Too Cute!

Too cute! That's what I said when I saw some fabric cupcakes similar to these that my sister Bonnie made. I knew I wanted to try a few myself. So I borrowed her pattern and began searching my scraps and project remnants. If you are a do-it-yourself kind of person it is amazing how much one accumulates over the years. Fiber fill...check. Sand...check. Notions, fabric, thread...triple check. Fusible interfacing...oh no...I am a little short. This means a trip to the local craft and cloth center. If you have never been a fabric junkie, you won't understand. I have been clean and sober for many years, due in part to the fact that I have been working and my children have grown up. But now I have time on my hands, and junkies should never frequent the source of their addiction. I managed to make it through the first visit with only a few additional pieces of material to round out my color scheme in the first set of cupcakes. Did she seriously say first set?

Well let me explain. My friend Verna just retired. She was my neighbor for many years and we would often sew for our children in those early years and share our ideas and projects. She had seen my blog about the dresses and decided to make some for her granddaughters. So she invited me to go to the store with her to help her pick out some fabric. Now if the cupcakes are cute as a decoration, why not something seasonal like Christmas cupcakes, or 4th of July. I entered the store and those July 4th fabrics were front and center. I started flashing like Chuck. (Chuck is a Monday night series where this computer geek kid/CIA agent has implanted in his brain information such that when he gets into a dangerous situation his mind sees or flashes before his eyes all the defense moves necessary to attack the situation.) Unlike Chuck, my mind was flashing decorating ideas and fabric combinations for my 4th of July cupcakes.

To top these cupcakes I wanted flags and pinwheels instead of the flowers and ladybugs as on my previous spring decorations. Here is where I ran into a snag, because although I could find the flags and pinwheels, they were on toothpicks and too thick to go into the fabric. Enter problem solver Terry. The children call him MacGyver, and for good reason. I have seen him fix a sea doo by making the broken part out of a tuna fish can and a bean can using some tin snips and screws. I have seen him fix a tractor with a plastic Pepsi bottle. So he is the logical person to ask in this situation. He looked at me point blank and asked "Didn't you ever make blow darts as a kid?" Add juvenile delinquent to his resume. I am certain that I saw the same jungle movies as he did as a kid but somehow missed out on the making of blow darts. It is a good thing he grew up in the late 40's and 50's. Back then little boys had boyscout pocket knives and played Cowboys and Indians. They probably had some mercury in their pocket because it was so cool to roll the ball in the palm of your hand, then put it on the ground and smash it with a hammer, watch it break up into tiny balls all over the place and then collect it again into one ball. It was a time when people would shrug and say, "Boys will be boys!" In today's climate, where a 5 year old is suspended from school for bring a plastic butter knife to show and tell, Terry would probably be on death row for making blow darts. Anyhow, you make blow darts by cutting off a match head and cutting of the head of a straight pin and then pushing the straight pin into the match. Then cut a slit in the other end of the match with a pocket knife and put small pieces of paper to simulate feathers. Put the dart into a straw and blow. For my project however, we cut the head of the match off and inserted one end of the match in the flag or pinwheel and the other end of the match held the beheaded straight pin. This allowed the flag/pinwheel to slide easily into the cupcake. Wow, this really is "Life in the Slow Lane".

Hot Cross Buns

Just to put my children's minds at ease, I would like to start off by saying that nowhere in this new post will I publish pictures or reference your father in a thong bikini. However, this is about his buns so to speak.



I have mentioned before that Terry (for some reason unknown to me) has decided to become profecient in the making of bread. Maybe it is because he likes to eat bread. He also likes hot dogs, but not just any dog. He likes them in the casing that gets hard when you cook it and crackles when you bite into it. Recently we happened to be in Phoenix close to a meat market that specializes in dogs and picked up several varieties. But here is the delima, for Terry anyway, he doesn't like any of the bun offerings at the local grocery store. So he decided to make some. He checked the internet until he came across the recipe that he thought would provide what he was looking for and whipped them up.




Then he made me Chicago dogs for lunch. (Information on everything in a Chicago dog bun is also on the internet) They were quite tasty I must admit. The only negative I could see was that he made the buns a little big. (Is there a hidden message there?) Now if I could just go to Chicago some day and try the real thing, I might be able to make a true comparison. I might also need to have Wanda revise my kitchen towel from saying "Mary Kaye's Kitchen" to read "Mary Kaye and Terry's Kitchen" because I have clearly lost control.

