S'more and Strawberry Pop Tarts - Homemade

OK, so guess what? Those two times I baked and succeeded weren't flukes ... or so I'm hoping. I'm writing this a bit prematurely as my latest creations, whole wheat pop tarts, bake in the oven. However I just checked them and they're looking fiasco free. The recipe is adapted from smitten kitchen, I only swapped 1 cup of all purpose flour for whole wheat.



The s'more filling consists of 1 cup chocolate chips melted and mixed with a graham cracker and a handful of marshmallows.


The strawberry filling is simply low sugar strawberry preserves. I was going to slice fresh strawberries, mix them with the preserves and add some sugar and use that but Alice began to fuss and in a moment of bad judgment I opted to use plain preserves. DO NOT DO THIS, go with my original idea. I just pulled mine from the oven and ate a strawberry pop tart. It was like drinking strawberry juice from a pie crust mug because the preserves liquefied.


The S'more pop tarts are OK. I would consider them delicious if I were making plain chocolate pop tarts because I couldn't taste the graham crackers or marshmallow. I think next time rather than mixing the filling I'll layer chocolate, crushed graham, then marshmallow. That may help to distinguish each flavor.


All in all these were pretty good with the exception of the strawberry ones. My issue with store bought pop tarts is that they're 510 calories per serving and one serving is one pop tart, not two. It's very misleading since there are two per package. My pop tarts probably aren't the healthiest things on earth either but they're super filling, unlike their mass produced counterparts, so they won't leave you hungry.

You Know What I Miss?

I miss the constant sound of the cicadas in the oak trees.

I miss days so hot and humid that your clothing sticks to your skin before you even begin to sweat.

I miss the smell of old wood that permeates every inch of my grandparents home in Bandera.

I miss the pleasant discomfort of trying to navigate across a rocky creek barefoot in shallow rapids.

I miss driving through the hill country on warm summer nights with my hair pulled back, the windows down, feeling so happy that I could scream.

I miss sporadic thunderstorms on warm afternoons.

I honestly never thought I could miss my home as much as I missed Nick while he was deployed but I do.

Creative Writing Wednesdays

I started attending a writing workshop at the Library and yesterday I was given some pretty neat writing prompts so I figured I would post my response to one of them. The prompt was simply "no thank you". Here is my response:

No thank you, I do not have any extra habanero jelly that I would like to sell to you. I have told you time and time again that you can purchase said jelly at the Joshua Tree farmers market every Saturday for $3.50. Stop being lazy and go get the jelly yourself. Also, if I have to text you the name of the jelly one more time I will scream. It is HABANERO jelly, if you can't remember the name go back through your texts and find the last one I sent telling you the name of it.

OK so that is my response, now the story behind this starts with my mothers day pot luck. I had made some really delicious appetizers using puff pastry, cream cheese, and my very valuable habanero jelly. One of my guests really enjoyed these appetizers and asked me if I would teach her how to make them, which made me so very happy because this is another recipe that I made up on my own and it was an honor to have someone want them so bad that she needed me to help her make them. So I said yes, of course I will teach you, I have an incredibly busy schedule but I will take some time out of that and make you food. I know that sounds sarcastic, but I was serious. I love to cook and I was flattered by this friends request. The only problem was that she needed the jelly and I didn't want to share mine so I told her to get some apricot preserves and we would spice it up with cayenne pepper and little bits of jalapeno. I really think that would have been delicious but this friend of mine wanted nothing less than the habanero jelly. My very expensive for the small amount that you get, habanero jelly. She eventually talked me into letting her use my jelly, she's very persuasive, this friend of mine, and she was set to arrive at my house at 4pm to start cooking.


Well 4:30 rolled around and she hadn't arrived. I later got a text that said "my husband came home so I had to cook for him LOL." Yeah, thanks. This was during finals week where I was literally working 13 hour days trying to finish all my school work so when I said I was really busy I meant it. I figured that was the end of it but I was wrong. I have since gotten 3 or 4 texts asking me what the name of the jelly is, what the puff pastry box looks like and where it can be found, and most recently a text that said "Do u hv some jelly I can buy from u? Lol" Like it's a street drug and I'm a dealer. The thing is that I have told her this information verbally and in writing several times so I just don't understand why she keeps hounding me for the same information. I get a little testy when I feel my time is being wasted, especially during finals week, when I simply have no more extra time and when I feel like I'm being used for my jelly. And a girl never wants to feel used, especially for her habanero jelly.





Here is Alice after she ate some of my coveted habanero jelly:




Just kidding people! It's prunes, I wouldn't give my baby habanero anything!

Our Trip to Paso Robles and Hearst Castle

We just returned home from Paso Robles, Ca after a long weekend where Miss Alice met more family members like her second cousin once removed (or something like that) Cole.








And her great grandma Beverly as well as many other family members.









She also tried on an array of headwear and went to church for the first time.





The highlight of our trip was our visit to Hearst Castle which is perched 1,000 feet above sea level.



This was taken about half way up the mountain:



Once we arrived we were greeted by numerous marble statues like this one:

I wanted to badly to touch these, they just look so smooth and soft but I was told I would be kicked out if I did so I refrained.

Haley, Alice and Nick on one of the many castle terraces.

The neptune pool. This was built, torn down, and rebuilt a few times before Mr.Hearst decided it was perfect.

This was one of my favorite parts, it's a bedroom in the smallest of the guest cottages. A cottage to Mr.Hearst was bigger than my house; most things at the castle were bigger than my house.

