The Birthday Cake I Have Been Dreaming Of

My birthday is just a little under a month away and I must admit - I am a birthday person, and not just my own. I tend to get pretty excited when birthdays are near.

During the year I drop random hints to my hubby about things I would find birthdayliscious (for my own personal day.) On my computer I keep a fun little archive of cute foods I would like to one day see become a reality. And by this I mean a reality that I can take a bite out of.

Things to Do With Your Life When You're Unable to Knit

Still out of commission but I have high hopes that I am on the mend.

Today was one of those days where I woke up smiling so I treated myself to a little Duran Duran via YouTube first thing.



Then I headed out to play some early morning basketball with my hubby. The weather was looking better than it has recently so I suggested if we left right then we could go canoeing.

The scenic twelve-mile river ride was worth the two hour drive to get there. Last time we went Perfect flipped the canoe at least twice so we didn't bring a camera out with us.

Since we started out so super early in the day we hadn't eaten yet. We chose to go through a Long John Silvers/KFC drive-thru. I ended up not getting the double down (say whaaaaaaaaaaaat?) and instead went for the KFC boneless fillet or what I have been personally calling, "hand chicken."

On the way home hubby felt incredibly compelled to buy a wiffle ball and bat for family fun when we head out to his grandma's house. I came thisclose to buying a Shake Weight but my mother managed to talk me out of it via phone, saying that she heard those don't work. BUMMER!

To lift my spirits I hoofed it over to World Market while hubby bought the wiffle balls and bat to look for something fruity nom to drink.

While I looked around I saw some other nommies and snapped a few pics and sent them to my waiting hubby outside in the car. There was an interesting looking Dandelion & Burdock drink, chipotle chilli dark chocolate bars (I was actually looking for the bacon and dark chocolate bars but they didn't have them today), and chilli and lime dark chocolate bars.


I nearly got this yard of twizzler container.


Here is what I came away with. So far I have only cracked into the sparkling pear and it's just wonderful. It doesn't really taste like any pear drink I have had before. My first impression was a bit like cream soda meets pear. All I can say is that it's sweet, smooth, light, and just the right bit of tart.

In the center is a key lime pie cream soda. There was only one left and my parents are huge key lime pie fans. I may drink it, I may bring it home, I may search for more so everyone can try it all at once - I just don't know yet. All I knew was, with one left I had to buy it.

And here is my impulse purchase, a Big Bite Gummy Bear (blue raspberry flavoured) - but I don't know if I will be able to bring myself to eat it.

I'd Prefer A Cold Turkey Sammich . . .

For the last week I haven't been knitting. Not because I've chosen to abstain for some unfathomable reason but because I woke up one morning with minor wrist pain (which happens to me from time to time) and instead of just not knitting for a day like I usually would; I didn't knit for something silly like two hours. Then once I picked my sticks back up I didn't just continue working on my sweater (which would have required very little brain power it's so simple right now), I chose to begin a fair isle beret (and not a particularly simple one).

Here is an example of what could be considered a simple fair isle pattern.

This is the "first fair isle anything(cowl/headband)" by Irene Ramalho. Shown here is Irene's (I have made one of these but do not have a decent picture of it).

Here is the pattern I chose to work on right now.

The beret shown here is not my own. I Googled you up a decent picture so you could see what we're dealing with here and all credit for the work that went into this should go to blogger, Lauren Wood of Lauren's Crafts.

Here is how far I got into my own hat before it happened.

One of the tips of my fingers has gone numb and I have been unable to feel it since. The wrist pain did not increase to an unbearable level until later that night.

Since I have been forced into cold-turkeydom I have been camped out on my lappie.

Right after posting about my attempt at dreamsicle cupcakes, Darling Misty B. pointed out she was unable to post a comment. I went back into bloggers comment settings and made sure everything looked good to go and it did.

However, today when I was snooping around the intarwebs I ran across Chinamommy, who was kind enough to stop by here as well. ChinaMommy ended up sending me a mail through my Etsy shop letting me know she had the same issue.

Comments should now be properly enabled. When you go to comment you should be lead to a page to do just that. I chose not to use the pop-up option because so many of us have pop-ups blocked these days.

And thanks again to ChinaMommy and Darling Misty B. for the heads-up.

Happy Belated Mother's Day

Happy belated mothers day to any of you who are fortunate enough to have little (or even possible now grown) people.

This mothers day was a two-in-one sort of holiday for my family here in OH. It was also my husbands grandmother's birthday. Which, admittedly we may not have known if not for months of hints dropped by the birthday-ma.

Columbus is fortunate enough to have a local ice-creamery that is so good I've considered never leaving the city. I have lived here for about three or four years now and it was only a few months ago that I tried out Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. The day of our first visit the boy and I noticed a flavour that seemed just up his grandmother's alley.

You see, among the things we know her to love are nuts. Yeah I'll say it, she's nuts about nuts. When we saw "Black Walnut Divinity" we decided right then and there that this was what we wanted for her for her birthday.

Neither the boy, or myself are from particularly small families. Most holidays here warrant a trip to grandma's house where a decent amount of us will congregate all day long. To insure that grandma would not have to share her birthday treat we decided to bring her to the ice cream rather than the other way around. We made a date with her for today around 1:30 to go out and get ice cream.

