2013 - Weeks 28 and 29

Vacation was awesome. We saw and did so many new things, it was wonderful. We started out in Portland, like I said in my last blog post (sorry for the little overlap in my trip saga), with my family for my brother's wedding. While we were there, we went to the famous Powell's Books, visited the Vista House overlook, went to a small lavender farm, and did all the fun things associated with the wedding (eating lots of food, getting hair and makeup done, lovely ceremony, etc.)

Welcome to beautiful Portland

Then we headed to McMinnville to see the Spruce Goose airplane (which I thought would look like it was made out of wood . . . I was a bit disappointed that it was painted . . . silly me). Then out to the coast for whale watching and then down the beautiful Oregon coast to visit my husband's family. And all of this in four days :)

The ginormous Spruce Goose (that doesn't look like wood)

While we were there we relaxed a bit, tried to help around the house and garden (I even made a cake), did a lot of family visiting, and we took a drive out to Crater Lake for the day. I was very brave and even jumped in the really cold water. What a great place to visit.

At Crater Lake

Beautiful

After that, we drove up to Mt. St. Helen's and spent the day learning about that and going on a slightly scary hike. Thankfully, I didn't fall down the side of the very steep hill, and it didn't re-erupt while we were there, so we made it out alive :)

Me on the trail in front of Mt. St. Helens

We had a slight hiccup with trying to find a hotel that night because of a Seattle to Portland bicycle race, but eventually we found a room in Tacoma and visited the church there in the morning . . . lovely people. Then we headed northwest and drove up to the top of Washington. We stopped in the lavender capital of the U.S.A. and saw a lovely large lavender farm . . . it smelled so good.

Amongst the lovely purple lavender

We drove to Port Angeles and then up into the Olympic National Park to Hurricane Ridge. It reminded me so much of the Alps. We had just gorgeous photo opportunities the whole trip, so I hope you don't mind all the pictures I'm posting :)

If that doesn't say "Alpine" to you, I don't know what would :)

From there, we drove to Forks (and yes, we did visit some of the "Twilight" spots, but since none of the movie was actually filmed there, there wasn't much to see). First Beach was really beautiful though, so we stayed to watch the sunset.

Sunset at First Beach

The next morning we drove back into Olympic National Park, from the western side this time, into the Hoh Rain Forest. What a difference from Hurricane Ridge the day before. I expected it to be raining in the rain forest (especially because it was in Washington), but we got a dry day. It was a really cool place to visit.

Hoh Rain Forest

We made our way back to Portland and spent one night with another of my husband's cousins. We spent our final day with my brother, rock climbing out near Mt. Hood. It was my first time rock climbing outside, but both my brother and his new wife we impressed with the skills I'd gained from my month of indoor rock climbing.

Going up :)

So that was our trip. It could have been twice as long and there still would have been more things we'd have liked to see and do out there, but I think for the time we had, we crammed plenty of awesome stuff into it. I dare say that I got a full dose of exercise and new things for the week. I did read on the plane home, so I got my reading in too. What a full two weeks :) Have any of you visited or done any of these things? I'd love to hear about it :)

2013 - Week 27

Hello from Week 27. I am not writing this exactly after it happened, so I'm sorry if this isn't the most complete summary of what happened. Most of this week was spent in preparing for our vacation that occurred during Weeks 28 and 29. There was a lot of planning and packing and preparing to do, so we were very busy.

For my task, I'm still reading, and travelling made for a great time to read. It seems airplane travel is not what it used to be (a fun luxury) and now each little thing that used to be included, even a glass of water while in flight, is now extra :( That fact, combined with the children who were directly behind us and not even reprimanded by their parents once for continually kicking our seats (and even at one point hitting my husband on the head) during the duration of our flight, made for a very exhausting travel day. But that being said, I did get a lot of reading done, and once we reached our destination (Portland, Oregon), we felt much better.

Aww . . . look how cute we are (me and my brothers) :) All grown up. 

