If at first you don't succeed...you can always put it on your blog

So a couple years back, I decided to enter the Pillsbury Bake-off. At the time, I had a one-year-old and about 3 weeks to come up with original recipes and, as it happened, had temporarily lost my senses of smell and taste. So the Bake-off prep was really in the hands of my tasters, because all I could discern of what I put in my mouth was sweet, salty, spicy, sour, or bitter. It was a great diet plan, as I figured that while I couldn't enjoy anything, I might as well just eat salads. It was very surreal, though, and even after a CAT scan, the ENT wasn't sure why it had happened, but eventually the senses came back, although I still don't think they've ever been as sharp as they were before (rest assured,though, they are plenty good enough to know the difference between salads and brownies - I know you were worried). Weird.
Anyway, I came up with three entries, all of which my tasters thought were pretty good. Once I had my smell and taste back, the standout for me was the cupcake recipe. Plus, it involves an element of danger and option for use of open flame - who doesn't love that?
Pillsbury, apparently. Alas, I did not win, but I won't let that stop me from sharing the losing recipe! Please ignore the brands - that was a requirement for the contest. I've also editorialized it a bit from the original submission.

Materials

1/2 cup shortening

1 1/4 cups white sugar

2 LAND O LAKES® Large Brown Cage-Free eggs

1 teaspoon McCormick® Pure Vanilla Extract

½ teaspoon banana flavoring

1 cup mashed ripe (not brown or over-ripe) bananas (seriously, this makes the difference between a cupcake and a muffin)

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark rum (or more if you're not into measuring)

2 cups Pillsbury BEST® Unbleached Flour

½ teaspoon McCormick® Ground Cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 can Eagle Brand® Sweetened Condensed Milk

⅓ cup heavy cream

1 jar marshmallow cream

Method

1. In a medium sized bowl, combine dry ingredients. Preheat oven  to 350. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the shortening and sugar using an electric mixer. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Add ¼ cup rum (can substitute with ¼ cup buttermilk and 1 teaspoon McCormick® Imitation Rum Extract - BUT WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO???), flavorings and bananas and blend until just incorporated. Add flour mixture in two batches and beat until incorporated. Using a ¼ cup measuring cup, fill a lined regular-sized cupcake tin with batter (it makes about 18 cupcakes, so you may have to work in two batches). Bake for 18-22 minutes, until tops spring back when touched.
2. While cupcakes are baking*, pour the contents of 1 can of condensed milk into a large microwave-safe bowl. Cover with plastic wrap; make a small slit in the top to allow steam to escape. Cook on 50% power for 2 minutes; stir with a wire whisk. Cover and microwave again for 2 minutes on 50% power. Stir with wire whisk. Repeat this procedure in 2.5 minute increments for 10 more minutes. Mixture should foam each time it is stirred and should be caramel-colored and thick near the end. Meanwhile, heat cream in a small saucepan until hot but not boiling. At the end of the 10 minutes, immediately add hot cream and 2 tablespoons rum (or 1 teaspoon rum extract); whisk until smooth. Set aside to cool.
3. When cupcakes are cool, take a measuring spoon or apple corer and remove a small (no more than 1 teaspoon total) section from the center of each cupcake. Put the cooled milk mixture into a heavy-duty plastic zip-top bag; seal the bag and snip off one corner (about ½ inch). Fill the hole in each cupcake until mixture is even with the top of the cake.
4. Preheat your broiler** and place all of your filled cupcakes on a baking sheet. Top each cupcake with 1-2 tablespoons of marshmallow cream (I find it is easiest to put it in a piping bag or zip-top bag with the corner snipped off). Try to center the marshmallow cream on each cupcake but don’t worry about spreading it out. Once all cupcakes have been iced, put the baking sheet in the oven until the marshmallow cream browns on the top, resembling a toasted marshmallow. This process happens very quickly, so be sure to check your cupcakes every 30 seconds or so. Serve immediately for the gooiest experience.:)

*If you like to live dangerously: The way I originally learned to make this wonderful caramelly-goodness was from a terrific book called Southern Ladies and Gentlemen. The author, Florence King, referred to this as "Danger Pudding." All you do is take a can of condensed milk, peel off the label, put it in a large stock pot full of cold water, and then boil it for an hour and a half. Take the pot off the heat, pour off the water, and leave the can alone until it cools completely. I guess bad things can happen if you open the can too soon. Like caramel on the ceiling. And your hair. And shrapnel.

