Suburban Trash Hunting

No, I haven't been digging through actual trash piles recently.

But I did pick something up on the side of the road. We were on our way to a friend's house on Sunday when I spied something leaning against the ground. You know how when you see a pile of stuff and you can tell it's got a "please someone pick me up and take me to your house" kind of vibe?  Well, this thing was screaming LOVE ME!  So I squealed, scared the crap out of Ryan, demanded we make a U-Turn, popped out of the van, and threw this baby in the back.

It's signed by the artist and is even titled.  "Dining Room Table".  Yeah, a name filled with symbolism and mystery. I would never have guessed this was a table and chairs.

For those scoffing and questioning my taste level...well, let's call it Primitive Art. There's a whole museum filled with this stuff in Baltimore, the Visionary Art Museum, and people actually PAY to see the stuff.  It might possibly be my favorite museum in the world.  When I was in college, I remember seeing a sweater that some crazy lady had made out of her bed sheets (which she had meticulously separated into little fibers) from the asylum...then she claimed to not remember doing it.  There was also a sky high paper-mâché sculpture of Divine (think: Pink Flamingos the movie.  Gosh, I saw that movie with one of my college roommates over spring break.  Gross!).  They even had a model of the Lusitania made out of toothpicks!

Anywho, I think the painting's kind of cool, and it'll go great next to my 2nd grade abstract masterpiece I have hanging in the family room (My elementary art teacher said it was genius.  Smart lady).

Monster Cookies

You know you want one.

Or more than one.  Three, perhaps?

Oh, I'll stop teasing.

I told y'all about my friend whose ring is bigger than a chocolate chip cookie. Well, apparently, while large, the ring isn't as spectacularly enormous as a Levain Bakery Chocolate Chip Cookie.   My pal recommended I try one, and since I'm miles away from NYC, I had to make a whole batch.  Darn.

I found a knock-off recipe at Love from the Oven.  (Much prettier pictures than mine.)

Made a few tweaks.

2 sticks butter – cold and cut into cubes

1/2 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cups light brown sugar

3/4 cups dark brown sugar

2 eggs

3 cups flour 

1 & 1/2  tsp salt 

2 tsp cornstartch

1 & 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

A regular size bag of chocolate chips

Half an ounce of semisweet chocolate, grated

375 degree oven.

1. Cream the butter and sugars together.  Yeah, use a mixer, handheld or stand. It'll be easier.  I was graciously given the Kitchenaid Epicurean Mixer (not sure if they make that model anymore) over 10 years ago. I use it a couple times a week.  Anywho, I let it go to town for quite awhile on that sugar and butter.
2. Add eggs one at a time.
3. Mix together the rest of the ingredients in a separate bowl (except for the chocolate chips).  You can either dump it all in at once like I do, or put a little at a time until the dough is mixed.  Remember, with most sweets, you don't want to overmix.  Then add the grated chocolate and the chocolate chips.  You'll probably need to use your hands to mix it up at this point.  Add nuts if you feel so inclined (which I never do for cookies).
4. Here is your chance to make enormous cookies. The recipe is supposed to make 12.  Yup, only a dozen. Roll 'em into balls and place them on your cookie sheet.
5. Bake.  8-10 minutes is my guess.  

Important: Your oven will determine cooking time, as will the size of your cookies.  I made one huge mamba-jamba, about 6 medium sized, and 12 smallish cookies.  I felt I needed to test the recipe--can you make a decent small cookie from it?

The verdict in this house is that they need to be big to be good.  The different proportions really affect the way these babies cook, and you might end up with crispier cookies if you make 'em too small. They burn easily with all that sugar.

Or it could be that my oven just plain sucks and you'll have no trouble making smaller cookies.  

Should I make these twice a week? Prolly not.  But they'll be in my repertoire for now. 


Now I'm off to buy bigger pants.  Big cookies call for big pants.

Productive Weekend

We went from this:

Invasive vines from hell.

To this:

Vines hiding in the soil, but pretending to be gone for now.

From this:

A one-butt garage.

 To this:

The whole family can stand in here now.

Drew helped.

I found a treasure.

Cheap champagne?  Sign me up!

Ryan toiled.

Admire the honeysuckle.  At least a ton of it. Perhaps two.

The kids went off-roading.

