snowy day

I had a surprise day off today, probably the last in a while, so I decided to make the most of it and take Nicky out for an early morning snowy day walk. For some reason late February snow always surprises me but I think it happens here pretty frequently so idk why that is! It’s actually snowed like three times in the past week but today is the first “real” one.


Nicky staying cozy in his stroller with the weather shield on!


This week’s Thursday treat was cupcakes, at Gwen’s request. I used this recipe for white cake, but halved to make 12 cupcakes. I topped them with this cute Fairy Tale sprinkle mix from Sweetapolita and they were a big hit with all the kids.


This boy loves his apples.

family dinner


I thought I took a pic of at least one of these meals but… I did not.

Sunday: garlic parmesan chicken with potatoes and salad This was Gwen’s request. When Taylor and I were meal planning she asked for “the chicken we always have,” which is true because I make this OFTEN. I make a couple changes to this recipe, as follows:
-I leave out the spinach, as no one likes it but Taylor and myself and it’s easier just to skip it as I don’t find that it really adds much to the dish.
-I pre-boil the potatoes because otherwise I find that they don’t cook enough in the time it takes the chicken to cook. Nothing more disappointing than hard, uncooked potatoes.
-I leave out SO much butter. The recipe calls for 7 tablespoons and this week I used… one. I cooked the chicken in just one and found that when it was time to make the sauce in the same pan, between the leftover butter and the chicken fat there was enough fat in the pan to sauté the garlic and make the roux. I could have MAYBE added like… 1/2 a tablespoon, but that’s it.

Monday: NOTHING We had a very late drive-thru lunch on our way home from snow tubing so no one was really hungry at dinner time. We gave the little kids some veggies just so they wouldn’t wake up hungry in the middle of the night but no one else wanted to eat.

Tuesday: spaghetti with garlic toast I made the garlic toast using bread I baked myself! I tried making some bread the other week but it came out… weird. There were a couple of problems with it, not all entirely my own fault, but this second attempt (using a different recipe) came out so much better!

Wednesday: slow cooker sweet & sour pork over rice This was a new recipe for me; I tried another one last year when Gwen was doing gymnastics but I didn’t like it. This one was a little better but I feel like it had too much apple cider vinegar in it, which made it a little TOO sour. I added 2 extra tbsp of brown sugar to combat that but I think it would have been better solved by halving the amount of ACV in the first place.

Thursday: macaroni and cheese for the girls, leftover chicken & potatoes for me. Usually Taylor and I have takeout later after the kids ar ein bed but I was TOO HUNGRY to wait, haha.

Friday: pizza night This week’s pizzas: yellow pepper and basil, and pepperoni. I wanted to put the leftover mac & cheese on the pepperoni one but my unadventurous family was like NO, ugh how rude!

four layer black forest cake

This week I got a real bee in my bonnet about making a Black Forest cake, so even though Gwen’s Lego Club was cancelled, so Sym wasn’t here AND I had to go to the school I whipped one up anyway. I wasn’t able to finish it before I left for the school (the layers hadn’t cooled enough), but Gwen loved helping me decorate it, although in the end she chose some Mini Eggs for her treat rather than cake.

I used my usual chocolate cake for this, and I didn’t have any whipping cream so I put buttercream on this instead (SORRY, GERMANS). Whipped cream on a cake really only works if you are eating it all in one sitting anyway, which we were not, so it was for the best. I used this recipe for the cherry filling, just halved because my cake was smaller; I baked four 5-inch layers for this. I actually meant to make five layers but I overfilled my pans and didn’t have enough batter for the fifth. The four layers proved to be a problem when I realized the cake wouldn’t fit under my cake dome, but after Taylor and I cut a couple slices the whole thing fell over on its side (OOPS) so like… problem solved.