The Black Walnut Divinity is out of season right now so the only way for us to get it would have been to buy a pint. So grandma tried the many flavours and picked two out for herself. The boy and I tried a few of the new seasonal flavours and chose to go with a bowl with three half-scoops.

From left to right is grandma's bowl which has: Bourbon Pecan and Gravel Road.

My bowl which has: Wilberry Lavender (purple), Goat cheese with roasted red cherries (white/red), and Rhubarb Rosé (pink).

The Wildberry Lavender is my favourite, so much so that the purple ice cream in my tattoo is supposed to be this Jeni's flavour.

And then the boys bowl, which has: Buckeye State (tan), Strawberry Buttermilk (pink), and Honey Vanilla Bean (cream).

[The hat seen here is the trilobite pattern by Hannah Ingalls available for free here on Knitty.]

As always Jeni's was far from a disappointment. I didn't get a chance to taste grandma's (but I wasn't after hers anyway) but I did try the boys. The Buckeye State wasn't for me but that's because despite my love of dark chocolate, I am not usually a big peanut butter ice cream fan. The strawberry buttermilk lived up to it's description of fragrant Ohio strawberries with rich buttermilk impart a light, clean finish. Like a bowl of strawberries and cream. It was indeed like a bowl of strawberries and cream.

The Rhubarb Rosé which boasts that is is, creamy with a burst of sweet wine flavor and a hint of not-too-sweet rhubarb. Was dead on, I found a lot of pleasure in the wine finish.

In fact, wine flavouring is one of my favourite things you can be sure to find in their other flavours like Riesling Poached Pear and Cocoa Zin. I forgot to taste the new flavour, Cherry Lambic (lambic isn't a wine anyway), but hope to very soon (my own birthday is only about a month away now.)

What I didn't forget to taste was the [new] Mango Lassi. This was a fantastic idea. For those of you who are not familiar with it, Lassi is a traditional yogurt-based Indian drink. Ice cream was a great move. Mango flavouring had me at mango. I loved it!

Even my non-cheese-eating hubby was able to enjoy the goat cheese with roasted red cherries.

If any of this appeals to you on a scale where you find yourself cursing the fact that you don't live in the capitol city of the Buckeye nation. Have no fear. Not only can you order Jeni's over the internet and have it shipped to you but it has recently become available in Whole Foods (however, I cannot remember if that is only a local deal right now.)

Cupcake Pebbles

Ever since I heard about Cupcake Pebbles I've wanted to get my hands on some. Who could blame me? Yesterday when I went grocery shopping I was finally successful.

Naturally, this morning I decided to try some for brekkie.

When I opened the box and took a whiff I swear it smelled exactly like cupcakes. Exciting.

I made sure to get a quick pic of the cereal before I laid into it.

This cereal tastes a lot like some sort of rice krispy treat cuppy.

The Om Nom Nom stance on this cereal is - for the win!

Another Entry for the Om Nom Nomtionary

I mentioned a while ago I coined another term for the "Om Nom Nomtionary"

Knitwhipped [nit hwipt, nit wipt]
- adjective

1. Having received a whipping from your knitting
2. Having been subdued or defeated by a knitted project as though by whipping
3. Exhaustion caused by having been beaten by knitting


Origin:
Knitting fuckery

Celebrate Good Times!

Today is a day for celebration in my house. My husbands contract with the military officially ran out today! ! !



Tonight I am making one of his favourite meals, my Fettuccine Alfredo. I don't know about everyone else out there but after I eat I almost always want dessert, so I am making dreamsicle cupcakes using the basic info provided to me by a good friend and Facebook fan, Darling Misty B.


I was told I would need:
1 box cake mix
12 oz POP of choice (which translates to 1 1/2 cups)
Cool Whip

The idea here is to recreate the magical pairing of vanilla and orange to get that oh so familiar, childhood taste of dreamsicle in cupcake form. The store did have French vanilla cake mix but I am terribly allergic to French vanilla so we got white cake instead.

The back of the box has two recipe options, with or without egg-whites. The egg-white option called for more water 1 1/4 cups) and less oil. In lieu of a twelve pack of "pop" (as my Michigander friend put it) we bought a two-liter bottle. I measured out the "pop" ahead of time and put it in a glass to the side while I checked the directions of the back of the box.

At this point all you really need to do is follow the directions on the back of the box (combine cake, oil, water ["pop"], and egg-whites. Put into cupcake pan. Cook.)

The box says to cook for ten to fifteen minutes, I put them in for thirteen minutes but my test stick came out with stuff on it so I put them back in for another four. Those four extra minutes finished cooking them beautifully.

The cupcakes were so incredibly light when I took them out of the pan that it was a shame I did not have cool whip to use instead of icing (Which I have quite a bit of. We keep cake mix around because my husband enjoys making himself impromptu cake.)







The end result was a happy hubby.

I didn't think it tasted too dreamsicle-ish (maybe it was because I couldn't have the french vanilla cake mix). Hubby said he could taste the orange in it - I did not.

I won't give up tho, just gives me tons of ideas for later.