We had early supper with friends, and then I went to a little Oscar party.  Got to meet my friend's new little girl from Ethiopia. And mock celebrity outfits. And cringe at Angelina's skeletal-chic look (Make some cake and eat it, girl!).

Good times.

Would you like a little lime with that?

All the work in the house has been slow-going.  It's very difficult for me to get a lot done during the day because my three kids are wildly engaging, and at least one of them doesn't nap very well (I'm talking about you, son.  Love you. Sleep.).  In the evenings, I have exercise class, Ryan has freelance work, and then we both just want to lie around and be still like vegetables some evenings. But there are only so many recipe posts I can do before feeling like a certified doofus.

Not today, though! With the weather we've been enjoying, it seemed ridiculous to take those precious alone minutes and put my feet up. Instead, I went outside to deal with this:

Yes, I'm a blogging loser who keeps forgetting to take "before" shots.  This is only quasi-before because the freezer already has a few sprays of primer on it (Will you ever get it right?  -Nope.  There is no "right" on the webs.  So put that in your pipe and smoke it!).

We bought the freezer so we could buy a cow.  Or at least a part of one.  Living in the midwest, and being meat eaters, we realized that buying CAFO beef isn't a great idea when we can get fresh meat straight from the source.

But where would we put it?  Our current freezer is pathetically small (You mean, it's European, which makes it efficient and chic. Okay, you win).  So we had to buy a new-to-us chest freezer off of Craigslist.  We bought it from a freshly divorced woman.  This past year, we also gave away our fire wood to a newly separated mom of four, and sold our Pier 1 side table to another recently split parent--makes sense for them to use Craigslist since their budgets are tight.  I hope we've helped 'em out, but I'm here to tell you that you don't have to be divorced to use Craigslist.  Promise.  Buying new stuff is so predictable.

Wait, where was I?  Oh, yeah.  An ugly, utilitarian chest freezer stood before me.  If we'd left it as-is, it would've felt completely at home with our hideous ceiling tiles.  I could not, however, stomach that.  It is going in the kitchen, which is getting better looking every week, so it needs to be really cool.

Meaning, I needed to paint it.

What would go with our soon-to-be peacock blue walls? That's the color on the right.  I decided to go bold on top, white on bottom, with white cabinets.  We'll be featured in House Beautiful because it'll be that awesome when we finally finish it in Spring of 2023. I know we will!

How's about lime green?  Oh yeah.  (It looks yellow to me.  Dude, I don't know what to tell you. It's lime green, and it looks great with the peacock blue)

Painted on the driveway. Several drivers slowed down to admire my work.
Or to make a mental note to avoid my house at Halloween since I
probably give out homemade granola or worse, fruit.

I taped off the rubbery parts.

A coat of primer first. Then two cans of lime green.
With a few gnats thrown in.

This weekend, Ryan and I will check the freezer for spots I missed, re-paint if necessary, and then bring it on in to prepare for our cow.  More to come in the kitchen.

I shared at Domestically Speaking's Power of Paint Party.

Let's Blog Hop again!

I really enjoyed the hop a couple of weeks ago--got to see many great blogs I've never heard of.  So let's do it again. -Starr

P.S. Thanks to It's so Very Cheri for setting this up.

Many of you have probably already heard that

GOOGLE Friend Connect will go away

on Feb 29 for any one that is not with Blogspot BUT

there is good news

There is a NEW awesome tool–Linky Followers

RULES:

1. You must have the LINKY FOLLOWERS tool on your site to participate.If you see that your link has been deleted you need to add the LINKY FOLLOWER tool to your site and then come back over and re-enter your link. You can have both the LINKY FOLLOWERS & GFC on your site but you must have the LINKY FOLLOWERS toolto participate in this party hop.
2. You must follow the person who has the party on their site as a thank you.
3. Just add your blog button to the LINKY PARTY below.
4. Then grab the BLOG HOP code.You will find the code right under the Linky Party where it says CLICK HERE TO ENTER–just under that it says: WHAT IS A BLOG HOP? GET THE CODE HERE
5. Click on GET THE CODE HERE and enter it into a post on your site.You can grab the party button code in the FOOTER at Its So Very Cheri
   You can grab info from my post if it helps you with your post.
6. Follow other bloggers–(as many as you want)–leave each one of the blogs that you follow a comment letting them know you are following them and ask them to follow you back.

If you want to add the BLOG HOP to your own site you will get lots of new followers–(see rule #2)