Crock Pot Cake

Earlier this week, I’d toyed with the idea of making a crock pot cake to use up the excess strawberries we had left over from our berry-picking adventure, and to do so without heating up the trailer. I found a few recipes online and they all seemed pretty similar: dump cakes that involved pie filling and cake mix. I hadn’t either, and was trying to use fresh strawberries, but thanks for nothing, internet.

This morning, I decided to experiment. A caveat here: There are SO many awesome recipe/baking sites on the internet. There is no way I can produce content like Picky Palate, Punch Fork, Pioneer Woman, Allrecipes, Food Network, et al. The stuff that I post here is to encourage you to experiment with things and develop an intuitive way of cooking, so that you don’t have to use recipes. That’s one thing that I really like about Alton Brown’s “applications” approach to cooking.

That said…

1) Strawberry pie filling? Ummm…

Strawberries, some honey, and some sugar in a pan. Heated it until it bubbled like this. It was a lot more runny than pie filling, but I had a plan for it, so I left it that way and dumped it in the bottom of the crock pot.

2) Cake mix? Nope. Here’s what I did have…

Yup. Blueberry wheat pancake mix, shortening (the recipe had called for butter), and really, REALLY old (to me) already old (and on sale) buttermilk. Remember the banana pudding? Yeah.

I mixed them together until they were about the same consistency as dumplings, then I dropped the stuff in spoonfuls over the strawberries and juice.

Then it cooked for several hours.

Tick tick tick tick.

CAKE!

And Little Women.

But… CAKE!!! With strawberries on the bottom. Not too sweet, and would probably be absolutely delicious with a bit of ice cream. Daphne loved it!

Kindly refer to me thusly…

I was just looking over the search engine terms that have led people to this blog. Might I share with you some of my favorite, please? Thank you…

1) Variations on McDonald’s Steak, Egg, and Cheese Bagel are by far the most represented.

2) Oklahoma Sugar Arts Festival.

3) Taco Bell Locos Doritos Tacos.

4) And then other products/places I’ve reviewed like Capriotti’s, L’Oreal hair color, chocolate bars, etc. The key here, I guess, is to keep up name brand reviews in order to draw viewers to this site. Maybe they’ll stay here and enjoy themselves.

5) Several random people, including Gretchen Ort, who owns Savor the Moment Bakery, and whom I met very briefly at Jen Yates’ “Wreck the Halls” book tour last year; Kerry Vincent, who is famous and you should know who she is; same thing with Alton Brown (and his associated “2011 book tour”); my employer, and the search included her maiden name, a la Facebook… Umm, you might have a stalker, woman. Don’t go outside after dark.

6) “worst cats for children.” We got ‘em!

7) “slimfast shaker.” I’m sure this is because of the hair color shaker tumbler thing to which I referred once. Sorry for the Rickroll, searchers of the interwebs.

8) “trailer trash art.” I almost bought a weather vane at the Dallas Arboretum last month. It had a spinning sunflower, and a counter-spinning something else behind it. Would it qualify?

9) “last minute desserts for groups.” Yea!

10) “messed up hair with L’Oreal Courleur Experte.” Maybe because you can’t read? Like the label? AND the directions? Oh, and P.S… HEY!!!

11) “why is sweet potato tots so greasy” *shrug* Maybe YOU’RE the greasy one?

12) Lots of variations on Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. Did I write about that?

13) Cherry Berry versus Yogurt Story. Aww, don’t get us started on THAT again. (Also, Cherry Berry versus TCBY)

14) “icecandy.” What is that?

15) “renting a place and you thought the utilities were included.” I know, right?!

16) “good eats ‘the once and future fish’ is that alton’s daughter?” Yes. Yes, it is.

17) “Claire’s gummy bear necklace.” Eww. Sticky.

18) “how much do sylvan learning office managers make?” No idea.

19) “christening cakes for older girls.” Are we christening older girls like, baptismally? Or with cake? And wouldn’t that be like a bachelor party?

20) Lots of variations on fondant.

21) “hot trailor trash ladies.” Well, shucks, you four… This one is for you.

 

Keep searchin’ and keep visitin’! See you soon!

Trailer Park Sisyphus

This guy.

Our RV park was probably paved when it was first built in 1886. Since then, as rain and use have wreaked havoc on the drive, it has been graveled over.

There are several pretty severe potholes. Occasionally, after a rainy season which has displaced a good deal of gravel, one of the managers  will get out with a small front-loader and move stuff around until the holes fill back out.

It usually lasts until the next rain.

