Food Fun

 Never in a million years would I have thought that I would like cooking and baking. I love making food for the family. Especially foods that are good tasting and safe for Connor to eat and enjoy. I like to tell people that I learned how to cook twice. The second time was learning to cook with food allergies.

I've come a long way!

A few of the things I have made lately, minus the corn dogs and brownies.

Simmering enchilada sauce.

Homemade chocolate glazed yeast donuts.

Chocolate raspberry ice cream cake.

Mint chocolate chip cookies.

The first angel food cake in the new oven.

A happy yolk!

(I didn't make the egg, that's God's doing, but I had to share its smile.)

Homemade stuffed crust pizza.

Homemade quick cinnamon rolls.

Sweet potato pie!

Not only do I enjoy being in the kitchen but I also LOVE cast iron. Why oh why did I wait so long to try it? This is the latest piece we've acquired. It was in an old building on the farm.

It was lead tested and brought back to life.

All ready to use.

All Things Food

 Over the last several months Connor has been able to try some new foods.

We bought a waffle iron some time ago.

A waffle is just a pancake with wells to hold sugar.

I make a triple batch of chocolate chip waffles almost every weekend.

We freeze the extras to use for breakfast during the week.

Corn dogs!

I had procrastinated about this for a long time.

If I had known how easy they were to make, I would have done it sooner.

 They taste like fair corn dogs too!

Super simple and super yummy.

Connor definitely loves these!

Yeast doughnuts!

Not as easy as the corn dogs but worth the effort.

Homemade pizza at our house is nothing new.

I've made the dough and sauce for years because of Connor's allergies.

Now we do it because we love it.

Recently we tried them in cast iron skillets.

Only three of us were home at the time and we each made our own version.

I folded over the excess dough and added cheese.

Part way through baking we decided the crust needed to be brushed with oil.

These were kind of deep dish style but oh so good!

Next time we'll brush the crust with butter and Parmesan cheese.

Last but not least...

I've had this mixer for 20 years.

It didn't die on me but was on it's last leg.

I've used it so much I wore out the gears.

I was sad to say good-bye.

It's just a mixer but I've had it for so long!

Meet the new mixer.

I've used it a couple of times in the first three days I've had it.

It's going to take some time to adjust to this one.

It has a little more power to it.

I can't wait to try an angel food cake!

Irony Things

You may remember that we acquired several pieces of cast iron during our vacation this summer.

If not, you can read about it here.

Some of them were in desperate need of deep cleaning and seasoning.

The little corn bread pan I did right away as it was in good condition.

The two big pieces, however, would require several days of elbow grease.

I decided to wait until fall when the outside temperatures would be

more conducive to several hours of oven usage.

This pan was quite gross. I knew it could be cleaned because I've done it before.

I had one once that was so bad it stunk up house for several days!

Thankfully this one wasn't smelly, just icky.

I alternated from boiling water in it to scrubbing it with rock salt.

Boil, cool, dry, scrub, dry, repeat.

I eventually got some steel wool.

It took a couple of days but I got it clean. :)

This is how it came out after only two seasoning sessions in the oven.

All ready to use!

We could not wait to use this one.

It's probably one of our favorites.

I can fix a lot of hash browns at once!

This one required a lot of scrubbing too but not quite as much as the deep one.

We use this frequently as well.

Now we have two double burner griddles.

:)

I finally tried cookie dough in the skillets.

 They turned out really well.

We did let them cool extra long so they would come out clean.

We cut the big ones like a pizza.

Dwayne promptly nicknamed them pazookies.

Christmas

We had a very nice Christmas this year. Low key just how we like it.

We had a beautiful snowfall perfect for Christmas morning.

(Pretty time is over, the snow can leave now...)

We had a great visit with my mom.

We were thankful the snow stayed away until after our visit.

It was nice of the snow to do that.

It's not the greatest picture but it's Pepper on her new warming blanket.

We moved it to her doghouse the next morning.

For Christmas morning I made Grandma Schultz's cinnamon rolls.

I finally got them right!

