When I was done I went back to Lloyd’s school to see if he was ready to go.

Lloyd: “It’s going to be a while.”
Lauren: “Like ‘regular’ awhile or ‘many hours’ awhile?”
Lloyd: “Many hours.”

Grrrrrr. I had a cake I wanted to try baking, dang it! I had all the ingredients waiting in the car! Now I was stuck hanging around this stupid school with its stupid classrooms – gym, computer room, library, home ec., shop, music room…..

Wait.

Back up.

I asked Lloyd if it would be a problem if I used the home ec. room if I was very, very tidy, and he mumbled something about the computers not working. I took that as a ‘yes’.

It is a ridiculously easy recipe with only six ingredients, and it is low-fat and jam-packed full of apples, so it’s practically health food. The real recipe is here, complete with gorgeous photos and witty writing. My version is here, with only ‘after’ photos taken with Lloyd’s phone:

Snoop through the cupboards to find a little 6-inch pan like you used for the clerical collar cake, because you’re going to halve the original recipe. Line it with foil for two reasons: 1) you don’t have a springform pan and 2) you don’t want to have to wash the cake pan later. Smooth out the wrinkles and spray with cooking spray.

Get out a cutting board (one dirty dish) and a peeler (two dirty dishes) and a knife (three dirty dishes). Peel, core and cut up three apples into chunks. Pile them in the foil-lined pan and then wash, dry and put away your evidence.

In a mixing bowl (four dirty dishes) whisk (five dirty dishes) two eggs, but dump out about 1/2 an egg’s worth. Add 1/2 cup (six dirty dishes) of sugar that you brought, and whisk like there’s no tomorrow. Add 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla (no dirty dish, I just poured from my bottle) and a little sprinkle of cinnamon, borrowed from the cupboard. (My apologies to Susan, the family sciences teacher. I repaid it by pouring all the rest of my sugar in the canisters.) You need air in this, and you’re not going to dirty up the hand mixer, by golly.

When it’s light and ribbony (whatever that means), add 1/2 cup of flour and mix until it’s just pulled together. Pour it over the apples and bang the pan around a little to get the batter down in the spaces. You’re supposed to spread it with a knife or spoon but you don’t want to dirty another utensil.

Put the cake in a pre-heated 350-degree oven for 55-60 minutes. Clean up all your evidence and do a little extra tidying so you feel less like a sneak. I loved that kitchen. It was crazy fun using it! Susan, if you are reading this, I think that it is delightfully well-organized and beautiful, and I’m also sorry I didn’t ask permission first.

When done, sprinkle with a little powdered sugar, make sure everything is back where it belongs, and take the cake up to the computer lab to eat with Lloyd.

It is so full of apples!!! I think I might like this better than pie! My favorite was the crunchy cake-y part at the top, and eating two slices of this was like eating a whole apple. See? Healthy.

UPDATE: I made it again tonight, this time ‘thirding’ it – two apples, one egg, 1/3 cup of sugar and 1/3 cup of flour, splash of vanilla and shake of cinnamon. I baked it in a greased cereal bowl for just under an hour and the whole thing was more cake-y – still a crispy top. I gave Lloyd a tiny bit and ate the rest all by myself. My gut hurts.

The downside is that my internal clock was confused and within an hour after getting home I was completely ravenous, and it was still early in the day. Lloyd heated up some t.v. dinners, but that wasn’t enough food for my angry belly. I wanted some dessert. I’ve had a box of puff pastry sitting in my freezer for the longest time – I don’t even know why (or when) I bought it. Now seemed like as good a time as any to try something with it.

I hacked off a frozen end, broke the folded pieces apart and let them thaw on my disgustingly discolored cookie sheet while the oven heated.

Baked ‘em up, then slathered them with lemon curd (which I also can’t remember buying) and added some sliced strawberries for a flaky, sweet & sour sandwich. Worrying about the top not feeling pretty enough, I used up some of Brad’s gross skim milk and made a glaze. Brad – new rule: Drink up that gallon before you leave Nebraska.

