2013 - Week 2

Well, here is my weekly update for Week 2:

Unfortunately, I did not finish my scarf, but I am getting close. I did keep up with my at least five hours of project work (knitting) and I did two hours of exercise to make up for not doing any during week one. My Wii fit experience was rather funny actually. It seems it had been 1020 days since my last time playing it . . . oops. It was good to get back into it again I think. I kept up my dream journal, daily event tracking, and my Bible reading as well. I am enjoying the chronological, archaeological Bible reading that we are doing. We read part of Genesis and now we are reading through Job . . . it's going well so far.

As for my new thing this week, I tried my hand at making chicken-fried steak. I have never had this and enjoyed it before (because I'd always had it in a cafeteria setting), so I was a little hesitant to try it. However, I saw a recipe for it using corn flakes in the latest Food Network magazine, so I thought I'd give it a go (Chicken-Fried Steak). It was actually pretty good . . . I liked the steak and the breading, but it was a little too salty, and I would have liked a bit more gravy. I didn't make the whole seasoning mix the recipe calls for, but scaled it back by ratio to account for the amount needed in the recipe (1 1/3 tsp. salt, 1/3 tsp. pepper, 1/3 tsp. garlic powder . . . I know, I don't have a 1/3 tsp. measuring spoon either, I just eyeballed it using a 1/2 tsp. one). I think in the future, I would use 3/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. pepper, 1/4. garlic powder, and double the gravy recipe. Other than that though, everything else in this recipe was very exact and the meat cooked well.

Chicken-fried steak with cream gravy

In other news . . . remember the Peanut Butter Cup Cake that I made last February? It looked amazing, but I was so disappointed with the cake and frosting themselves. So, for a friend's birthday, I decided to try and redeem myself using my favorite chocolate cake and frosting recipes, but turning the frosting into a peanut butter version of Swiss meringue buttercream. This was the result, and oh was it tasty :)

Here are the links to the recipes that I used, in case you want to recreate this masterpiece (which I believe weighed about seven pounds :)) - Sandy's Chocolate Cake, Frosting (I cut the recipe in half and added a bit less than one cup of peanut butter I think), and this is the design inspiration (originally from Annie's Eats, a blog I enjoy, but she doesn't have it posted anymore) Peanut Butter Cup Cake image. It even looked good on the inside, always a plus. I think everyone enjoyed it, including the birthday boy. 

I hope you all had a great week, stay tuned to see what next week brings :) Can I finish my scarf before my library books are due???