So Balls Out I Don't Even Know It

Look. I'm posting . . .
Okay so I have been doing all kinds of things for the past month or so, just not writing about it. I think it doesn't seem so awesome when you do it every day. It just doesn't seem strange to me to make everything from scratch anymore. Why not? I can do it better and cheaper than the prepackaged crap. So let me just outline a few of my more awesome moments since my last post and then I will make a commitment to post at least once a week.

First the lasagna. This had to be about a month ago. I wen to the store to get ingredients to make three lasagnas. I have everything I need except the cheese so I head to the dairy section. In these troubled economic times you may have noticed the subtle increase in the price of groceries, so I was looking at the mozzarella and ricotta with a wary eye and I noticed that whole milk was on sale a gallon for $2.50. So I just made my own cheese. I ended up with just over a pound and a half of mozzarella and almost two pounds of ricotta! For FIVE dollars!! Boom! Balls Out!!!

What else? Oh, this Saturday I woke up at about 4:45 (am) and couldn't fall back to sleep. Clearly the only logical thing to do was to wake up and make sticky buns! Luckily I had two pound of brioche dough sleeping peacefully in my fridge (thanks to artisan bread in 5 minutes a day, my new addiction). Three short hours later, my family wakes up to fresh buns, OJ, and coffee. They are so lucky sometimes I want to slap them!

One more thing. I think I mentioned how my lovely Mikee made fun of me for starting this little adventure earlier, but he has changed his tune (as predicted). His new stance is more like "you mean you could make cheddar and Gouda if you had a press? Well I could make that." He did. I am still waiting for ingredients and then we will start making some hard cheese. He's sweet to me, and he does listen when I talk. He also went out one evening "to run some errands" and came back with a kitchen scale, new baking sheets, cooling racks, a funnel set, measuring spoons, and a few other things I had been complaining about. Now that there are lovely baked goods and from scratch meals every day he just wants to make everything easier so the food keeps getting better.

So whats on the horizon? This week I will be experimenting with DIY frozen pizzas for quick mom-is-working-tonight dinners (per Grace's request). Also I really think I need to learn how to sew. This is getting ridiculous. If I am going to be a domestic (make fun of her behind her back kind of) goddess, I NEED to get down with some fabric crafts. I think I might steal my mom's sewing machine over thanksgiving weekend and then find someone (this means you Laura) to help me get started.

Okay Annie, it's your turn now. POST!

Today I made lemon pound cake, tortilla soup and bought fabric for baby quilts.  Look at me be domestic!

However, I've realized that I have a huge problem when I cook - I don't read ahead in the recipe.  "Oh, oops!  The sugar was supposed to get mixed with the eggs!"  Dump that one down the drain and try again.  Oh well.  One day I will learn, but probably not any time soon.  

Megan gave me an awesome recipe for lemon curd cream, so I'm going to put that in between the layers of my trifle.  You can look forward to a post about me having an OCD meltdown when my trifle doesn't look exactly perfect.  I can already feel it coming on.

Finally, like I mentioned, I made tortilla soup for dinner and sadly realized that I had bought flat leafed parsley instead of cilantro for my soup.  :(  For a second I thought it was the weirdest tasting cilantro ever.  And then I laughed.

So, my bread turned out great.  I made with 100% whole wheat flour and added a little big of gluten to it for a nice rise and potato flour to keep it moist.  (So, I cheat?  Got a problem with it?)  My husband just declared it to be the best bread he's ever had, so I guess I did okay.  

This week my goal is to use my trifle dish that I got when I got married and have never used since.  I'm making red white and blue trifle for Megan's election party.  This also means that I get to make pound cake, which I have never made either.  Or maybe angel food cake?  What's the vote?

Finally, at church I saw someone with a GORGEOUS baby blanket, and I've decided I'm getting some fabric and making a quilt this week too.  I've been thinking a lot about making super-easy quilts for my unit at work.  The babies at work always look so bland and sad on the white sheets and blankets, and some colorful quilts would really be cute.  We usually have quite a supply, but we've been running low lately.  So maybe I'll make some of those too.  I could probably pound one out in an hour, so it's not a huge time commitment.  We'll see.