Mmmmmmmmmm.

Tomorrow I won’t mess around with the t.v. dinner. Straight to dessert for me!

Then a week or so later, Lynne Rosetto Kasper (of The Splendid Table) answered a caller’s question about spaghetti squash, and she made cooking it sound so easy! “Bake it up, then treat it like an Asian noodle and marinate it in some delicious dressing…. doesn’t that sound fabulous?” Yeah, you’ve played that trick on me before, Lynne.

So I decided I should try to cook some squash. I am not a squash fan whatsoever, but Lloyd and I very rarely eat fresh vegetables, and a squash can sit out on my counter for weeks until I get around to experimenting with it – which this one did.

I tried cooking it on the first day that I felt ultra sick. That was my first mistake. I cut into it and the smell almost made me throw up. Bleh – so pumpkin-y.

Scooping the seeds was arduous, what with the smell, and then I put it in the pan wrong. I read that some people have trouble with it taking too long to cook, so put in in a baking dish with water so it will steam. I did that, but it should have been cut-side-down. Oops. After I put the pan in the oven I went to go lie down – for a long, long time. Subsequently, I don’t really know how long this cooked.

Then I pulled it out of the oven and went to go lie down again – for a long, long time. Cooked squash can’t go bad sitting out on the counter, right?

After tons of napping I went to pull it apart, and was duly surprised at the direction of the ‘noodles’ inside – they string horizontally!

Pulling it apart was very, very fun, but then I was out of energy and had no appetite for this. Not wanting to waste the squash I put a little in two bowls, adding Italian dressing to one and rice wine vinegar/sugar/salt/pepper to the other.

The Italian dressing version was horrible, the vinegar one less so. I tasted each one then went to lie down.

Does anyone have suggestions? I like the idea of trying spaghetti squash again, but it’s just so exhausting to make.

She told me how to make it, “You use olive oil –you have olive oil, right?– and butter and you add some Italian seasoning and garlic powder –not garlic salt, garlic powder.”

I had to ask Lauren if we had any garlic powder (it turns out that we don’t) and she knew that something was up. Well, now we do have garlic powder (not garlic salt, or, heaven forbid, baking powder) and by completely guessing as the relative amount of each ingredient, I was, more or less, able to also make this toast/bread.

Here are the proportions that I used. Put about a third of a fourth of a pound of butter into one of those cute, little white Pyrex bowls that you got at an auction years ago. Next pour enough olive oil over it so that you’re about a quarter of the way up the side of the butter. Nuke* it until it is melty. Add what you think is about a spoonfull of garlic powder (…) to the butter/oil except you’re stiring with a fork instead of a spoon, so you’re really just pouring it in and hoping for the best. Sprinkle relatively liberally with Italian seasoning, but don’t put quite enough in, so that after you brush copious amounts onto your bread you decide to add some more, just to be safe.

Ask Lauren to do whatever it is that you do to bread to make it all toasty when you are dealing with bread that probably shouldn’t be put in the toaster and after a little while, you’ll have (again, more or less) really delicious I do not know the name of this bread, bread.

*That’s what we say at my mom and dad’s house for the verb microwave.

I don’t know what has come over me, but I have been craving dessert at the end of a meal. I’ve never been a big fan of desserts, but lately when I’m done eating supper my stomach screams, “CAKE! Get some cake in here or we will kill you from the inside!” (I think it’s in cahoots with my intestines.)

I’ve tried eating a Starburst or two, but that just isn’t cutting it. I needed something chocolate-y, and aside from a slice of chocolate cake, chocolate pie is pretty great.

I tried making up a thing of chocolate pudding a couple of weeks ago and dolling it out into those wonderful little graham cracker crusts – one each night – but after three days the pudding in the bowl got a little gross.

Tupperware to the rescue!

I measured the bag of pudding mix, then divided by six. Then I asked Lloyd to check my math, so we would have less fist-shaking around here.

