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!!

Blueberry Marscapone {Roulade} Trifle - French Fridays with Dorie

I think I'm a week + a day late on this recipe.  We're busy this summer and it seems like when we have a free day, I just wanna be lazy and not do too many extras.  One of my favorite lazy-day activities, so far, has been watching the Star Wars movies because my kids had never seen any of the movies and 2 of the 6 were new to me too.   I think #2 is my fave, but we still need to watch #5 & #6.

I wanted to try this recipe, but I also wanted to make it as quick & easy (& mess-free) as possible.  Instead of rolling my cake to make a roulade, I just cut my cake into bite-size pieces and turned my dessert into a trifle.  I like raspberries better than blueberries, but I decided to stick to the recipe and try the blueberries ... they were great with the recipe.  I also drizzled a tiny bit of orange juice over my cake pieces which added another flavor to the mix and sweetened the cake a little.  I walked away from my heavy cream while it was whipping, so it got a little well-done.  Kinda ugly looking, but it still tasted good.

Overall I give this recipe 4 out of 5 stars.  I didn't love the cake.  It was good, but I'd probably try this with a different cake recipe next time.

We are Young

Another $0.25 Amazon song for you to help you enjoy the rest of your summer.

Call Me Maybe

Hope you are all enjoying a great summer!!  We're busy here with trips to the library, museums, swim team, dance classes, music camp, playing with friends, swimming several times a week, etc, etc, etc.

My 9-yr old went to a birthday party a few weeks ago.  She came home and introduced the other kids & me to Carly Rae Jepsen's song, Call Me Maybe. We're having fun listening to it around the house & in the car when we're on the go.  If you're looking for a fun, upbeat song, you can buy it right now on Amazon for $0.25!

Enjoy!

Giving Away Grins

 We are proud of our Mister after a busy & productive weekend.  Hubby worked hard on Saturday to help open a new dental office in town.  To help promote their grand opening, they gave away free dental care on Saturday morning at their newest location in Mesa, AZ.

Over 200 patients showed up to receive free dental care on a first come, first served basis.  The doors opened at 8am, but the line started well before 6am.  At one point in the morning, I heard a patient called back to see the doctor.  As he walked past me, he mentioned to the assistant that he showed-up at 6:30am to get in line.  I glanced down at my watch ... it was 10:50am ... wow!  In 4 hours, several dentists gave free dental care to 55 people in the community.  Everyone else who was still patiently waiting got vouchers to come back another day for their free dental care.  In all, over $20,000 in dental care & $15,000 in ortho discounts were given away on Saturday morning.

The kids & I spent the morning at the party to give our support to Hubby and Grins Dental.  A special thanks to our friends & family who also showed-up to offer their support!!

French Strawberry Cake - Tuesdays with Dorie

Don't let the title of this post fool you.  No, this is not a French Fridays recipe, but a French recipe we are baking for Tuesdays with Dorie.  And let's cut to the chase ... I LOVED this recipe!!  I loved our French Friday's recipe for quartre-quarts so much that I've made it a few times and this week's cake recipe was very similar.  WAY better than traditional/American shortcake!!  I love the dense, vanilla-y cake with sweet, juicy berries.

Yesterday I was pooped ... no motivation ... tired.  I keep getting to bed too late at night and things are busy and going at my house by 6am every morning.  I was grumpy & tired and so were my children.  By 4:00 in the afternoon, I was at my wit's end with sassy attitudes, disobedience, being told NO!, etc, etc, etc.  I quickly decided it would be best if we all take a break from each other and rest a bit before Dad got home from work.  The kids were all sent to their rooms ... Penguin read for a while and Peacock kept trying to sneak out of her room but she eventually fell asleep & slept almost FOUR hours!  Turkey had a nap too and I must admit that I fell asleep next to him for about 30 minutes.  After my quick nap, I came down and got busy with my strawberry cake and had some nice, quiet, relaxing time to myself.  For whatever reason I was a bit worried about making this recipe, but once I got into it, it went very quickly.

I think my cake had enough height to make 3 layers, but when I was ready to assemble everything, the cake was just barely cool enough to cut and I didn't trust myself to make the 3 layers.  I was thinking it might be fun to double the cake recipe and do 4 thicker layers sometime. Or use this cake in my English Trifle recipe instead of pound cake.

{working on the first layer}

I chose to not frost the sides of the cake because I liked seeing the insides and thought it was pretty.  I also just dumped the remainder of the strawberries and the juices on top of my cake.  I'm sure I wasn't supposed to do that....

It turned out fun & yummy & the extra juice made the frosting fall down the sides of the cake.  I think I'm gonna go eat some leftovers now for my mid-morning snack.  My children will be jealous.  I might share.

We have two hosts this week who shared the recipe on their blog.

Sophia's Sweets

Think, Love, Sleep, Dine

Swimming Lessons ~ May 2012

Thanks to our wonderful swim teacher!!

Time & Bakerella's Chocolate Chunk Muffins

#photoadayjune

Everyday on our way home from picking up Penguin from swim team practice, the kids start dreaming up all kinds of things they'd like for breakfast.  Monday they wanted Bushka's homemade granola, Tuesday it was doughnuts, yesterday it was cheesy scrambled eggs, and today they were after muffins. I knew once I got home, I could look at my Pinterest board & find something muffin-y with some chocolate.  A while ago, I pinned Bakerella's Chocolate Chunk Muffins.  Peacock & Turkey helped me make the muffin batter while Penguin went to change out of her wet clothes hide in her room and read a book in hopes that I'd forget about her so she could spend the morning reading.

Bakerella's Muffins were quick & easy.  From the time we got home, gathered ingredients, waited for muffins to bake, etc, we were sitting down to eat in less than hour.  I doubled the recipe and got 24 nice-sized muffins ... more than enough for us, some saved for Dad, a large plateful to a neighbor who recently had a baby, and some to our favorite swim teacher along with a surprise visit at her work along with kid-made thank-you notes.

First we mixed up the dry ingredients:

Then we mixed up the wet ingredients:

Time to mix everything together:

We filled 24 cupcake liners:

TIME for breakfast:

Art

#photoadayjune

Drink #photoadayjune

Hat #photoadayjune

Close-Up #photoadayjune

On my Plate #photoadayjune

Empty #photoadayjune

Empty forehead. Ready for swim meet!

California Playin'

morning - junephotoaday

bright & very early this morning ... swim team practice.

Here Comes the Bride