FRIDAY!!!

Yes, I am yelling FRIDAY!  This has been a long week and the weekend can’t officially start soon enough.  It kicks off tonight with a show at the DPAC.  The McHusband and I are seeing comedienne Amy Schumer.  She has a new show, which just started a couple weeks ago, on Comedy Central, and I’ve read good reviews of it so I’m looking forward to seeing her live.  Neither the McHusband nor I were familiar with her when we bought the tickets a couple months ago so hopefully we find out tonight that we made a good choice.

Tomorrow morning, I’m going for my first run outside since…Thanksgiving?  I know, I can’t believe I ran a marathon and then more or less hung up my running shoes.  I mean, I still went to the Y and took my classes and used the machines, but I guess I just needed a break from all the pavement pounding.  I think part of it is that I preferred to run outside and since it was turning cold, I wasn’t very motivated to keep it up.  But now that the weather’s getting better (and it’s about time!), I’m craving the fresh air and sun on my bare skin as opposed to the air conditioning and fluorescent light in the Y.

I hope to do one lap through my five-mile route without feeling like I’m dying.  Wish me luck!

{Recipe Recap} Turkey Tamale Potpie

I didn’t want to share this with you until I’d had it left over because I figure most of you reading about this dish who might make it will be like us and have enough left for a few more meals via microwave.  Lucky for you, I nuked it for lunch on Monday and it passed muster.

I made it on Sunday in honor of Cinco de Mayo. I would’ve rather had bottomless chips and salsa and washed those down with muchas margaritas, but I didn’t want the side order of guilt that’d come with those.  So Turkey Tamale Potpie it was.

I confess that I did take a shortcut.  Instead of making the cornbread topping from scratch, I just used a box of Jiffy cornbread mix to which I added some cumin and chili powder.

I read through the reviews and noted that the main complaint seemed to be that the meat and bean mixture didn’t have enough flavor.  So I added a chopped jalapeno, some cumin, garlic powder, and a few shakes of Cholula Chile Garlic hot sauce. (Side note: If you haven’t tried this stuff yet and you’re a fan of hot sauces like this and Sriracha, look for it.  I found my bottle at Target.)

I think my additions helped, but they still didn’t knock the flavor out of the park.  Next time, I’d just make it with a packet of taco seasoning.

However, overall, this meal was a winner.  The serving size was big enough to satisfy, it did taste plenty good, and it reheated quite nicely.

I’ve got an HOA meeting tonight so no promises on a post tomorrow.  I might just need some quality couch potato time once I get home, shower, and get ready for tomorrow.

{Recipe adapted from here}

Turkey x 2

A group of us went bowling after dinner this past Saturday.

Vickie and I are the only ones missing from that cellphone pic.

I didn’t bowl particularly well, but I broke 100 in each game, which is my minimum goal.  At least 120 is the score I really like to get.

I should’ve said I didn’t bowl particularly well until the very end of each game.

In the 10th frame of the first game, I bowled two strikes in a row, which gave me one more roll.  Which apparently I was on because I bowled ANOTHER strike!

But even a turkey couldn’t save me in this game.  Heather, who said she wasn’t a very good bowler before we started, beat us all.

We had time to play a second game, which started out pretty much the same way the first game did so I figured I’d gotten all my strikes out of the way with that turkey.  Turns out, I’m just a creature of habit.

Not too shabby a score, huh?  According to the McHusband, only Jeremy had a higher score the whole night.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never gotten more than two strikes in a row ever, much less done so TWICE during the same outing so I was pretty proud of myself.  As my dad reminded me, strikes are in my DNA as two of my uncles have bowled perfect 300’s.  Kinda puts my two turkeys to shame, huh?

We all had a lot of fun, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be bowling again sooner than later.

{Recipe Recap} Peanut Butter Cup Ghetto Cracker Toffee

I promise, I wasn’t lying when I said I was going to make fewer treats.  Or maybe I should’ve phrased that differently to say that I wouldn’t be making treats just to try out a recipe that caught my eye as I’d still be making them when an occasion called for it.

As soon as I saw this recipe, I thought of Sara and Cliff, and then Cliff had back surgery last week, which gave me just the reason I needed to make finally make them.

There are two layers each of club crackers and a dark brown sugar-butter mixture.

Then the chocolate on top is a mixture of semisweet and milk chocolate chips (because I had to mix and match to get enough) and peanut butter.

And finally you have toffee pieces and chopped-up peanut butter cups.

