Sunday Afternoon Drive to Fountain Hills

Fountain Hills

Popovers - Tuesdays with Dorie

After two weeks of school, I feel like we are starting to get into a routine.  We're all still a bit tired, especially my cute kindergartner ... she's still having a melt-down every afternoon.  Last night after apologizing to me, she looked at me and said, "I'm tiiiiired."  Poor girl!  She's being super good and obedient at school and even earning extra stamps and treasures, so I think by the time she gets home, she is totally pooped.  Anywho, I hope I can get back into more cooking and baking now that we're getting back into a routine.

I wanted to make popovers for breakfast and serve them with scrambled eggs, but getting up an hour earlier to make the popovers was not appealing.  I decided to make them yesterday and use up some potatoes in a pot of soup to go with my popovers. 

I doubled my popover recipe and sent leftover popovers and soup with the girls in their lunch today.  And since I haven't been baking as much recently, I didn't have any whole milk in my fridge, so I used half & half with a drizzle of skim milk. :)  I also thought I'd cut corners and spray my muffin tins with Pam, but I don't recommend it ... all my rolls stuck to the pan ... should've just used the butter like I was supposed to! *UPDATE: After reading a few blogs, it sounds like buttering the pans didn't work-out great for everyone either.  Maybe it needs butter with a little flour??

The recipe says to bake the popovers at 425* for 25 minutes ... after 17 minutes my popovers were looking too done, so at that point I turned the oven down to 350*.  I was supposed to bake them at 350* for another 15-20 minutes, but after 10 minutes, some of my popovers were beyond done.  

I did a little experimenting with my different muffin tins.  I poured batter into every other cup of my Wilton Pan like I was supposed to.  My popovers in the Wilton pan came out better but they were burned on the bottoms and sides and had darker tops too.  I had lots of batter leftover to I filled every cup in my Calphalon pan.  This batch of popovers actually puffed up better and ended up having more unique/fun tops and they didn't burn at all, but these ones stuck horribly to the pan.  So take it or leave it but I don't think I'll be using Wilton or Pam for popovers in the future.

Even though my popovers weren't pretty, they still tasted good.  Much to my dismay, my son had fun filling the inside of his popover with soup.  Happy Tuesday!!

If you'd like to try Julia Child's recipe for popovers, you can get it HERE or HERE.

Mission Accomplished

Done! Found two purple flowers for Peacock's hair on sale at Children's Place today. $1.63 total for both flowers!

First Day of School

Today is a day for lots of changes and firsts for our family.  Up until now, I have been homeschooling my kids, but we felt like we were ready for a change and I was feeling like the girls needed this change.

Penguin (4th Grade) is very excited about all the social aspects of school and hopes to make lots of friends.  Her biggest worry about going to school is whether or not she will make friends.  She's outgoing and fun, so I have no worries.  I also have no doubts that she'll come home today with lots of email addresses that she got from her new classmates.

Peacock (Kindergarten) didn't seem to have any worries or concerns except which of her many pairs of purple shoes she should wear today & the fact that her mother didn't have a glamorous purple bow for her hair. (She doesn't usually request a bow. How was I to know?!? First item on my to-do list today it to find a nice purple bow or flower.)  She also wasn't too fond of the the walk from the off-site parking lot to the school ... and then she had to walk to the opposite end of campus to get to her classroom ... in almost 100-degree weather!  (YES! It really was that hot at 8:30am!!)  She went right into her room, put her backpack in her cubby, got organized at her desk, and immediately dug into the worksheet that was waiting for her to start.

After Turkey & I dropped the girls off, we enjoyed breakfast at the school where were met lots of other very nice mom's.  All the parents at my table were raving about both of the teachers that the girls got this year.  It sounds like both teachers are the highest requested teachers for their grade levels.  Penguin's teacher sounds excellent & I'm told that Peacock's teacher has been teaching at the school for forever and will have her class the most prepared and ready to move onto 1st grade.

I'm so excited to pick my girls up this afternoon and hear about their first day of school!!