drain it all in a cloth draped in a colander.

After you drain it for 10 minutes, then you wrap it all up tight, squash it between two plates and stick something heavy on the top to press it all together (I happened to have a case of silverware handy, but shhhh... that's just between you and me).

And that's how you make paneer.

Having finished the paneer, it was time to make the marinade for the tandoori chicken. Lots of spices and some plain yogurt were involved with that.

It came out absolutely delicious and, better yet, wasn't dyed red!

M1 helped make the dessert. Gulab jamun, it's called - fried milkballs in simple syrup. The local Indian restaurant serves them, and I've always loved them, but I've never made them. They are also incredibly easy to make.

Mix 1 cup of powdered milk with 1/2 c. Bisquick (of all things!) and enough whole milk to make a dough. Make balls out of the dough, and fry it on as low a heat as possible. They sink when they're raw but float when they're completely cooked, and you have to turn them constantly.

M1 did the turning and cooked all of them! It was the first time he'd ever worked with hot oil, and I was a bit nervous, but he did great!

Here they are resting on the plate. After you get them cooked, you mix up 1 c. water with 2 c. sugar and a bit of cardamom, heat that till everything's all melted, and let the milkballs soak in the syrup all day. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Saag paneer, all finished.

Gulab jamun, after they've been soaking all day. Most delicious.

And because I can't resist, here's an extremely belated Valentine's Day wish for all of you.

Pavlova.

I'll be back soon! I promise!

Moments of pride and joy

I have a grainy photo to share with you today :)

I don't know whether you can see it or not, but on the top right corner of the page, it says "Final Test," and in red ink in the middle of the page, I wrote, "Perfect! 100%" because my boy totally aced his final exam from Math-U-See Alpha.

Because he passed (which I would have accepted anything around 90%), he earned himself a new toy. It's a Leapfrog Didj, and he's absolutely thrilled with it. Little does he know that the Indiana Jones game I got him to go with it will only supplement and reinforce his math learning - muah ha haa haaaaa....

I'm pretty proud of him right now. We've had some serious struggles with math over the last few months, so seeing him finally be able to "get" it is very fulfilling.

-----

I had another moment of pride on Tuesday.

I say that with great sarcasm and embarrassment.

I got my van stuck in my front yard. Not just a little stuck, either - STUCK stuck... the kind that requires big, strong men, a huge tow chain, and a very large truck to pull it out, and then the men step back and wonder how on earth one medium-sized woman can get a van that stuck in the mud while she hands them beer as payment and stands around looking useless and sheepish.

I didn't do it on purpose... obviously, one would hope... and if I *had* meant to do it on purpose, I sure wouldn't have picked this week to do it.

Why is it these things always happen when your spouse/significant other/only person you don't *mind* helping you out... is out of town?!?!? The last time something like this happened was last spring when I locked myself out of the house for almost the entire day. Oz was five hours away, in another state. The day that I got dragged by my car, Oz was three hours away, in another state. Two days ago, when I got the van buried in the mud, Oz was four hours away, in another state.

I think I've learned humility, God... now can ya cut me a wee bit o' slack? Please??

So how, you may ask, did I get the van stuck in the mud in my own front yard. Since I've already admitted to the doing of the deed, I figure I may as well share the rest of the story!

M1 and I had gone to Wal-Mart. He has outgrown his pants - again - and needed new ones (my 7-year-old son now wears size 10 slim pants, by the way), and we needed groceries, so off we went. This is not unusual for us on a Tuesday. I usually try to run errands on Tuesday. It's what I do.

So we went to Wal-Mart, got the groceries and the pants, paid for it, choked at the cost (as always), loaded it all into the back of the van, and headed home.

Now... as you know, it's been a bit snowy here lately, and it's been melting. I like that it's melting, but it does make my yard into a bit of a bog, a fact that I completely and utterly forgot while driving home from Wal-Mart.

So I pulled into my driveway, and the only way to back into my garage is to turn around in my yard and back in. This requires me to go a bit off the driveway. This would not have been a problem if my van was rear-wheel drive, but of course it isn't, and my driver's side front tire instantly got stuck. Nothing daunted, I got out, pulled a cardboard box apart, stuck it under the front tire, and figured I'd be able to get out.

I'm nothing if not resourceful and independent.

No such luck, however. The cardboard flew spectacularly up in front of the van, and I went precisely nowhere.

Still undaunted, I decided I'd see if I could go forward a few feet and then throw the van into reverse and give escaping the mud hole one last good shot.

So I put the van into drive, gunned the engine a bit...

... and flew forward like a bat out of Hades. Since I was facing a good old-fashioned pipe fence, I had to steer very quickly to not hit that, and the next thing I knew...

