Good Grief Charlie Brown

My husband HATES dessert. He hates quite a few things that are sweet, the only exceptions I can think of are Cherry Coke and the weird Kool-Aid mixture he used to drink in high school that is 3 cups of sugar, 2 packets of Kool-Aid, 1 pitcher of water. Um, ew.

So I was surprised when we went out to lunch and he ordered a 7 layer bar from our local deli. (Every year we eat there on something he has dubbed "Customer Service Day" because one time four years ago he ate there and had already ordered when to his chagrin he discovered they don't take credit/debit cards, only cash, and they GAVE him the food with nothing more than a promise that he'd come back and pay. He did (well, I did since he was at work).

Anyway- I was thumbing through my Baking Illustrated and found a recipe for 7 layer bars and made them on Sunday afternoon. Seriously delicious stuff. I was suspicious at first at how simple the recipe is. Add stuff willy nilly to jelly roll pan and bake for 30 minutes.


My reaction:
"Hey this is really good!"
Dearest: "Oh, yeah it is!"
Me: "And I made it!"
Dearest: "Um........Ok, follow that to its logical conclusion...."

Dramatic pause.

Me: "Ok, so later tonight we'll all suffer terribly with food poisoning and die?"
Dearest: "Yup."

Hmph. The thing is, he has every right to say that. He's the one who was hospitalized with food poisoning about 10 years ago.

When we were married a sagely neighbor gifted me this:


and this:On the one year anniversary of Dearest proposing to me I tried to bake a chicken from a recipe in the book. Ended up using part two of the gift as a topping. The next week, I tried to make up for it and made a lovely no-bake dinner: fresh salad greens from our garden. About six hours later we were at the local emergency room, Dearest being intravenously re-hydrated and the nursing staff glaring sideways at me as I apologized for the cause of the food poisoning. Salad? Really? I gave up on trying to be a super wife, cooking just wasn't my thing.

Ok, I don't really give up easily on anything, but my major attempts through the years have been inedible or caused stomach illness. It doesn't even have to be me cooking, but recipes I've shared have carried the curse (sorry about the Turkey Tetrazini WhimsiGal!).

Lately, though, and with the help of Christopher Kimball and staff, I have muddled my way out of the muck that is my cooking. I know that substituting Olive Oil for Crisco is not so good, I know that adding cinnamon and apples to EVERYTHING may not be to everyone's tastes, and I know that baking is chemistry and throwing in more of an ingredient I like can (and has) cause a chemical reaction that leads to the fire department knowing that I ruined dinner before I do.

But....24 hours later no one is sick from my dessert bar, just yet.

Friday Part Three: Chicken Little

"I love you this big!" She declares herself a chicken and sets off to do chicken-y things. Yes, her pants ARE already wet from being thigh high in a 6 inch farm puddle (see previous post)......


Is she a chicken or a pig? To be fair the only sort of clean part of her is the only place she got sunburned. This is a totally different puddle, by the way. Look closely and see her boots are off her feet AND packed with mud.


This is inside the chicken pen. I love that this family let her play and explore the hen house and chicken yard. She collected eggs too. We brought four home and she hugged them in the carton all the way home (yes, one broke!). It was her treasure for sure. We've been to many farms the last year and the coups have all been off limits for various reasons. When I was a kid, we had free access to them and did just fine. Lil'Bug and her friend played for hours with the chickens and ducks. She even ate some cracked corn. Not yummy. I had to bathe her twice. The second time was a second round of muck after the first bath.


Where did her boots end up? As a monument to childhood mucky fun! :)

As we got ready to leave, A. noticed I had a VERY flat tire. She tried to air it up, but it wouldn't hold the air. I'm still on lifting restriction from surgery, so she changed my tire for me. Seriously. She is a super hero. I'm not sure I could do it myself anyway. It's been 15 years since I last changed a tire and it was on my 1971 VW super beetle (the one with a duct taped axle...).

Also.....
I ate hummus. You know, I had never eaten hummus before because in my mind I had confused hummus with haggis and could never figure out why such a thing was so popular at all the mom groups. Last year I discovered the error and since had not had a chance to taste it. It is sooo delicious! That particular error is so typical of me. Gah.

Friday Part Two: Sugar Creek Farm

Lil'Bug pausing for a brief moment to gaze over the field and pastures. Me too. It sets my heart afire again to pursue the farm dream.

I love, love, love this farm. It is a CSA, but since we grow our own, we don't have a share. Perhaps we should, to supplement in the things we cannot grow ourselves. Something to think about for next year. We were invited out to help make mulberry jam, but we got there after the jam making was over. No time was wasted by Lil'Bug though. She had a tea party, played with a kitten, and headed outside to meet the chickens and horse.

This is Sunny. A very cal and gentle horse. When we were little Aunt Bee was bit by a horse, so I was nervous about the apple feeding. Unnecessarily. It was awesome.


He he, horse apples. Sorry. Had to say it. They are! FOR the horse of course!


This is the "farm pond" that Lil'Bug found. This girl can find a puddle in a desert. However, with the heavy rains, there are spots like this everywhere we go, thus the muck boots. What comes next?

Friday P-ART One

Lil'Bug has learned how to open the paint bottles. When (if) this dries next month we will put a wire through it and make a mobile. Hey, at least it's not on the floor!