More things that I've accomplished

Oh boy it's been awhile since I blogged:  whoops!  I don't realize it until I see how many new pictures I have on my camera.  I've been busy, though.  Here we go!

I made these lovely sugar cookies.  The dough was super easy to work with, and felt very "perfect dough"y.   I would recommend it, especially with the frosting I talked about last time with almond extract instead of vanilla.  So yummy that they were gone in about a day.   Even though the recipe made about 55 cookies.  ugh.

Also, I made applesauce!  We visited an orchard quickly and although the you pick apples were finished, but we got a couple of bags.  I spent a few hours, made the biggest mess ever in my kitchen, had a blender catastrophe that made me really regret not peeling the apples, but in the end we got a few jars of applesauce that hopefully will help get my husband off high-fructose-corn-syrup-added pre-packaged-and-wasteful individual cups of applesauce that he takes to lunch.  Now all we need is some lightweight containers for him to dish applesauce into to bring to work for lunch.

 We also carved a couple of terrifying pumpkins for Halloween weekend.  Mine is a spider, Dillon's is a ghost.  His is a little hard to see in the light, since it was one of those cut out the white space pumpkins.  His was also a very stubborn pumpkin that broke two of those little pumpkin saws and was a beast to carve.  But it looks very spooky!

 Next up, I made bread.  Here's the dough before rising:

 20 minutes later, the dramatic removal of the towel revealed this:

 Nothing.  So, I thought maybe another 20 minutes would make it even better:

 Nothing again.  So I thought maybe I'd roll it into the loaf shape and make some cheesy garlicy biscuit shapes and then let it rise again:

 And guess what:  NOTHING.  I think I killed the yeast by using too hot water.  Failure.  Dang it.  Oh well!  Lesson learned for next time.


Then I organized our closet, which has been driving me nuts for a few weeks.  Nothing makes me feel better than a stack of clothing in a perfect pile.  Oh I love it.  Hopefully it will stay that way for a while.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Halloween weekend!  We might go to a party on Saturday, I'm thinking of dressing up as Jimmy McMillan (of The Rent is Too Damn High Party in NY) if I can get motivated to make myself a beard. 

Also in the news, I finished my mom's birthday present!!  You will just have to wait until after November 18th to see it.  I used my new glue gun to finish it off, and got (no joke) the most severe burn of my life on my finger.  Dear Lord the pain was incredible.  Oh mom, the sacrifices I make for you.  (just kidding, thanks for, you know, the whole BIRTH thing ;)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Catching up

Here's what I've been up to for the past couple of (unfortunately blog-less) weeks:

Pierogi making at its' finest!  Cut the dough, fill with cheese/egg mixture, boil them, fry them, eat!  I froze a bunch as well and did my darnedest to keep my husband from eating the whole batch.  He loves butter, therefore he loves these pierogi!

 

We enjoyed a lovely (and very successful) Badger football game with some friends, followed by one of the best burgers I've ever eaten in my life.

AAAnd I made these lovely Halloween sugar cookies.  They were a little too delicious though, because we ate them all up in a day. I plan on making more this weekend when we carve our pumpkins.  ALSO, they were so yummy because I used a different frosting recipe that dried very hard (read: portable) and used almond extract instead of vanilla.  It just adds a little extra yumminess to store-bought cookie dough.  Make your own!


Sugar Cookie Frosting:

1c. powdered sugar
2tsp milk
2tsp light corn syrup
1/4 tsp vanilla OR ALMOND extract
food coloring

Mix the powdered sugar and milk until it's all incorporated.  Just keep mixing, it will work eventually. Next, beat in the corn syrup and vanilla/almond.  If it's too thick, add more corn syrup first.  Then, if you are like me and were too impatient to stir in all the milk during the first step, add a little more milk, corn syrup, or powdered sugar to even out whatever you threw in so that it's a nice frosting-y consistency.  Frost, wait for it to dry (or not), and enjoy!

My birthday weekend

I had a great weekend!!  We went out to a new local restaurant on Friday night, then went into the city on Saturday (we missed the farmer's market, but managed to go to a few awesome shops), dinner at another Italian restaurant, then off to Wicked (where several ushers reminded me that photography was prohibited since my camera was too big to fit inside my new clutch).  Came home for some yummy triple chocolate cake with triple chocolate chunk frosting.  Then, church on Sunday and a trip to my in-law's house for a football game and some steak.  What a weekend!