Remember my Wipe. Flush. Wash. sign from last week?
Well, it was feautured on Roca and Company,
another mommy blog, today!
You can see it here. Thanks Carmen, you made my day!
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the Crumb Factory |
Guess what?
Remember my Wipe. Flush. Wash. sign from last week? Well, it was feautured on Roca and Company, another mommy blog, today! You can see it here. Thanks Carmen, you made my day!
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There was no school yesterday and it was a long day. A long long day. We did stickers, we colored, we glued things, we watched tv, we looked through all the holiday catalogues that arrive in the mail every single day and circled all the toys we want someone to buy us for Chanukah. We also played outside before, after and while my bro was here for a while. We even made chocolate chip cookies. I'm not sure how this is possible, but it was still only 2pm. And in the later afternoon, when things really started to really get crazy, we made dinner. It was only three o'clock, but it seemed like the right time to do it. So we did. Together. Sometimes you just have to say all in because really, has there ever been a mess so big that you haven't been able to clean up? Having said that, this is what we made - hush puppies. Or at least this is what I thought hush puppies were. Turns out, not so much. We made hotdogs wrapped up in dough, but when I googled "hush puppies recipe" I got something that was a cross between deep fried corn dogs and hot dogs wrapped in mashed potatoes and boiled. I do believe, though, that the main theme through all the recipes that came up were sticks. Ours weren't that complicated and did not include corn, potatoes or oil. They almost included sticks but then I got nervous after I stuck the skewers* in, I thought the kids would hurt themselves when they bit into the hotdogs, so I took them out. Either way, this is what we did, following no recipe: Open up a package of hotdogs and count the hotdogs. I was sure there were 8 so I divided my dough into 8 pieces, but there were only 7 hotdogs. Didn't hotdogs used to come in packs of 8? Anyway, make a batch of dough, using this recipe or use some premade pizza dough - Trader Joe's has awesome pizza dough for 99cents, you really can't beat that - or use refrigerated crescent dough, and if you can find one that is both kosher and pareve, can you tell me what brand it is, please? Divide the dough into seven pieces and roll each pieces into a long strand, about 16 inches long. Stating at the top, wrap the dough around the hotdog and place on a foil covered cookie sheet. Brush the dough with a beaten egg and bake in a 400 degree preheated oven for about 20 minutes, or until the dough is golden brown. Allow the hotdogs to cool for a good while because they get really hot inside their little dough homes. I served these with cole slaw and leftover roasted sweet potatoes and cauliflower and it went over well, if I do say so myself. *If you are not skewer-phobic like I am, and you are using wooden skewers, make sure to soak them in water for 30 minutes before putting them into the oven, otherwise they may burn. Thanks so much for stopping by! If you like what you've read, leave a comment, please!
I made these a few months back for my 6 year old's birthday party at Home Depot. If you've been following along, you'll know what I am talking about. If you're new here (welcome!) then you can see everything about that really fun party right here. My son had requested that we have a barbecue at his party, but since it was to be held inside the Home Depot, I wasn't really sure how to pull that off. So we made these hamburger cupcakes and cookie french fries instead and they were a hit. And I know that there are several mommies in my son's class who did not believe me that these were really easy to make, so I'll show you. The original idea came from Bakerella and I pretty much followed her directions exactly (for once!). I baked a batch of Duncan Hines cupcakes using the yellow cake mix, but followed the directions for the pound cake on the side of the box, using a box of vanilla pudding, extra eggs and whatever else that recipe calls for. Then I baked two boxes of Duncan Hines brownies, the cakey kind, not the fudgy kind, because as much as I love a good fudgy brownie, I needed them to hold together. While the cupcakes and the brownies were cooling, I made the frosting. Using one larger size container of Duncan Hines vanilla frosting, I tinted most of it green using the green colored food gel colors from Wilton. The rest (about 6 tablespoons worth) I tinted ketchup colored, using red and purple gel food colors in a 3:1 ratio - so that would be 3 drops of red to 1 drop of purple. Once your cupcakes are cooled, slice them in half horizontally, to make them look like hamburger buns. If I had had a little more time, I probably would have cut them in thirds and discarded the middle piece so that the buns were not quite so thick, but it worked out fine this way too. Then, using a round cookie cutter or a glass cup the same size as your buns, cut out circles from the brownies. I was able to get 12 brownies from each pan of brownies, which worked out well because I had baked 24 cupcakes to begin with. Remove the top half of each bun and place a brownie burger on each cupcake bottom. Fill a sandwich bag with the green icing and if you have a cake decorating tip and a coupler to attach the tip to the bag, go for it. Well, actually, go for it before you fill the bag with icing - but if you have the coupler and tip you would already know that. If you don't have those items and have no idea what I am talking about, no sweat! Just fill the bag with icing, twist the top of the bag closed and snip a teeny-tiny corner off of the bag. When you squeeze the bag, the icing will flow out if that tip. Or, and here's what I did - it was 11pm and I couldn't find any couplers. But I could find the cake decorating tip - so I improvised. Get some good 'ole duct tape and attach the tip to the bag with tape. Perfect. Pipe lettuce onto each brownie. Then do