I was stuck. Forward, backward, and ranting all got me nowhere. I got out and took one good look at the now mud-filled tires, got back in the car, and just wanted to die.

But I couldn't do that, because I instantly realized that if I died, who was going to get M2 from school in three hours? Who was going to get M2 from school? That was the question.

Have I mentioned I love my in-laws? I called my mother-in-law, who said that she and my youngest brother-in-law would be out to help as quickly as they could. So I hauled all the bags out of the back of the van, fixed M1 and I some lunch, and posted a rant about my day on a forum. No sense in having a bad day if you can't share it with someone.

My in-laws showed up, and my BIL tried to pull me out using a brand-new tow rope.

The van didn't budge.

He turned his truck around and tried again.

Still nothing.

It was time to call in the cavalry. So my MIL placed a call to one of her friends, my BIL went to get M2 from school, and the friend arrived with his heavy-duty Dodge, a very large tow chain, and complete incredulity at the way I'd managed to bury the van so well. Did I mention that the way the van was positioned, there was no way to push from the front? The nose was almost on the ground.

If I'm gonna screw up, I'm gonna do it right!

An hour later, the van was out. As mentioned, beer was offered as a poor means of payment to the guys who had been laboring over (and probably cursing at) my van for a good chunk of the afternoon.

There are still very large scars in my lawn from where the van was pulled out. I'm leaving them to show Oz when he gets home so I can explain to him why he should never leave me alone again, to which he'll probably laugh, give me a hug, and tell me he's flying out next Thursday.

Or something like that.

The obligatory ice storm post (and a fun story)

So we survived the Great Ice Storm of 2010 That Thankfully Wasn't as Great as the Great Ice Storm of 2007. At least, it wasn't as bad here, anyway. There were other parts of the state that got hit much, much harder.

All that to basically say we didn't lose power for a week this time.

Thank heaven.

The power did flicker a time or two, and we had gotten some extra propane and an indoor-safe heater, just in case, and I had mentally made preparations (no extra shopping... I have a bit of an apocalyptic mentality that requires me to keep a full pantry at all times, anyway), but we never did actually lose power for any amount of time.

I had fun taking a few photos, especially after it started snowing on Friday morning.



The kids couldn't get over the fact that the tree branches were buried in the snow.

M2: "They're touching the ground, Mama! Look!"

M1: "Mom, is that tree gonna break?"

Me: "I don't know, baby, but it sure is bending."

One child or the other: "Can I go outside and touch it?"

Me: "Um... no... but thanks for asking!"

It didn't break, by the way. That tree is extremely flexible. It survived 2007 fairly intact, too.

I thought we'd go a bit stir-crazy over a three-day weekend where we were all cooped up together, but the kids kept themselves pretty busy.

M1 broke out his tools - REAL tools - that Granny gave him for Christmas along with some wood - REAL wood - and built a little table. He loves woodworking, which does and doesn't surprise me. I thought the noise of hammering would be too much for him, but he pounds away without even blinking.



M2 wanted mint hot chocolate, also a gift from Granny. I made that and also served up some snow ice cream. I hadn't made any of that in a long time. It reminds me a lot of the ice cream I had growing up, since "premium" ice cream in my youth meant that Grandpa had churned it himself in the storm cellar beneath the house. My kids and husband, on the other hand, are ice cream snobs.

It almost made me sad.

But then I got to eat the rest of it, and I got over it.

And now it's all melting.

-----

And now for something completely different.

I want to share a web site with you. But first, a story.

M1 and I went to the pediatrician today. He's been having asthma attacks this fall and winter, which is something new for him, and I needed guidance in how to manage it.

I love our pediatrician.

So we got into the office and started going over the details, and the pediatrician nodded and told me we needed an asthma action plan and a peak flow meter to measure how well his lungs were working. So she stepped out to get the sheet for the plan and the meter for us to take home.

I really, really love our pediatrician.

And then she walked back in with this:


And I about died laughing.

That, my friends, is Ebola virus, in plush form, straight from giantmicrobes.com. Oddly enough, I had known of this site previously. One of my friends was gifted the Swine Flu plush toy after her family contracted the virus over the fall; another one had received a louse after she had to deal with that in a family that wasn't even hers. The pediatrician had received Ebola (among others) from her son at Christmas, and she just KNEW that my son would appreciate it. Which he did... does...

And the pediatrician also got a good kick out of hearing about the swine flu and louse stories. Her quote: "It's good to know you have as warped a sense of humor as my family."

Love my pediatrician. I'd be friends with her even if she wasn't my kids' doctor.

Hope you got a good giggle, and enjoy checking out the site. Hope you can find something on there to amuse yourself or your friends with!