Two Cakes for Brother Daniel

Daniel's tenth birthday is Monday. Since he is just starting a three-week spring break, he had a classroom party on Friday, and we had our "Day of Daniel" on Saturday.

For the classroom party, I asked our local Food City to make some cupcakes with soccerballs on them. This is what they did instead:


I thought the "cupcake cake" looked awesome!


This is what I baked:

Not nearly as cool looking, but it tasted better! It's actually a brownie with white frosting. And no one is really sure what "B-Davy" means.

The Greatest Moment in His Young Life

Big game tonight at the indoor soccer arena - D's team took on an undefeated powerhouse - and we won!! It was a nail-biter, but with less than a minute left to play, Daniel scored his first goal of the season to win it!! He was PUMPED!!

I didn't actually get the goal on screen when he scored - I tend to get excited and forget to pay attention to where the camera is pointing - but you can clearly here me yelling in a very redneck sort of way when the ball goes in. Enjoy! Daniel is #13 in the blue jersey.

Bebop with Aesop

The Fourth Grade classes put on a musical program called "Bebop with Aesop"at tonight's PTA meeting. It was really, really well done. The chorus wore togas and green laurels, and different kids got to be characters in five different fables. Everyone knew their lines, and everyone was really animated and into it.

Daniel was the grasshopper in the story about the grasshopper and the ants, where the ants were all work, work, work, work, work, and the grasshopper was all hop, hop, hop, hop, hop. Then winter rolls around and the grasshopper freezes and starves his caboose off while the mean old ants enjoy the spoils of their labor. Or something like that.


Daniel did a great job! And check out that wicked cool costume - wonder who helped him with that?

Improving on Perfection

Submitted for your approval....The Banana Crunch Muffin:

Long-time readers of this blog are well-acquainted with my love for this muffin. Hailing from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, this culinary delight sports walnuts, bananas, and granola. It makes for an extremely hearty breakfast muffin. Some might call it - dare I say it? - the perfect muffin. My apologies to blueberry muffin fans (of which I am one myself), but I do think this muffin achieves perfection. I love to bake a batch on the weekend, and eat them all week for breakfast.

And long-time readers will also recall that I have made one modification to this muffin to make it a healthier breakfast option: I started using white whole wheat flour instead of plain AP flour. It did change the texture and color slightly, but actually made it better in my opinion. A recent kitchen experiment made me wonder if I couldn't improve it even more.

The kitchen experiment to which I refer is homemade granola. Since oatmeal is on my superfood list, I have been trying to get more of it. One of the ways to get oatmeal is to eat granola. Most store-bought granola, however, is loaded with sugar and salt, not to mention unidentifiable chemicals that somehow keep it fresh. So I thought - why not make my own? How hard could it be?

Not hard at all, I discovered. I combined a couple of recipes to land on one that uses oatmeal, almonds, walnuts, (nuts are also on the superfood list), vegetable oil, honey, cinnamon, and a touch of salt. It turned out really, really, good.

So good in fact, that I made another batch just to have enough to put in my banana crunch muffins. The cinnamon in the granola added just a little somethin'-somethin'. And I replaced one stick of melted butter (two total in the recipe) with a half a cup of vegetable oil to cut out some fat. They may have some out slightly drier, but I don't know if I would blame the oil as much as the baking time.

And so it happened that the perfect breakfast muffin just got more perfect. (If our founding fathers can say "more perfect", then so can I.)

I think I'll have another.

The Asheville Meet-Up

Today was the Asheville Meet-Up, postponed from last month due to inclement weather. We met my cousin Kelly and her family (Rob, Meredith, and Christine) at Fuddie's in Ashville, and then went on to the Grove Park Inn to hang out and visit. Paul and Sam were scheduled to make an appearance (Natalie was sick), but Sam woke up with a fever and they cancelled.

But we still had great fun! I hadn't seen Kelly in three years, and it was good to catch up face to face. We' ll be doing this again!

(My Grandmother passed away three years ago tomorrow. I would love for her to see this picture.)

Oh look! Rocks to climb!

