Valentine's Day Dinner

Last night we had our Valentine's day. We had a nice time. Corny made dinner while I made apple dumplings, we opened up a bottle of wine we had been saving for four years, watched Couple's Retreat, and then just sipped our wine and talked. We will exchange our Walgreen's gifts on Sunday, that is if I can wait that long!! I have included some pictures of the apple dumplings, and other things from our night.

Apple Dumplings
2 Cups water
1 1/4 Cups sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 Cup butter
2 Cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 Cup shortening
4-6 Tablespoons of half-and-half
2 Tablespoons of chopped walnuts
1 Tablespoon of honey
2 Tablespoons sugar
4 Granny Smith apples
butter

In a saucepan combine 1 1/4 C sugar and 1/2 t of cinnamon. Let it boil, then reduce heat and allow to simmer for about 5 min.
Add 1/4 C of butter and remove pan from heat. Just set it aside for now.

Mix together salt and flour.

If you have a pastry cutter use that to cut in the shortening. I need one but I will usually use a whisk and mash it, or a for.

Add in half and half by the tablespoon until it is moist. Make sure and use a fork to stir in the half and half after each pour, you don't want it to be too moist.You are done when it is crumbly.

Work it into a ball, then roll it to a 18x12 in rectangle.

Cut into 4-6 six inch squares.

Peel and core each of your apples.

In one small bowl mix together the honey and walnuts. In another mix together the remaining sugar and cinnamon.

Place the walnut and honey mixture inside the core of each apple. Then sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar around it. Place a small piece of butter on top.

Cover the apples in the pastry. I added a heart on top in honor of the holiday!

Bring your sauce back up to a boil and pour on top of your dumplings. Then place in a 350 degree oven for about an hour.The very best wine I have ever had, courtesy of the best wine club ever Robert Sinskey Vineyards. It was perfect!

Beautiful flowers that my Dad sent me.

Corny's dinner of rib eye, and creamy potatoes. We forgot to make the asparagus, so the plate is missing a little green.

And the apple dumpling for dessert. Scoop the sauce on top of the dumpling then serve with some ice cream.

Ricci is coming over tomorrow night for dinner, so I will bake what ever she chooses. I am so excited to see her. San Francisco seems like states away even though its only about 15 miles. So I miss seeing Ricci, Kat, and Yvonne!! Have a wonderful Valentine's Day weekend!!

Valentine's Day

In honor of my most favorite holiday, I decided to write in red.

Happy Almost Valentine's Day!!!!

Okay back to black because really I hate Hate HATE Valentine's Day. I used to love it when I was little. That is when it is so fun and exciting. I remember one Valentine's day when my parents got me all the stuff to play school, that's when I still loved the holiday. I also remember one Valentine's Day when my dog got run over, that's when the holiday began to go down hill. You would think since I am married it would be exciting for me again. But it's not. I know it's my own fault that I hate it, and I know Corny dreads this day.

My problem is as much as I hate this holiday, I for some reason have high expectations. Why?? I don't know. Every year it turns into a melt down. Let me see if I can revisit a few of our past days and the excitement that occurred.

V-Day '09- I am pregnant, I just got medicine to help with the grossness so we decide to try and go out. Kim and Adam want Aiden to spend the night with them so Corny and I can have some much needed alone time (they are the best, I miss them terribly!!). I have to work (of course, it's a holiday!) and then we plan on eating and going to see a movie. Not too exciting, but the fact that we are alone is exciting! We are running late for our movie so we share an exciting dinner at Rubios. I think I had some nachos. Half way through the movie I start getting phone calls from Aiden in hysterics saying I have to come get him. Sucks! Aiden tells Kim and Adam that he will not go pee pee until mommy and daddy come to get him. Really??!! So we leave the movie and drive to Concord to get him. When we get home I see that Corny had decorated the house for me. We just went to sleep.