**If Danger is your middle name: You can also accomplish this with a kitchen torch (the kind you use for creme brulee). Just watch your eyebrows.

Mommy Read That! Review of the Grisha Trilogy, Books 1 and 2

So I know I'm kind of cheating by writing a book review, but I've been working on another cake post for 2 weeks and it's coming, but slowly, and I needed a break, so, yeah, book review! And of course, it is YA, although it is one of those YA books that I am not sure just how young the adult should be to read it.

Books 1 and 2 of the Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo

 and 

And because I am nice, I am going to provide you with quickie review, in case you just want to know if you'd even be interested before wading through my rambling.

One-sentence summary

It's like Harry Potter crossed with the Hunger Games, set during the Bolshevik Revolution.

Disclaimers*

• There are two criteria I have for liking a book: It must have an interesting plot or be well written, extra points for both!
• I like trashy books. I don't necessarily mean "50 Shades of Grey" trashy, although I have read that masterpiece of misogynist porn modern love as told through erotica, you just won't see a review of it here. Okay, maybe you will, here goes: Save your money, people. There, all done!

On with the show

I think I can endorse the Grisha series (the first two books, anyway) for both interesting plot and decent writing. With some reservations, of course. The prose isn't flowery or moving or anything, but it is dramatic and clean and throws in random Russian words, which I really like, because I took Russian for two years in college, and while I can't speak it or really understand it, I can pick out the random phrase (phonetically spelled, of course,"Oo menya nyest kaniga" means "I have a book." Technically, it means "At me there exists a book." Thank you, communism!). It makes me feel smarter.
The plot is absorbing, if somewhat familiar in the genre. These novels are YA fantasy, but thankfully free of werewolves or vampires. They are chock-full of magic and monsters, though, which is great if what you're looking for is escapism.

The basic premise is not unfamiliar: an ordinary orphan girl, Alina, and her life-long friend and fellow orphan, Mal... 

...are scraping by as conscripts in the First Army of what is essentially a feudal society, with the "haves" being the King, of course, and his court, and also, the Darkling, who commands the Second Army. This army is comprised of Grisha, who are basically wizards whose magic seems to lie mostly in controlling certain elements. Everybody else is a "have-not." That includes the entire First Army.
The big "bad" in the first book is an entity called "the Fold," which is this enormous gash of a wasteland that sprung to life a century ago as a result of the former Darkling using some kind of bad ju-ju and is full of man-eating versions of these guys:

The first real "action" in the book is when Alina, a cartographer, and Mal, a tracker, have to cross the Fold. They know going in that not everyone will make it, but there's no choice, and they have a few flame-thrower Grisha to help them with the beasties.
I don't think I'm spoiling anything by telling you that not all goes smoothly on this journey, and just when it looks like our heros are done for, something.Magical.Happens.

I'll stop there. The rest is up to you to read. There are epic quests, adventures, kidnappings, ships, gruesome deaths and maimings, smooches, coups, and fun little wisecracks. I will say that the first book is better than the second in terms of plot tightness, but the second is no freaking joke at the end. The middle drags a bit, mostly with relationship and political stuff, but the end is kind of brave of the author, I think. It ain't pretty, in many ways. But I'm interested in seeing where #3 takes us. In other words, if you hated books 2 and 3 of the Hunger Games, well, you've been through this before.