The details put into making the cottages and the main house amazed me. Check out the tiles and carvings in the concrete ceiling, those special touches were everywhere.

Here is the main house, La Casa Grande. I believe there were 132 rooms or something like that. While it was amazing I was just left wondering why someone would spend that kind of money. Maybe he was trying to get the attention of a past love, like in the Great Gatsby. I'm pretty sure he was just a man with a ton of money that needed spending though.

Check out this ceiling, it's hand carved.

This is the dining room:

And here is my absolute favorite part of the house, the indoor pool.

Greek Gods and Godesses lined the walls and the blue and gold mosaic tiles made you really feel like you were in Rome at some pool just for the Gods, it was pretty neat.

So there you have it, our trip up the coast.

My Babies

Alice began eating solids recently. I was a little hesitant because she is so young still but I told her doctor she was reaching for my food all the time and she never seemed satisfied after nursing so I was given the OK to start introducing foods. We started with baby cereal which made her gag repeatedly so I tasted it and agreed it was pretty nasty, we tried 3 times on 3 different days and she still hated it so we moved on to avocado which she liked better but still gagged sometimes. So I mixed in some banana and that was the magic trick. She has been eating the avocado/banana mixture for about a week and it's so funny because she loves it so much that she gets mad at us for not feeding her fast enough.

Here she is during on of her first feedings, she looks a little terrified:

It truly amazes me how much Alice looks up to her big sister. I honestly did not expect her to find Haley so cool for another 2-3 years but Alice just adores her. When Haley walks in the room Alice just smiles, she smiles so hard that she uses her entire little body to convey just how happy she is. And she won't take her eyes off of Haley most of the time. Haley also has the power to make her laugh on command. She'll say "gummi bears" and Alice will burst into laughter.

French Vanilla Strawberry Layer Cake

I'll go ahead and apologize in advance, the photography in this post is so hideous it makes the cake look bad, it detracts from it's deliciousness. But I assure you, and so will anyone who was fortunate enough to eat the cake, it was amazingly delicious and super moist.

Ingredients:

1 pint of strawberries

Smuckers Low sugar strawberry jam

Duncan Hines French Vanilla Cake Mix

3 eggs

1/3 c veg. oil

1/4 heavy cream

4 cups powdered sugar

1/2 cup of butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

Go ahead and mix the cake mix according to the package directions, then throw in 1/4 cup strawberry jam.

The next part is up to you, you can do like I did and use a mixer to get the jam mixed into the batter or you could try to be artistic and just fold it into the batter. I just now thought of folding it in otherwise I would have tried this, but it may give a nice marbling effect.

Pour it into a greased 8 inch spring form pan and bake it for about 50-55 minutes at the temperature listed on the cake mix box.

Meanwhile, prepare the butter cream.

Beat the butter until it's light and airy, two minutes should be just fine.

Then, add your heavy cream and vanilla and beat those into the butter.

Add the sugar 2 cups at a time and beat on low.

Put the butter cream into the fridge until you're ready to frost the cake.

While the cake is cooling cut 6 or so strawberries in half, and then thinly slice the rest. I did not macerate my berries, I felt the cake was already sweet enough, but if you're a macerator then go ahead and macerate. Can you tell I like the word macerate?

OK, so once your cake is cool go ahead and cut it in half so you have two layers and set the top layer aside. Spread strawberry jam across the bottom layer, then spread about 1/2 cup of butter cream on top of that, then place some thinly sliced strawberries on top of that.

Put the top layer on top of the jam/butter cream/berries and then frost the entire cake. Stick some of the thinly sliced berries along the sides of the cake and then top the cake with the halved berries.

Enjoy!

Latest USMC News

If you are a close friend or family member you probably already know that Nick and I really don't want to leave the USMC but there is a lot of uncertainty over whether or not Nick can re-enlist. I won't go into that here because it's a really long story but we've basically been living with the mentality that Nick will re-enlist if he can and if he can't then we'll figure something out. Well that's just not going to cut it, a family of 4 can't go with the alternative of "figuring something out". So we are now planning on getting out unless things finally work in our favor and Nick does get to re-enlist. Although this may sound like just an alternative way of thinking of our situation it completely changes things. We are now planning on returning to Texas on August 1st of 2011, that's 1 year and 3 months away. If things work out with the Marine Corps, great. If not, we have a plan. Either way I'm happy.



But all this talk about possibly getting out of the Marine Corps has me scared and sad. It's amazing how dependent I have become on the Marine Corps. I won't have free aerobics classes or gym memberships. I won't have a free swimming pool. No more free events with free child care. No more tight knit community of women who can relate to me completely. No more running into friends at the commisary. No more commisary. No more cheap dental. The list goes on and on.



But if we move back to Texas my girls get to grow up with family, we won't have to wake up at 4 am to take Nick the field where we won't see him for days or weeks (thats a huge perk). No more deployments. We'll enjoy Fiesta and NIOSA, and volunteering there with Dad. We won't need free pools because we'll have rivers and creeks. I'll have my old friends that I've known since middle school. I'm excited about the possibility of moving home, it's the transition that freaks me out. So I'm going to utilize every base resource there is before we move home. The base offers free microsoft certification and I will be doing that. They offer help with writing a resume, they train you how to properly interview, etc. And I am so so so glad I have spent the last 3 years volunteering because I can fill my gap in unemployment with my volunteer work and they can provide me with letters of recomendation.

So that's the news, as of right now we are planning on returning to Texas in late July/early August. :) Oh and here are some pics of Alice in her bathing suit: