His Mama's Cake

I have a foodie friend.  He appreciates food of all types.  I often will share with him what I make, and he will give me honest feedback.  Sometimes, too honest.

I had worked hard at making a chocolate zucchini cake with chocolate butter cream frosting. It was dry.  I knew it was dry.  The frosting was enough to cover the dryness, I thought.  When he ate a bite, he didn't say much, just, "You should try my mom's chocolate zucchini cake."

That is like a dagger to the heart of this woman.  A boy's first love is always his mama, and I can find that endearing.  But when you start comparing my cooking to yo' mama's cooking, you set the expectations higher than a girl can reach.  Okay, I know he didn't say that the cake was dry.  I know he didn't say his mom's cake was better.  It was heavily implied, though.

A few days later, she friended me on Facebook, sending me the recipe for her chocolate zucchini cake.

Don't tell him, but her cake was better than mine.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake
by His Mama

1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. oil
1 3/4 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. buttermilk
2 1/2 c.all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cloves
2 c. zucchini, finely shredded
1/4 c. chocolate chips

Cream butter, oil, and sugar together in large bowl.  Add eggs, vanilla, and buttermilk.  Beat with mixer.  Mix dry ingredient together and add to creamed mixture.  Beat well.  Stir in zucchini.  Spoon batter into greased and floured 9x13 pan.  Sprinkle top with chocolate chips.  Bake at 325 degrees for 40 - 45 minutes.

Alas, it was so good and moist, it needed no frosting.

Insert Photo Here

In an unfortunate accident, I dropped my iPhone into the water while getting a pedicure.  Even thought the thoughtful nail technician hurriedly placed the phone in a bowl of rice, my iPhone was lost, including all the photos of this lovely cake.  I currently am out of zucchini, or I would have made another cake and placed photos here.  

In the meantime, here is a  picture of me and Frack who I hope will never appreciate anyone's baking but mine.  

Back to School Shopping for Mamas

I like having new clothes.  I do not, however, always enjoy shopping for clothes.  First, there is always the realization that after wearing comfortable dresses and stretchy pants all summer, I have masked the fact that I may have grown a little.  Second, there are the unflattering lights and mirror angles in the dressing room that make my skin look pasty and my hips wide.   (Maybe I went in there with pasty skin and wide hips, I just don't need the mirrors to remind me.  I feel there should be soft, gentle lights and trick mirrors.)  Third, I live in a small town and to find an assortment of shops, I have to travel.  I like to travel.  But to travel, then shop, then try on clothes, then drive home can wear me out.

My favorite solution for shopping for myself is to shop online.  I can spend hours shopping online. However, I get sucked into sites that are overpriced.  Or I search for hours and find the perfect item, only to find that it is no longer in my size.  Or that the shipping and handling is ridiculous.  Or worry that when it comes, I will have to return it.

This is my favorite new site that solves some of my online shopping worries.

Shop It To Me

Once you create an account, you choose your favorite brands, sizes, price range, types of clothing.  What this fancy little place does is to watch your favorites and send you weekly emails that meet your requirements.  It is a personal online shopper.

For example, I love Boden.  When I look at their site, I love their clothes, their style. I don't like the prices.  I can't afford it.  But the nice thing is that when there is a sale, I can afford it.  Now, instead of looking at their site and wishing and filling the online shopping cart with clothes I can't really purchase, I have Shop It To Me alert me when my size fits my price range.  Simple.  I also know that Boden is consistent in their sizing, so when it comes, it will fit.

It also does brands, not just shopping sites.  So, if you are interested in a Kate Spade bag, it will send you links to different stores carrying Kate Spade bags, allowing you to comparison shop.  What a dream.

The weekly email includes pictures of the items, so I can quickly scan and see if anything appeals to me.  I click on the pictures, and it takes me directly to the site.  You can even set how often it sends you emails. I currently receive emails twice a week.

Go set up account.  Tell me you don't love it!

My Boden package this week.  It comes boxed so nicely.  

My Boden sale items.  Two skirts, a dress, a shirt, and a necklace. 

Home

On the Sundays that I have my punks, we eat pancakes. It is usually late in the morning.  Because most of the week I have to get up early, Sunday is mama's time to snooze in bed, be lazy and read.  The punks get up quietly and eat dry cereal and watch TV.  When I emerge from the cocoon of the bed in my pajamas, I make pancakes with their help.  It is required that pajamas are worn while eating the pancakes.  This has become our ritual.

I know in my heart that I would like for the ritual to include a church service, another place of community to help the kids.  But even, now a year later after the divorce, I feel we all need this time together.  There is something about being home, with no plans, no urgent matters.

Someday when the punks are older, I want them to remember their Sunday mornings with me at our house. I've told them that we are never moving again.  I want them to have that sanctuary in this world.

Just know that you're not alone

I'm going to make this place your home. 

The Chicken Gets Me Every Time

I don't go to the grocery store hungry.  I know that lesson.  But I do shop once a week, having planned out what we will eat.  My cart is full of makings for breakfast, lunch, dinner, including something for that day's dinner.  But by the time I get to the deli, I start smelling those rotisserie chickens and my mouth starts watering.