What I liked 

I really enjoyed the wintry, gothic feel of these books, and I liked the world, although I wish there'd been a little more focus on the mechanics and training of the Grisha, and a little more about the history of Ravka.  In this arena, Harry Potter, it ain't.

What I didn't like

There's, like, 3 love interests. But not really. It's lame. Also, Alina is kind of Katniss-like in her grouchiness, although noone really has to twist her arm to get her to step up to the hero plate. Still, there are moments when I had to remind myself of why I was supposed to like her.

What I am on the fence about

Alina and Mal's relationship. In the beginning, it's kind of like this:

But without this:

And eventually is also like this:

What I liked about it, though, was that the real problem in the relationship is not another character (not really, although there are a few thrown in there) or even that Alina is *super special* and Mal isn't, it's the way the world treats those two roles, and the ideologies that the two of them grew up with that they can't quite shake. And also, they are young and stupid. I say this with absolutely humility - I was the former once, and am the latter frequently.

All done

So there you have it! A good couple of reads for the beach or the lake or staying up late into the night. And maybe next summer we can all read the thrilling conclusion, Ruin and Rising. I hope we find out a lot more about Alina's early history, why she was orphaned, why the Grisha Screening Committee totally failed, if Mal has super powers, and if Alina ever gets her hair fixed. Ah, the anticipation.

*Disclaimers subject to change at any time. I have actually read and enjoyed books just as trashy as 50 Shades, but probably with fewer sex toys.

Taking care of business (cards)

You know that thing about pride goeth-ing before a fall? Yeah.

A friend asked if I could help her Mom (a very VERY talented lady) do some business cards on VistaPrint. I said sure, no problem, I'd never used them before, but I could do the design. I promptly opened up a Word template, and within a few hours, had a decent prototype. No sweat. Design was finalized, everybody's happy, woop!

I offer to set it up on Vistaprint's site, and get to work. It was bad, y'all. Every which way I could do it, that preview looked awful. Word, my old friend, was no longer good enough. Photoshop, I discovered in short order, makes me feel incompetent is an elitist and I refuse to associate with it (read, I gave up, in tears, after it took me two weeks to figure out how to draw a dashed line, and I still couldn't get it right). Illustrator, luckily, came to my rescue, and the finished product turned out well, I think! Plus the name of the business is genius (alas, not mine). Check it out!

I then did some for another friend, and I think these turned out pretty good, too!

Materials

• Adobe Illustrator
• You Tube (God bless you, Internet!)

Method

I can't tell you how long it took me to figure out this stuff, because it's kind of embarrassing, but I will share with you the wisdom of others.

• How to make a fancy frame shape (here)
• How to make a chevron pattern (here)

Conclusions

I failed at using Word and I failed at using Photoshop with both of these projects. I hate failing at anything, but especially when it feels like I'm being held back by my own ignorance. What I learned, though, was that sometimes you have to stop beating the dead horse with the same stick, and either get back on the horse or beat it with a new stick. Sort of like that right there. I am going to walk away from that horrible head-on collision of equine metaphors and instead refer you to this video, which is sweet and inspiring and if you've ever failed at a project or had it rejected, you should watch, because you aren't alone. My horse and I are with you.

(After) Party Chicken

We've had a couple of cookouts lately, and while the leftover plates and cups can be applied to the next party, there are a few remaining bits of flotsam that must either be used immediately or trashed. For example,  that half sleeve of crackers and 1/4 bag of potato chips. Could you eat the latter in one sitting while watching "Marriage Boot Camp: Bridezillas Edition?" Why, yes, you could (I have scientifically tested this one for you-ain't I sweet?), but then what is everyone else gonna eat for dinner?

Potato Chip Chicken Parmesan!

Aside from breading the chicken in the potato chip bag, my favorite part about this recipe is that you only get one pan dirty. Well, and I guess one pot, too, for the noodles (unless you have a microwave pasta cooker thingo, which I tried and...major fail).