Hey! 30 grams is the same as 30ml, and there is a handy little line inside these cups. Awesome. I divided the bag amongst the cups, then struggled to put the lids on.

So, mix up one of these with a half cup of milk and put it in the fridge. In five minutes, I am ready for fresh chocolate pie!

So that’s that. I’m good for pie until next Monday.

In other news, I have lost one of those terrible-fitting lids. Have you seen it?

Anyway, if I’m making a sandwich (or two) for Lloyd I ask, “Squares or triangles?” These are sandwiches for dipping in tomato soup, which is the only way anyone should ever eat a grilled cheese.

Lloyd is pro-triangle, while I am open to other possibilities.

You?
Squares? Triangles?
Ham? No ham?
Soup? Wrong?

“Don’t throw away the stem of a head of broccoli – Peel the stems, slice them up into thin rounds, put them in a jar, put a half teaspoon of salt in that jar, shake it, put it in the refrigerator overnight, and then it will draw off the water. Pour that out and toss it with garlic, olive oil, and vinegar, and you’ve got a marinated broccoli stem or pickle that is so good… Everybody loves it.”

See? Don’t you feel like a thrifty genius just reading that? A delicious pickle out of something most people throw away? I am just clever enough to do it!

I was at Beth’s house and she had out broccoli florets and I asked if she still had the stem. She said it was in the trash.

Oh, yes I did.

Relax. She still had it in the original bag – so it was cleaner than anything in my refrigerator.

I made it using rice wine vinegar because that’s what I had, and I have to say – I like it.

I googled the recipe for amounts: (1 minced clove, 1 T vinegar, 2 T oil) but it said to let it sit in the garlic/oil/vinegar for several hours. Since mine was in the fridge all day the oil got a little thick. That part was kind of ‘bleh’, but the flavor was good.

So: next time I go through Beth’s garbage, I’ll tweak the recipe and use less oil.

Every time I listen to the show, I think, “Well, of course I should make that! It’s just throwing (main food item) together with (some secondary item) and (some seasoning) and then (method of heating). It sounds so scrumptiously healthy yet deliciously decadent!”

Then I pull into Burger King and order a Whopper Jr. meal (with cheese).

This time I was lured into a story about a woman who had an abundance of lavender, and Lynne Rosetto Kasper told her that she should use it to make lavender sugar and use that in a crispy sugar cookie recipe, and I was suckered in. “I have lavender! I could make delicate sugar cookies and eat them with tea – each scented by the light floral aroma of lavender sugar.” I could feel my “English-lady-for-teatime” self welling up, and couldn’t wait to rush home.

Well, I put a lavender twig in with my cheap sugar on Sunday,

and tonight I just opened the jar and smelled it.

Hmmmm…. it’s less ‘English Lady’ and more ‘Old English Furniture Polish’-smelling.

…. maybe I didn’t use lavender?

I’ll admit that sometimes in church I get distracted. (God loves me anyway – he made me, y’know.) Many Sundays back I was singing a hymn and the thought popped into my head, “Y’know what would be funny? A cake shaped like a clerical collar. Isn’t October Clergy Appreciation Month?” Great. The whole rest of the service was spent trying to put that thought off until a more acceptable time.

Fail.

I mentioned it to Lloyd after church and he thought it was funny enough that we stopped by the cake decorating aisle at Wal*Mart and looked at fondant. I’m a failure with fondant, so I hemmed and hawed and decided to wait.

A week later I went to Lincoln and bought some stuff, including something made just for me – edible construction paper!

A week after that, I actually made some cake. I lined the bottom of the pan with a parchment circle and even ‘crumb-coated’ them so when I put on the final frosting it wouldn’t make a big mess. Thanks, YouTube, for your educational services.

Ummmm…. then the cakes sat in the freezer – unwrapped – for days until I remembered to wrap them. (This project was slow going.) I was pretty sure they were dried out and inedible, but since I knew from the get-go that these were just prototypes, I sallied forth.

