Internet...I need a recipe..

Hi Blogworld,

I want to make brownies and I want to eat the whole pan myself. Don't try and stop me. Well, OK, I MIGHT share them w/ my 92 yr old neighbor, but only like three because she lives alone and frankly I NEED these brownies. Derek is in NY and I am on my own w/ the three little piggies this weekend. I say piggie in the most loving of ways. They baby spits up on at least 6 outfits a day, Jacob takes his diaper and clothing off at any possible moment (and I have found NOTHING that I can keep on him, even zip jammies on backwards) so you can imagine the kind of laundry that creates and Lauren has a cold and is in a very fun paper cutting artistic phase. Cute little piggies but piggies none the less. Laundry piggies.

ANYWAY.. I already know what KIND of brownies I am going to make (Ghiradelli boxed...two boxes in a 9/13 pan...they are the best brownies known to man and come out perfect every time). What I am trying to figure out is what kind of delicious topping to put one them. What I want to put on them is some sort of marshmallow-y, chocolate frosting-y combo. Sometimes I have bakes the brownies in a cupcake tin w/a peanut butter cup in each one...yum. I have also done ones w/ a caramel-y peanut topping. I enjoy a good cream cheese frosting w/ raspberries as much as the next guy. Tonight I want something different. I want marshmallow. I want chocolate. I want a layer of brownie, a layer of marshmallow and then some chocolate frosting. I don't want to debate whether brownies should have frosting or not because we all know that no one really cares as long as there are brownies. :-)

Does anyone in blogworld have a recipe for this? I read a recipe like this on someone's site but can't find it now.

On this vein... I want to invite you readers to share your favorite recipe. The favorites in our house usually come from another person and I LOVE to collect recipe's because I love to cook. What do you love to cook? What is your signature recipe? Would you share? I need some new ones to inspire me to get cooking again.

Lauren-ism

The other day Lulu asked if she could have some lotion. I told her that she could but to be careful because a little bit goes a long way.

"you mean, like, less is more?"

"yes, how did you know that phrase?"

"What you used to love now, you're gonna adore
Charmin Ultra......Less is More.....

Cha, cha, cha Charmin"

You know the commercial w/ the cartoon bear? Again my firstborn proves that annoying jingles WORK. She then asked me if I was ever going to buy the new giant Oxyclean ball "that lasts up to 25 loads".

If you haven't heard the jingle...here is it.... http://www.charmin.com/en_us/templates/charmin_popup.html

Caribbean recipe's

If you want the recipe's to any of the dishes I mentioned in my last post...you can find them here on my recipe site. My friend Julie started it and I tagged a long. They are all there. :-)

http://juliecooks.wordpress.com/

More San Diego snaps....

Lauren wrote her name in the sand and posed by it. We do this every year on Christmas Eve when we go to the beach. This is the first year that SHE could write her own name. I have 5 years of these pictures.

For some reason I love Speedo suits on little kids. Maybe it is because they are not too grown up (as in...not too sexy). Maybe it is because little kids have such perfect little bodies...who knows. Anyway, she is always happy to pose for a picture. This is right before she went body boarding w/ her Grandpa (who is 63 going on 25...he bikes across countries, he runs marathons...he is unbelievable).
Here is Jacob's "name" picture. Lu wrote this one too. We couldn't get him to look at the camera...but we DID get about 12 shots of him shoveling sand into his mouth...with an actual shovel. It didn't bother him nearly as much in his mouth as it did on his feet.

Another day, another beach, another bucket.

One night we went to dinner w/ Derek's sister and her husband. Grandma and Grandpa babysat the kids for us. Jacob recently learned how to climb out of his crib and we had been having quite a time getting him back into bed. When we got home from dinner we asked if JJ had given them a hard time. They told us no...they put him back in bed once and then didn't hear from him again. This is where we found him asleep. He is fast asleep in this picture..but squinted b/c of the flash. This continued for the rest of the trip. We found him behind doors, in the bathroom, etc. We bought a crib tent the minute we got home. It is the only way that I know he is safe (he can open the sliding glass door in his room and he is on the second floor.....).


Nori slept a lot. This suitcase was her bed on the trip. We used dish towels for her burp clothes. Poor little matchstick baby. :-) Don't worry, she only slept in the suitcase on the trip. At home she doesn't sleep in one. She sleeps in a laundry basket. Seriously.

Norah slept in lots of great places on the trip...in a suitcase, on pool chairs, in strollers at SeaWorld and the Zoo, at many dinners while on my shoulder. Just never at night.



Poor red Lulu. We did use sunscreen, just not enough. Nori already looks so small to me here. She has changed so much.


Now that Lauren is able to write she can take pictures with all kinds of stuff in the sand. This one says "I love Peter Pan".