Materials

1. 1/4 bag of potato chips (Whatever is left over. That little bag of tortilla chips from the Mexican place would probably work, too.)
2. 1/2 sleeve of crackers (I've used Town House and saltines. Both worked fine, but I am partial to Town House because, well, butter.)
3. 2 tbsp Italian Seasoning or whatever your go-to blend is. Just nothing with salt, unless you really really love salt.
4. 6 Boneless skinless chicken breasts and/or thighs
5. 2 jars spaghetti sauce
6. 1 cup of wine (whatever is left over. Or is left in the box.)
7. 1 8-ounce bag of Parmesan or Italian blend cheese
8. 1 1lb box of noodles (whatever you like best)

Here are last night's ingredients:

Method

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a 9x13 baking dish with foil (for easy cleanup).
2. Dump the 2 jars of sauce in the dish, along with the wine. You can stir it up a bit if you want, it doesn't really matter.
3. Dump the crackers in the potato chip bag, hold  the bag closed (you can also clip or fold it), and pulverize. I use my rolling pin, you can use whatever makes you feel the most catharsis.
4. Add the Italian seasoning.
5. Hold the bag closed and shake to combine.It should look like this:
6. Rinse off your chicken, then drop it 1 piece at a time into the potato chip bag. Shake.
7. Place the piece of chicken on top of the sauce in the pan. DO NOT STIR.
8. Repeat for the rest of the chicken pieces.
9. Sprinkle remaining crumb mixture on top of chicken. It should look like this:
   
   
10. Put it in the oven for about 40 minutes. This sounds like a long time, but really, your chicken is half-drowned in sauce and covered in potato chips. It'll be fine.
11. Remove the dish from the oven, cover it in cheese, and put it back in for another 10 minutes (while the water for your noodles is boiling?).
12. When the cheese is all lovely and melted, it's done! Spoon the chicken and sauce over noodles and eat up!

Everything's A-OK

We took the Little Bit to Sesame Place last weekend. She's been fighting a cold for a week or so, but we'd had the tickets for months (due to a personal appearance by "Kindi Rock" superstar Laurie Berkner), so we were going, snot be damned. Plus, it was the first unGodly hot weekend of the year, where else would we be but a theme park full of pre-schoolers?
The trip there was miserable. Normally a little under 3 hours, it took us 5. I now hate the following cities, ranked in order of worst driving experience last Friday to best.

1. Philly. Eva started puking around Hour 9000 and we couldn't get off the highway for 3 miles.  HATE.
2. New Jersey. Toll Plazas. That is all.
3. Baltimore. Because apparently they drive tanks up and down the pavements all night long when noone is looking. Pot holes the depth of the axles. Luckily, we were only going 3 MPH so it didn't do anything permanent. I hope.
4. DC. Yes, you read that right. The new 695 interchange is much better than turning right at a traffic light on Pennsylvania Avenue and trying not to hit the curbside flower vendors. Plus, traffic was heavy but at least it was flowing. At 12:30 in the afternoon.

All this said, we had a great time once we got there. My child is not threatened by any ride, any height, any spray of water, or any adult-sized costumed character.
So, how does all this rambling tie in to something Mommy made? Well, I finally got to see a scale model of the brownstone where Maria, Big Bird (he roosts on the roof), Bert and Ernie (in the basement), and Oscar the Grouch (in the trash can outside) live.
This would have been helpful to me when I re-created it in cake form for a birthday party in February.

I'll spare you most of the details, so if you really want to know, email me and I'll bore you with minutia. Some more.

Materials:

• 2 12-inch cake layers
• 4 8-inch cake layers
• About 5 pounds of this frosting
• Cake plate (mine was a nice pedestal that promptly broke)
• 10 lbs of chocolate fondant*
• 2-3 pounds gum paste and/or white fondant
• Paint brush
• rolling pin
• sharp knife
• confectioner's sugar
• Crisco
• blue food coloring
• green food coloring
• food coloring pens
• fondant cutters of your choice - I used this but it's more trouble than it's worth
• 15-20 hours of your life

Method (deep breath. I promise I'll only hit the high points)

1. Using the chocolate fondant and the gum paste, I rolled it out and cut it into shapes to use for the trim on the house (windowsills, doors, windows, etc.)*
2. Stack, fill, and crumb coat the square layers.
   Like this (please ignore the yogurt and turkey)!
   