I’m sure many of us have had the idea that it would be much lower-maintenance and a lot better on the vehicles around here if they would just repave the drive, but I’m sure that is an expensive proposition.

So, every time it rains quite a bit, this sweet man gets out with his broom and sweeps rocks into the potholes around his space. There are a dozen or more.

I don’t know anything about him, except that he’s probably in his 80s and that this seems to be his sweeping uniform. Today, I noticed him out when I was doing laundry. He was at this job on and off for 4 hours.

Fortunately, there is no rain in the foreseeable forecast. Hopefully he can take a well-deserved break.

Checkpoint Chickee Modeling Session

Fellow gym mom and new friend Gabrielle Grafrath styled my hair, make-up, and clothes and took way too many pictures of me last month. The pictures are here; take a look at them and consider hiring her for your portrait needs!

Speaking of Bananas, Muffin…

One of the things I love about Allrecipes (and, actually, I believe Google has this function now, too) is that you can type in ingredients you have and want to use and find a recipe that has those things in it.

Today, I had some red bananas left over from the nanner puddin incident, and I also had some sour cream I wanted to use. So I searched for and found this well-received recipe for sour cream banana bread.

But you know me; it’s difficult for me to stick with a recipe. Plus, I was making some for a friend who cannot have sodium, so that eliminated the salt and baking soda. Also, I just don’t typically enjoy nuts in my breads/sweets at all.

Sometimes, my recipe toying is a fail. Other times…

How DID she leaven that?!

Here is my modified recipe, halved on the site because I had no need to make 32 servings of this stuff, even giving some of it away.

• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 cup non-dairy whipped topping
• 1-1/2 cups white sugar
• 1-1/2 eggs (1 whole egg and 1 egg white)
• 3 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 1/2 (16 ounce) container sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa nibs

The first step makes it all crunchy on the outside!

First, spray the baking pans (as you can see, I did muffins and a loaf) with cooking spray, then dust with a mixture of the sugar and cinnamon. I ended up having to use MORE cinnamon and sugar for the tops of the bread. This isn’t a step included in the original recipe, but I figured that if having that sweet crunch around the bottom and sides of the bread would be good… hello? More=better?

Next, I mushed the bananas in the mixer and added the eggs, sugar, whipped topping, sour cream, vanilla, cinnamon, flour, and finally, cocoa nibs. If you’re newish to cooking, you don’t want to mix up anything too violently after you’ve put the flour in or it activates the gluten and you’ll end up with a super chewy (and not in a good way), gluey finished product.

You can’t just omit baking soda and expect your baked goods to turn out “right,” but in this case, I figured that the egg proteins would leaven the bread enough for my purposes. Besides, a little density in banana bread isn’t a bad thing. The texture turned out great.

These bake at 350 degrees until they’re done. It’s different for muffins and loaves, and your oven is a lot different than my propane box, so just keep an eye on them and when the tops start to crack and the middle is only mildly puddin-y (it WILL keep cooking after you’re finished, as long as you let it sit for a while), you’re done.

Lest you expect this to be like a chocolate-chip banana bread, understand that cocoa nibs are not what you think of when you think “chocolate.” They’re not sweet. They’re a lot like chopped up coffee beans, but their fat content is higher, and they add a nutty flavor to the bread without adding sodium. (Yeah, I know they make unsalted nuts, but why on earth would anyone buy those?!)

Daphne thinks the nibs are “a bit much,” but that’s because they DO have a rather intense and distinctive flavor. I think it’s a perfect balance to the sweetness of the banana. Try it and let me know what you think!

This is Bananas!

Yesterday, I wanted to take something yummy to take to a friend’s house… but, as we learned last year, baking in the RV during the summer is tantamount to starting a fire in the middle of your living room when it’s 93 degrees outside and your a/c hasn’t shut off since sunrise.

Since I’d just seen Paula Deen’s “Not Yo Mama’s Banana Pudding” at birthday party last week, that was fresh on my mind. Also, I had some left-over chocolate chips from my most recent marshmallow Peeps dipping (which I was supposed to have given my nephew but instead left in my car the whole day when we were at Six Flags, and they all melted into a clump and Daphne and I have been eating them ever since; Happy Birthday, TJ!), so I was thinking algebraically.

Where a=awesome and b=banana pudding and c=chocolate, if b=a then b+c=x (an unknown quantity that might make one’s head explode from pure rapture). So I tried.

Now, I will say that I had push back from one friend who claims to be a “banana pudding purist.” But the overwhelming consensus by those who tried this is that it was fabulous and actually tasted a lot like a banana candy bar. Try it! You’ll like it!

