Just...nothing!

I don't have time to write about what I want to write about today, so it is going to be a random thoughts day!
Proceed at your own risk of time wasted!

I got an extra workout today, yes I did.
My son finally brought home a library book that needs to be returned.
He remembered it at the bus stop so I had to carry it on my whole walk!!
Extra load=extra workout.
I am just feeling so fit!!

I relish the sound of fallen leaves crunching beneath my shoes!
On the other hand, I get the heebie jeebies when a bug is crunched beneath my shoes.

I like relish on my hotdog.
Relish and mustard and chili!

I am making chili this week. Well as soon as I get back to the grocery store and get some meat to put in it.
I made vegetable soup earlier this week and almost got boo'd out of the house for it not having meat in it.
"Where is the meat?" they said.
"There is no meat, it is vegetable soup!"
"Vegetable soup??? How could you do this to us??"
Well, truly I thought that bowl of stuff in the freezer had meat in it and was relying on that for the meat.
I explained this to my family and also let them know that I did use beef stock as the base.

They were not impressed.
I enjoyed it!

When I was a little girl I just loved horses.
I dreamed of them, I drew them, I read books about them, I watched movies about them.
My daughter has this same propensity toward horses.
I think it is genetic!

I made the Tres Leches cake from the Pioneer Woman blog the other day.
Easy, especially with a mixer.
I truly did not think I would enjoy it, because of the interesting soggy nature of it, but decided to make it anyway, just to try something different.
I gotta tell you, I really like it!!
And, more crazy than anything...all three of my kids liked it!
But they did not like it enough to eat a full serving of vegetable soup in order to have it for dessert!

My husband is super awesome and I love him!!
Wow, I realize that came out of nowhere, but it is true and it hit my brain so I typed it.

I don't type everything that hits my brain.
Often I type stuff that hits my brain, then delete it.
This is best for all of us!

My favorite number is 8.
I don't know why.
It is a mystery to me, like numbers in general.

We are going camping soon.
I am working on my positive attitude about this adventure.
Actually I am working on working on my positive attitude about this adventure.

I have three rulers, 2 markers, 3 pencils and one sharpie sitting here on the second shelf of my desk.
Huh! I wondered where those rulers were!

I have 2 more minutes to write.
I set a time limit some days.
Well actually my schedule sets a time limit for me some days.

My goal for today is to make another round of pumpkin bread to see if I can tweak it to suit my liking.
We shall just see if that happens!!
45 seconds.
Oh the pressure.
What can I say?
28 seconds.
I have frozen up here....
oh my I am down to 15 seconds.
now 5...
done!

Warning!

STOP!!!
Don't just go out touching any old thing you read about in some random blog!!

Yeah, see these seeds...

...the beauties from the previous post.

This may be the one time when I should have done some research and didn't for lack of time.

Here is what I found out after hearing from two people that these are poisonous.

"A chemical in the plant called cycasin is toxic and often causes permanent liver damage as well as neurological damage if enough of the poison is absorbed by the body. "

Don't worry we are all fine here. We didn't choose to gnaw on them or make special soup stock hoping for a gorgeous orange color to thrill us. Just looked at 'em and planted 'em.
So please people do your research before you go eating random things from your neighbors yard okay??
Seriously though, dogs sure do love to chew on anything and everything...and this would be one of those things to keep away from them.

Now on to another even more serious note!!!

I must caution you not to attempt to make caramel apples at the precise moment you begin to crave them especially when it is after 7 in the evening and you have no prior experience with making caramel apples.

I must also warn you that those simple clear cellophane wrappers on the caramel of death squares that I bought are so frustrating to get off of the candy that I almost gave up the whole project before it was even partially underway.
Luckily though I didn't have to, seeing as how I did in fact spring for one bag of caramel bits.
I snickered at this convenience wondering just who is so lame as to not be able to open those simple little cellophane wrappers. Really!!!
Get the bits, trust me on this.
If you are gonna buy caramel
...which for the most of you,
I know you are, 'cause you roll your eyes at me when I talk about making my own at home,
just pay the extra .50c and buy the bits!!