Someone was excited to get Jim Carrey's Christmas Carol.

Oh look, more books on writing.

We also got him a book on writing fight scenes.

You need something to use those weapons for...

That would be Connor's itty bitty flash light that is from his new knife.

And yes, there's a stuffed duckling stuck beside his face.

I took the boys roller skating.

I brought along my hand quilting project to do in the snack area.

As much as I love quilting, I would have loved to have skated with the boys.

My foot is slowly returning to normal... very slowly.

Someday I'll be able to put my skates on again.

Sorry for the fuzzy picture.

He was squatting not falling.

The last several years the boys have not exchanged gifts with their cousins.

We have done an activity instead.

This year we went bowling and had a blast.

OK, I watched and the rest bowled but it was still fun.

Spare!

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It was a nice several days with food, family, and play time. I was hoping I would escape this holiday season without having a major mourning moment. I made it all the way to the evening before Christmas Eve. Then I fell apart for a short time that lingered into Sunday morning worship. I had a couple of sad moments before then but not the onslaught of tears like this time around. I'm pretty sure it was the predicted snowfall that triggered memories with my dad on Christmas Eve. I should have expected it. It's part of life. It's good to have good memories of a missed Papa.

Mmmm Cookies

Over the weekend Dwayne and I wanted cookies.

This is nothing new but he wasn't feeling well and my foot was grumpy.

So we jokingly asked Nolan to bake us some.

He did and they were awesome!

Why is there a laptop in the kitchen?

Good question.

Upon our request Nolan searched allrecipes.com for some good cookies.

That's what the laptop was for.

Armed with his recipe he began working. 

I stayed out of the way except to tell him where some of the ingredients were...and to take pictures.

:)

Almost in the oven.

I have no idea what recipe he used because he closed it as soon he was done.

I'm hoping he remembers what it was so we can keep it.

I will say they were very good.

Our only complaint was that there weren't more!

We knew Nolan was capable of doing it.

I think the school's cooking class has taken his fear out of cooking.

Using a new recipe doesn't deter him at all now.

Awesome job son.

(Can't wait for more cookies!)

Updates

This isn't really an update but more like "we finally got around to it".

Dwayne worked on his Associates Degree from

Tyndale Theological Seminary for what seemed like forever.

He actually finished it around the time my dad was killed.

(The date on the diploma says 9/2/2015, just one week after.)

Because of the timing, we opted to get the diploma later.

Well life went on and we kind of forgot.

In February I decided to secretly get it for him.

Although I got worried with a few close calls, he didn't suspect a thing.

It was an awesome surprise.

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Since we can use duck eggs, I have been making homemade noodles.

For my birthday I ordered a ravioli maker.

I was a little hesitant to try one but it turned out to be super easy!

This was my first batch of 12.

I overfilled the pockets and had to help them out... thus the dimples.

The second batch turned out much better.

Now I just need to work on the flavor of the filling.

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I have good news and bad news.

First the bad news.

In case you haven't seen our Facebook posts, all of our ducklings died before they hatched.

We were so saddened and frustrated.

We do want to try to hatch some out but we decided to wait until next year.

Now for the good news.

We've ordered six female Indian Runners.

The ducklings should be here by the 26th.

And we should get some colored ones!

We also picked up a couple Pekins.
They are supposed to be a relatively tame breed (and good layers).
Connor's hoping to make pets out of these.
He's named them Click and Lavender.
It will be several weeks before we know their gender.

So cute to hear little peeping again!

Love

 We're not really ones to go all out for Valentine's Day around here.

We usually do nothing.

(Unless taking advantage of the left-over sales counts!)

Love me some chocolate.

My father-in-law gave us some strawberries the other day.

I didn't have a particular recipe in mind so I dipped them in chocolate.

Love me some more chocolate.

I had just enough left over melted chocolate to fill four frog candy forms.

Perfect for each of us to have one.

The only frog I'll ever willingly eat.

Dwayne and I did end up eating out just the two of us.

We had chocolate covered strawberries for dessert when we came home.