Soooo I’ve been a terrible blogger this week. I actually have TONS of posts to make, but apparently being on vacation means I’m too busy doing nothing to blog (although today I’m too busy baking and decorating because it’s Taylor’s birthday!). Soon, I promise! Until then, please enjoy this video of a baby skunk chewing on a McDOnald’s McChicken Sauce packet outside my window.
Tiny Marketing Executive
This morning as I was working on my eighth glitter banner with hearts, Sym came wandering over and said to me “Everyone wants hearts! You should make something else; you should make stars! But you should make the stars limited edition so everyone really wants to buy them!”
She is too smart.
Manicure Monday
Even though I’m trying to get away from wearing all grey clothes all the time I still really like grey as a nail polish colour. I have a lot of light greys and since I couldn’t pick just one to use, I decided to use them all!
l-r/thumb-pinky: OPI in Stranger Tides, OPI in Moon Over Mumbai, OPI in I Vant To Be A-Lone Star, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Lavender Cloud, OPI in Skull & Glossbones
on toes: Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Eel Skin
What I’ve Been Eating
Food again!
(pictured above: Taylor’s triple-veggie cheeseburger slider with tomato and pea shoots on a ciabatta bun)
Breakfast/Brunch
Saturday, August 13th
scrambled eggs, toasted ciabatta buns and rosemary potatoes
Sunday, August 14th
wildberry panettone french toast at Glowbal
Wednesday, August 17th
chocolate chip waffle & raspberry lemonade
Dinner
Friday, August 12th
sweet & sour tofu with rice
I used fresh pineapple for this instead of canned and it was 1,000% more delicious than my last sweet & sour dish (back in January I think). The tofu was breaded with panko crumbs and fried in oil. I used three peppers (red, orange and yellow) as well as two different kinds of sweet & sour sauce and the juice of one orange.
Tuesday, August 16th
veggie sliders with purple potato chips
To make the veggie slider patties I cut circles out of some regular Yves patties with a cookie cutter, then hand-formed more patties by smooshing the scraps together so there was no waste. For the chips I thinly sliced purple potatoes, brushed them with olive oil and sprinkled them with smoked salt, then baked at 425°F for 30 minutes, turning after 15.
Snack
Friday, August 12th
cherry-blackberry-lime smoothie
Monday, August 15th
fresh pineapple (left over from Friday night)
Tuesday, August 16th
blackberry smoothie
I made one of these for Sym but she didn’t finish it, so I put it in the fridge to save for making popsicles. By the next day it had started to gel- I think I may have accidentally made jam O__o Note to self: make jam.
Lockout
Yesterday there was a serious situation at my house: I got locked outside. This was no accident, someone DELIBERATELY locked me out of the house.
I’d taken the daycare kids out to play in the backyard at the end of the day, and only had my phone with me, not my keys. A couple of neighbor-girls were out too so I called Sym to come outside and play, since she’d been holed up in her room almost the entire day. Sym didn’t want to come out, but I said she had to and she got really irritated with me. After whining and complaining on the phone she came out and sat next to me, whining and complaining some more. It was really frustrating, so I told her that if she was going to behave like a brat she could go back inside and go to bed. Which she did, and promptly fell asleep (note to self: look into re-lowering her bedtime), but not before LOCKING THE DAMN DOOR.
I didn’t realize what she’d done until after the kids were all picked up (luckily I had all their stuff outside with me), but if there had been some sort of accident or emergency it could have been really bad. I tried banging on the door and calling both Sym and Taylor but they were both asleep so eventually I had to go around the far side of the house and climb through a bunch of scaffolding (my house is being painted this week) and bang on the window to wake Taylor up. By this point I was RULL MAD so Sym go a very very serious talking to, by which I mean yelling at. She’s now grounded for a week, which means no:
• tv
• computer
• videogames
• iphone
• non-emergency phone calls
… so she’s going to have plenty of time to think about what she did.
You Like Me!
Things to Eat This Week
I went to the farmer’s market on Saturday for the first time in a couple of weeks, and stocked up on some of my favourite things.
l-r: smoky tomato chipotle humus; raspberries: orange and yellow tomatoes; honey sticks for Sym; sweet chili lime humus; mint; onion; black bean humus; garlic; purple bell peppers; blackberries
Taylor and I already ate the tomato and bean humuses, oops. A lot of this stuff I’m planning to use to make some fresh salsa, although I kind of wish I could have gotten green tomatoes instead of orange and yellow; I made purple and green salsa one time and it was awesome.
Today I got my weekly order from SPUD, I am really loving this service!
clockwise from top left: this crazy dark green rinded watermelon; spinach; extreme purple smoothie; raspberry lemonade (this was supposed to be REGULAR lemonade but I’m not super mad); skim milk (three liters is the exact perfect amount); chocolate chip waffles; a sour cherry pie; more tomatoes; peaches, apples; purple potatoes!; cherries
All of these were grown/produced locally- even the watermelon! I know, crazy! Okay, the service considers anything in a day’s driving distance as “local” so it’s from Washington state, but that still closer than California or Mexico! The average travel distance for my whole order was 8km; I’m gonna win that ~local hero~ prize yet!
Green Glitter Gradient for my Girl
Last week Sym and I collaborated on the design for this gradient glitter banner for her; she took it to her dad’s house to hang by her bed. It isn’t perfect, but I really like how it turned out. HOWEVER I will NOT be making these for sale, it was WAY too much work and no one would ever pay enough to make it worthwhile.
Manicure Monday
It’s back! These nails are a little sloppy but I as so busy with Sym’s hair that I didn’t get a chance to paint them until this afternoon. idk how I feel about them, I love all these colours but together it might be a little much.
Sally Hansen Diamond Strength in Diamonds, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Lavender Cloud, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Lacey Lilac and OPI in Planks a Lot
Donuts of the Day
Funfetti Mini Donuts with Pink Glaze and Sugar Sprinkles
These donuts are my first attempt using mini donut pans instead of my mini donut machine. The results were a little mixed, but promising!
Using donut pans is easier than the machine because with twelve cavities instead of six, you can obviously make more donuts faster. You also don’t have to worry about filling the cavities too slowly and ending up with some donuts being overcooked or burnt since they all go in the oven at once.
One thing you do have to be careful of is overfilling the cavities- your donuts with puff up and close over the hole and you’ll end up with a weird donut/cupcake hybrid. Another thing to look out for is the overall batter quantity; I used half a box of funfetti mix I had leftover, and ended up with 56 donuts: 24 overfilled mutants and 32 perfect cuties. If I hadn’t overfilled the first two batches I could have made four batches with that batter, for a total of 80 mini donuts. Unless you either have six or seven pans or don’t mind washing the pans between each batch I would suggest quartering your recipe.
All in all I like these pans- I have two that I bought at a store here and have ordered another two, and once I have four it’ll be a lot easier/less time consuming to make lots of little donuts at once. I want to use these to retry my chocolate chip cookie donut experiment, since the pans would solve the cooked-to-a-crisp-all-over problem I encountered when making them in the donut machine.