V-Day '06- We were super super poor that Valentine's Day. I am not really sure why, but we were. So I was sad because no presents, and no date. Later that day Corny shows up at work with balloons, flowers, I think maybe a bear, just the standard Valentine's Day stuff. I freaked out. This is me: "Corny where did you get the money to buy this?? Did you bounce a check?? We don't have any money!! I don't want this stuff!! Take it back!!" Then I cried for like 2 hours at work. Looking back I acted like a crazy person! So what if maybe he bounced a check to try and make me happy! 4 years later it doesn't matter that we lost some money, what matters is that he was trying to make me happy. Love :) But back then it did not seem like love to me, so I ruined that day!

V-Day '02- Corny and I were dating. I was planning on driving down with a friend to SoCal to surprise Corny on the 15th. This was the first Valentine's Day that I had a boyfriend on the actual day. And this was going to be the first time Corny would have to deal with crazy Valentine Shannon. I woke up that day and the boys I live with had made breakfast for us girls. That was nice. The morning continued as I went to spend my day working at McClymonds High School. Corny's best friend called to tell me happy day. It was like 11 and I had still not heard from Corny, so I switched to crazy mode. He finally called and this is me again: "Corny! I have heard happy Valentine's day from Casey, Kyle, Anthony, and Chris before I even heard it from you!! I was planning something special for you because it's our first Valentine's Day together and you don't care!!" And on and on and on! I am terrible. I went down there anyways and even after my fit he still proposed to me that weekend.

Man, Corny has to deal with a lot!! Everyone else reading this should be real happy they don't have to be married to me on this happy love day. This year my goal is to have zero expectations and go with the flow. Not get upset just be happy that I have a husband that loves me enough to put up with 8 Valentine's Days so far, and is still willing to face another one with me. We are going to have our dinner tonight because Corny is off work tomorrow and I want to be able to stay up late (on the real day I will be home with the 2 kids while he works a double, but I am going to try real Real REAL hard not to complain!!).

A little baking-- I am going to bake Apple tarts tonight. Corny is not big on sweets, so I let him pick what he wanted. I will share all the pictures with you tomorrow. I think Corny is making Rib-Eye, asparagus, and our yummy potatoes. I will show pictures of that too. We will have some wine and champagne and probably play a game and just enjoy (I will try so hard) each other.

Now I did see something super super exciting on TV last night. They have personal Valentine's Day shoppers at Walgreen's! That seems like the funniest thing ever to me! So I told Corny each of us will go to Walgreen's with a $20-$30 budget and must buy whatever the personal shopper selects for the other person. This makes me real excited!!

Just visit Walgreens.com if you want to play too!

I do really truly have the best husband ever :)

Almost forgot to tell you about Stella. We went the GI doctor yesterday and really liked him. He put her on her 4th medicine, and also scheduled us to go in for an upper GI next week. He is currently treating her for severe GERD, but once she gets the GI we will know more. He thinks the fevers could be caused by the throw-up going into her lungs. She's 4 1/2 months and only weighs 11 pounds! I am really praying we that next week we will have all our answers!

Baking tip and recipes!

My baking tip today is that semi-homemade can be just as good as homemade if it is done right! Sometimes there just is not enough time to bake everything from scratch! I love my cakes to taste perfect, but sometimes a box mix can do the trick. There have been a couple of times when I have had to spend a lot of time decorating a cake and just mixing some cake mix together was going to save me a ton of time. If I do use a cake mix I always make a few substitutes. I always use butter instead of the oil, and milk instead of the water. If it is a white cake I will beat the egg whites and fold them in.

Semi-Homemade recipe 1
My Aunt Sarah (I didn't ask permission to give out her recipe, hope I don't get sued!) made this really really yummy cake for Christmas and I think she just followed the directions on the box mix (it was a white cake) and then also added a tub of vanilla frosting to the mix and baked it in a bundt pan. It was so moist and good.