I frosted them, then cut the sugar sheet out. A paper cutter worked just dandy, and scissors cut out the notch.

I wound up frosting two cakes, but only making one into a clerical collar, and that was two weeks ago. We have three pastors at church, so if I want to do this for real, going by my timetable I need to start next June so they’ll be ready by next October.

Ahhhh….. Lauren’s world – where crazy ideas go to die. What am I going to do with two dried-up frozen cakes? Maybe cake pops….

So, I was a little excited to make fruit leather. I bought a dehydrator a while back but only used it for some failed experiments. With gobs and gobs of peach pulp, this was the time to test it out.

I’ve learned a lot.

One: I really shouldn’t use regular plastic wrap in it. It kind of goes all shrinky-dinky on me, and after stretching it across the tray I fret that I haven’t cut enough air holes all ’round, and then have trouble falling asleep because I think the machine will overheat and set my house on fire.

Two: Parchment paper is somewhat better in that you can cut circles to fit, but it’s harder to spread close to the edge and I have trouble falling asleep because I worry the paper will catch fire and burn the house down.

Three: I can’t spread this stuff evenly (which is actually ok because I love the shattery bits that happen when it’s too thin and too dry) but when I set the thicker parts back in the dehydrator I fret that the house will catch on fire.

So, all in all, it’s been a success, except for the fire fretting. I’ve got a fair amount of leather and the challenge is to not eat it all in one sitting. When I was a kid my dad would make fruit leather and try to hide it from me, but I found it – oh yes I did! We kept it in the freezer so all of it was shattery bits!!

Sorry for eating it all, Dad, but it was goooooood.

I lucked out on an endcap, though. This $30 popsicle maker was on sale for $10! I wasn’t sure if I should trust it – I once had an ice cream maker that was based on the same principle: freeze the entire base and then do your frozen confectionery thang.

This thing, though, this thing is golden!

Freeze the base, pour in your juice, wait ten minutes or so, and with the most satisfying ‘pop’ – out comes a beautiful popsicle.

Delirious Boy seemed to appreciate it, though he doesn’t smile anymore.

I was so sad it was after 7 p.m. when I made it, because I really want to try one.

….. maybe for breakfast.

Lloyd:”*cough* *cough* There’s a truck *cough* on the highway *cough* that’s selling peaches and *cough*”

Lauren: “I got it. You want peaches.”

I drove quickly because it was almost 6 and I didn’t know if the peach guy would close up shop or not. He was open, and I had 4 dollars, expecting to be able to buy a handful of fruit.

Peach Guy: “I don’t split up boxes. I can let you have this one for 20 bucks.”

20 bucks!!! Grrrrr….. I broke into my emergency money and bought the box, grumbling the whole way home that I had just bought a box of work. Lloyd likes fruit, but he couldn’t eat all this before it went bad.

So, on Sunday afternoon I made peach puree. The goal is to eventually turn it all into fruit leather, but I won’t show you those pictures until I figure out if I’m doing it right. Here’s my day in photos:

Cut ‘em all the way around criss-cross-like and dunk them in boiling water for as long as it takes you to whistly your ABC’s in a jaunty style. If you get tired of that one, try Twinkle Twinkle or Baa Baa Black Sheep. Take them out and the skin just slips right off.

Then just smush ‘em off the pit.

Add some water, some sugar and a slug of lemon juice. Start cooking and start smashin’. Admit that you really don’t know what you’re doing.

Get out the immersion blender. Sniff it to make sure it doesn’t smell like curried peas, since that’s all you ever use it for.

I poured five trays of fruit leather, three ice cube trays, then a mini-muffin tin for peach ice cubes. I figure these will be good to throw in a glass of orange juice.

I made the first pot and realized I’d have to make another. I grumbled about how many peaches there were, and Sickie said, “Could we use them for pie?”

I had no idea he liked peach pie. So, I cut up some for a pie.

