Success on day 1

WOOHOO! Made it through my first day of gluten-free-ness! I was a bit disappointed by the selection, or lack there-of, of gluten-free baked goods at the store yesterday...something will have to be done, but more on that later. I just finished a bowl of amazing potato soup and threw a loaf of bread (minus the oh-so-tasty wheat) in the oven. I have a delicious pear for dessert, Dog and Cat are lounging contentedly, and I made it through 24 hours with no wheat....overall a great day! Here's the recipe for the potato soup (from my mom, with a few modifications)...I don't measure anything for it, so I'll do my best to describe it by look...

Potato Soup (Gluten-free optional)

Dice up potatos into about 1/2 inch squares (personally, I love red potatos for this with the skin on, but peeled brown potatos work too). Put the potatos in a stock pot with enough water to cover them, plus a little, and a chicken bullion cube. Boil about 15 min, till they are soft enough to poke easily with a fork, but not so soft as to fall off of the fork.

Drain the water, leaving about 1/2 in. Put the potatos back in and add 2-4 tablespoons of butter, and let the butter melt. Meanwhile, Mix 1 cup of flour (regular or gluten-free) with a generous pinch of salt and pepper as well as some dried parsley and oregano...or fresh....or any other seasonings you want. Crack an egg into the bowl with the flour/seasonings and use a fork to mix it up, set aside.

Pour enough milk into the pan with the potatos to cover, then add about another cup...you can also add some half & half. Turn the heat to med-high and let the milk warm up. Meanwhile, dice up any bacon or ham (or whatever else you want in there....) and grate about 1 cup of cheese. Once the milk is hot slowly add the rivels (the flour/egg mixture) and stir to keep them from all sticking together. Add more milk if needed. Allow to cook for about 15 min. Add your ham/bacon/etc. Adding sour cream is fabulous too, I just never seem to have it on hand. Add the grated cheese and salt and pepper to taste, stir till the cheese is melted.

This goes great with cheesy rolls....haven't tried any gluten-free ones yet, but if this bread turns out I'll work on it. Enjoy!

Amazing amazingness.

Amazingness #1: Over the weekend, in between two separate 8 hour shopping stints, I made about 70 mini marzipan pumpkin stems and curly-cues...along with, of course, mini pumpkin cupcakes....


The beginnings of my mini pumpkin patch

Amazingness #2: This morning when I stopped in the office at work for some papers Frenchie, my boss, asked if she could place an order for Thanksgiving! She had mentioned it in passing a few times, but this morning said that she definately wanted the mini chocolate hazelnut cakes (see this post) and that she had her mom bring some chocolate from France (French chocolate!!!!!!) for me to make them with! YAY!

Amazingness #C: After informing me about the chocolate (French chocolate!!!!), Frenchie told me she had something I could borrow. Ok...we are currently at a day care/pre-school, so when she takes me into the kitchen telling me how excited I'm going to be I really didn't believe her...till she pulled out 2 of these:

SO FREAKIN CUTE! Yes, those would be little mini carrots. And radishes. And cabbage (cabbages?). And look at the adorable little peas!!!!! I'm planning carrot cake for them and am super excited to spray paint the frosting...I bought a can today to start practicing :) (And yes, that would be a Williams Sonoma bag in the background....which also makes me happy, because, although I did not buy the cute little pans there, I did see other cute little pans there and purchased a fabulous cutting board and spatula)

Amazingness #4: It's 8 pm onTuesday. Which means that a) I survived an atrocious Monday and b) Glee is on. And I'm a Gleek. So this makes me happy! Woo! (But seriously....look at the cute little peas!!!!!!)

Tranquilizer glove not included

Good things this week (as inspired by Portland):

*Dog is a celebrity. Well, as good as. Everywhere I take him people stop what they are doing to tell me how beautiful he is and the trainer at puppy class pulled me aside after to tell me how great and smart Dog is....this makes me hugely happy : )

*new Calphalon pans for $160 instead of $400

*got a new wireless printer, but didn't know I needed a wireless router....this is still a good thing because it gives me more of a reason to finally get actual internet

*the new cookbook my mom got me....although it is strictly a cookie cookbook, and although typically I thoroughly dislike making cookies, I'm going to give it a chance...there some rolled up apricot raspberry thingies that look promising

*for the last 20 min Cat has been sitting on the back of the entertainment center staring intently at the backs of the wii and antenna and jumping spastically...I'm entertained

One potato, two potato, three potato, cupcake!

So far this has been a very productive week in terms of baking. I promised my roomie, Portalnd, peanut butter frosting before she moved to Oregon, so that meant I had to come up with something to go with the peanut butter frosting. Don't get me wrong, in the process I ate about half of the frosting on its own, but I didn't think bringing a bowl of frosting and a bunch of spoons to work was going to go over so well. So after deciding against chocolate cake-ness (too expected and, really, not one of my favorite combos for cake and frosting) I did some research online and came across a bunch of recipes using banana cake. This looked promising, till I realized that it was Saturday....and I had to bake on Sunday....and there was no way that I was going to have over-ripe bananas that quick. So nix the bananas. But it led to a random recipe for applesauce cake...oooh! I like apples and peanut butter. And cinnamon. I like cinnamon. So I modified a favorite recipe and here are the results:

Aren't they cute!!!



...and delicious!

Several people at work were a little hesitant about the cinnamon and peanut butter (till they tried it and lovevd it), but it really added some depth to the frosting and the cake. All in all, absolute success.

Second episode of the week....I was approached today by Lady P (aka: my boss and the co-owner of the company) and asked to bake something for Owl's last day of work tomorrow. I was very excited about the whole conversation actually, basically L.P. offered to finance a fabulous state of the art bakery and pay me for it....and buy me a pony. Ok, not really any of that, but she did say that I had her support if I ever left my job to open a bakery, which is almost as good as that other stuff. Anyway, as a result of her offering to pay for any groceries I needed to bake for Owl, I decided to go with the dark chocolate hazelnut cupcakes I've been plotting lately. I'm totally thriilled with how they taste and look (dark chocolate hazelnut cake topped with Nutella and a piece of dark chocolate with hazelnuts in it), but I kinda misjudged their remove-ability-ness....that is to say, they don't come out of the wrappers so easy. But, messy eating aside, here they are:



It's a whole herd of them!



 I have 6 dozen of these....and 8 mini-loafs. I have a lot of chocolate. But, really, when is that a bad thing?

Why you scream-a like a girl?

So far this being single thing has consisted of many first-experiences too. It started with spending a Friday night sneaking to the nearby fields and stealing mint plants. Then getting a dog, discovering a love for baking miniature things, taking off for an unplanned weekend to visit my sister. Ok....so the mint-stealing-night was probably the biggest first (unless you count the time we stole cactus, but that's a whole nother deal). But regardless, yesterday marked another major first...first crush in two and a half years. I feel very high school-ish, but it's almost unnerving to realize that you are super excited that you have a mini-crush on the cute guy at the toy store. The past 2 weeks have been so stressful that the silly-giddy-self-conscious feeling really threw me off. But in a good way.

In other positively happy news, jury duty has officially been cancelled! This is good for several reasons....or two. 1-I really couldn't afford to miss that much work, and 2-Now there is no chance of me running into Redneck on the day of his sentencing....woo!!!! Plus, my hours with Chatty at work have been reduced, super excited. I also have more hours with Wolfman (dat-a make-a me happy!) and with Whiner (not so happy). However, I am also scheduled to work with one of my favorite kiddos, Banana (that one was for you DonkeyOwl)...which makes me super happy. So all-in-all, not a bad day. Or two.