Semi-Homemade recipe 2
This one is my mom's. She has a lot of talents, but she will be the first to say cooking and baking is not one of her passions. She makes three fabulous dinners: her enchilada casserole, sesame chicken (that was always my birthday dinner), and lemon pepper chicken. And she makes one dessert: Butterfinger dessert. It is really simple and I love it! Buy the frozen Sarah Lee pound cake. Get a few packages of the fun sized butterfinger bars. And mom always used cool whip, but I prefer real heavy whipping cream ( a lot more calories though!). You get a 9x13 pan, and line it with sliced up pieces of the pound cake. Then you top that with whipped cream that you sweeten with powdered sugar and vanilla. On top of that you put the butterfingers that you have chopped up into tiny pieces (just put them in a zip-lock bag and mash them up with a rolling pin). And that's it. Easy!

Semi-Homemade recipe 3
This one is mine! This is perfect for a barbecue night. Get the Sarah Lee pound cake (you can do so much with this goodness!!) and slice it up. On one slice spread your favorite fruit flavored cream cheese then cover it up with another slice. Throw it on the grill for just a couple minutes until both sides are browned. Then serve with whipped cream and your favorite fruit.

I plan on baking on Thursday for our Valentine dinner, and Friday for Corny to take a better looking cake to work. Tomorrow we take Stella to the GI doctor. Please pray he finds out what is going on so we can move on from this and she ca finally feel well! I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of the week!

Cake Disaster!

Had a rough night! I wanted to make a cake to send with Corny to work for his pot luck tomorrow. I decided to make red velvet. Originally I had decided to make a round cake with either a saints or colts logo, I was going to let Corny choose. Corny suggested I do the Southwest tail logo. I decided I could do that. He also suggested I make a sheet cake because it would be easier to serve. So I decided even though I hate making sheet cakes, I would do it. So basically what I am saying is I blame this entire cake disaster on my husband! It's all his fault!!



I am very comfortable with making round cakes and frosting them simply. I am also very comfortable with using fondant. I love using fondant because it covers all you mistakes. Icing does not, it really only makes it worse. My plan going into this cake was to use some of the new techniques I had taught myself this week. I was going to use the star design to fill in the logo, then place dots all around the border of the cake. I had it perfect in my head!



I will use the following pictures to show you my disaster.



My icing is all ready to go. I made the perfect Southwest Airlines colors. At this point I still had very high hopes!


First layer of the cake down.

Frosted the cake, its always easy to frost the first layer because no one sees it.

OH NO! The top layer completely fell apart. This is why I hate sheet cakes, the layers are too long and hard to transfer. Round cakes are easy!! At this point I thought I should mix up a batch of fondant real quick, and then no one would notice. I decided against it for three reasons. 1. It would add another hour or two to this process. 2. It's really really really messy, and I am out of dishwasher detergent and the dishes would just pile and pile up in the sink. And finally 3. I need to learn how to use frosting! I decided to try and cover the mistake.

I know you are thinking, how nice she let Aiden frost the cake. Your wrong! That was me. Terrible. Absolutely terrible! I think I was already frustrated by this point so I didn't care that I was throwing the cake all over the place. And I thought I could cover it up with my new star icing tip I was so excited to try!

So I did the outline in yellow. Do you see how I starred the letters in?? Oh you don't? That;s because I ruined that too! Something else that is really difficult in frosting cakes is the icing consistency. If is too thin it just melts. I was nervous and frustrated and I have been having crazy hot flashes so my hands were hot and it completely melted the frosting. Oh well, no turning back now.

My dot's around the border clearly did not work. No stars in the blue icing either. Didn't work. I'm sad.

There is the red. I kept hoping it would get prettier, but it didn't.

And finally the orange. Lovely!

Add the rest of the melting dots and I am done. When Corny saw it he said, "Oh no the icing is melting!" No, no it's not. It's just rough. Maybe Corny should just drop it on the way to work so no one really knows how terrible it is.