See, it says it right there on the package but I was too stubborn and proud to pay heed.

"Unwrapped for easy melting" yeah, yeah...I see it now.


I must also advise you to warn your immediate family that you are in fact heating bits of caramel and chunks of caramel in the same bowl and that no you haven't lost your mind and put in a can of beanie weenies to heat!!

I guess behind the door of the microwave, while rotating this could be mistaken for beanie weenies.
But why in the world would I have that at my house and why would I be heating it up at 7:45 at night after making a wonderful soup for supper??
You can't make stuff like this up, this is real life people.

I think maybe the only thing I got right about this entire process is getting the sticks into the apples.

Uhhhh, I actually didn't put the sticks into the apples, my son did.

I had high hopes and a sincere desire for lovely sweet and tangy caramel apples. I wanted it to happen instantly and I wanted to drizzle chocolate on them in beautiful long strands.
Ha ha hah ahahhhah ahahhhha.

You know how you can step into work on something but you just feel off!
I tend to ignore this sensation and press on.
I shouldn't have pressed on!!

See how I put the pretty apple at the front and the "oops why isn't that chocolate sticking and why is it running down and pooling on the wax paper" apple way in the back!?!

These were a disaster-ish experience.
I will hold off my final decision until after I have had the chance to taste one.
They are supposed to cool for about an hour and a half, which puts me eating death on an apple on a stick right around 10 pm!

What??? I ask you...feeling your strong accusation at such things.
It is a treat, not a part of a regular meal plan.
I don't have to justify my caramel apple issues to you!!

Oh....look at the time.
It is 10:02.
Guess that means I can go sample an apple now!!
teee hee heee hee.

Mmmmmm! Just what I wanted!
Please seek a caramel apple tutorial elsewhere as mine is not likely to be helpful...
...at all.

Male or Female?

Take a look at this plant!

It is in my next door neighbors yard.


It is hiding a huge secret!


Take a closer look, can you see it yet?




Come on I will take you closer still.



See the center there!
It is a rounded out bulbous fuzzy area.



Come on, even closer and look inside.



When the layers of fuzziness are peeled back, you find these spectacular orange seeds.





A whole bunch of orange seeds!!

They are also covered with the pale yellow fuzz.


My 10 year old is holding a group of these seeds.
Some he had already rubbed the fuzz off of, but the others still have a bit on them.

My son, being the kid he is, took one of those wonderful seeds and planted it right away.

Come to find out this is a female Sago Palm.
I guess I knew some plants were male and female, but not all of them give us so much to take notice of.

Why am I just now, after 40 years of living giving notice to this you ask??


Well, a friend brought over a few Sago Palms to our place.
Apparently, they produce babies as well as seeds. What??
How does that happen?
Well seeing as how I don't have time for research we just have to take it for what it is.
They do in fact make little offsprings which show up and can be transplanted.


We planted 2 in the front yard...


...and three by the pond.

I just can't help but wonder if any of them are female.
And, how long will I have to wait to find out.
And when I do find out, will I remember enough to care?

Well, there you have it folks, just a little piece of what is going on around here.

I am working on perfecting a pumpkin bread recipe to my liking, and a pumpkin ale spiced bread as well.
Oh, and caramel apples!!
I just don't know if I have the guts to make an attempt at my own caramel again, so I will admit now that I bought those little wrapped squares.
I am human after all.
And, it is a treat, not a daily part of a meal plan.
And, while unwrapping the caramels may take some time, burning pot after pot of sugar kinda gets to ya too.
Ahhhh ha ha ha, look at me justifying my caramel purchase to you!!
We shall see how the week goes!

Exclamation Point

I was not going to write this morning.
However, I went out to the pond to feed the fish, as I usually do and had to share what has happened with our flowers!

First of all, look at this.

It is a new stalk of buds coming up. On Monday it was a mere inch out of the base you see there. On Tuesday 4 inches, and just look at it today!
I thought my kids were growing fast, but this beats that for sure!!