It was misty and overcast most of the day, but it cleared in time for us to spend a little time outside at the GPI.

Good times!

Blue and Gold

Tonight was the annual Blue and Gold Banquet:

Daniel earned his Webelos Badge and a Compass Emblem.

He went with the gas stove joke, to much applause. One girl scout threw fruit. Not really.

Mr. McCool.

Look at these handsome guys!

Mark and DP made a cookie cake for the auction. We bought it back for ourselves. We know it would be good.

We are VERY proud of Daniel and his scouting accomplishments! He has worked very hard this year!

Your Assistance Needed

Daniel's Blue and Gold Banquet is this Tuesday night. Each den is to perform a skit. The meeting during which Daniel's den was to plan their skit was canceled due to snow. So...with no skit to perform and no time to prepare one, Daniel's den leader has asked each boy to come prepared to tell a joke.

Joke-telling in front of a large group can be a dicey prospect. Long jokes with lots of details tend to flop, especially when the comedian in question is only nine years old. We're thinking DP needs to focus on something really quick and easy to tell, but also packing a lot of humorous punch.

We spent the breakfast hour this morning telling jokes in hopes that Daniel would fine that perfect joke that he could tell. I personally laughed until I cried. We told some good ones. These are our three finalists:

Joke #1: Guy goes skydiving. When he pulls the ripcord on his parachute, nothing happens. He looks around, frantically, and sees some guy coming toward him, shooting right up off the ground. As they guy flies past, he says "HEY! Do you know anything about parachutes?" The other guy says "No! Do you know anything about gas stoves?"

Joke #2: Guy gets found after spending years alone on a deserted island. A member of the rescue party sees three makeshift tents and asks what they are for. The guy says "Well, this one's where I live, and that one's where I go to church. And that one over there's where I used to go to church."

Joke #3, courtesy of Uncle Paul: A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says "Why the long face?"

Here's where you come in. Please leave a comment and vote for your favorite joke. Or leave a new joke of your own. Anything off-color or profanity-laden will obviously be ineligible for the banquet, but feel free to tell it anyway! It feels good to laugh......

What I'm Reading Now

The Insight City Guide to Philadelphia.

OK, so this post is more about Summer Vacation 2009 than it is about sharing good books, but I'm really not reading anything good right now. I started Rhett Butler's People, but haven't gotten very far. I actually haven't read anything since I finished The Shack at Christmas. We got Mark the new Joe Torre book for his birthday, but he gets to read it first. Nothing else seems particularly engaging. I'm open to suggestions.

But back to the Philadelphia guide. Yes - we're going to Philly for our summer vacay this year. We plan to drive to Hershey, do the Hershey Park thing, then drive through Amish Country to Philly and do the Philly thing for several days. I've never been to Philadelphia and am really excited to visit there - especially since seeing the John Adams series. I found a great hotel in Philly, and Daniel is particularly excited after having watched a Good Eats episode about the quality of pretzels in Philadelphia.

I love trip planning - almost as much as I love the trips themselves!

What's For Dinner? (Times 2)

This week, I took a page from Robin Miller and had a "prep-ahead" day. On Sunday, I roasted six bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts. Then I removed the skin and the bones and shredded the meat. I put it in a Tupperware container in the fridge to use this week. Here's what I did with it:

Monday: Enchilada Lasagna. Exactly what it sounds like. I got the recipe from a Good Eats episode I saw last week about tortillas. I made a chili sauce using tomato sauce, chicken broth, cumin, chili powder, and chipotle chili peppers. Then I sauteed an onion, and later added half of the chicken (just to warm it up.) Then I dipped whole wheat tortillas in the sauce, and layered them in the pan with alternate layers of the chicken, the sauce, and Monterrey jack cheese. It baked up just like a lasagna, but with a Mexican flair. Mark wants me to try it using corn tortillas, and Ben wants me to leave out the onions. But they ate it. That's something.

Tuesday: Buffalo Chicken Calzones. These ROCKED. I took the rest of the chicken and tossed it with buffalo sauce (2 parts margarine, 3 parts Texas Pete). I made pizza dough using my standard dough recipe, and rolled out two (approximately) twelve-inch rounds. I made one chicken-only calzone, and one chicken and cheese. I baked them at 450 for 15 minutes. Everyone ate the heck out of them. They were really good.