Busy weekend...........

We have been pretty busy this weekend. Our social worker called twice this week to tell us that she is "in the area" and wants to drop in for a post placement visit (this is to check the house to make sure it is safe and to see how we are all adjusting). I spend the very few free hours that I have making the house spic and span, arranging for everyone to be here (that means Derek and Lulu too...) and each time, about 30 minutes after she was supposed to be here.....she calls to cancel.

WHHHHHHAAAAAAA?????????

Finally she "had some time" today and we just got it done this morning. Sheesh. Two more to go. We are blessing the baby tomorrow in church and are having a small dinner at our house afterwards (50 people...but for me that is small). In honor of Nori's Caribbean heritage we are having all Caribbean food. Not all of it is Bahamian, but it is all from the general area. It all has lime juice in it........ I juiced 40 limes this weekend. Want to come over? Come on. You know you want to. Here is the menu to tempt you...............

--Island Pork (pork loin w/ a spicy rub and basted in a caramelized orange and honey sauce...sweet and spicy)
--Jerk Chicken w/ mango salsa
--Grilled Lemon Thyme Chicken w/ Peanut Satay or Curry Dipping Sauce
--Caribbean Black Beans (Black beans w/ bacon, onion, pepper, carrots and garlic...yummm)
--Black Eye Pea Salad (white beans, peppers, pumpkin, red onion, celery, and lime vinaigrette)
--Roast Bake (a coconut bread made w/ unsweetened coconut..so it isn't too sweet..but coconuty and delicious)
--Rice w/ Green Onion and Cilantro
--Honey and Cinnamon Roasted Sweet Potatoes
--Macaroni and Cheese Pie
--Lime Punch (make a simple syrup and steep 6 cups of banana's in the syrup. Then add water and fresh lime juice............Delicious)

Dessert:
--Blueberry cobbler
--Brownies
--Vanilla cupcakes w/ dried pineapple flowers
--Pumpkin pie

Now don't you want to come over?

What I did on my summer vacation.....

Earlier in the summer Derek's family made plans to take a trip to San Diego. We go on a vacation with them every year. Every other year it is a "big" trip. We have been to Hawaii several times, last year we went to Tuscany for cooking school and who knows where the future trips will be (Africa, I hope). On the off years we take a trip that doesn't require a long plane ride, passports and shots. Also, we can bring the kids. :-)

It turned out that Norah was only two weeks when we were scheduled to go. I went back and forth about whether to go or not, but in the end we got an extra room (so everyone else could sleep) and we were off. We stayed at a small-ish hotel RIGHT on the beach in La Jolla. It was great to be so close to the sand. We had a public beach, a pool and a huge playground structure and park right next door to the hotel. In a word.....awesome!! Jacob loved the sand have the time and hated it the other half (it was so soft...I have never seen sand like it...not up here anyway....). We usually hit the beach early and were in the normal pool by 10:00 am.

I finally cracked out my camera and took pictures. This one is for the grandmas!! We did the beach (fun), the zoo (not fun), Seaworld (started fun then turned QUICKLY into NOT AT ALL FUN) and general sitting around. It was great. Just yesterday my mom reminded me she hadn't seem many pictures of the kids...so here they are Mamma Jane. Here is the warning... there are a ton of pictures on this....so leave now if you aren't as interested as a grandma!!

The kids loved to go in the ocean but were a bit worried at first...especially Cubby

Lucky Daddy gets to hold all of Lu's "treasures"

We built lots of sand castles...

This bucket was a source of endless fun for the boy. Mostly it stayed on his head.

Jacob still loves sand...he spent many hours playing in it and was fine, as long as it wasn't on his feet.

This was the hotel's "childrens pool". It looked suspiciously like a fountian that was turned off. Or is it just me? Jcob sat in this pool for hours at a time. When you see the pictures of him "swimming" you will see why that is just fine with me. The boy think he can swim. This way I didn't have to keep scooping him off the bottom of the pool.

Lauren thinks the best part about hotels is the bathrobe!! This was taken on the morning of her actual birthday. She got room service breakfast in bed. We love that (especially when I don't have to worry about the sheets).

Jacob eating the rest of Lu's breakfast. I loved the light on his skin in this picture. He looks so little here.

I am not going to push my luck with blogger tonight so I will post the rest tomorrow.

He kills me!!

This is courtesy of the daycare where Cubby went while I was in Africa. They took this picture and sent it to me. Apparently, he was thrilled with the wig and wore it a lot.

He reminds me of a lunch lady...I don't know why. Also, this is proof that not only would he be a pretty girl (I KNEW it) but that those eyelashes ARE wasted on a boy......