Since this made a 9 x 13 pan and I knew Cliff and Sara wouldn’t mind sharing, I brought a plateful to dinner with some of the usual group on Saturday.  I didn’t hear any complaints, and the McHusband nibbled away at the leftovers yesterday.

This should be called Ghetto CRACK Toffee because it’s addictive.  It’s got that sweet-and-salty thing going so it satisfies on both fronts and isn’t so rich that one piece’ll necessarily do ya, you know what I mean?

If you need to bring something sweet to a gathering, I highly recommend this “toffee.”  I can’t imagine anyone not liking it, and they were pretty simple to put together.

Hope you guys had a good weekend and you’re ready to take on another week.  Can you believe we’re already in the second week of May?  2013 is flying by.

{Recipe here}

{Recipe Recap} My birthday cakes. Yes, cakes.

Heather offered, as she did last year, to make my birthday treat.  I requested this Heath Bar Cake, which had been on my radar for at least a year.  The blogger raved about it and it was so simple, almost too good to be true.

This cake was good, but I don’t think it lived up to the blogger’s praise.  Maybe it was, in fact, too simple to be true?  And this has absolutely nothing to do with Heather’s baking.  She followed a recipe of my choosing and did so just fine.  As I know all too well, you get what you get out of a recipe.

I told her I’d also be making something since I wanted to use my birthday as an excuse to make a treat just for me.

Let’s take a peek inside.

You are seeing: Three chocolate cakes cut in half.  Toasted marshmallow buttercream filling.  Chocolate malted frosting.

Back to those toasted marshmallows for a second.  When I roast marshmallows over a fire, I like to get them all gooey, then I leave them in the fire to get charred.  But I may be changing that in the future because these toasted marshmallows from the oven were just delicious.  I may have toasted a couple extra just for quality control purposes…

I had a hard time cutting each cake layer perfectly in half.  If you look at the cake from the right angle…

But luckily being crooked didn’t make it any less tasty.  I mean, how could all that chocolate and marshmallow NOT be scrumptious?  {The toothpicks were for keeping the foil off the frosting since the cake was too tall for my cake cover.  See Instagram proof over on the right.}

Luckily I had the extra frosting so I could add the decorative piping to the top.  I mean, you really can’t go wrong putting even more frosting on, right?

Verdict?  This cake didn’t blow my mind like I thought it would.  Don’t get me wrong, it was good, just not something that I’m going to remember forever.  (Not for the taste anyway, but maybe for all the time I spent making it.)  However, both the marshmallow filling and the frosting were to die for on their own.  I want to use them both again, but I’m not sure if I’ll use them together or separate.  Either way, you know I’ll be reporting back.

Thank you, Heather, for making that lovely toffee cake.  I liked it and am so glad I finally got to try it.  Now it’s time to find another recipe to obsess about for the next year.

TGIF!

{Heath Bar Cake}

{Six-Layer Chocolate Cake with Toasted Marshmallow Frosting and Malted Chocolate Frosting}

Interesting article

Sorry, guys, I was tired last night and just wanted to veg with an episode of Scandal and a magazine.  So that’s what I did.  But I played on the computer a little, too, and came across this article that I found very interesting.  I can relate.  Not to all of it, but more of it than I’d like.

Now I just wish they made a patch to cure me of this little addiction.  I imagine it looks something like duct tape and goes over your mouth.

To Grandma’s house we went

On Thursday, April 18th, the McHusband and I drove up to Conneaut Lake, PA, to surprise my grandma for her 90th birthday.

The McHusband drove most of the way, but I got us through the final leg of the trip.

Have you ever seen a tanker of coffee?  Me neither.

My grandma and much of my extended family were at Olive Garden for her birthday dinner when we got into town, but we weren’t able to make it.  Instead, we surprised my grandma at her house when she got home from dinner.  Sorry, no photographic evidence of that. 

There was a party planned for Saturday that my grandma knew about, and she knew about the dinner at Olive Garden, but she didn’t know for sure who all was going to be around.  My dad (from Kansas City, MO), uncle (from WI), aunt (from TX), and sisters (from NC) were also surprise guests.  Thank goodness my grandma has a strong heart!

But before the PAAAAAH-TAY on Saturday, there was lunch and pool at Station 3 on Friday.

Our table was right by the pool table so once we were done eating, Owen and Lyla couldn’t wait to get their hands on the sticks.

The McHusband was such a good sport uncle, helping the kids line up their shots.

And finally a video to show how the pool game ended up being played.

Playing “pool” at Station 3

More from PA soon.  Well, soonish…