Cooking with Jack

Today Jack and I made ice cream and red velvet cake. We started with the ice cream - chocolate! - and then moved on to the cake. Both seemed to have come out well, but as they were both for events tomorrow (the ice cream for a bbq at Willa's and the cake for mom to take to church), I don't know exactly how they turned out!

Jack puts the chocolate in the pot to melt.
Jack sports a sticker Lindsay and I found while cleaning.
Taking self-portraits.





Stirring the chocolate and cream mixture.
Trying to taste the ice cream mixture.
For the cake, Jack decided he would mix the cocoa with the food coloring by hand. As a result, the cake was a lovely red. Unfortunately, so were Jack's hands!

The Easter Cake!

Here's the cake for tomorrow's Easter festivities at Pam's:


I spent the morning preparing it - well, really about an hour because it's really easy to make. Here are some photos of the process.







Are you drooling yet?

Throwing Nutrition Out the Window...

...should not really be a post for Nutrition Month but the fact is, tomorrow I'm throwing a little impromptu birthday party for myself and we're eating New Orlean's style! Shrimp po boys, chicken and sausage gumbo and king cake are all on the menu. I found the little plastic baby recently (he has sentimental value, as he was the little baby in our very first king cake our first day in New Orleans!).



I think the kids are planning something for the real deal on Wednesday. One of my students said to me yesterday, "Ms. Roberts, next Wednesday could you leave your classroom door open and, like, not be there?"

These Are a Few of My (Current!) Favorite Things...

Whether it be a new book, a new movie or a new activity, here are some things to try out (in absolutely, completely random categories). Note that I say CURRENT because these are the things I keep coming back to right now. There's a big difference between CURRENT and ALL-TIME (though scrapbook and the Harry Potter book probably fall under all-time as well).

Activity: Scrapbooking
My new favorite activity is taking all my pictures and putting them together into fun artsy projects. Makes them much more fun to look at and really narrows down the pictures. I did one last summer of all the pictures taken of one of my classes last year, and currently I'm working on 1.) a summertime scrapbook of all the summer adventures and 2.) a 2007 Year-End Scrapbook of all the events from September-December. Then I will keep going with these. They're time consuming though so don't be shocked if I go months after the event before documenting. It's a learned art, so I think I'm getting there. Here are two page samples:



Soups: Amy's Organic bean-based soups.
I like the minestrone, the lentil, etc. (And for the vegetarian members of the family - there's no meat anywhere in the soups; it's an all-vegetarian company.) This has been an easy way to take lunches to work. (And for the record, I don't like the tomato - I think it's like eating tomato sauce.)

Potential Travel Destination: Greece!
Never been, REALLY want to!

Book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
I know this has been out for six months already, but it's honestly the last book I read straight through without skimming

TV: The Office
I haven't liked a sitcom this much since Friends was on the air! My favorite character by far is Jim, but all the characters are funny and I can't pinpoint which aspect of the show I like the best! Here's just a small part of the interaction between Dwight and Jim:



Movie: Across the Universe
The basic idea is that it's a musical using all Beatles music - and how much of them you recognize depends on how well you know the Beatles, I guess (I didn't realize some of them were Beatles songs but I knew most of them!).



CD: The Music Man Soundtrack
I can't help it - I'm exposed to it A LOT these days! You'd think that would make me sick of it, but it has had the opposite effect for some strange reason...

I'm thinking there should be a theme to March... but I'm stumped as to what the theme should be.

Oh... and SOMEONE'S birthday is in 11 days... I won't say who, but I think you can figure it out...

It's National Pie Day!

Here's an apple pie from Thanksgiving.


Of all the national days to post on the family website, this one felt the most fitting!

The New Year's Cake!

Finally, here are pictures of the New Year's cake, which will be just another offering from the imaginary Pig & Pepper.




I'll admit it right here, folks. The numbers are only different sizes by accident. I made the 8 much bigger than the 2, so I made the 0's funky sizes as well to make it look intentional. I think the effect works though!

Desserts by Kara and Emily

Kara and Emily's Christmas dessert - an ornament cake!

Christmas Desserts, Post # 2

Okay, so this is actually, positively the last post of the day, as I'm going to go watch the deleted scenes on my new Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix DVD, but I wanted to get the pictures up of the other desserts. The first is the snowflake cake and the second is the grand marnier torte.




There will be more photos coming of our Christmas Eve festivities shortly - we have TONS of pictures, mostly due to a late evening surge of energy that involved wigs and hats and crazy family members so I need to weed through them all to get them into the photo gallery. I, of course, will feature some of our best looks with the wigs.

Christmas Desserts, Post # 1

As a follow up to my planned Christmas desserts, here's a picture of the Chocolate Peppermint Whipped Cream Tart I made for Sunday's Fake Christmas. As I speak, everyone upstairs is enjoying the Snowflake cake and the Grand Marnier Torte, and pictures will be up of those later on or tomorrow.



I took a picture of it on the little cabinet that we had it on all day. I was trying to make it look like an ad or something, but it just wasn't working! (I think it's the thermostat behind it that kills it!)

Pig and Pepper Designs

Lindsay and I have had this REALLY unofficial cake business for a couple years now. Really that just means that we make cakes for various functions and hope to make them more professionally at some point. But for now we'll stick to being impressive at family events and parties.

In any case, here's a showcase of some of the Pig & Pepper designs.

Our most recents, for Richie's 30th Birthday Party this Saturday:



A cake for a baby shower for my friend Celeste, February 2006:



A winter wonderland cake for Christmas one year (a little busy, I think!):



A butterfly cake I made for a friend for her birthday:



A piano cake for Joe's college graduation - next time I'll figure out how to make it with legs!



We're now on a cake decorating kick so we'll see what else we can come up with as the months go by!