I know that it is easy to roast a chicken at home, but that cooked chicken with greasy, golden skin always calls my name.  I throw it into the cart, pick up a package of rolls, grab some steamer vegetables from the freezer section, and dinner is done in five minutes once I get home.  We can usually eat the chicken for dinner, a casserole the next night, and still have chopped, cooked chicken to put in the freezer for dinner later.

This recipe calls from ground beef, but I found that the cooked chicken is just as good.  If you want to add ground beef, use a pound in place of the chicken and brown it with the onions and garlic.  Then, proceed with the recipe.

Frick loves this and asks for "that pasta".  It took me a long time to make the connection.  This is one of those dishes that gets better the longer it sits.  The tortillas become very soft, almost pasta-like.  Left-overs are deadly for breakfast with all the black beans, but I recommend that you try it to start your day.

Quesadilla Casserole
1 lb. ground beef  or 2 c. cooked, chopped chicken
1/2 c. chopped onion
1 tsp. minced garlic
2 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. oregano leaves
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper (optional)
2 cans (8 oz. each) tomato sauce  (Have also made this with salsa when I didn't have tomato sauce.)
1 can (15 oz.) black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can (8 3/4 oz.) whole kernel corn, undrained
1 can (4 1/2 oz.) chopped green chiles, undrained
6 flour tortillas (8-inch)
2 c. shredded Cheddar cheese

Brown the beef and onion in a large skillet on medium heat.  Add in garlic when the beef begins to brown.  If using chicken, soften the onions and garlic in skillet and add the chicken to warm.  Add tomato sauce, beans, corn, and green chiles.  Stir in all of the spices, except red pepper.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to low; simmer five minutes.  Add red pepper if desired for extra spiciness.  Spread 1/2 c. of the sauce mix on the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish sprayed with cooking spray.  Top with three of the tortillas, overlapping as needed.  Layer with 1/2 of the remaining sauce mix and 1/2 of the cheese.  Repeat with additional layers.  (I always end with tortilla and cheese on top as the final layer.  That tortilla gets crunchy.) Bake in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes or until heated through.  Let stand five minutes before serving.

Anxiety

A morning last week found me in the doctor's office for a yearly check-up. My appointment was at 9:00 am, and at 10:00, they called me back, where I sat naked in the ripped open muumuu and the paper towel to cover myself. It had been twenty minutes and my anxiety was growing by the minute. Of course, there is the general anxiety one may feel just from visiting the doctor. Then the anxiety of having to wait. Add to that the nagging questions that your brain uses to occupy its time.

Do I have this muumuu on correctly? Do I put the opening in the front or back? If the fire alarm goes off, do I have time to get dressed? What if they have forgotten I'm In here? What if they have forgotten I'm in here and being someone else in? How long will it be because I need to use the restroom? Is this paper under my butt really sanitizing me from the last person's butt that was here?

After all that, they wonder why my blood pressure is higher than normal.

Hopefully, your anxieties are not getting the most of you today. Maybe your biggest worry is that you don't have enough zucchini recipes to use all that zucchini from your garden. If that is the case, I highly suggest you try this lovely bread recipe. It is one of my new favorites.

Blueberry Zucchini Bread
3 eggs
1 c. vegetable oil
3 tsp. vanilla extract
2 1/4 c. sugar
2 c. shredded zucchini
3 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 Tbs. ground cinnamon
2 c. fresh blueberries

Lightly grease two loaf pans. In a large bowl, mix together eggs, oil, vanilla extract, and sugar. Fold in zucchini. Mix in flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. Fold in blueberries. Bake in 350 degree oven for 55 - 60 minutes. Let cool in pan for 25 minutes, and then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely.

Blueberry Muffins with Smoked Cheese

The summer evening found me stuffing twenty dollars in my pocket. I loaded up the punks and headed to the local blueberry farm for the evening. The plan was to get the kids out of the house, break the monotony of the day. We would pick blueberries until the first meltdown. I estimated that would be about thirty minutes.

We arrived and were assigned buckets and a row of our own to pick. Frick and Frack were ecstatic. They had been black raspberry picking with my mom and I heard her exclamations coming out of their mouths. "Jackpot! Look at those berries! Bonanza!"   My mom used to drag us along berry picking when we were young. I remembered my mom's excitement over finding an abundance of berries in a good spot. We spent hours capping wild strawberries until there was not much left of the berry but a tiny spot of mush. My mom would make freezer jam, cakes, pies out of those berries. It was misery to me until in the middle of January when she would pull out a container of jam for toast. I didn't appreciate the work then, but I do now. I expected the punks to be in the same misery I used to be in I when picking with my mom at that age. 

However, she had prepared them for me. They were eager pickers. Because you pay by the pound, twenty minutes in, I began to worry abut the quantity of berries piling up in their buckets. Trying to calculate the heft of the bucket around my neck, I began to worry I hadn't brought enough money to cover the cost of what we were picking. I gently suggested that it was time to go. They ignored me and told me they couldn't leave all those berries there. They were racing to see who could get the most berries in their buckets. I had to bribe them with Dairy Queen to get them to leave. They continued to pick their way out of the row. I was sweating the thought of how much the berries would cost. I hadn't even brought the checkbook. 