Duck Tales

In a previous post (Arizona Spring) I mentioned the Ducks who decided to live in my backyard. Since 7 of the ducklings died while we were off on a trip, Terry stepped up his Daddy Duck position and went to the local feed store to pick up appropriate food. He wanted them to be healthier than a steady diet of just Cheerios. Let's face it, our pool isn't teaming with pond scum and what ever life lives around a natural habitat. With the new diet the babies were thriving. Then trouble arrived. Apparently other ducks got wind of the easy life that existed on our side of the fence. Free food, free lodging, and some old guy cleaning up every day after you. So we got a couple of new squatters. Another male and female that thought they could nest here too. First there were turf wars, where they tried to chase mom and babies from our pool.

Here they are heading into the pool after the mom and babies.

Then there was posturing and gang violence.

Daddy duck couldn't let that happen. So he collected some lemons from our tree and lobed them at the illegal ducks in our pool. They would fly off, but as soon as we went into the house, they would fly back over the border. Mother duck was concerned for her ducklings. We had two concerns. Protect the ducks that were already here, and no way were we going to allow more squatters. There is a limit to the number of ducks our backyard can sustain. The "war on ducks" lasted for several days. Terry with his lemons and the ducks taking flight. Terry said if they didn't stay in their own territory he would bring out the heavy artillery. Before you get all liberal "left wing" on us let me be perfectly clear. We have no problem with ducks. We just have a problem with illegal ducks. Especially since we are footing the "bill". So, like many politicians and T.V. commentators like to say..."If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck." We reserve the right to determine which ducks live in our back yard. (We also hope they take flight before summer as it is starting to get hot and we want to utilize our own pool.)

Chocolate - My Ememy, My Friend

Sunday was Mother's Day and a woman new to our ward was both surprised and delighted to see that instead of handing out a flower to each Mother, we received a bar of See's Chocolate. She exclaimed that she had moved many times and lived in many wards and this is the first time she received chocolate. I believe it started in our ward quite a few years ago. At that time our bishop was the husband of one of my "Nuance friends", Jayne Sargent. Nuance was the name of our singing group, and we would get together once a week to rehearse, talk and laugh and eat chocolate. It was well known by our husbands that each of those things were and integral part of the whole. So when Jayne's husband became bishop and the discussion came around to what to get the ladies in our ward for Mother's Day, Paul suggested, "Why don't you get them what they really want - chocolate!"

There have been a lot of studies done on chocolate. Dark chocolate, my personal favorite is the most healthy. Among the findings are that it stimulates endorphin production which gives the feeling of pleasure and it contains serotonin, which acts as an anti-depressant. Any woman could have told you that without the studies. Well...maybe not the scientific words, but what woman when depressed, doesn't head for her own stash of feel good chocolate. Chocolate also has antioxidants. It has nearly 8 times the number found in strawberries! So when I eat chocolate dipped strawberries I am really eating healthy.

So that is the friend part. In my current position of caregiver for my aging mother-in-law I have needed my friend often. Unfortunately, the enemy part is obvious.

This is all leading up to a new recipe I just tried. It comes out of the April Bon Appetit magazine. If you like chocolate, then you must try the "Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake". It is made with both bitter sweet chocolate and cocoa. The mayonnaise makes it moist. Go figure. The frosting gives new meaning to butter cream and I discovered that it tastes really good on strawberries. So here is the best way to eat this cake. Take a very thin slice. It is 3 layers, so a thin slice will do ya. Then put on a large dollop of cool whip topped with sliced strawberries. The strawberries and cool whip seem to balance off the richness of the cake. I am serious. Oh, and I am incurable. I will always love my chocolate.

Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake, Baker Man

Terry's brother makes wonderful bread. He has been doing this for some time now and occasionally we are recipients of his creations. That is terrific. I like this arrangement. However, as if Terry's retirement hasn't been stressful enough on me, he has decided that he wants to make bread too. He just couldn't be happy in the garage playing with his tools, he had to invade my kitchen!!! And true to form for Terry, every new project requires new tools. Never mind that I have made bread for our 42 years of marriage, apparently I haven't had the right tools. He spent a great deal of time on the Internet looking at recipes and watching bread making videos. He spent a great deal of time shopping for just the right tools and grains for his new concoctions. (For which I had to find new space.) Now, he has spent a huge amount of time in my kitchen experimenting. I don't think he has found the perfect bread yet, but he is still trying.

I suppose you ladies are saying how you wish that your husbands would do more cooking, and there is an up side I would admit. These loaves of bread certainly look lovely, and hey, they were tasty too. But we don't live in the boonies and I could buy bread faster and perhaps cheaper. (Remember the new tools?) But here is the down side. He literally slings flour everywhere!!!