International Potluck Day!

I don't usually blog about work. Nothing good comes from it, generally speaking. But today was worth noting.

I am fortunate to work on a team of ten great people. We realized a while back that out of ten of us, only three of us were born and raised right here in East Tennessee. The rest of us come from three other countries, and other parts of the United States. We have teammates born and raised in Mexico, India, Russia, California, New Jersey, Memphis, and good ole' South Carolina. I don't remember whose idea it actually was, but one day we had this brilliant idea to have an International Potluck Day, where everyone would bring in food that reminded them of their home. Everyone participated, and everyone was really into it. It was cool to try new foods (many of which I had never had) and to listen to the stories of how people grew up and what kinds of food they ate.

And so I share with you my photos of the First Annual QA International Potluck Day. It rocked.

This is the team. After me on the far left, we have Jacob, Nirav, Chip, Randy, Tony (aka Coach T), Scott and Marina, and Eloisa and Bertha in front:




Eloisa brought tamales and rice. I didn't get a picture of the rice, but I got two pics of the tamales, one in the husk and one out. I got a pork tamale and it was AWESOME. And it was SPICY.

Nirav brought Samosas. He described them as Indian hot pockets. They had potatoes, peas, and corn on the inside.

We ate the Samosas with this green chutney. It was made with lots of cilantro, and some other spices which lit me up. It was good though.

Nirav also brought an Indian dessert called Ceero. The texture reminded me of cream of wheat, but it was almond-flavored and sweet. I ate about ten of these. They rocked.

Jacob brought strawberry cobbler. We said it was because he's from California and they grow lots of strawberries in California, but actually it was because it was one of the few things he knows how to make. But it was still good. We ate it with Chip's homemade ice cream, which I failed to get a picture of. Chip originally wanted to bring potted meat, as a culinary representation of his childhood, but we all balked. He finally landed on some memory of making ice cream as a kid, and we encouraged him to make some for us. I even brought in the ice cream maker. It worked out so well, we may just institute Ice Cream Friday in the lab. At any rate, this is the cobbler, sans ice cream:

Tony brought in fried catfish. I ate it with my cocktail sauce, which we'll get to shortly, and it rocked. (Tony also wore his Memphis Grizzlies jersey, just to get more into the hometown zone.)

Bertha brought fried chicken and potato salad. She said that's what everyone brought to church potlucks when she was a kid. It was nice to have some milder flavors to fall back to after the tamales and the chutney.

I brought a roasted shrimp cocktail. I was trying to find something that represented southern/coastal fare, and this was easy to transport and I didn't have to keep it hot. I served it with homemade cocktail sauce, not pictured.

Marina brought Pirozhki, which she described as Russian hot pockets. (Apparently, hot pockets are sweeping the globe.) It's made by wrapping dough around a potato/onion mixture. It was very hearty and very good. Marina's husband helped her make it, and he said the recipe was in Russian, so she had to translate, and then they had to do something like three math equivalents to get the measurements right. Obviously, I took the picture after most of the Pirozhki were gone.

But I got a picture of the inside of one:

Scott showed us what to do with day-old doughnuts. Re-fry them in butter! They were pretty tasty, I have to say.

Scott also made homemade pimento cheese, which was AWESOME!! Possibly the best pimento cheese I've ever had.

And we end with the beginning. Randy baked blueberry bread and a breakfast casserole to get us started. It was the breakfast of champions.

And that was International Potluck Day. I don't think I've ever eaten so much food at once in my entire life. Not even on Thanksgiving. I wanted to try everything, and everything was so good, I kept coming back for more. Good food, good friends, good times.

What's for Dinner?

Tomato-Basil Soup.

A few months ago (or maybe a year ago, it's been awhile now, come to think of it) a Jason's Deli opened right across the street from our office. We eat there fairly regularly - they have great sandwiches and particularly good soups. My favorite is Tomato-Basil. Tonight, I attempted to recreate it.