The happy couple

We got to spend a lot of time this week with my family and I had the pleasure of being a part of my brother's wedding ceremony. We also stayed in a very comfy hotel (they served soup and warm cookies at 5 pm, how awesome is that?) and I took advantage of their exercise equipment to complete my workout requirement for the week. Add in all of the walking we did too, and I think I more than covered my hour, but alas, we ate so much good food that my exercise couldn't keep up. Oh well . . . it's vacation, right?
And as for my new thing this week, well, there were just too many to count. But I would have to say going whale watching on the Pacific Ocean was definitely a highlight :)

Our first mate :) 

We saw whales, but I didn't get any pictures of them. We did see (and get pictures) of other sea life though :) 

Stay tuned for a more thorough tale of the rest of our vacation and more pictures next week :)

2013 - Week 26

Hi :) Week 26 was not too eventful blog-wise, but somehow it was still really busy. I didn't have a whole lot of time to do things, but I still got my exercise in with my Wii boxing game, and mowing part of a friend's lawn. He was joking about me mowing, but I thought it might be fun, because they have one of those old manual mowers. It was a work out, but the lawn looked pretty decent when I was done :) I still worked on my reading "task" but have fallen a bit behind. Have no fear, with the holiday this week, I will have plenty of time to finish this week's reading and do next week's too :)

The only fun thing I have to share this week is a recipe for these Peanut Butter Pretzel Bites that I made. It made quite a lot, and I kept them in the freezer because they were very tasty cold (and I didn't want to risk getting the pretzels soggy). I would just rate them as "good", not "great" . . . they were full of peanut butter chocolate sweet salty goodness, but not a knock out in my book. I did enjoy them though, and if you're looking for something small to snack on, these might be a good option :)

Peanut Butter Pretzel Bites

Enjoy . . . see you next week :)

2013 - Week 25

Hello everyone. How was your Week 25? Things outside of the blogosphere weren't terribly great for me this week, but I did manage to make a couple of tasty dishes to share with you.

For exercise, I'm still boxing . . . I'm determined to "beat" this game, but it doesn't like to register my movements sometimes and that makes me frustrated. Oh well, it's still fun, and it's keeping me in shape so I can keep eating all these desserts I make. My task is still reading. I finished the Hunger Games series and watched the first movie. I have to say, I was rather disappointed in the movie. I liked the first two books, and the third was okay. Not as happy of an ending as I was hoping for, but still okay. It just seems like they changed things in the movie that didn't really need to be changed, or omitted things that could have easily been included, and it was for those reasons that I wasn't really a fan. I liked most of the casting, but not the announcers or President Snow. Donald Sutherland will always be the nice father in the most recent "Pride and Prejudice" for me, so he just didn't seem as mean or snake-like as I pictured Snow. I suppose if I hadn't read the books, the movie might have been better, but as usual, the books were much better than the movie.

Now to my tasty dishes :) I have never tried to make a molten lava cake before, so that was my task this week. It was my husband's birthday, and we had a lot of desserts in the house, but I didn't think it would be right to let his birthday pass by without making him a special cake. He didn't really have any ideas about what he wanted (to be honest, I think he likes fruit better than cake . . . when I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he told me "a pineapple" and he was pleased as punch when he got it :)). So I wanted to make something easy and relatively small, and these little cakes definitely fit the bill. They were very easy, didn't take much time, and turned out just great. This is the recipe that I used (Molten Chocolate Cakes), and it turned out so well, I would use it again in the future for sure. I used 4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of the baking chocolate, and it still turned out perfect. I would recommend serving them with vanilla ice cream to get the contrasting hot and cold aspects, but they did not need the caramel sauce I added, they were sweet enough on their own.

Cute little cakes

Yum :) 

Speaking of cake, be sure you check out last weeks post (Week 24) to see the pictures of my completed Guacamole Cake that I finally got posted :) 

My other creation this week was a Creamy Chipotle Chicken Salad. I can't give you an exact recipe, because I just sort of make it up, but I started with a base of fresh lettuce, tomatoes, carrots and cilantro. Then I sauteed some chicken with drained and rinsed black beans, seasoned with southwestern seasoning. The sauce is really the crowning achievement though. I think it was about 3/4 cup sour cream with a finely diced chipotle pepper and some of the sauce and onions from the can. I also added green onions and fresh garlic, plus enough whole milk to make it into a nice sauce. I cooked it all together until I thought the green onions were soft enough, and then I blended it with my immersion blender. Then I thickened it with a little corn starch dissolved in water, and voila . . . creamy chipotle sauce. I also topped the salad with some shredded cheddar cheese and crushed tortilla chips to give it a nice crunch. So good :)

