Mothers Day Dessert :o)

For Mothers day, the goose and me wanted to do some skype-cook-bonding and make a yummy surprise dinner for mom! (but mom knew about it...again with the surprises).

It all started when I found the recipe for this bad boy:



Its called, "chocolate panna cotta cake". oooooh yes. Doesn't that sound yummy!

Me and goose thought so too! So we decided to make one for mom (well, the one goose made mom got to eat. The one I made, me and mark got to eat and some of our friends too :o) Sharing is great!)

here is the link!:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chocolate-Panna-Cotta-Layer-Cake-240700

Some of you may have noticed that the above cake photos is a much higher quality than my typical photos. Did I get a new camera? Did I learn how to take a photo? Did Mark give me those roses for mothers day?!?

Nope! None of the above. :o)

Actually, the above photo was not taken by me. Nor was that cake cooked by me.

That's because the one that I made looks a little like regurgitated cottage cheese:



see what I mean? :o)

This one is pretty funny too:



The rotella oil and crockpot boxes in the background add to the ambiance, don't you think? You know, just like those yellow roses in the first one :o)

Anyway, this is the funnest cake I've ever made since I was doing it with the goose. :o) And we were laughing, like, the whole time. (...But probably, the amount of fun you have while making it is inversely proportional to how good the cake turns out. Hence the above photo :o) )

For instance:

"So goose." *giggles* "Guess what I am using for my water bath since I don't have any ice cubes"

"Hmmm...ok! I give up"

"frozen vegetables"

" WHAT?" *surprised laughs* "you have vegetables floating in your water!?"

*laughter from both of us* <--the kind where you have a hard time breathing.

"No! They're in bags. Duh!"

*more laughter*

"But don't worry, they're not peas. They're just yucky lima beans. That means mark wont mind"

*more laughter*

"oh no. I think they're melting..."

Soooo...my water bath didn't go so good. I ended up putting it in the freezer to thicken. Then I forgot about it. It got too thick. So! The only thing left to do was scoop it out smooth it out to a becoming, cottage cheese like finish. And then douse it in powdered sugar for a photo shoot.

But don' let this deter you from trying it! This cake is really, super duper rich. If you are or know a chocolate lover, you need to try this on for size. At least once.

I just recommend having ice cubes on hand :o)

**note: just so you know, the goose's version (heavy on the ice cubes) turned out BRILLIANT! JUST like the picture (...minus the chocolate band. hehe!) So don't be afraid to try this is you want to try something fancy and chocolaty.

Gardening!

Purdue Village has these garden plots that you can rent for a season :o)

We decided to rent one! It was lots of fun :o) Well, mostly lots of fun :o) You'll see!

here's before :o)


Thar she be! I spent a long, loooong time digging this up. And sifting out the weeds. And the rocks. And the random trash in the dirt. :o) And we decided to use planter boxes to put the plants in. Here is it with the weeds out and the planter boxes in!



Oo! purdy purdy boxes! Mark built them :o) AND the fence! The fence is essential. We have MILLIONS of rabbits in Purdue Village. And they looove gardens too.

Here are some photos with the plants in them too :o)

Tommatoes


peppers



We also planted lots of corn, and cucumbers, and zucchini and beans and peas and radishes, carrots, and lettuce, and...corn! And corn! and...corn! (Mark likes corn)

Look! Here is one that is grown!


(doesn't it kinnda look like I am magically holding it out sideways? Yeah. Themz is skills)

Here are some of our zucchini. They were BIG :o)


we used them to make Zuca-nukes.


mark was pretty excited :o)


unfortunately...those were the only vegetables we ate from our garden :o( No wait! We did eat some snap peas. Oh, and some lettuce. But here's a little tip from us to you. :o) If you let your lettuce grow, and grow and grow.... its not pretty. What it is, is bitter. :o)

See, we're not very good gardeners. I over-watered, and then under-watered to compensate. And fretted about the pH balance and nutrient content of the soil. And about how it was essentially clay (not fun to work with by the way). And for some reason, people went through our garden and cut all the heads off our green bean plants. Isn't that weird? And then we were out of town when everything got ripe. Bummer. But we sure learned a lot! :o) And we made a lot of friends in the garden arena. There are some pretty cool people in the garden! Like this older lady named Margaret (I think). She gave me a tour of her cool garden, and taught me things! (like, for instance, that we planted our snap peas to late. So thaaaats why they didn't grow!)

Then there was this super nice Chinese man that had the most beautiful garden I have ever seen. SOOO pretty. and it was HUGE. like 4 times the size of out plot. And it was gorgeous. I told him that his garden was pretty. And then he told me stuff in Chinese. And then he called over his friend to translate for us. I told him I thought his garden was pretty. He smiled. Then he started cutting mounds of leafy Chinese vegetable things, and gave them to me! I didn't know what to do! So, I told him he didn't need to do that, and then he told me something in Chinese, and I sorta of smiled and thanked him. And then, he asked if I wanted any help with my garden!

And by golly! I said "Yes!" :-D

So, he came over, and said that he thought that for "an american", we had a good garden :o)

I was pretty proud.

And then he ripped out my "cucumber" plant.

I was pretty flabergasted.

Apparently I had been carefully tending a weed :o) We had a good laugh about that one. He he!

I told you. We're not good gardeners...

...Yet :o)




Here's till next year!

20 dollar cake, take 2

Ok. I know I have problems. I love baking cakes. And this one is so painfully, wonderfully yummy, I had to tell you more about it.