I combined a can of diced tomatoes, a can of crushed tomatoes, and a can of tomato paste with two cups of chicken stock (homemade - once I started, I never went back) and a half a cup of cream. I added a tablespoon of dried basil, lots of salt and too much cayenne pepper. (I started with two dashes, which I could barely taste, and added three more dashes, which lit me up. Somewhere in those last three dashes, I crossed a line.) I pureed all of that, and added another can of diced tomatoes, drained. And then I kicked back and let it simmer.



It was pretty good, with just a little too much cayenne pepper. It wasn't as good as Jason's, but I'm definitely on the right track. I might need more basil, or maybe just use fresh instead of dried. At the very least, it looks just like Jason's, which is half the battle.

I served it with a little cheese and homemade tortilla chips (with Chinese Five Spice - my new favorite go-to spice.)




And for dessert, Sugar and Spice cookies. I found the recipe in my King Arthur Flour's Whole Grain Baking cookbook. After King Arthur retired from the Round Table, he kicked up some killer recipes. This one uses whole wheat flour, molasses, cinnamon, allspice, and ginger, along with the obvious butter, sugar, and egg. These were crispy on the edges, but chewy in the middle. In other words, perfect. And while the molasses was all I could smell while they baked, you really couldn't taste it too strongly in the finished product. Thumbs up.

Ben There, Done That

Ok, so I persuaded one more family member to start a blog. Ben There, Done That is now alive and well in the blogosphere.

Not much to look at now, but give him time.

Good Saturday

We had another one of those "multi-activity" Saturdays, only for this one, I don't have pictures.

Mark and Ben spent the day at Merit Badge University. All the scouts in the council meet up at ETSU and attend workshops in the morning and afternoon that help them knock out requirements for merit badges. Ben went to workshops for Citizenship in the Nation and for Citizenship in the World. All he will tell us is that they talked about Obama and China. Hmmmm. Meanwhile, Mark attended some of the leader sessions - he earned a Red Cross First Aid Certification (he wrapped my arm in a sling when he got home) and went to a forum on rank advancement (still not sure what that was about.)

Daniel had his third soccer game of the season. This was far and away the best game so far. It ended in a tie, but it was all action, all the time. Daniel made the best header I've ever seen in youth soccer. He also ran full-boar into a girl twice his size - they both bounced a few feet before hitting the ground. It looked painful.

And me, well I cleaned the house and made hummus. I used the same recipe, only I subbed two teaspoons of ground ginger for the garlic. And I sprinkled Chinese Five Spice on the pita chips instead of salt. It was a very tasty change.

A good day, all in all.

Season Five

OK, so I'm a huge Lost fan. And I thoroughly, THOROUGHLY enjoyed the season premier. I know lots of fans were dismayed at the thought of the time travel plot, but I think it rocks. I loved the opening scene where Daniel showed up in that tunnel with the Dharma guy.

My fellow Lost fans at work have been pondering the current events on and off the island, and we have some theories. If you don't watch Lost, read no further. Just go rent season one and get hooked. But if you are a Lost Geek.....

1. I think the baby in the opening scene will grow up to be Miles.
2. I don't think Locke is dead. I think he arranged to be bitten by one of those Nikki/Paolo spiders.
3. I think the remaining castaways will keep time traveling and we will see a lot of the things that happened in the island's past.
4. I think Sun is not on the up and up. She's a bitter woman. "How's Jack?" my big ole butt.
5. I think the lady at the end is Daniel's mom. The one who reamed Desmond in the antique shop a few seasons back.
6. I think the smoke monster......OK, I still don't really know what to think about the smoke monster.

And there you have it. Any other theories out there?

Thoughts on the Day

So, I didn't vote for Barack Obama. But I am truly excited and proud for America today. And I keep wondering - after all the parties and the hoopla - what it will be like for the Obamas to go home and crawl into bed in the White House? How cool would that be?

And finally, props to Aretha for sporting that hat. She totally pulled that off. Pelosi couldn't have pulled that off. Hillary couldn't have pulled that off. It's good to be Aretha.