Creamy Chipotle Chicken Salad

That's all for now folks. See you next week :)

2013 - Week 24

Wow, so much to tell this week :)

First of all, I've been keeping up with my Wii boxing game for exercise, and for task, yes, I'm still reading. I started the Hunger Games series and I'm on the final book, "Mockingjay" right now . . . we'll see how it ends (DON'T tell me) :)

The surprise that I alluded to last week shall now be revealed: I made a cake (no surprise there), but it was modeled after a Mexican molcajete bowl filled with guacamole. I found the recipe here: Guacamole Cake. I couldn't find candied cherries, and my attempt at making my own ended in hard, charred ones (ick), so I went without. The cake was a bit messy to make (Oreo bits all over my kitchen) and time consuming, but I think it turned out tasty and really fun. The taste wasn't quite up to my standards because so much of it was just store-bought and processed, but it was still a neat experiment. Will I make it again? Probably not, but it was fun to try once.

Molcajete base pre-coating

"Guacamole" ice cream with cinnamon sugar pita chips

The finished cake

The next dish I made was a creamy portobello mushroom pasta with caprese salad (which I later chopped up and put on top of the dish, which was also tasty). I adapted this recipe: Chicken in Creamy Pan Sauce that I also tried this week (it turned out really yummy with some green onions and fresh garlic added to the sauce.

Chicken in Creamy Pan Sauce served over spinach with tomatoes and basil

Anyways, for the portobello dish, I adapted this recipe for Roasted Portobello Mushrooms by using mozzarella cheese instead of blue cheese and I added some plain bread crumbs as well. They turned out really well, and I would recommend this recipe with those changes, I can't say how it would be with blue cheese. Once I had that made, I made the sauce from the pan sauce base: 1 cup beef broth this time (instead of chicken) with 4 oz. cream cheese cooked with green onions and fresh garlic. I sliced the mushrooms, put them on top of linguine and covered with with sauce. I put a small caprese salad to go on the side too . . . all in all, it was a really tasty dish, both variations were very good and I would order it in a restaurant :)

 Creamy Portobello Pasta with Caprese Salad

My final creation was probably my best one: mini turtle cupcakes with caramel German buttercream. Did you even know there was such a thing as German buttercream? I didn't. I knew of the super sweet American version, the rich French version, and even the light and buttery Swiss version, but I never knew about the German one, and honestly, I don't know how that is even possible considering it's made with a custardy pastry cream base, which is one of my favorite foods ever :). My husband doesn't have the same affection for the Swiss version that I do because he thinks it tastes too much like pure butter, so since these cupcakes were for a party for him, I looked for a new variation to try. I discovered the recipe here: Bravetart German Buttercream, but thought that two pounds of butter was a little excessive. Luckily, I found this recipe: Food-ology German Buttercream and it only used one pound, plus vanilla extract instead of vanilla beans, and it worked out perfectly. It was great by itself, but I wanted caramel frosting, so I added about 10 oz. of store-bought caramel dip (the kind that is usually paired with apples), and it incorporated seamlessly into my frosting and it was so good. It might have bumped Swiss buttercream off of to the top of my list of favorite frostings :)

For the mini cupcakes, I used my go-to chocolate cake recipe: Sandy's Chocolate Cake. I didn't know how many it would make, but since the cake recipe is for three 9" round cakes, I figured it would be a lot (it was . . . I didn't even try to count them all, but I'm guessing about 150 mini cupcakes). I tried with cupcake liners but it was sticking, so I greased the pans instead, still sticking, then finally I really greased and floured the pans and although they didn't have perfectly round tops, they did come out of the pan better. I also experimented with piping in the caramel filling (I just used the straight caramel dip) before and after baking and decided that after worked better. My husband helped me by ladling the batter into a funnel that I used as a dispenser . . . kind of a fun trick that worked pretty well :) So needless to say, with all of the sticking going on, I was a tad bit frustrated with the cakes, but the frosting saved the day. I piped the frosting on and topped half of them with pecan halves and they were beautiful and little mouthfuls of goodness. I highly recommend trying German buttercream for your next cake.

Pastry Cream base

Before and After Frosting

YUM Turtle Goodness

Hungry yet? I hope you all had a good week . . . come back next week to hear about more adventures in my Life's Lab Notebook :)

2013 - Week 23

Well, here is my update on Week 23:

For exercise I'm still working on that Wii boxing game. I think I hurt my shoulder, but it's feeling a bit better now. My task has still been reading . . . it seems like kind of a cheater task, but I can't stop until I've finished these Hunger Games books :)

I made a couple of really tasty recipes this week too. First, Velvety Carrot Soup from the Penzey's spice catalog. I just blended the whole thing in the pot using my immersion blender, and I didn't add the half-and-half because it was creamy enough without it. We ate it with a side of garlic herb goat cheese on triscuits . . . mmm, now that's a meal :)

I also tried another variation on the Sweet Roll Dough from the Food Network Magazine. This time, I made the Poppy Seed - Lemon Twists. I must say, I'm not that big of a fan of lemon poppy seed things, but these gave the cinnamon rolls a run for their money. They were a bit time-consuming, but turned out really tasty, and if I do say so myself, prettier than the Food Network version :)

Ready to rise

Risen

Baked

Glazed in luscious lemony goodness :) 

So that's all that I have for this week, just wait until you see the fun I have in store for next week :) Talk to you then :)

2013 - Week 22

Hi :) How was your Week 22? Can you believe this year is almost half over already? My Week 22 was pretty good, I tried a few recipes that I would love to share with you. I also did more of that Wii boxing game (Gold's Gym Cardio Workout) which is surprisingly still fun, and for my "task" played cello, guitar, and sat down and read a book. I know it's not accomplishing any of the projects that I need to get finished, but it's been so long since I read a book (I think it was last year during my book reading month), it is still enriching my mind, and as an added bonus, my library's summer reading program just started, so I get fun prizes for reading . . . so it is definitely worthwhile, plus I love it. I got a few new books so that's was got me back into reading. Don't worry, my scrapbooking is still out and on the forefront of my mind, so I will try and work on that too, but for now, I have a few books calling my name :)

But first, before I go read, I have to share my yummy creations from this week. The first was something I alluded to in my post last week . . . cappuccino knots. They are made with the same sweet roll dough as the cinnamon rolls I made last week, but instead of the cinnamon sugar mixture, an espresso sugar mixture is made, the dough is rolled into logs, dipped in butter and then the espresso sugar, tied into a knot, and baked in a muffin tin. The finished rolls then get a espresso glaze and a plain glaze . . . the result was very pretty :) I think the sugar caramelized on the top a little too much so they were a bit harder than the cinnamon rolls, but they were still pretty good, and I don't even like coffee. But if you are a coffee lover, this might be a good recipe for you to try. (I found this espresso powder at my local Whole Foods in case you have trouble locating it.)

Pre-rising

Post-rising

Ta da

Next, I still have a ton of pumpkin in my freezer, so I made some pumpkin bars. They turned out pretty well, and I just winged a cream cheese frosting to put on top (cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, vanilla . . . I think I added a little too much vanilla because it was a little dark, but still tasty). I substituted applesauce for the oil and they were super moist :) Also, I followed some reviewers comments and baked it in a 10 x 15 inch pan for 25 minutes. I was a little worried it would run over the edges, but it was perfect.

Aside from sweets, I also made two tasty savory dishes. First was these bacon hasselback potatoes. My husband (who was home for the day) actually gets the credit for making these look so pretty. He did the initial steps and got them in the oven . . . I just did the last step of adding the onion, parsley, garlic, butter mixture. I'd never seen potatoes like that before and certainly had never tried them, but they turned out fantastic. We left the skins on, and they got nice and crispy while the potato was really soft and creamy (that might have to do with the large quantity of butter in the recipe) . . . overall, I think it's a really good way to make potatoes if you have the time.

