Recipe Review

I tried three new recipes this week, all of which were positively received. First I made a Spinach Puff Pastry Quiche, a recipe I came across on Epicurious.

This was the first time I've ever worked with puff pastry and I thought it made the quiche look a bit more fancy than usual, but secretly I think I prefer a regular pie crust. After reading the online reviews, I decided to prebake the crust a little bit, but since it was puff pastry, I had to cover it with foil and weigh it down with dried beans to prevent it from "puffing" too much. I also added crumbled bacon to the custard mix, which I usually do with spinach quiches anyway, but after tasting the finished product, I wish I had added some garlic as well.

Next, I made Chicken Over Curly Noodles, a recipe out of a Quick Cooking Annual.

My thought on this one, was that it was a unique way of using Top Ramen. When I told Rick that we were having chicken with peanut butter noodles, he got all excited until he realized that Top Ramen was involved. I guess he prefers my regular peanut butter noodles that I make with spaghetti. Next time I'll just use my own seasonings on the chicken instead of the seasoning packet from the ramen and substitute my own peanut butter noodles. It was a good idea though.

Lastly, I made Poppy Seed Coffee Cake. I found this recipe in my newest cookbook, The Best of Country Cooking 2008 Annual.

I cut the recipe in half to fit an 8x8 pan, as well as to accommodate our family size. The cake itself is kind of a cross between a poppy seed muffin and a coffee cake. The brown sugar filling has espresso powder in it, which makes the whole thing even more delectable. Yum, I can't wait to have another piece!

The Outtakes

Over the weekend I had everyone dress up in festive colors so we could attempt to get a nice family photo to use for my scrapbook calendar or Christmas cards. I suggested that we go to the nursery down the street and use their trees as our background or that we could just do something at home. We decided to take pictures at home, partly because it was super cold outside and because it would have been awkward taking our tripod to the nursery.

Once we had the location, our next problem was the lighting, which is horrible in our house! We opened up the blinds all the way and did the best we could. Everything was going fine for the first few shots, until Tyler's attention span had run out. Here are some of the outtakes.

We ended up with a photo that I was pretty pleased with, but I'll have to wait until later today to find out how it looks printed. I've been having the worst luck with the Walgreen's by our house. I went with Costco this time, so we'll see.

Light Parade

I've been looking forward to this year's light parade ever since Tyler and I went last year. In my opinion, it's the best parade in town, well at least the prettiest. The only drawback is that it's so cold outside. It's always cold this time of year, but 28 degrees....come on!

We knew we had to bundle up, but it took us so long to put on all the layers that we arrived kind of late and ended up catching just the tail end. I guess that was better than missing the whole thing completely, but I was still disappointed that we missed most of the floats.

It took me a while to figure out which camera mode worked best for taking pictures of moving lights at night. The first several pictures came out blurry until I switched the camera to candlelight in the scene selection mode. That seemed to work a little better.

The Coca-Cola truck was the most well lit of all, using over 14,000 lights.

I had to catch these two trucks at the end of the parade route because we had missed them on their way through.

If Tyler looks a little dazed, it's because he fell asleep in the car on the way to the parade and then continued to sleep through most of the parade.

After the parade we walked over to the Millenium Plaza to watch the lighting of the Christmas tree. Then we boogied home as fast as we could before our fingers and toes started to fall off.

Craft Day

The first Saturday in December is always the busiest day for kids crafts around town. There were so many different events going on today at the same time, that it was impossible to attend all of them. We ended up sticking with our usual, and went to Ace Hardware and The Home Depot.

We were first in line at Ace Hardware this morning, where the kids had a choice of making either a snowman or Christmas tree ornament made out of craft foam. Tyler chose the Christmas tree option and that funky shade of craft foam. Is it reminding anyone else of pea soup?

Our next stop was The Home Depot where the kids were making wagons. We got there somewhere around 10:30 a.m, which was just in the nick of time, because they ran out of kits shortly after that.

I have to say, Tyler is getting much better about not going overboard with the wood glue.

I think I say this every time, but this is my favorite project yet from The Home Depot.

On the way out, we bought a small sample size can of red paint so Tyler could paint the wagon at home. Once it was dry, Tyler put his wagon to use immediately. I saw him use it to carry around Lego cars, train pieces and some other random stuff.

Holiday Decorations

Our Christmas tree has been a work in progress for most of the week, but I think we're finally finished with it. Rick worked the day shift last week, so we were only able to get a little bit done each night. It took us one night just to get the tree up, another to figure out the lights, and one more to put all the ornaments on.

Tyler was in charge of putting on all the Disney ornaments and his other personal ones.

Besides the Disney ornaments, we put mostly red and silver ball ornaments. It's kind of hard to see in the picture, but the tree looks really nice in the evening when the rest of the house lights are turned off.

On the outside, Rick started putting up the lights this afternoon. He was waiting for it to warm up a little bit, but that's wasn't happening, so he just had to brave the chilly weather and get out there already. It was in the low 30's today and it even snowed a little bit throughout the day. Brrr!

Last year Rick used a staple gun to put up the lights, but this year we're trying out some plastic hooks that hang off the rain gutters.

Only a few strands of lights went up today, so it looks like the boys will be back at it tomorrow.

New Recipes

I tried two new recipes this week. One I thought was pretty good and the other was just mediocre.

For dinner the other night I made Slow Cooked Coffee Beef Roast. It's basically just a roast cooked in a pot of coffee with a few seasonings added in for good measure.

I don't know if the key was the particular cut of meat (beef sirloin tip roast) or the fact that it roasted in coffee for 8 hours, but the meat came out so fall apart tender it was ridiculous. In that regard, it was the best roast I have ever made. As for the coffee flavor, there was no sneaking that past Tyler. He was not shy about telling me how disgusting it was. I'll agree that the gravy was not outstanding, but it was fine. Certainly not disgusting.

For dessert, I made a Cranberry Nut Jelly Roll.

I'm still on the fence about this one. It tastes decent enough, but for all the work involved it came out way below my expectations. The cake batter was a little strange and it took forever to bake through in the oven. Even with the extra baking time, the cake was still excessively sticky and hard to roll. And then to top things off, Tyler had had enough after just one bite. Ack! I should have gone with the pumpkin roll!

School Photos

Tyler took his first school picture back in September and I've been waiting like crazy for them to come in so I could take a look and see how he did. We all know how Tyler does...he either smiles or looks at the camera, but it's kind of hard to get him to do both at the same time. He promised that he would smile for the picture and look at the camera, so we gambled on his word and ordered a fairly large package. Well, I'm glad to announce that he did not disappoint!

I was so pleased when I saw the pictures! The class photo didn't come out quite as magical, but hey, 1 out of 2 ain't bad. I've already framed and hung the 8x10 in the office and the more I look at it the more I think.....hmmm, where have I seen that smile before?

Of course! On me! I was the master of the closed mouth smile. I'm glad I finally got over that silly phase. The date on the back of the photo says 1983, which would make me 4 years old. Maybe that's just the way 4 year olds smile?

This is the only school photo I have of myself, so I really need to dig up my other ones and make copies or something.

Rick is a step ahead of me in that department. He asked his dad for some of his old pictures while we were home for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Awww, isn't he cute!