Chocolate, Chicken and Cupcakes

The following are more chronicles of a martha 'wanna-be.'

Recent hostessing foodie goodness, household makeover accomplishments, and other adventures.

Enjoy.

First stop: chocolate cake.  Ummm.  I had made this cake once before and was craving it something fierce.  We were expecting company (and by company, I mean 2 other adults) and I figured that was enough to warrant this cake.  However, it was HUGE. We had oodles of cake left.

Which we ate.

Within 3 days.

How many calories was that?

Not too bad right?  The icing only has chocolate and cream-cheese, the cake has buttermilk....

It's called "Died and gone to heaven chocolate layer cake"

aptly named

(Recipe from Eat, Shrink and Be Merry cookbook)

Next up:  finishing previous pillow project.  Yup, that's right.  DONE.  All the pillows are covered, zippered, and in their new locations.  I had numerous fights with Bern, my reluctant old sewing machine...but we still conquered the pillows!

I followed an awesome 'hidden zipper' sewing tutorial online. 

Onwards to more cupcakes and some 'favors' that I made for a weekly women's group.  I hostess a table at our Church and brought some fall pumpkin cream-cheese cupcakes as well as some chocolate sash gifties.

Fun.

I've kind of decided that making wedding favors for a living would be a blast.

Any takers?

The recipe was from martha online- simple, fluffy, soft, lip smacking.

Cream cheese frosting from joy the baker, her cinnamon frosting from her red velvet cupcakes.

Gifties:

Not the best picture...

Final hostessing endeavour: enter J.O.  Jamie Oliver- new favourite cook book author.  (Thanks to the Searles) I've ordered every cookbook from the library.

Chicken.  Amazingness. 

However- handling dead, pale chicken, not so amazing.

Recipe: Sweet and Sour Pot Roasted Chicken

Coarsely chop 2 red peppers, 2 orange peppers, 4 red onions, 1 ripe pineapple

Place in bottom of roasting pan with a couple 'glugs' (as he calls them) of olive oil

Mix in salt and pepper, crushed fennel seed

Stuff chicken with chopped parsley and grated ginger (3 thumbs or so)

Season chicken inside and out with pepper and salt

Put chicken on veggies.  Pat with olive oil

Shove in oven- 375 for 1.5 hours

(served with rice)

BEST PART: after cooked, take half of veggies and put in blender with 6 tbsp of balsamic vinegar and 2 tbsp of salt.  Blend.

Chop up chicken- serve veggies and chicken over rice with veggie sauce.

SO good.

Oops- didn't take a picture of the end result.  But it was epic.

Couldn't find the recipe picture on his site- but there's other great recipes on it.

Next project:  It's a surprise.  However, some hints:

-crochet

-bright colours

-stuffing

-button eyes

-nieces and nephews...

Christmas projects have officially started!

p.s. Silas has a tooth that's just about up!

p.p.s for the interest of my readers: I'll be taking a photography course starting next week.  Hopefully that will make the blog pics better.

Household Projects etc.

Not sure what motivated all this, but here are some of my latest projects around the house.  


1. mmmmmore cupcakes.  
This time around it was cookies and cream cupcakes.  I overbaked them a touch, but they were otherwise yummy.  The bottom had half a cookie in it, the dough had chopped up oreos in it, and the top was a cream-cheese frosting.  
calories?  ha ha.  don't ask.

Recipe from Annie's Eats blog.

2. Gardening

Went and saw Brian Minter speak at our Church/community gardening event.  He is a gardening guru and got me inspired about winter gardening.  

Oops.  Went to the gardening store and spent 100 bucks.  But now we have a beautiful front plot (although, there is more to do) and I made this lovely winter bucket ALL BY MYSELF.  All the plants should survive the winter.  

Finger's crossed.  (psssst don't tell them that I killed the three flowers I planted in the summer...)

3. Sewing

My grandmother gave me HER mother's sewing machine.

Introducing:  my very own Bernina.  (Bern for short)

She's old.  She's solid.  She's a bit sassy...She's swiss. She's a hard worker and was a movie star sewing machine back in her day.

Mom came over and helped me figure her out.  She is a bit complicated and needs a bit of tender love, but we're figuring each other out.

Here's what we've accomplished together so far:

Amazing isn't it?  I mean, I am a terrible sewer.  Terrible.  The first two minutes alone with Bern, and we were already fighting.  She was groaning and whining.  I was grumpy and a bit rough with her...

But then.  There was a moment of understanding and, look what we accomplished!

Hello beautiful little pillow cover!  I carried this little gem from room to room trying to find a perfect location for it.  

I know.  Weird.

But here's the catch.  

I have a LOT more to re-cover.

It's okay.  Bern and I will do it.  (Right Bern?)

Oh....and did I tell you, Bern, we're going to sew a quilt together too?

I bought all these fabrics in Ghana well over a year ago.  The plan was to make a quilt to remember our trip  by.

We'll see how long this takes me to accomplish...

4.  re-decorating?

We have a family room attached to our kitchen.  It was getting over-crowded with furniture.  Not kid friendly.  New plan:  playroom!

So we painted a fun chalkboard on the wall (thanks Jackie for the idea and the paint)

And, I removed some furniture and put a nice reading chair (whose cushion will be re-covered soon), some fun flooring, and I will be putting up a toy organizer, possibly a bulletin board and some educational letters on the walls/maps etc.  

Any other fun ideas for a play room- pass them along!

So.  Yes.  Lots to do...

(And that's not even mentioning my continued scrapbook project of our Europe trip, the knitting project I'm starting, and card making....oh, and trying to cook like Jamie Oliver).