I was extra, specialy careful with this recipe. Well, it was a Martha recipe and my first Martha endeavor. I read the recipe over and over again making sure that I didn’t get anything wrong. I left my ingredients out so they would be at room temperature. I even used the coarse salt that Martha called for. And that was my downfall, friends….
So I was finally able to try out the pound cake recipe I clipped out of Martha Stewart magazine. It called for a heck of a lot of eggs so I didn’t get to try it till I had done my grocery shopping for the week.
I creamed the butter and sugar just like she said…for an entire 8 minutes!! It was white and fluffy like she required. I added flour/salt mixture and the eggs in additions just like Martha said.
I popped it in the oven and ohhh did it smell good. The smell of delicious baking cake wafted in the air. P would walk by the oven every once in a while and just sniff. When it was done baking I let it cool just like Martha said! The two loaves looked perfect and springy to the touch. After it cooled, I cut out a slice and brought it over to my official taste tester, P.
I took a small sliver and with that first bite, I knew it had gone terribly wrong. The texture and denseness was spot on. The color was a perfect golden yellow. But the taste. With the first bite, I bit into a nugget of coarse salt. Bleh! Hopefully it was just that bite. NOPE! Almost every bite contained that same intolerable salt.
So I had to throw out those two beautiful loaves and this morning I went only to see if anyone else had the same issue. And behold! Yes, so many bakes complained about the same thing. Some questioned the use of coarse salt altogether while others think is must be a typo, one tsp rather than one tbs of salt? Many others couldn’t get the cake to the correct texture no matter what they tried. So phew, I don’t feel so bad after all. At least m cake was perfect except for the salt nuggets.
But now I’m obssessed with getting this right. Darn you Martha! I’ll show you!
P has work meetings every once in a while and they usually last all evening. Shhh, don’t tell P but I actaully don’t mind. Its not that I don’t like his company its just that a quite evening alone is a nice thing every once in a while. Since it doesn’t happen that often, I’m actually excited for the evening alone.
I get all the baby duties to myself which I don’t mind. I like the one-on-one time with KK. The only difficult thing is to walk Heidi when I get home. Now that its colder, I’m reluctant to bring KK out with me when I walk Heidi. I can’t exactly leave her at home by herself when I’m out with the pup either. So I run home real quick, walk the dog and then go pick up KK.
And for dinner I can make up whatever concoction I feel like eating. its like it was during my single days. I’d make up some strange mixture for dinner and its not something I’d ever serve anyone else but it suits my fancy. If its just me, I’m not cooking. Microwaving is the most I’ll do. I remember I used to have this rice dish I’d mix up. Its the frozen brown rice I get from Trader Joe’s and I’d add in some canned cor, chopped up fat free hot dogs and them mix in a tablespoon or so of this Chinese barbeque sauce. I’d heat the whole thing up in the microwave and Viola! Dinner is served. Sounds all sorts of strange and nasty but I loved this combo.
So last night, I put KK down for bed and then went for a 30 minute job on the treadmill, showered and then heated up some leftovers. I had about an hour till bedtime and I finished up the scarf I was knitting and squeezed in a little reading before hitting the sack.
No one said that being a mom and working full-time was easy. In fact, the one constant thing that I hear from working moms is that it is super hard to juggle everything and to do everything well. Something has to give right?
Of all my friends and acquaintances, I can’t recall one of them saying that their jobs were easy and that they’re left with tons of time to do personal things. I don’t care if you’re single, married, dating, with or without kids, the biggest complain is that there isn’t enough time to get everything we want to do done. Well, add kids into the equation and your time problem just increased to the nth power.
Talk about wearing multiple hats! Try wearing all those hats…balance a tray of breakables and navigating through a maze all at the same time. That’s more like it.
I’m new to this world and I have not found a time machine that will magically create the extra time that I need nor have I grown additional arms that will help me get all the extra things done. I’ve simply tried to live in the moment and honestly, I’ve had to let some things go.
I’ve given up on trying to keep in touch with everyone that I know. Its not that I no longer like them but if I haven’t heard from them in a while, I’m assuming that its ok and we’ll just all keep chugging along. Our paths will cross again when we all have time. I will always try to make time for the people that are important to me. I’ve tried to be more mellow and to not abide by strict schedules (other than the baby’s feeding and bed time schedules) on when things need to be done. No one ever fell over and died because their closet is not organized.
I’m definitely still learing and I always ask all my mommy friends how do they do it. What has worked for them and what their wise words of wisdom are for me.
But there’s no doubt that its hard. I enjoy my work and I want to do well of course but there are times when its a struggle. I DON’T want to use my time in the evenings or weekends to do work. I want to spend that time with KK. I’m about to get really busy at work and that will last till the end of the year. This coincides with P’s busy season at work too. Scheduling who will pick up KK on certain days can potentially be difficult.
And what do I do when I start up classes again in the Spring?