3. Stack, fill, and crumb coat the round layers, then dye some of the icing blue and do a smooth coat.
   Like this!
   
   
4. Cover the "cube" cake with chocolate fondant. If you can. 
5. Smack the House cake on the round cake. This part is not fun and can go terribly wrong.
6. Use water and a paint brush to attach all the doo-dads to the house and the sign to the round cake.
7. Use leftover icing for details on the cake.
8. Get someone to help you carry the thing, because it is seriously heavy.

*If there's a word stronger than "hate" here, that's how I feel about Wilton's chocolate fondant. I hate fondant, anyway, but this stuff is the weirdest, stickiest, driest, cracki-est, meanest lump of sugar dough I have ever worked with. Seriously, I had a humidifier cranking next to it and it still cracked. Next time I'll just take my chances with chocolate buttercream. Wait, I am never doing this again. Nevermind.

Whine into Water

So, I swear not all of these posts are going to have to do with gardening, because my current garden is on my 5x10 balcony. There just isn't that much I can do out there. That did not, however, stop me from producing this (the strawberry, the penny is just for scale. In my defense, the first strawberry to come off the balcony was, like 1/4 this size):

Or rather, to be more accurate, stop me from purchasing the plant that produced it. Which I almost killed because I have a strict policy of Benign Neglect when it comes to my plants. Which doesn't work so well since I forget to water them for days on end.

Problem: Plants dying because they would probably get more water in Arizona than they do on my balcony
Solution: Water Globes! You know those pretty round glass things that you buy and stick in potted plants that slowly leak water into your soil as it dries out?
2nd problem: Paying money for them seems like a waste. I mean surely, I can find something that will work just as well lying around my house, right?
My solution: Booze.No, really!

Materials:

Empty wine and cider bottles. If you don't partake, any glass bottle will most likely work, or you can just sneak into your neighbor's recycle bins.

Method:

1. Water your plants first. Otherwise they'll just gulp the water out of your bottles and you'll need to refill, like, immediately.
2. Rinse bottles
3. Fill them with water
4. Go outside, quickly invert bottle and shove into soil of plant. I find that if you act like you're screwing in a lightbulb, it works a little easier.
5. Neglect away!

Caution:

If the water in your bottle is all gone in about 2 hours, either you didn't water the plants well enough to begin with, or the bottle wasn't shoved in far enough. Once you've gotten the bottle to a good depth, it should be easy to refill and re-insert in the same spot in the plant.

The wine bottles last a few days in a large plant. I use the cider bottles for flowers and smaller pots, they last a day or two. There is some debate on the Internet that you should somehow cap the bottles and make small holes in the cap, such that it's more of a drip-irrigation thing. I found that just leaving the tops off and making sure the bottles are firmly inserted works just fine, and is easier to refill. I don't actually enjoy getting dirty, so this is an important feature.

Good cages make good tomatoes

Or so I have been told. And this year I am finally heeding the advice. In previous seasons, I always grew patio or some other compact variety of tomato that looked cute but only yielded about 10-15 tomatoes total. This year, I decided to get adventurous and grow two regular-size Roma tomato plants (I was suckered in by the Heinz label! I could make my own ketchup! Curse you, Home Depot!) in two of the pots that I brought over from the old apartment.
When I bought these darling little things, I wasn't even thinking about how to support large, luxurious limbs heavy with fruit, I was mainly trying to keep them from death-by-sandbox at the hands of my daughter. They beat the odds, survived, and got big enough that they started to list. Being that storm season is upon us, it occurred to me on the way home from Sesame Place yesterday that they needed a cage, which I do not own. I thought it through as mile after mile passed and finally settled on coat hangers. It could work. It should work. I could twist them and bend them into something totally usable with adorable curly-ques and then paint and distress them so they look like something you'd buy in a store in Old Towne called Ye Olde Farmhouse Crappe and I would be a DIY goddess.
Well, one out of four ain't bad, is it?