This was even more fun than the first kind of cut. I cut each peach into eight wedges (four times around), dunked it in the boiling water, slipped off the peel, then cut it around the middle.

It was like taking apart a Rubik’s cube! (That’s how I used to solve it. I may not be smart, but I can demolish stuff and re-assemble with a minimal amount of damage.)

So: after all that (2 1/2 pots’ worth), now there is this giant tub of peach puree waiting its turn in either the freezer or the dehydrator, and there is still a giant bowl of peaches for Lloyd to eat. I can’t tell if the 20 bucks was a bargain or not.

Please stop at Big Lots on your way home and buy another bag of this fabulous cereal for me!!

I have no good ‘prepared’ pictures because it’s always dark when I’m eating it, but this stuff is 5 grains of deliciousness in a bowl. I’ve been on a Cream of Wheat kick before, but ever since I read that you’re basically eating wallpaper paste, it lost it’s appeal

Oatmeal has always eluded me because it gets so slimy and sticky. gag *jibblie* (Sorry, but it reminds me a bit of barf. Again, sorry.)

This stuff, though? Nutty grains all the way. I scoop up 1/3 a cup of the dry stuff and 1/3 + 1/2 of 1/3 cups of water (that works out to 64/89ths right?) and nuke it for a minute + 1/2 a minute.

Spoonful of brown sugar, spoonful of Craisins, nummy nummy nummy.

I wanted to make it on Saturday for Easter lunch but it is ‘best served on the day it’s made’. So I got all the ingredients ready to go the night before and then woke up early on Sunday so I could mix, bake, and pre-roll it so it could cool while we went to church.

If you’re interested in the how-to, you should really read the original post. I would just like to say that this is the first time in a long time that I actually followed almost every single direction of a recipe. The only problem I had was that my pan wasn’t quite big enough.

After baking, you let it cool a bit with wet paper towels on it (really), then sift cocoa all over both sides, roll it up in a towel and let it sit so it ‘sets’ in a curve.

After it’s cooled all the way, you unroll it, slather whipped cream on top, then re-roll.

That was the part that I really wanted to do. In fact, I’d really like to make this cake again so I could practice my cake-rolling skills, but then I’d have to eat cake all the time, and that’s not really my thing. Any bakeries out there looking for a cake-rolling apprentice?

See, I really need to practice because this thing was ugly. Like ‘this cake has a nice personality’ kind of ugly. I decided to fix it by making some ganache, but first I had to learn how to spell ganache.

Using some hot cream and the rest of Lloyd’s ‘secret’ stash of dark chocolate, in minutes I had a giant Ho Ho.

It tasted alright, but I think I’d like to try this again sometime with a cake that has flour in it.

Over on another site I was reading about how making your own butter is cheaper than buying butter. That might be the case, if you are buying fancy-schmancy butter that is made from golden milk, as I discovered.

I was excited at the initial proposal, though: A pound of butter (1 pound 3/4 ounces by weight) costs roughly $3, and a pint of cream (1 pound 1 3/4 ounces by weight) is $2. You can see how I was coming dangerously close to having to do math, but by my own estimations, if two-thirds of that cream weight was fat, it was an even draw.

Well, as it turns out – it wasn’t. When I was finished, only 7 1/2 ounces of that cream became butter. Somebody check my math:
8-ish ounces of homemade butter = $2
8 ounces of store butter = $1.50.

But at least I have some pictures to show for it. And some toned arms, since I churned it by hand. You can do it with a food processor or a blender, but I figured the small trade-off in exercise would slightly offset the calorie intake.

Ha! I almost typed that with a straight face.

See, I actually like making butter. I’ve made butter with preschoolers several times before, and the rule is: It will always take you twice as long as you think it will.

So, pour your cream into a jar that is big enough and put on a tight-sealing lid.

You shake /roll it until you can’t hear it slosh anymore. I guess at this point it’s whipped cream.

