June 23, 2013

Orange Poppyseed Tea Cake

Some days, you just want to bake a cake. But you have to wait till a weekend. And you have to pick a cake that your husband wants, otherwise it won't get eaten, and you'll have a whole cake sitting on your counter that you are not allowed to finish all by yourself. Sometimes you plan on using oranges for a cake, and end up using half oranges and half lemons, due to the selective memory loss of that fore-mentioned husband. You may even send him to knock on doors, looking for spare oranges. There probably won't be any. So the cake will be more of a "mixed citrus" than orange, but it doesn't really matter. That cake will probably be pulled out of the oven a few minutes too early, if you happen to be napping off a strange 24-hour virus and that husband is in charge of judging when the cake is done. You might even have issues making frosting, namely a fear of too much powdered sugar, that leaves you with less-than-gorgeous frosting, but don't worry, it still tastes good!


June 21, 2013

Dark Chocolate Black Cherry Muffins

Holy heaven and a half, am I glad to be home!! It has been a long, long day of errand-running. On the bright side, we have no errands left to run tomorrow! The longest, of course, was the DMV. Getting our driver's licenses changed to Colorado. We've been informed that is one of the things holding up our homestudy. Nice to know!! Anyway, when we got there, there had just been a crowd of lunch-break-ers about the same time as most of the staff left for lunch! We were there for three hours. With little kids. *Headache* Luckily, the boys were really, really good. Stellar, actually. The iPad helps. They're only allowed to play with it when in a waiting room, so it never gets old! And boy, is it a lifesaver! New licenses in the mail, groceries bought, errands over, time to breathe. Ahhhh... And blog :)


June 19, 2013

Chicken Fajitas and Cilantro Lime Rice

They're not pretty or fancy, but this is one of my favorite meals! The Geologist of course infinitely prefers the beef version, and I meant to make him some beef ones this time, but I forgot. So you get pictures of the chicken ones. :) Not much to write today, busy busy! Gotta get my house mostly tidied and baby- AND puppy-proofed, half an hour before I watch my friend's two little girls and their brand new puppy! We're going to have a blast, hope my carpet survives!


June 17, 2013

Weekly Menu June 17

Source: mytravelingteacup

This week we have:
Chicken Fajitas
Cilantro Lime Rice
Dark Chocolate Black Cherry Muffins
Orange Poppyseed Cake

For today, June 17...

June 16, 2013

Creamy Lemon Tart

I have a garden!! My very first garden!! The Geologist came home Friday with a window box for me. Technically it's not a box, but it's exactly what I've always wanted. He knows how to make me happy! A neighbor asked , "Isn't it Father's Day? Why is he buying you presents??" Because he likes me :) Besides, we're celebrating Father's Day next weekend, since I seem to have caught yet another 24 hour bug of some sort. Anyway, of course we had to go out and fill it immediately! I bought:

Two kinds of dahlias,


June 15, 2013

June 13, 2013

Buttermilk Scone Muffins (Scuffins!)

I had the greatest experience in the grocery store today! We were walking by the little aisle of cheap little toys, and Stephen saw something that looked like a portable Nintendo thingee... honestly, I don't even know what those are called anymore. Anyway. It was one of those games where you tilt it around to get the tiny balls in the holes, not a real Nintendo. He asked what it was, and I told him. Then the magic words: "Mom, what's a Nintendo?" Ha HA! Victory!! The best part was the employee shelving things next to us said, "Wow. You don't hear that much anymore, do you?" Now, I'm not a horrible techno-nazi mom, I promise. My boys have played with Wii's and things, dancing games and Mario-Kart and such. But we don't own one, and we won't for a while. Someday! I'm not against them completely. They're lots of fun! But first I want my kids to play outside. Or together. Or read. Or explore. Or dance like crazy around our living room. (I guess you can do that with a Wii... whatever) I hope that when they get older, they'll be the ones that invite their friends over to play basketball or something. Technology will be very controlled in my house. I don't want teenagers who spend their weekends in the basement staring at a TV, sorry!! 


June 12, 2013

Grilled Mustard-y Brussels Sprouts

Ah, summer. Both kids at home. Some days are all sparkly and idyllic (like yesterday), some, not so much (like today). Not awful, just kinda... wearing. It's one of those days when all I want to do is listen to Maroon 5 and watch interviews with Benedict Cumberbatch. Oh wait, that IS what I did today! HA! Hee hee, I love that my spell check cannot handle Benedict's last name... giggle... Don't worry, I did a few useful things today, like work out (training to do a pull-up!! woohoo!!) and take the kids to the pool, and do some laundry, so I'm allowed a little me-time drenched in silliness. 

