Weenie Roast!

My sister Jordan is working at a family camp this summer and so we never get to see her ever. I sometimes forget what she looks like. Then I check her Facebook page and remember. Barely.

Anyway.

She turned 19 (holy cow, sometimes I think I'm still 19) on June 8th, and we had a wonderful party with presents and a three-tiered cake and balloons and U2 live and a fireworks show.

Oh wait, we didn't. Sorry.

She was working. Lame. So we didn't get to see her. I did, however, leave her a musical phone message that morning and think about her, which is practically the same thing. Or something.

So.

A week later, we were able to get together--and by we, I mean, my parents, and Jordan, and my One and Only and me--(Elisabeth and Tyler were in Hebgen, Orgegon, Katie and Chad couldn't make it, and Daniel was at Youth Conference) for a little fun.

Fun, in this case, is a fancy word that means WEENIE ROAST.

I don't recall being present at one of these since basically forever. The last one I have a clear recollection of was in Oregon when I was about 7 at my Great Aunt Annette and Uncle Mark's amazing house. I'm sure I've been to one since, but it has escaped my memory.

So last night, we drove up the Provo Canyon for a lovely evening in front of the fire. After a valiant escape from some inch worms, my parents and Jordan found the perfect spot for us to tuck away in.

We cooked hot dogs on the roaster sticks that my mom has been waiting to use for 2.5 years, ate chips, an AMAZING salad, and watermelon, and had yummy cold drinks. On cute tablecloths with plastic forks and knives, and disinfectant wipes, and hand sanitizer, and store-purchased wood, and plastic bags to sit on so we don't get dirty. My kind of roughing it.

Then, things got serious.

We. Made. S'mores.

Not just any s'mores, we had regular marshmallows, and toasted coconut marshmallows, and Hershey's chocolate bars, and Reese's peanut butter cups, and graham crackers.

Mom got hers perfectly golden.

Dad made a double-decker

I had mine en flambe.

Michael looked really dreamy. Duh.

Jordan enjoyed her birthday hootinanny. Uh...really. She did.

It. was. Great. Gruh-ate.

And we were a delightfully sticky, marshmallow-stuffed crowd.

In the end, mom started cleaning up, and we all pitched in too much, so we ended up being done a bit earlier than we'd hoped.

I guess it's all for the best though. It was getting dark. And you never know when you'll be attacked by wolves. Or inch worms.

Iron Chef Dixon: Battle Strawberry

Michael and I like food. A lot. As in, when we don't HAVE to be thinking about other things, we're thinking about food. We get really excited to go to the grocery store, we watch Food Network, we plan menus together...yeah. It's a little embarassing. But, I figure, everyone has to eat, why not do it well?

Anyway.

On Sunday, Michael and I were in the mood to make a dessert of some kind and Michael (aka. Captain Make-up-a-game *my hero*) suggested that we make something based on what we had in the house (on account of it was the Sabbath after all), and also stipulated that it should revolve around the fresh strawberries we had in our refrigerator.

We thought up several options:

1. cream puffs filled with vanilla pudding and smothered in strawberry sauce

2. strawberry shortcakes

3. a mixed berry pie

4. a mixed berry crumble/crisp

Realizing that we had no whipping cream, we abandoned options 1 and 2. And out of 3 and 4, four just sounded to great to pass up. Having no recipe to go off of, we sort of pieced together recipes that had similar ingredients and came up with something really tasty.

And, if I do say so myself, really good looking. Bonus points to Michael for making the topping.

Don't be jealous.

Happy Pie Day!

March 14, or 3.14 is Pi day! Yay!

Michael and I were talking last night about how fun it would be to go back to elementary school knowing what we know now. You have parties in the middle of the day for big reasons, little reasons, and sometimes no reason.

So although Friday is our crazy day (I am on campus from 7am to 7pm and Michael works till 8:45pm), we're celebrating Pi day this evening with pie.

I'm also going to watch an episode of Pushing Daisies online.

This meant that I had to choose ONE kind of pie to make. Sigh...

I really love making pies. It's been my favorite Thanksgiving responsibility for years. Pecan pie, pumpkin pie, chocolate cream pie, lemon meringue pie, strawberry pie, banana spice pie (SO GOOD, somday I'll post the recipe), apple crumble pie, and then...there's the most amazing pie in all the world: cherry almond pie.

How I wish I had the ingredients on hand to make that pie! My uncle made it for me last fall and I fell so deeply in love with that pie that I had him make several more for my wedding in December. The poor man also made my beautiful wedding cake, but that's another story.

ANYWAY... I've decided that based on the ingredients I have on hand, we're having apple pie. I'm sort of toying with the idea of making cup-pies. Sort of like cupcakes...except with pie...in ramekins.

I'll post pictures and the pie recipe later on to share.

Muffin Thursdays--Banana Chocolate Chip

As Michael can easily attest, I am sort of a muffin fiend. Of all the things I bake, I most often bake muffins and cookies. Last fall, Michael would come over to my apartment on Thursday nights to watch The Office and I'd bake a batch of muffins. It sort of mutated into Muffin Thursdays. This semester, I'm not quite as vigilant about muffin Thursdays, but I still love muffins nonetheless.