Happy Anniversary, baby!

On April 17, 2011, I stood in the gravel road watching a very nice couple back this 2008 Jayco Jayflight G2 into my space at the park. They were kind enough to hook everything up, level the unit (snicker), and make sure I was all set before they left. After they pulled away, I started loading my gear. I’d packed up earlier, and had unloaded several cars full of “stuff” in the side yard, ready to move in. Daphne was at my parents’. I put up all of the storage stuff, hung up her clothes and mine, made our beds, and got ready to live life in 300 square feet. I didn’t have a timeline. I didn’t know what the plan was beyond that day, beyond having someplace safe and sane. I had no idea. But I had hope.

Over the next week, weeks, and months, we had some of the most consistently bad weather this area has seen in years. Friends’ had windows blown out of their wall mounts. There were tornadoes. There was rain. There was hail. Multiple occasions of hail. Once, we evacuated to the clubhouse bathroom, but that was mostly because my niece was over and I am always safer with other people’s kids than mine. Another time, we happened to be at a friend’s house when the hail that dented the north side of the trailer did its best.

Through all of that, though, we remained dry and safe and at peace. And that was all I was really going for.

A year ago, I was studying medical transcription. Over the next two months, I would test for numerous companies, frustrated by the slow going, poor recordings, and distractions of having a very conversational child who didn’t appreciate the “time is money” concept or that being distracted took my head out of the game completely, so that I’d often have to start over. I started applying for jobs with at-home-call-center providers, I was doing odd jobs for friends, and I was watching my savings slowly dwindle, picking up as many mystery shops as I could.

If you had told me then that, within the year, I would have begun working outside of the home, in an office, and even have my insurance license, there is very little way that I would have believed it. How can that happen when you homeschool? How can that happen when you’re not even willing to work 40 hours a week? How can that happen when your brain is a magnet for all things artistic and unimportant and a holey grocery sack for numbers and business principles?

The past year has been a roller coaster of surprises, disappointments, blessing, devastation, enlightenment, humbling, exhilaration, and craziness. I have loved everything I thought I would love about living in an RV: little maintenance, no yard work, simple lifestyle, inability to accumulate too much. I didn’t think much about the kind of neighbors I would have, but they have turned out to be the greatest. As a whole, this is a very quiet community. There is no drama, there is no crime. The ambiance is laid-back and comfortable. Everyone has the vacation mentality, and that is always fun. I have learned how to keep us cool enough during the summer, warm enough during the winter, and how to bake properly in a tiny propane box.

Since this time last year I could in no way have imagined where I’d be now, it’s foolish to try to predict what life will look like a year from now. However, I hope it’s fundamentally different. Don’t get me wrong: I am blessed beyond what I deserve, and I do struggle with reconciling that to the several “hitches” that won’t loose. And it’s that struggle of which I’d like to be free this time next year. There are elements of my life that I can’t change. The two biggest (and second and third most important facets of my life) are inextricably intertwined. One can’t change until the first does, and the first shows no signs of changing. So by this time next year, I pray that either those things will have miraculously begun to resolve, or that I will have found the strength to move beyond them. Whether that takes the form of physical moving (I have my eye on both the Pecan Grove RV Park in Austin – in which I’m primarily interested because it’s downtown and impossible to get into – and the RV Park in Van Buren, AR that I’ve just wasted 20 minutes trying to re-find on my computer) or allowing God to cut out parts of me I felt he planted in me before I was born or just learning to stop straining against the bonds and finding a way to work within them, I don’t know.

Daphne doesn’t want to move. She doesn’t want to leave where we live, or where she goes to the gym, or where we go to church, or her friends she has now. One of my friends reminded me that she’s along for the ride until she’s 18 and that I have to do what is best for us as a family, regardless of what decisions make her “happy” at the moment. Thing is, I’m not entirely certain that I’m qualified to make that judgment call right now. Hopefully, a year from today, I will be.

One year's worth of momentos. There have actually been more added since I took this picture...

Monster Rockstar Amp!

Last week (and I think this week, if my morning foray to the grocery store was any indication), Kroger had a bunch of their energy drinks on sale half price. I’ve not ever been a huge fan of energy drinks, having tried a few when someone else was paying (gas station convenience store mystery shops). Diet Red Bull, some other Rockstar… I just thought they were awful. But they were on sale HALF PRICE!! So…

Sale bonanza! But was it a good buy?

I read all of the information on the cans carefully. For instance, did you know that you aren’t supposed to drink more than three energy drinks per day? I took it easy and only had one or two. There were a lot of supplements in the drinks, and I know that overdoing it on vitamins is just as bad as underdoing it on vitamins.