Ahem! Back to the point here. Food, right? Yep. Food is yummy. 


June 11, 2013

Spicy Honey Chicken

I've been doing a lot of reading on food photography lately. I'd say my pictures have improved quite a bit over the past few months, with a new camera, and lots of practice. But there is always room for improvement! There are some things I probably won't ever do, like buy reflectors and set up a real photography station. I will probably never buy a gigantic camera with a zillion lenses. But I am learning how to use the manual settings instead of automatic, and I bit the bullet and bought a REAL digital photo editing program. My biggest problem is still light, and there is only so much my Windows Gallery can do. I decided on Adobe lightroom, and I LOVE it!! It will take me a while to learn the ins and outs, but so far I am thrilled!! I'll show you this chicken before and after as an example. If you're looking for a new editing program, this might help! :)

This was as good as Windows could get it... Not bad, but still a little blue, and dim...
Soooo much better!!!!

June 10, 2013

Weekly Menu June 10

Source: m-i-n-t-leaves

This week we have...
Spicy Honey Chicken
Grilled Mustardy Brussels Sprouts
Buttermilk Scone Muffins (Scuffins!)
Creamy Lemon Tart

For today, June 10...

June 9, 2013

Lemon Drop Cookies

Today was about as perfect as a day can be. My sweet little boys woke up so happy, got dressed for church all by themselves, then played together nicely until it was time to leave. The Geologist made me breakfast (even if I did have to coach him through it :) while I got my lesson ready. Sunny, warm, blue skies... angel children in church... lunch together after... baked cookies and delivered to a neighbor... had a blast with two of our favorite little girls in the WHOLE world... We went swimming today, which we usually don't do on Sundays, but it was a reward for the boys being such good "men of the house" while The Geologist was gone all those weeks. This is the Man of the House motto:
This is between them and their Dad, and they take their motto very seriously. Anyway, went swimming, lovely, came home, fed kids and off to bed, all as pleasantly as can be! Joe was out like a light in minutes. Then the Geologist and I made our dinner on the porch (it was running late) enjoying the setting sun and perfect temperature as the air cooled. Altogether, a heavenly day!


June 7, 2013

Raspberry Rhubarb Crunch

My blog needs some tweaking. Just a bit!! So I have a few questions for my wonderful, talented, fabulous fellow bloggers.

First: Can anyone tell me how to get a "Pin It" button at the bottom of each post?? If you explain it to me, step-by-step, I can handle HTML code. Or an awesome, simple link to someone who does.

Second: How do you get borders around your pictures? Simple as frames, or a white line, or something. It looks sooo nice! I'd like to learn how to add that.

Now, thanks to my sister, I have an awesome custom blog design. Yay!! Unfortunately, it's based on the old "minima" template, so anything you could normally do through Blogger template designer won't fly.

While I'm waiting, I'll munch on some of this divine-ness...


June 5, 2013

Blackberry Mint Lemonade

Ugh. This is one of those posts that makes me ashamed of my photography. You've got to go see the original, there's a link below. It would be helpful if I owned a pitcher that wasn't opaque plastic!! I am officially on the hunt for a pretty glass pitcher. A picture of a glass all by itself is just NOT that awesome. Oh well. It's still yummy enough to share immediately, instead of waiting to buy a pitcher and make it again!!

June 4, 2013

Coconut Lime Chicken

The Geologist is the grill master in this house! If you asked me to grill something, I would probably burn it to a crisp. Or be afraid of burning it and leave it half-raw. Regardless, the grill is HIS domain. We used to have a nice big (though old) gas grill, and a little "Smoky Joe" charcoal grill before that... But we left them behind when we moved away from Missouri. Since then, we've been making do with this:
It's tiny, and old, and temperamental (woah, I had no idea that word was supposed to have an 'a' in it), but it works! In fact, we used to take it on road trips. It would sit in the back, in a cardboard box, and we'd have meat marinating in the cooler, or hot dogs, and at lunch or dinner time, we'd pull over at the nearest rest stop with a playground and cook up a real meal! Fast food gets old fast. Ha. We have fond memories with this little grill, and it continues to cook up yummy meals.

June 3, 2013

Weekly Menu June 3


This week we have:
Grilled Coconut Lime Chicken
Blackberry Mint Lemonade
Lemon Drop Cookies
Raspberry Rhubarb Crunch

For today, June 3...