I sort of got into this pattern of baking something every weekend. For the past few weeks I’ve baked something new or different every weekend and I usually have P take whatever I baked to work with him. I don’t tend to eat a lot of the baked goodies I make. I’m not sure why, its not that they don’t taste good. I think its more the mindset that I’m making this lovely, yummy concotion to be enjoyed by others. I get enough pleasure out of just baking it. Cheeeeeesy!
So I’ve made pumpkin bread, lower fat pumpkin bread, banana bread, chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, cupcakes, pumpkin pecan pie and for this coming weekend POUND CAKE. I’ve never tried pound cake before but I foufn this great recipe in Martha Stewarts magazine that I want to try. Doesn’t seem like the easiest recipe in the world but if I can master the pound cake, there are so many different varieties that I can make out of it. I could add choco chips, blueberries, crandberries and orange zest, cinnamon and raisin…the list seems endless.
I always try to make something lower fat but I kind of figured out that some things are just not meant to be low fat. the lower fat pumpkin bread used a cup of apple sauce in place of the cup of oil the recipe called for and according to P and his co-workers, it wasn’t as moist. Duh, that’s a whole freakin cup of oil people!
I will need to be better about posting pictures of what I make. I don’t tend to post the recipes either but if you are interested, let me know and I’ll start doing that.
Another thing I have been doing is making something out of the crockpot on Sundays. This weekend I’ll be trying Jean’s crockpot lasagna recipe!
I have painted, glued and decorated more in the past month than I have in years! I am by no means an artistic person nor am I very good at crafts but I’ve always enjoyed doing things with my hands. In teh past few weeks I’ve really been putting those skills to the the test.
I made a hairbow holder for KK’s crowing collection of hair thingies. That was easy and involved some painting and glueing. I also helped put together P andKK’s Halloween costume. Youguys can check it out on Facebook.
I recently came up with and idea for what to do with all the baby food jars. Its still in the works so I’ll share that with you later….if it comes out the way I am expecting it to.
My project this week is to paint the ceiling fan blades. Its plain white right now and we wanted to add a little color to them so I’m going to pain animals on them. I’m thinking a bunny, piglet, duckie and turtle. When its spinning it will look like one giant blur so no worries, haha.
I know, I know….I’m a little late for a weekend round up. Miss KK was a bit fussy on Saturday from her shots and I tried to stay in most of the day. I went to my WW weigh-in a day early cause of my run on Sunday morning. I met up with my mom and we went to Wegmans. We were able to grab lunch and also get my weekly grocery shopping done. I LOVE Wegmans. I don’t know how anyone can resist the dessert bar or their asian food buffet. And their produce and fruits are so fresh. My uncle works there and he swears by the quality and says that they have really strict food safety guidelines.
Ohhh, I digress…..we spent the rest of Saturday at home. We took the little ones, KK and Heidi, out for a walk after the rain stopped. Its such a pretty time of year right now with the brightly colored leaves. Pretty soon it will get ugly outside and everything will look dead. Bleh.
P and I ran the Goblin Gallop 5k on Sunday morning. I didn’t think P could run cause he’s had this awful congestion and cough for the past month or so. Turns out he has some sort of viral thing going on. He felt well enough to run it with me. He had told me beforehand that this was not an easy 5k cause it had lots of long hills so I was mentally prepared to take it easy and pace myself. I felt great during the entire run. Here I am with a co-worker. You can’t see it but I have two cookies that I’m hiding behind my back. Turned out they weren’t so good so I didn’t eat but one bite of them.
I think I’d like to up my runs to 4 miles from now on out. The goal will be to do an 8K or 10K next year. I have just one more 5k left in November. I might sign up for a second one on Thanksgiving. Would be nice to work in some exercise before the big pig out.
Sunday afternoon I took my first knitting class and as my mom so delicately put it…”my hands were like my feet.” Not sure if that’s an ancient Chinese proverb or anything but I was pretty darn clumsy. I would mess up or forget what the heck I was doing. I have been practicing at night and I’m starting to get the hang ouf it now. My mom has crocheted before when we were little so she caught on really quick and last night she told me that she’s already finished two scarves! Holy momma!
Wow, no one ever told me that the concept of time totally changes after you have a kid. Itsbeen set at warp speed. The first 6 weeks seems to go by so sloooooow but after that, its “zip” and now its time to pack them up for college. JK, lol.
KK had her 6 months appointment today and I’m currrently typing to you guys from home cause in the past, the shots have made her fussy and she runs a slight temperature. I decided to take the day off and to keep her home from daycare. On top of her regular shots she also got the flu booster for the first time. The swine flu vaccine isn’t available in our doctor’s office yet. I must say that all the flu and swine flu hoopla has me quite concerned. I just want it to all go away and for all the kiddies to be healthly.
I can not believe that KK is 6 months old today. Wowsers. How did that all happen? Where has the time gone? She’s 15 lbs 10 ounces and about 25 1/2 inches. She’s right about average for her age group. I look back on the pictures from her first few weeks with us and she looks totally different. Like most people say, we all think our babies are soooo adorable but looking back…eh not so cute those first few weeks. Hahaha.