Bacon Hasselback Potatoes

Finally, I made a repeat recipe. I may have lauded this seasoned chicken previously on my blog, but it's just so tasty I had to put it in again. I don't know when I found this recipe, but it's so easy and turns out so good . . . definitely a keeper. I know I have at least one blog reader (Hi Helen :)) who was looking for something easy to try, and I know has lots of soy sauce at home :) The oyster sauce is not something I usually have lying around, but I did find it at Wal-Mart. It really stinks, but trust me, it gives the chicken an amazing flavor. I always add extra garlic too, because I love garlic. I've made it with the Cornish hens before, but this time I tried it with chicken leg quarters . . . worked perfectly. The chicken is super moist and you can use the sauce from the pan to put on the rice . . . very succulent. So simple, and so good . . . give it a try :)

Okay . . . that's it for this week. Leave me a comment and let me know if you try any of these recipes and how they work for you. I'd love to hear suggestions too. Talk to you next week . . . time to go read now :)

2013 - Week 21

Whew, Week 21 was a crazy one. I had something going on every single night. From parties to meetings to music practice, I was kept running all week, but it was filled with tons of fun things to tell you about too :)

First of all, I was kept late at work one day due to a fire alarm going off, but as it turns out, this was a good thing because on my way home, I saw that the Budweiser Clydesdales were right by my house. I ran and got my husband and we got to see the whole team hitched up to the wagon and everything, it was really cool. Also, the day before, I saw the Oscar Mayer "wienermobile" . . . how fun. Then, I got to see both of those things again later in the week . . . it was crazy, but fun. Seriously, how many other people have gotten to pet the Budweiser Clydesdales?

Just a bit of silliness :)

Big Horsie

My husband is 6' 7", just to give you an idea of how HUGE that horse is

We also go to attend a fun A Capella group concert, meet the group, and get their autographs . . . so all in all, it was a very exciting week.

To top it all off, I made the yummiest Cinnamon Rolls ever. I found this recipe for Sweet Roll Dough in one of the latest Food Network Magazines, and since there were six variations to make with it, of course I decided I had to try them all. I didn't have any whole milk, so I used a 50/50 mixture of skim milk and heavy cream. Also, don't forget to add the water! The girls at my work really love coffee, so I wanted to make the "Cappuccino Knots" for them, but I wanted to practice with the cinnamon rolls first, just to make sure the dough worked out okay. And oh boy did it work out :)

Awesome dough

Ready to roll

Before rising

After rising

Behold the masterpiece

Om nom nom :) 

You know you want to go make those cinnamon rolls now, right? Enjoy!

2013 - Week 20

Hi, not too much to report from Week 20. For my working out, I did more of the Gold's Gym Wii boxing game . . . I'm still enjoying it quite a bit. I did made a few recipes, but nothing really spectacular. I tried Anadama Bread (a version of it as I've seen many) but it was not very good. I had to substitute milk for the nonfat dry milk + water, but that shouldn't have caused any issues. The amount of molasses made it a little bitter, in my opinion, and the texture was very strange, almost like a cross between bread and a molasses cookie. I didn't really enjoy it.

I also made two dinners, Pasta Primavera and Pizza Stuffed Chicken (the Pizza Stuffed Chicken link goes to another blogger who tried it, I couldn't find the original recipe online). I found that the Pasta Primavera was was a little bland and the sauce never thickened, so I think I would try a different recipe in the future. For the Pizza Stuffed Chicken, I used shredded mozzarella cheese, it was a bit messy, but tasty, and I also made my go to breadsticks (Quick Soft Breadsticks) and a salad, so it made for a decent meal. Both main dish recipes were good, but like I said, nothing spectacular. I think the best thing I did all week was to decorate more sugar cookies for a friend's retirement party. He loves beer and always insists people wear green shirts on Tuesday, so the Ganache Queen and I made beer mug cookies and green shirt cookies (she gets all the credit for making the cookies and royal icing, I just helped decorate). The shirts actually matched some of our friends' shirts perfectly, so that was really fun. I think he enjoyed the cookies and the retirement party was a success :)

Green Shirt and Beer Mug cookies

My friend on the left refuses to be on a blog, but I wanted to  show how close the cookies were :) Awesome. 

Hopefully I'll have more exciting things to tell you next week. Have a great week :) 

2013 - Week 19

Well, another week down already. Since I didn't get any feedback about lessening up my crazy challenge, I kind of did, and kind of didn't. I didn't really keep track of the time that I spent on my music planning, but I'm fairly certain it was still over five hours. I was a little behind on my exercising too, but I got it done eventually thanks to more PopSugar 10 minute workouts and the Gold's Gym Wii game. So not a whole lot to report this week, but I do have a couple of new recipes to tell you about.