It is a learning experience. I am teaching myself day by day. I want to give up on this whole frosting thing, but I need to keep learning until it's perfect. So I will. I will try again this week, and hopefully get the consistency right.

Have a happy Superbowl Sunday!! I still have not decided who to go for. Corny is making beef brisket sandwiches. I can't wait!

Family Craft Night

Happy Friday!!
Last night I decided to practice my icing techniques with my new kit I bought at Michael's. I didn't want to sit alone at the table, so I asked Corny to sit and talk to me. He said okay, and decided to work on his hobby of making banjo's. We open a bottle of wine and start on our hobbies. Next thing we know Aiden comes walking in with his drawing pad and a box of crayons. He wanted to have craft time too!! He drew pictures of banjo's and then cut them out. We had a great time sitting around talking, laughing, and working on our own projects. It was the best Thursday night.

I have been teaching myself different decorating techniques, and I have decided using fondant is easier than decorating with icing! But, I am determined to get this down. It just takes a lot of patience, and a lot of icing!! I am going to bake a cake tomorrow to send with Corny to work for his Superbowl pot luck. I have had requests for Red Velvet. Since there are a few decorating techniques I have mastered, I am going to try it out. The question is do I write on the cake Go Saints, or Go Colts? I am torn. I would like to see the Saints win since they have never been to the Superbowl, but I love Peyton. I guess we will have to see!

Now for my kids......
Aiden is getting better. It's tough because the breathing treatments and the steroids turn him into a crazy person! We cannot keep him still, and it is impossible for him to fall asleep. So he has been having lots of time-outs. We took Stella to infectious disease today, and of course they do not know what is wrong with her. He is hoping the fever is related to her tummy problems. We go to the GI doctor on Wednesday, so I am really praying it will solve all our problems. He also just wants us to write down her temperature everyday on a calender and bring it to him in two weeks so he can see the pattern. Corny and I are exhausted to say the least, but I guess that is just part of being parents. We are so ready to stop running all over the bay area for doctor appointments!

And lastly I need to say to the Internet world how wonderful Kim is. I got a unexpected package in the mail today and as I opened it I became the happiest person ever! It was the new New Kids on the Block DVD!! I also got a dog-tag (haha!) and a swatch of their clothing that they wore on tour. I am not allowed to watch the DVD until Kim gets here in just 15 more days!! I cannot wait to have her here.

I will post pictures of my cake tomorrow, have a great Saturday!!

My practice board, I need a little help on the letters!


Corny working on his banjo.

Aiden cutting out his banjo. Notice the knot in the middle of his forehead. He got so excited for craft night that he ran into the door!!

Aiden helps me clean my practice board, he loves that part.

My week so far......

So this week has been exciting (not the good exciting!) Where to start.......

Well as most of you know Stella has been having some troubles. She has some major tummy issues that we will deal with next week when we go to the GI, so right now we are focused on her fever. She has had a low grade fever for about 4 weeks. Her doctor told us to go ahead and head up to children's hospital to have tests done. We went up there yesterday to begin the process. Her doctor ordered several blood tests, urine/stool tests, and a chest x-ray. When it was time for all the testing excitement to begin, Aiden and I went on a little walk around the hospital. There was no way I could see my baby in pain, that is Daddy's job! We went for about at fifteen minute walk then headed back to the ER. Before I even got to her room I could hear her screaming, so Aiden and I continued our walk. Another 10 minutes passed and we went back, the door was open this time but Corny waived us away. Finally a nurse came outside and got us and told us we could go back in. It was sad for Mommy and Stella!! The nurse came in and told me later that I have a very strong daughter, she has never heard a 4 month old scream the way Stella did (I think we have a great future ahead of us!!). After six hours we got only a few answers. They know there is an infection somewhere because her white blood cells are elevated, but they do not know where it is. Because they don't know how to treat her yet they sent her home and we have to go back Friday (all of the tests will be complete by then) to infectious disease and hopefully they can locate the infection. But the thing that frustrated me the most was for the first time in I don't know how long, Stella was a prefect baby. She laughed, smiled, and cooed at all the doctors. Usually she is screaming her head off, or demanding to be held. So the doctors kept telling us, "well this can't be too serious because she doesn't act sick". And we would try to insist this is so unusual, even her doctor called and told them she is not a happy baby. But Stella decided today would be her day to be happy. Got to love her!!