If you’re new, I’ll tell you this right now: I love me some food. So I don’t like wasting calories on beverages. All of these drinks have 10 or fewer calories per serving (most cans are two servings, except for the itty bitty baby Rockstars). And most of them have excess caffeine.

This is the first one that I tried.

After a Zumba class, the rehydrating promised from this Rockstar seemed appropriate.

In case you're wondering, milk thistle is supposed to help with liver toxins or something. Taurine does something with bones. Whatever. How does it taste?

It looks moderately like lemonade.

This wasn’t offensive-tasting. It didn’t taste like lemonade per se, but there was a lemony citrus element to the drink that successfully masked the supplement content. I was able to finish this beverage without much protest from my taste buds.

Monster Red Tea and junk

Have you ever had Lipton prepared tea? The kind you can buy in a 2-liter bottle at the grocery store? That’s kind of what this tastes like. It looks like this…

You got your cranberry juice in my tea!

Again, this wasn’t difficult to get down, and it tasted fine. Not wonderful. Fake tea isn’t my favorite. But I didn’t gag.

More like "Mountain Don't"!

I had high hopes for this one! I’d downed two energy drinks and had not had much trouble with that whole thing. And I LOVE Mountain Dew! But this drink… goodness help us, it is NASTY. It tasted not at all like Mountain Dew. It tasted like supplements and something strong that is supposed to mask that taste, but didn’t. Yuck. Gagged it down because I’m cheap, but it was disgusting.

At this point in the experiment, by the way, something interesting had started happening. I was crashing at the end of the day. I would fall asleep at 9:30 and stay down all night. I usually go to bed between 12:30 and 1. That happened for a couple of days, and then something REALLY weird happened…

I left the house one morning feeling like I could conquer the world! I was so giddy and hopeful and energized! By 4:00 PM, I was drowning in a sea of morose complacency. I was sitting at my desk on the verge of tears, thinking, “This life is soooo depressing. Nothing is ever going to change. Whyyyyy?” So I was emotionally crashing in addition to the physical. I don’t think it was the caffeine; I drink a ton of caffeine (in the past 24 hours, I’ve had more than 3 liters of Diet Coke). I guess it must have been some of the other stuff?

Of course, at the same time, we were having really weird weather and I was largely unable to breathe, so I was sucking on the Albuterol way more than the recommended dosage. So perhaps the lesson here is not to mix a stimulant inhaler and energy drinks?

One morning, I got to the office about the same time as my employer and, because his hands were full, I was trying to unlock the door for him. My hands were shaking so much that I couldn’t hit the key hole!

Lesson learned.

Oh, and speaking of lessons…

zomg, it's pink!

It's packing its own straw!

This here beverage was adorable. But do you remember the stuff with which you used to swish during your visits to the pediatric dentist’s office? Yup. That was how this tasted. It was even a little worse than the Amp, but only because instead of just being generically bad, it was specifically medically-tasting. And, yes, I polished it off.

This one wasn't memorable in any way. Meh.

So. Not really impressed with any of these. None was tasty, and they might have contributed to a near mental breakdown. You should really pity my closest friends; if you interviewed them, I’m sure they’d tell you that they highly recommend I no longer partake of the energy beverage genre. Plus, even half price, they’re still too expensive for me.

Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Tacos

Call me naive, but I’d seen this picture so often, that even after other people had posted their pictures of the Locos Tacos with completely different wrappers, I was still kind of hoping for something like this.

 

Because, let’s face it, that’s pretty epic.

We ordered two: a regular taco for Daphne, and a supreme taco for me. Now that I think about it, the actual product didn’t look too much like that picture, either.

Which one is supreme? Which is regular? Yeah... the tomatoes tell you that it's full-throttle!

 

The hard paper packaging. It's not a chip bag, but it'll do.

Dorito-y!

At first, I felt kind of ripped off because I couldn’t see the sour cream… then I bit into the taco, and there it was! In giant, uneven globs between the meat and the lettuce.

Still, compare the concavity of my actual taco to the near-bursting bounty of the publicity photo.

Basically, this is a Taco Bell Taco in a Dorito shell. The shell improves it, of course, and it’s a fine quick snack but it didn’t transport me to another world or anything.

I did, however, have the tell-tale “Dorito fingers” after having consumed my dinner.

This is a weird-perspective picture. I don’t have freakishly-malformed fingers. (No offense to people who have freakishly-malformed fingers.)

Sweeeeeet! :)