Now, remember those crazy big centers which seemed so odd to me.
They BUST out and become yet another branch with even more flowers!!
LOOK!!
(Bad photo sorry, in a rush here!!)


Now check this out...

As you go farther up the stalk those centers choose to be this beautiful clump of yellow pieces.
Fantastic!!!
I thought you would want to know, so there ya go!!

Wow!! I sure did use a lot of exclamation points today!!!
Well, it is because I am excited!!!
Little things like this in my little world make me a little happy!!!
Okay, a lot happy.
I choose to live life like that, it's just my way.

And ya know what else?? This duo of plants right here makes me happy too!!

They are heart shaped and happily colored and they grow at an unbelievable rate too!!
Hey...
...have a great Friday in your little world too!!

Oat-ey Peanut Butter Cookies

Here they come people!!
Hang on for the amazingly long awaited peanut butter cookie recipe!!!
Click HERE for the printable and all the correct measurements.
I feel that I must warn you...
This is a double recipe, so you will have lots of cookies.
Feel free to share, or be stingy and cut the recipe in half... if you can live with yourself under those circumstances.

I am not much of a peanut butter gal myself, tending to steer more toward chocolate, but...
These are YUM!!!

Though I went to the store to get peanut butter, I did not think about my brown sugar stash!
I was a good half a cup shy of what was needed so I did this little trick I remember reading about somewhere.
I added just a touch of maple syrup to my regular cane sugar.
Now this is more commonly done with Molasses, but I can't stand the taste of the stuff, so it doesn't make an appearance in my house.
100% pure Grade A Maple Syrup was my stand in.

Really the best thing to do is to just have enough dark brown sugar for the recipe.
Which by the way is 11/4 cup.

First things first with most cookie recipes is to cream the butter and sugar.
In this case we get a double doozy with that creaming... bringing in two butters and two sugars! How fun is that??
When those are good and creamed add in 4 eggs, one at a time, incorporating after each egg.
And last of the wet stuff...vanilla!! 4 teaspoons worth.



Here is a rather gross looking photo!!

Ha, well it is the creamed ingredients with an extra half cup of crunchy peanut butter thrown in for good measure!! By extra I don't really mean extra. Since it is crunchy I didn't want it in the mixer while I was doing all the creaminess creaming, so it got put in after that so I didn't have to listen to those chunks beating against the sides. Don't you just love the whump whump whump sound of the mixer going around in that butter. Pay attention, you just might!
I like the occasional peanut in each cookie, my son...not so much.
Can't please everyone all the time, right?


Next you are gonna measure out the dry ingredients.

1 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
1 1/2 cups White Wheat Flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
AND

Oats!!

I suppose you could use quick cooking oats, but I wanted them finer than that so I started with old fashioned oats and then pulverized them!!

I put them in my tiny little food processor and hit the button til they looked more like this.


Throw the oats in with the other dry ingredients and stir well to combine.
Next add the dry ingredients to the wet ones mixing until combined.

Then you will have a soft but clinging together kind of dough. It is not firm, but it does hold together well.

I have not found a need to refrigerate this dough at all before baking as with some other cookie recipes...it is good to go, straight from mixing.
I used my medium scoop to put the dough balls on the baking stone...which is my baking surface of choice.
I suppose if I had some silpat and a metal cookie sheet I might just use that, but I sure do love how my cookies turn out on my stone. (Hearken back to my old Pampered Chef days...wow, that was like 16 years ago and that above is my original stone that I took to all my parties.)

Hey listen...flatten the cookies before you put 'em in the oven.
Just do it, I know it is an extra step but the get really puffy if you don't and you will want to put the yummy icing on nice flat cookies!! So do it, okay?




Ugghhh, this photo is awful. I was in the middle of 5 things and couldn't concentrate on how it looked...my deepest apologies!!

It is the cookies right out of the oven. They need to move to a cooling rack for a bit to await the icing!