the same with the red icing. Pipe ketchup. Replace the top of the cupcake on to the brownie, pressing down very lightly so the lettuce and ketchup icing flows out of the sides a little. I stuck a toothpick into each cupcake at this point just as a little insurance policy. I really didn't want the tops sliding off of the brownies because of the icing. Then take your super-expensive and tiny jar of sesame seeds and marvel at the cost of so few seeds. Brush the tops of your burger buns with a small amount of water and sprinkle the sesame seeds on top. Delight in the fact that they now look like actual hamburgers. Place all your hamburger cupcakes in pans and set them aside. On to the french fries. First, I want to say that the template for the adorable french fries holder came from here. It was probably more time consuming to put together the envelopes for the french fries than it was to make the fries. The second thing I would like to point out is that having a Silpat mat when baking these or any cookies is really the way to go. These mats are made of silicone, can be placed in an oven that is up to 500 degrees and don't allow your cookies to stick to the pan. They also help the cookies bake to an even color. I don't know why and I don't really care, but I do know that I love them. So go, go now and pick up a few for yourself. Go ahead, I'll wait. Start by mixing up a batch of Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix, using the recipe for the roll out cookies. Divide the dough in thirds and roll out the dough onto the Silpat mats, baking one batch at a time if you have only one Silpat mat. Once the dough is rolled out onto the Silpat, use a knife or a pizza cutter to cut the dough into french fries. Starting from the long side of the dough. cut narrow lines vertically through the dough, making long thin french fries. Then make one horizontal cut through the long side of the dough, in the center, cutting all the french fries in half. Sprinkle the cookie dough with a nice amount of sugar. Bake. Right when they come out of the oven, hold onto the pan (use an oven mit, please!) and with the same knife or cookie cutter, recut the initial line that you made before you baked the cookies. Sprinkle with a nice amount of sugar again and let cool. My cookies spread in the oven a little more than I had liked, so I used the pizza cutter to cut those in half, vertically, again, while they were still hot and before they got crunchy. Once they cooled off, I piled them all into a pan and baked the next batch. Once all the french fries were done, I packed them into the little holders and off we went to the party. Wait, that's not true, We didn't go right off to the party. The party was three days later. But the good news is that I stored all the cupcakes, covered, in the fridge and the cookies, covered, high up in one of my cabinets where no one would look to find them, and they were still fresh and very tasty the morning of the party. Thanks so much for reading! If you like what you saw, please leave a comment!
If you've ever done any laundry, you know that, at best, one sock will be missing when the load comes out the dryer. At worst, one sock of every pair will be missing. I've never understood this, I cannot explain it and I doubt science will ever come up with a plausible explanation either. It's just one of those things that has to be accepted on faith. Having said that, there also exists the phenomenon of socks seeming to be mateless when in fact, one sock wound up in the laundry while the other did not. I can blame this on the kids, but if we're being honest with each other, this is learned behavior. From their father. And I know that this is inherited from Josh because I don't wear the large black dress socks that I find next to the bed, on the bathroom floor, in the living room or under the computer desk. It's been almost nine years since we got married and nine years since I began finding socks in random places, so I have just accepted this, made peace and moved on. However, I refuse to spend my life buying socks, so whenever I find a sock that has no buddy, I stick it in one of the drawers of my nightstand and hope for the best. Once in a great while, or when I cannot jam one more sock into the drawer, I will dump the whole load of socks into a bucket and sort. I really dislike sorting. My five year old, on the other hand, loves sorting, Sadly, he was in school when the drawer overflowed and I kind of thought that signing him out early to do laundry would be a misuse of the school's sign-out sheet. This is the bucket of socks before the sorting and pairing began. We were done two hours later. I could have spent those two hours going to Target and buying new socks - and dumping my bin of unpaired socks in someone's Dumpster on the way, but that would be wrong. Both the buying and the dumping would be wrong. So I didn't. Baby and I sorted, paired, made a huge mess and came up with this. A bucket of deliciously sorted socks. And the goddess of all things laundry wept with joy. Thanks for reading! If you like what you've read, leave a comment please!
We've been having, shall we say, some bathroom issues lately. Either the kids forget the steps they're supposed to take being sitting and wiping their hands on a towel or they just don't care. Either way, in a bid to help them - and me, because wiping down the bathroom has been a daily chore lately - I made them this sign. I hung one in each bathroom and it's wonderful. The sign - any sign really - capitalizes on the boys' burgeoning reading abilities, which they are very proud of. And the words themselves - wipe, flush, wash - are kind of catchy if you say them in a fast, singsongy kind of way. Yesterday, when I walked past a bathroom in use - with the door wide open of course - I saw some little feet swinging and heard a little voice singing the three words to our new anthem. Whatever it is, it's working. All I can say is yahoo! If you like what you've read, please leave a comment!
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September 2018
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