Materials:

• 6 wire coat hangers (the full wire ones, not the cardboard tube ones. Extra points if they are all the same color)
• Regular pliers (I'm sure they have an official name, but mine came in a tool kit from Ikea. "Ikea pliers?")
• Needle-nose pliers

Here's a shot of my supplies spread out on my couch, where I sat comfortably while creating this masterpiece.

Method:

1. Untwist all of the coat hangers and straighten them as best as you can. Step on them, pull them, use the pliers, a mallet, a hammer, whatever makes you happy. You're going for relative straightness here, don't worry about it too much.
2. I used the needlenose pliers to curl one end of three of the hangers. I was hoping for attractiveness here, but the real goal was to keep my kid's eyes from getting poked out when she invariably smacked herself in the face with one.
3. Using the same three hangers, about 12 inches down from the curl, I used the needlenose pliers to make a small loop, and then another loop about 12 inches down from that. (This sounds nice and simple on paper. It actually involves some elbow grease and a little swearing. I recommend, as with most DIY project, a glass of wine or a bottled adult beverage of your choice.)
4. With the remaining 3 hangers, try to form them into something of a circle. I freely admit that I skipped this part, and other than unwinding the hangers, basically left them to their regular triangular shape. You will see the results later. Do the circles if you have the time and/or patience.
5. Make a curl on one end of each circle with the needlenose pliers.
6. Lay your three long hangers (that you added curls and loops to in steps 2-3) next to each other, with the loops and curls all facing the same way.
7. Thread the non-curled end of each circle (that you made in step 4) through the bottom loop of each straight hanger. 
8. Using your needlenose pliers again, curl the other end of the circle, and then "link" that curl to the one you made in step 5. This should complete a circle that runs through all three bottom loops of the straight hangers.
9. Repeat steps 7-8 on the middle loop and top curl of the three straight hangers.
10. Go outside and spread the three straight hangars out such that they form the points of a triangle. Holding each straight wire near the bottom, shove them into the ground around your plant. The circle hangars should keep the upright straight ones stable enough to support the whole contraption, unless you are growing  watermelons or something.

And here is my hot mess finished product!

Conclusions:

I think the next time I will actually make the circular hangars actual circles vs. warped triangles. The reason for this is that the straight hangers tend to drift until all of them are in one corner of the "circular" ones (which are actually "triangular" because I am "lazy") and that...just isn't helpful. I've had to do a little retro-fitting with my pliers.

So, there you have it. Not gonna make it into Ye Olde Crappe Shoppe anytime soon, but hopefully they will give the plants the support and encouragement they need.

Does anyone ever decide to start a blog at a decent hour?

My completely uneducated guess is...no. At least, not likely. In my case, it was prompted by a half-joking series of comments on FaceBook and the realization that, as I fed the cats, took a shower, and did something to try to make my feet look presentable (all at the same time, in the same room), that I do in fact make a lot of things. Some things are virtual, some things are physical, some things are edible, and some things are epic failures. Almost everything is done during nap time or when my sweet girl is down for the night (whenever that happens).
So I make no promises about frequency of postings, but I have a lot of previous mommy-made adventures to draw from and I'll surely come up with something new sooner rather than later. My husband says I don't know how to relax. I don't know what makes him think that! I only have a work meeting in the office, a party on Thursday which involves some pretty authentically Mommy-made things which I will not detail yet, two committees at church that need my attention, some business cards to design for a friend...and that's, like, all. This week.
I'm going to bed. I mean it. I'll even try not to take my phone.
Goodnight, y'all!