Now that icing is simply 1 part peanut butter to 2 parts powdered sugar, with some heavy cream to make it the right consistency.
Make it spreadable and easy to work with, not drippy or stiff.
If you don't have heavy cream, then by all means stop what you are doing and go get some...it is needed for so many things...or just use half n half. I suppose plain old milk would do as well, but where is the fun in that???

OOooooohhhhhhh finally, done cookies!!

Did you notice that I actually frosted the bottom of those cookies?
It makes them look upside down to me.
Upside down frosted oat filled peanut butter yumminess cookies...maybe that should be the name?!?
Nah, I will stick with what I have got.


Nutter Butterish, soft and chewy peanut-y goodness cookies!!
That was just another description for you, not another crazy long name.

Enjoy!!

Cookies, almost!!

Peanut Butter Cookie Day!!!

Well I just spent 5 minutes searching for the photos I took of the Peanut Butter Cookies.
It was some time ago, so the confusion is merited!

I can find them in one part of my computer, but not the part that hooks to blogger!
Ahhh, now 13 minutes wasted. Sometimes I do so wish I were a computer geek and able to figure such things out.
I wouldn't be a good computer geek, I am way geekier in other ways though! I got the geek covered!

So, no photo of the cookies, which is fine for me because the original cookie I made was a sandwich cookie, and really the richness of this cookie makes eating just one almost impossible in the sandwich form.

This recipe came about because my oldest child (and husband to for that matter) was whining desperately for Nutter Butter Cookies.
I heartily refused, reminding them that it is firmly in the "kill your kid" food category.
Oh, I haven't used that term before have I?? hee hee.
I try not to use it in public, but I guess I just let it out of the bag huh?
Foods from the naughty list which are so rampant in our American diet, which are doing nothing nutritionally but stand for most of the "nutrition" in the average American kids life...that is kill your kid food.
My kids know I don't buy it, but yearn for it in a most desperate way some days.
Of course my oldest has the most trouble abstaining as he was the most exposed at a very young age. That poor baby survived off of pop-tarts and lunchables and loved it.
We know better know, but still have the craving for some of those yummy tastes.
Enter the Nutter Butter need.
I know that if I can make it at home it will be way better nutritionally and way better tasting too.

And, I get accolades, which I am into!
It helps to off-set the grumbling of the poor, poor children made to do chores and homework and such.

I did a search for copycat recipes, then went to All Recipes.com to check out some of their recipes. I read and read and read and finally got to one that I thought combined the best parts of what I wanted this cookie to be.
I converted the Oatmeal Peanut Butter Cookies III from that site.

You know what, I am sorry to do this to you, but I am seriously out of time for today.
I am gonna make yet another batch of these cookies when I get home this afternoon, so that I can have pictures for you, then I will post the recipe.
I know I also did not write down specific measurements for the icing (mmmm, yes there is icing), so I want to do that too for all of you specific measurer type people.

Okay, so wish me luck getting all my chores and running done...
...one of which is buying peanut butter, since I had to scrape the sides of the jar this morning for sandwiches!!
Don't expect anything until after 5ish, okay??
Oh, and the two of you sweet readers who are expecting a baby within the next 2-5 days, I hope I didn't get your cravings up to bad only to let you down.
If you lived close I would hand deliver cookies to you!!!
Oh, man I gotta go.
Be back later!!

the most lame post ever

Pond life update day 3.

Sorry, I am feeling pretty shallow this week with my writing.
So, you get frogs, plants, dead bugs and fish.
It may get worse before it gets better, but I will plunge on so as to not have you checking back again only to find the previous days strange and shallow post.

Ahhhh, the flowers made quite a lot of progress!
Very interesting flower indeed.


Here are my fish.
They know I am just about to feed them so they are circling like sharks!!



Feed me, please feed me!!!



Shelby...


My clean and fed puppy!

Yeah, it is just not happening today people.
I am typing and erasing, typing and erasing, typing and erasing.
I have plenty I could write about, so that's not it.
I am trying and trying to be funny or practical or helpful in someway and keep coming up short.
So I am gonna quit trying and go finish up that last load of laundry!

okay
bye now