Then shake it (twice as long as you think you need to) until it starts sloshing again.

I couldn’t take any pictures after this one because my arms were so dead toned. Trust me, it is some delicious butter – you can eat it straight out of the jar.

Go ahead – it’s homemade. That means healthy.

Megan over at NotMartha made a crazy adorable leprechaun trap cake with a surprise rainbow inside (you really should see hers), and seeing that I am The Leprechaun, I thought I might want to practice making one so I’m ready for next year. I used a little castle-style bundt pan that I’ve owned for forever and used perhaps four times.

I would recommend following her directions if you want to try it yourself. Either that or hire an elf to bake it. I hear that they really hate leprechauns and would make this cake for free.

Warning: Dividing the batter involves some math. Or, some good estimating.

Bake and wonder that it didn’t go over the sides of that little pan and cause a fire.

Cut cut cut. Eat eat eat.

Well, it wasn’t a perfect rainbow, more like a paisley swirl, but it was still fun to make. I used liquid food coloring and could have gone a little darker with the red and orange, though they look better in real life than in a washed-out flash photo.

This also marks the very first time ever that this cake pan has released a cake without tearing. The secret? Spray half a can of cooking spray inside it. That’s a whole half can – no less.

Good thing I have a whole year to practice, huh?

Warning: Those are not pickles. They are marinated squash, or ‘pumpkin melon’ as it translates, and they are gross.

We got home and I set to work. I happened to have the licorice tin, and once the lid was removed, I boiled some noodles and assembly began.

I would like the record to show that while I was goofing around making this ridiculous thing, it was actually time to make a real dinner and I forgot all about feeding us. Lloyd had a sandwich, and I ate the rest of the noodles (since I only needed one but boiled several) with Italian dressing (all praise its delicious name).

Assemble, assemble. Bake, bake (for longer than you’d think).

It was so cute! But you know – that first piece is always so difficult to get out of the pan….

I know it’s silly, but I’m glad I did it.

One of the signs of Spring is the scratch-scratch-scratching of Lloyd eating a can of frozen fruit cocktail. It’s been his treat of choice since …… forever, and I think it’s pretty funny because the energy he exerts scraping outweighs the calories in the fruit. It’s like a diet snack.

Well, no more.

Lauren: “Hey, is there another can?”

Lloyd: warily “Yes.”

Lauren: over her shoulder running to the basement “Cool. I gotta go get something.”

I actually wound up smashing a fair amount of the fruit, but the shaved fruit was pronounced delicious and effort-free by Lloyd.

It’s not too difficult: a couple of cups of flour, some baking powder, some salt, a blob of Crisco and some water. Stir, knead, let rest, then roll into oblongs and fry.

If I was going to have a Mexican restaurant, I’d call it ‘Oblong’. You know it’s authentic when it’s Oblong!

Making tortillas always reminds me of kindergarten. Our teacher aide was Hispanic, and one time she made tortillas with us and offered them with jam or butter, and my addiction to a warm tortilla with melting butter was born.

And that reminds me of the time she came back from a vacation and showed us slides of some beautiful beach. I was sitting on the floor next to Rusty Rice (his real name), who was my long-time love and fellow Justice Keeper. We would run around on the playground and punch kids in the stomach who we thought were bullying other kids. (Looking back on it, that was kind of ironic.) I had loved him deeply for all of kindergarten, but as we watched this beautiful slide show he leaned over to Kathy Frovarp and said, “When we get married, that’s where we’re going to live.”

WHAT??!

The traitor! After all we had been through during out crime-fighting weeks! I didn’t know what to do with all the roiling emotions inside, so I did what any jilted woman would do.

At recess, I punched him in the stomach.

Mmmmmm…… tortillas……

*********************

Marisa is a dang fine writer, and has a deep love of jars, which I admire greatly. She did a cool thing regarding caring for her wood utensils with homemade spoon butter, and wrote about it much better than I could ever hope to do.

All I did was take some pictures of my messing around.