Okay, so while we were at the ER we decided to just go ahead and have Aiden checked out because he has a nasty cough and I could hear wheezing. It look like he has taken after his Daddy and Uncle Shea and got Asthma. They won't diagnose him with it yet unless the wheezing continues to happen. But he had to get some steroids, and two breathing treatments. Oh the joy of parenthood.

So these are my needs:
1. A maid
2. A Chef
3. A vacation
4. A long bubble bath with no one bothering me
5. A day at the spa

Is that too much to ask???

Oh wait...
6. A live-in Nanny
7. 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night.

I am pretty sure I need to find away to become famous, and then all these things would be possible.

So for my baking.......

Not really seeing a lot of time for that this week, but I do have a few small goals. I find as many Michael's ads I can find every week and use those 40% off coupon to buy cake things. That way I can slowly build up my collection. I have 3 this week, so I will need to go 3 times this week and buy stuff! I am planning on buying a large set of decorating tips and icing bags. I got a book last week that will teach me all different techniques. I hope to practice that this week. I would love to get one cake baked, maybe Friday, and use the new things I teach myself! Eventually I want to get to work on by big cake, but I need to get these kids well first!


Aiden with his mask :(


Sad Stella with he IV :(

best chocolate cake

Happy Monday!
I had a busy weekend, so I have not started yet on my special cake! We had some friends that were in town from southern California over for dinner Saturday night, and that was so much fun! We loved spending time with them, and Corny and I love love love to cook together for people. Corny roasted the best chicken EVER (which today he will turn into the best chicken soup EVER!), some yummy potatoes that are really not good for you because they are covered in heavy cream, and some asparagus in a white wine sauce. I baked my favorite chocolate cake. I remembered to take pictures along the way, but since our friends were here I forgot to take pictures of how to make the frosting and the finished product!! Sorry!!

This is cake is soooo moist and so yummy. At my Grandparents restaurant they used to call it Chocolate Scotch Cake.

Cake:
2 Cups flour
2 Cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Cup butter
1/3 Cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 eggs
1/2 Cup buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon



Here we are getting ready to make the cake. Aiden was my best helper, and Stella was screaming (of course) so I had to just put her in the sling and get to work!

Grease a 13x9 pan, and I like to have a beer or a glass of wine when I bake. Today was Sam Adams Winter brew, you can choose what you like :)

Mix the flour, sugar, soda, cinnamon and salt in a bowl and set aside.

That's Aiden adding in the sugar.

Aiden can never quite keep his hands out of everything, but don't worry he has to scrub them good before he helps mommy in the kitchen!

In a medium saucepan add butter, cocoa powder, and 1 cup of water.

Stir constantly until it comes to a boil.

Add it to the dry mixture and beat on high until combined.

Add the 2 eggs, and if your 5 year old cracks the eggs please remove the egg shells from the batter.

Add buttermilk and vanilla, beat for one minute then pour into pan. Place in a 350F oven for about 25 minutes.

Frosting
1/4 Cup butter

3 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

3 Tablespoons buttermilk

2 1/4 Cups powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoons vanilla

3/4 Cup chopped pecans

In a saucepan add the butter, cocoa, and buttermilk. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Beat in powdered sugar and vanilla. Stir in pecans.

You don't have to wait for the cake to completely cool before you put on the frosting because it just melts into the cake a bit. I love to serve this cake warm with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.

Yummy!! Let me know if any of you try it!