I love this cake. Its pretty stinkin fantastically wonderful :o)

Its real name is "White Chocolate Truffle and Chocolate Fudge Layer Cake"

This cake came into our baking repertoire thanks to Mommy Hargett

Me and Susan used to go over and bake with her on Sunday afternoons. I have some pretty fantastic memories from doing that with her. It was so fun :o) She sure was a good mommy hargett to us :o)

And now when ever I make this cake, I think of Mommy Hargett. And smile :o)

Anyway, the Teek and Alex gave this recipe its name. Apparently if you have to buy every single thing on the ingredients list, it costs around $20. But not to fear. The Teek says now she can do it in buying only about $8 worth of ingredients! :-D All I generally have to buy is some cream and white chocolate. But you don't want to use the super cheap white chocolate. If you get the super duper cheap kind, it is going to have too much fat and plasticy yucky stuff in it, and your filling will be suuuuuper runny. Don't ask how I know.

here is the link to the recipe:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/White-Chocolate-Truffle-and-Chocolate-Fudge-Layer-Cake-107459

if you make it, don't use all the cream in the truffle filling. Trust me. AND, if you line the baking pan with plastic wrap, then put the truffle filling in, and then put the cake on top of it and freeze it for a while, then you can flip it out and top it with the other cake half. Then, it wont leak out everywhere! It works great.

We made it a little while later with the above changes, and here is a picture.




good stuff! I think this is one of my most favorite cakes of all time.

Becky's Prom and Mom's Birthday!

Yep! After the semester was over, we went back to Muncie and got to see Becky off to Mormon Prom and have a yummy birthday dinner for mom.

I did her make up :o) It was fun.




( I dont know why this is stuck sideways. Sorry Becky!)

Doesnt she look so pretty?

Mom and Becky added the little sparkly things to the fishtail. Purdy purdy!



We had a nice dinner for moms birthday and I made mark's mom a birthday cake that the teek named "20 dollar cake"



the reason that it looks kinnda funny with that drooly drizzly stuff is because it leaked out. I used too much cream in the filling. I admit. :o( But! The filling is so, SO YUMMY, I couldn't waste it. I just couldn't!

So... I kept scraping it off the plate when it leaked out from beneath the frosting and put it on the top. :o) Then I chilled it into submission. Muhahaha!

Ahem.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Funny Faces and Alpha Nu Sigma

So!

At at the end of spring semester 2009 I got inducted into Alpha Nu Sigma. Its like the honor society for the American Nuclear Society. They took us to a nice dinner and it was yummy.

:o) We got dressed up a little and took pictures




Don't we clean up nice?


love you all!

Flowers from Mark!

:-D Yay!

The labs Mark works at are pretty close to the house. He walks there or rides his bike when the weather is nice. :o)

And SOMETIMES....he brings me back FLOWERS!! :-D Yay!



aaaww, aren't they pretty?

:o)
They grow right in the fields he that walks through! That sure is handy.


These things are cool because they go to sleep at night and then they open back up again in the morning. But then they die in the afternoon since they are little baby flowers. That part is sad. :o( But they are pretty while they last!

Clouds

:o)

Spring time makes pretty clouds.




pretty, pretty clouds :o)

(I think Mark is rubbing off on me :o) And it is a wonderful thing!)

:-D

Purdue Picnics!

:-D

I love it how some time there are random free picnics on the lawns in the Engineering Mall at Purdue.

Mark and I went to one! It was like a lunch date! :o)





there is handsome Mark! :-D




I had to have photographic evidence of the event :o) Good thing I was pretending to be a tourist and had my camera handy :o)



:o)

:o) More Spring Blooms! :o)

Spring always makes me think of that musical "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers:"

Every field wears a bonnet, with some spring daisies on it, even birds of a feather show their clothes off together...

Sun's gettin' shinery, to spotlight the finery,

Spring! Spring! Spring!...

:-D

Ahem. Anyway, I have come to realize that in Indiana, spring isnt like that. Instead, spring sorrta creeps up ya.

Thats why spring is harder to take pictures of than fall.

See, for fall you sort of have a warning that the leaves are coming, and then it will get cold and things sorta go from there. But! In the spring, sometimes it gets warm and things start to bud, and then it will freeze again (bummer), and then the process repeats.

So, you never really know when its spring spring and time to grab the camera.

But! Eventually you will look outside and say to yourself, "by golly! there are flowers EVERYWHERE!" :o) And then you grab your camera and feel like a tourist again.

(the other hint that spring is here is that your allergies start going nuts. But that is waaaaaaaay less pleasant a herald than flowers. Dont worry. I didnt take pictures. :o)

So! Here are a few picture just form around campus. Even after I had decided spring was here and it was time to take pictures...I kept forgetting to grab my camera. So! I hope you enjoy these! Love you guys!

SPRING!

IIIIIIIIIIIII! .....

looked out the window

and WHAT did i SEE!! :-D



POP CORN POPPING ON THE low-growing-shrub-bushes-around-Purduuuuuuuuue!

:-D

These little flower thingies are pretty cool. The flowers are tiny a white. They reminded me of the lei that we made for the Teeks wedding.





Aren't they cool?!

I took lots and lots of pictures of these flowers. People looked at me funny since I was walking around in the shrubbery.



But thats ok :o) I will choose to think that they were too smitten with my loveliness to think of my idiosyncrasies.

You know, like Mark is!

he he.

Ok, ok, not really, but it is nice to pretend :o)