This recipe is adapted from one by my old roommate Mandy, a queen among chefs. Not only is she the master of Italian cooking, but she is one stellar baker.

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Ingredients:
1/2c brown sugar
1/2c margarine
1 1/2c mashed ripe bananas (3-4)
1/4c milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
2c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4tsp salt
chocolate chips--I use semi-sweet

Directions: cream butter and sugar. Stir in bananas, milk, vanilla, and eggs. Stir in dry ingredients, stirring till just blended. Fold in chocolate chips. Use as many as you want based on whether you want them as a treat, a snack, or a breakfast food.

Quite honestly, for me...there's not always a difference.

Bake at 375 20-25minutes

Hypothetically speaking...

If you had to name a restaurant/bakery/thingofwhateverthatinvolvesfood what would you name it?

All my "good" ideas were taken (i.e. "Lucky Buns")

So...I'm fresh out of ideas.

Also, check out this amazing website about cupcakes. SO FUN! My favorites are these, these, and these.

Soluting Real Men of Genius--Answering Machine Inventor

Have you ever heard the radio commercials for Real Men of Genius? (If you haven't heard them, I recommend Mr. Too Much Cologne Wearer and Mr. Tollbooth Collector.) I'm in a class called Substance Abuse and Addictive Behaviors and we spend a solid portion of every class watching things like Superbowl beer commercials, explaining drinking games, or watching beer or tobacco ads. Lame.



Anyway, I decided to try my hand...



Background:

I'm pretty sure I believe that answering machines were invented to make perfectly competent people feel like complete imbeciles. For instance, one time, my sister Elisabeth (who is often quite eloquent) went to leave a message for a boy she was liked at the time (Jake). It ended up something like this:

Hi Elisabeth, this is Jake. NO! I mean, Hi, Jake, this is Elisabeth. I was wondering...um...

I have won speech contests before. I feel fairly confident in my ability to speak clearly, but another time, I tried leaving a phone message that came out something along the lines of

Um...hi...this is Emily...this message is for ___. So...hi ____ this is Emily...
Um...I was...um...okay...this is Emily...and...I had a question about____ so if
you can give me a call, this is Emily...and my number is...um...___.

So people who have all their faculties about them basically end up saying

I'm a complete moron. I'll call you back when I feel more competent...or you can
give me a call if you think I'm worth talking to still...I'll understand if
I'm too idiotic to speak to anymore.

And Here We Go...

So today I solute you Mr. Answering Machine Inventor. You make completely competent people feel like imbeciles (Mr. Answering Machine Inventor).



You make it possible to sound like you're speaking a foreign language when you're trying to communicate something simple (what the heck are you saying?).



You are responsible for ruining relationships, business transactions, and international relations merely by creating a machine that captures the absolute neanderthal in us all (ha ha you stupid moron).



Today we solute you, Mr. Answering Machine Inventor. May you rot in Hades. (Mr. Answering Machine In-veeeeen-tor!).

Happy Leap Day!

I tried to think of a million amazing things to do on Leap Day. So far, all I could think of was...well...leaping.

And...well...lame.

So I thought I'd think of something completely different to talk about: Time travel [insert cheesy comment, i.e. "Leap into the past" here].

Michael and I were talking the other day about when we would want to live if we could choose any era/decade/time period. While we both thought it would be fun to try a week in various time periods (provided we could choose our socioeconomic status), such as the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, a Jane Austen book (oh, wait, maybe that one was just me)... we both agreed that we thought we could spend some serious time in the stereotypical 50's.
















My initial vision was something Pleasantville-esque. Me in a dress and heels and half apron pulling dinner out of the oven as Michael dutifully walked up the lane of our perfectly manicured lawn, past Bobby and Sue Ann who are playing cooperatively in the front yard. In his still-crisply pressed suit, Michael hands me his briefcase and hangs his hat as he walks in the door in a "Honey, I'm home!" sort of way. Fantastic Etta James music would playing as a soundtrack.

And then I figured..."hey...bo-ring!"

So I popped that bubble, and we started talking about why we'd choose the 50s. For one thing, Michael and I are both believers in gender roles. Not in a women-oppressive kind of way, but in a traditional, Michael brings home the bacon and I cook it for dinner, kind of way. In the 50s, this was still the societal norm.

Another thing we liked was that this was the apple-pie-and-baseball time of life in America that we picture the country is supposed to be like. (And, like I said, we're going off of the stereotype here, so don't burst the dream bubble.) It was a time of neighborhood get-togethers, casseroles and jello-rings, dresses and suits, holiday parties, good music, family barbeques and wholesome values.

Sure, no time period is perfect, but this was about as stereotypically perfect as we could picture.

What would you choose?

These are a few of our least favorite words...

Michael and I have recently been discussing our least favorite words. The list keeps growing, but here's what we have so far:

1. moist
2. flesh
3. loaf
4. whiz
5. sphincter
6. bosom
7. reared
8. "fruit of my loins" or any combination with the word "loins"
9. chunk

One of our favorite things to do is to use as many of these words as we can in a sentence. For example:

"The moist flesh loaf whizzed through the air"

Ew.

But also, too much fun.

***UPDATES***
10. secrete
11. squirt