The scale revealed my suspicions. Thirty minutes of picking - a little over ten pounds. The cost $18.92. We had cut it close. We were able to put twenty-two cups of blueberries in the freezer for winter consumption. My mom would be proud. 


You will be proud of this blueberry muffin recipe. They truly are the best muffin ever. Just a good, simple, solid muffin with a sweet crusty top.

To Die For Blueberry Muffins
from All Recipes


1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1 egg
1 c. fresh blueberries
Crumb Topping
1/2 c. white sugar
1/3 c. all-purpose flour
1/4 c. butter, cubed
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Line muffin tins with liners.  Combine the 1 1/2 c. flour, 3/4 c. sugar, salt, and baking powder.  Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup;  add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup.  Mix this with the flour mixture.  Fold in blueberries.  Fill muffin cups right to the top and sprinkle with crumb topping.  To make the crumb topping, mix together 1/2 c. sugar, 1/3 c. flour, butter and cinnamon.  Mix with fork and sprinkle over muffins before baking.  Bake in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 - 25 minutes.  Makes about a dozen regular-sized muffins.

For the Smoked Cheese Flavoring (Not Recommended)


Bake a cheap frozen pizza for lunch the day before, placing the pizza directly on the oven racks.  Allow cheese to drip off into the oven.  Forget about scorched cheese.  Bake muffins.  15 minutes in, remember the scorched cheese from the day before.  Worry that muffins will taste like smoked cheese.  Win a small prize for your correct guess.  Muffins with have absorbed the toasty taste.

Give Me Some of Your Tots.

"Why do you love me? Why do you need me? Always and forever... We met in a chatroom, now our love can fully bloom... Sure the world wide web is great, but you, you make me "salvivate"... I love technology, but not as much as you, you see... But I STILL love technology... Always and forever."  

Kip, Napoleon Dynamite

"Don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day."  Dating online is not all that fun, but I'm an optimist.  If Kip can "be almost 100% positive that [Lafawnduh's] his soul mate" after meeting her on the world wide web, I think that I can at least find a good date on there as well.


To be honest, I have found some good dates.  My favorite dates are the ones where the guy actually thinks about how to impress.  Thinks about their "A" game, and then brings it.  Teaching me how to play darts at the Irish Pub.  That was "A" game.  That was fun.   Taking me bowling and ordering the grossest deep fried item off the menu and daring each other to eat it.  That was "A" game. That was fun.  Slow dancing together outside a restaurant while waiting for a table.  That was "A" game.  That was fun.  


Talking incessantly about yourself?  Not so fun.  I'll even give the benefit of a doubt for nerves on first dates, but before the night was over, he almost had me convinced that rainbows were shooting out of  his ass, but I couldn't see them in the dark hours.  Couple that with the fact that he was short, and I couldn't help but refer to  him as Napoleon in my head.   I even went out a second time with Napoleon before calling it quits.  


Now, I know some of you girlfriends are saying, "But, Brindi, you like short men with tall egos."  Those girlfriends would be correct.  I do seem to be drawn to banty roosters, who strut around.  What one usually finds under those faux exteriors is that there are reasons for their tough shells.  


On the second date, I learned that he still lived at home.  He didn't have a job.  He had a child who needed my children as play dates.  Any of those things, singly, are not deal breakers.  What I learned from Napoleon was that I'm old enough to have my shit together, I would expect someone of the same age to also have theirs together as well.  


In honor of Napoleon and the lesson I learned from him, I made zucchini tots.  Not necessarily tater tots, but they taste just as good.  If you don't like them after you make them, then "just make yourself a dang quesa-dilluh!"


NOTE:  I referred to the date as Napoleon, as in Napoleon Bonaparte, but I don't make French food.  I do, however, have an extensive knowledge of Napoleon Dynamite, the movie.  So in my mind, I made the logical jump from French Napoleon to Napoleon Dynamite.  If you don't know Napoleon Dynamite, you are missing out on some sweet quotes from the movie, many of which I included in this post.  

Zucchini Tots
The Curious Country Cook via Pinterest
1 c. zucchini, grated
1 egg
1/4 yellow onion, diced
1/4 c. cheese (cheddar or Parmesan)
1/4 c. bread crumbs (I used crushed up stuffing mix)
Salt and pepper

Spray a mini-muffin tin with non-stick spray.  Grate the zucchini and then place in a dish towel to squeeze out the excess water.  In a small bowl, combine the egg, onion, cheese, bread crumbs, zucchini, salt, and pepper.  Fill each mini-muffin cup to the top with a spoonful of mixture.  Bake in a 400 degree oven for 15 - 18 minutes, or until the top is brown and crispy.

"Don't worry Napoleon, I'm sure there's a babe out there for you too. Peace out."

What's your favorite Napoleon Dynamite quote?