I can’t look when KK gets her shots. I’m totally fine with getting shots and drawing blood but when it happens to KK, I can’t stand to peek. She’s a trooper and only fusses and cries after getting shots. She was so well behaved during her entire appointment. There was a student doctor tagging along and she let them do all the checks twice without a peep. The pediatrician joked that she was so mellow that we should have more kids, hahaha. Funny lil doctor.
So depending on how lil KK feels tomorrow, we might have to miss Chase’s Halloween birthday party. P was watching his beloved Yankees play last night and I was busy painting their costume. Didn’t turn out quite like I had in mind but still looks pretty decent. I definitely didn’t inherit the artistic gene in my family but I can make do when I have to. I just hope that KK doesn’t look back at those pics and wonder which blind person painted everything.
I have another 5K this weekend that I’m a bit more nervous about. More likely P won’t be running it cause he’s still getting over a nasty cold/cough. This 5K is really hilly and P says that its the hardest 5K course that he’s ever run. Great! I’ll just have to remember to pace myself on those hills.
Have a great weekend everyone!
I’m working from home today and as the multi-tasker in me has the laundry running and the tv on in the background. I’m watching the Monday episode of Oprah that I have DVR’d. Not sure if any of you have seen this episode so if you haven’t yet, this will be a spoiler. This episode is pretty disturbing. A bunch of middle aged (50+) women all dated the same guy and all got HIV from him. Ack! They were all totally duped by him.
None of these women knew that he was seeing other people. He was quite the casanova in that he dated over 26 women at the same time. Wowsers. He’s behind bars for assault with a deadly weapon cause he knowingly infected these women.
I feel really bad for these women cause none of them are promiscuous, most of them were married for a long time and he was the first person they dated after their divorces. And I was shocked to hear that HIV is starting to become a problem in nursing home!!! People think that they do not fit the profile for those who are at risk for HIV but nowadays there is no profile.
What got me thinking wasn’t the HIV but more the fact that we’ve all been in situations where something didn’t feel right but we ignored our intuition. There’s a book called the “Gift of Fear” that I highly recommend. It talks mostly about trusting our gut feeling. The hair that rises on the back of your neck when someone gives you the creeps or that nagging feeling that you left the oven on. There’s usually a reason for that. Our subconscious has already picked up on cues or clues that we need to beware but our brain hasn’t processed it yet. These instincts are what keeps animals alive in the wild and our primitive ancestors safe.
Women and their instincts are especially strong but women so often discount that and doubt ourselves. There are times where I don’t want to be rude so I keep letting that strange chat it up. How many times have I ignored that nagging feeling that something isn’t right? Its rare that we are completely caught by surprise and most of the time we had a feeling something or someone wasn’t quite right. The all knowing Oprah has just reminded me that that gut feeling is more often than not right.
We had to make our Costco run this past weekend and with the weather being all rainy and crappy, it seemed that half of Northern Virginia also decided to go to the land of bulk items.
I don’t know about you guys but I LOVE Costco. I don’t know what the appeal is. There isn’t exactly great merchandizing or displays. The items are almost always the same, save the seasonal items. Customer service is virtually non-existant till you get to the check-out line. So what is it that I love so much about Costco?
Probably because it is so darn simple. Stuff is oragnized well throughout the store and it hardly ever changes. You know what you’re getting when you go there. And darn it, its a great deal!! I’m a sucker for those things that end up in my shopping cart that I didn’t anticipate buying. Like that pack of socks and a pair of work out pants that I snuck in in the last minute. It took a lot of restraint not to buy that pastel, soft and fuzzy disney blanket for KK, that she wouldn’t be old enough to use for at least another year.
Its so much more than just food. In fact, I don’t think I get that excited over the food. I don’t indulge in the samples that often. Although during our last trip there, they were baking brownies and we ended up with a giant box of brownie mix. We made the most decadent and moist brownies ever with it and now its all gone….I am kicking myself for forgetting to get another box this time.
Whether is a ginormous bag of paper towels or scented candles….I never know what I will end up with…or what the end total will be. Its like a game we play, I like to see what everyone’s checkout total is. I know, I know…I need to find a new hobby and not descend further into suburban mom land. I promise not to buy any mom jeans in the near future!
Maybe its because I’m working from home today….or pherhaps its just that its nice and sunny out, but I’d say that today is a great example of a perfect Fall day. I have really never been a fan of the Fall cause in my eyes it was a time that the trees look like they are dying with their leaves shedding, the days get shorter and the temperatures drop. It served as a reminder that the summer was over and it was time to start bracing for the cold.
I never did understand how some people loved the Fall and felt it was the perfect time of year. I guess looking at things from a slightly different lense is all it takes. The cooler temps do have their perks. I no longer have to wait for it to cool down before I go out for a run. I don’t have to make sure the car is cooled down before I put the baby in her car seat. I can stay inside and bake or do something in the house without feeling guilty that I “should” be outside cause its summer. The dying trees actually don’t look like they are dying right now. They look like they’ve changed the color of their outfits and the bright yellows and reds are so beautiful.
Let’s say that now I kinda like Fall. Ok, Winter is my new enemy!