First, I made some Cincinnati chili. Now, many of you have been introduced to Cincinnati chili at the famous Skyline Chili like I was. A special thanks to my brother and sister-in-law for taking me there, but even greater thanks for the Colonel De spices that I used while making my own version of Cincinnati chili. I used this recipe that I found in the Food Network magazine: Cincinnati Chili. In my humble opinion, it was better than Skylines :) Very tasty. I had to modify it a little bit because I didn't have fresh tomatoes and my jar of tomato sauce was too small, so I compensated by adding a 14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes . . . it worked out fine. Also, I added the beans to the meat mixture halfway through the simmering time just so I could make sure they were fully cooked instead of just putting them on top when it was done. I was a little worried because I am not a huge fan of a few of the spices used in this recipe (and there are a lot) but it all came together really nicely . . . I would recommend this recipe.

Cincinnati Chili

The other recipe I tried was for an "Ocho de Mayo" party at work. We didn't have a Cinco de Mayo party because it was on a weekend, and for some reason, people decided they wanted the party on Wednesday. I wanted to make churros or these adorable piñata cookies, but churros aren't really good unless they are fresh, and the cookies didn't make enough for a pot luck, so I needed a better idea. I thought: Mexico . . . hmm . . . beaches . . . sand dollars :) I had seen the recipe for these cute sand dollar cookies on Pinterest that I had been wanting to try. The cookies didn't turn out quite like the tasty sugar cookies I was hoping for, they were a little dry, but they looked great. For a very easy substitute, just try the slice and bake sugar cookies, or your own go-to sugar cookie recipe (maybe add a bit of cinnamon to the dough to make them extra cinnamony :)).

Sand Dollar Cookies

So that's all for this week. Have you tried any good recipes lately? How about any fun workouts? Let me know :)

2013 - Week 18

Hi from Week 18. This year is sure flying by, and boy have I been busy lately.

For my task this week, now that my fun exercise challenge is done (although I did work out for about an hour this week, I literally ran to the grocery store, and then I spent the rest of the time "playing" a Jillian Michaels' Wii Fit game, I was not impressed, but my legs were sore the next day). I was planning on going back to scrapbooking. Unfortunately, things didn't work out quite as planned, and I spent all of my scrapbooking time working on my second job . . . planning the special music for my church. It seems to go in spurts when I have tons to do, and then it settles down for a while, but with school ending and all of our regularly meeting church music groups wrapping up for the summer, my job gets a lot busier. I have a feeling I might be doing this for my task next week too.

Speaking of, I've been thinking (this might be dangerous ;)), the whole point of these tasks was to get me working on things of value and not just wasting my time on Facebook, watching movies, or watching TV, and I think I've accomplished that. Now, it seems, the tasks are just making me really stressed out. So, I'm rethinking my commitment to it. Do you have any suggestions? Should I keep up with it, or just let the tasks come as they will? I can't decide. I still want to work on my scrapbook and knitting, etc., etc., etc., but it doesn't seem like I'm ever going to find the time.

Okay, so that was my musing for this week . . . now on to the fun stuff. This was a very long week for me at work that involved many new experiences (that I don't think I should share here . . . sorry). Because of that, I didn't feel like I really needed to make a new recipe, but of course I did anyways :) On Saturday I tried out two new recipes (and I must have really been in the mood for oatmeal): Oatmeal Cake and Oatmeal Bread. (Sorry, I couldn't find the original Penzey's recipe for the cake, but this blogger scaled the sugar back a little bit, which might be a good idea since it was so sweet). Both of these recipes came from the Penzey's Spice catalog . . . what other free catalog can you get that comes with such good recipes? Seriously, if you don't get it yet . . . sign up for it here :) The cake was a little too sweet, like I said, but not bad. Definitely not my favorite cake, but it was worth a try. As for the oatmeal bread, also a little too sweet, so I would scale back the honey a little bit, but it was leaps and bounds better than the whole wheat bread I made last week, that's for sure. It is soft and very tasty . . . I think it's a "make it again" recipe.

Oatmeal cake

Oatmeal bread

Okay, well I'm off to do some more music planning now. I hope you all have a great Week 19 :)