Do you like the new look? Kelly from Nello Designs did if for me!! How great is this? I wanted a little change..............

My name is Rebecca....and I am an addict....

Yesterday I got ambitious and took the kids out of the house. I had three stops planned. About 12 seconds into the first stop I realized that it would be the ONLY one that day. The other errands weren't really that important (diapers and formula...who needs them REALLY?) I knew that I absolutely could not go home without getting some more caffeine. This was my third day w/ no sleep (Derek is in Boston) and the baby is still using the night time hours as her personal Mommy and Me bonding time. If I was going to make it through the day with out anyone crying (well, without me crying) I needed some help. Frankly, I wish someone would just invent something I can inject directly into my veins and save me from all that bothersome swallowing.........but since the FDA has all of their "rules" and "regulations" I was forced to find the liquid variety (not to mention that it is a slippery slope from injecting caffeine to injecting other naughty things like Nutella and Hollandaise Sauce....Caffeine is the gateway drug).

The store that I was at didn't have much selection. None, in fact. What they had was the new Diet Pepsi JAZZ soda in Strawberries and Cream. Clearly this is a new idea because I haven't seen this before. This might be a reaction to the Diet Coke w/ Black Cherry Vanilla, Cinnamon, gold powder and fairy dust. How many flavors does a soda need? Besides...isn't Diet Coke with Black Cherry and Vanilla called Diet Dr. Pepper?

As for the Diet Pepsi with strawberries, cream, puppies, unicorns, rainbows and fairies. NO. NO and NO.

Who's idea was this? Did they test market it AT ALL? The topnote of this soda is what Strawberry markers would taste like if they tasted like they smell. The backnote was a delightful combination of Pepto and that really crappy cheap store brand strawberry soda that stopped tasting good when I was 7. Plus, this is brown. Soda that tastes like that should be radioactive pink. It is the only way to justify it. Bleach....

But, like an alcoholic that drinks fingernail polish remover when there is nothing else in the house. I drank it. I drank it all.

(hangs her head in shame).......

Jacob loves sand.....

In an effort to take lots and lots of pictures for Nori's mom, T, I tried to do a photo session w/ her. Jacob decided that he needed to hold her NOW and not put her down. He is a little bit rough with her sometimes. I figured it could be cute to get pictures of the two of them together so I started snapping.

Sadly, most of the pictures turned out looking like THIS:

It's like she KNOWS what he wants to do to her (poke her eyeballs out, stick the bottle so far down her throat that she chokes.....but all in the name of love, people). She looked equally disturbed in all the other photos, like the love child of Star Jones and Yoda. Then I remembered another photo shoot that I tried to do when Jacob was Nori's age. The pictures turned out like this:

It's ok. Not cute. Neither of them. Lauren was not a very cute baby either. I think I just get little gremlin babies that eventually become cute. Lauren is a cute girl and Cubby is dreamy now (although will I look back on THESE pictures and think "ewww, not cute?" Who knows, I will tell you in 10 years). I guess there is hope.

So, as you all head into your weekend (esp you Fizz-GOOD LUCK on the half Iron Man....) remember that I gave you something to smile about. It is almost comic when you think about it..... my poor little troll babies.

Project Runway...

I love this show. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this show. This season it does seem a bit contrived and edited and judged for maximum controversy, but still. I TIVO it and then watch it in the middle of the night when the screacher isn't sleeping. It makes me not quite as bitter.

Tonights highlights:

1--The fact that Laura has started showing in just a few days. Did you see her in the Paris outfits? Dude!! She looks like she is much farther a long then she really is. Also, this show is shot in about 30 days so when it is all over she is only about 4 months along. I guess it is her 6th child, but I am surprised how quickly she popped. (P.S. I hated her dress tonight...).

2--Michael when he said he was "sweating like a whore in church" about his dress. I haven't heard that phrase in donkey's years. That was great. I love him and I love his clothes. He seems like a nice guy who isn't too full of himself. Everyone else seems to like him too and he manages to stay under the radar. I would have been so sad if he had been booted.

3--I love Jeffrey's dress....but he still bugs me. He is too..I don't know, blechy.

Next week they design for the Olsen twins. I can't wait to see that. Also, Laura cries. I can't imagine how hard it must be to do that show...but doing it pregnant. Yowza.

Sigh..

Internet,

I am a terrible mother. Today I took Lauren to school at her regular time (10:30) and when I got home had a call from the office that it was EARLY RELEASE DAY.

I sent her to school two hours late.

For the second week in a row. Sigh......








I swear that it is because I am not sleeping and NOT because I am an airhead. On a lighter note...this is how my kids entertain themselves when I am not around. These are baby floaties that became fun costumes...... We should be the Jetsons for Halloween. More pictures and huge post tomorrow.