Uh, here I am......

Today is Elise's birthday and I am feeling green. So much green that I had to change the sheets in the middle of the night. So far only 5 1/2 hours of sleep and I feel like I'm being held together by stitches. I wonder if it was the cupcake I ate before I went to bed?
I might feel ill, but I don't really get SICK! So now I am off to some ginger tea, ginger ale and a boiled egg(or two).

I will survive and get these chicken wings cut up, cooked, cook a pot of rice, make 3 types of icing (one for the cupcakes, one for decorating the graham cracker houses, and one for gluing those things together). Am I a glutton for punishment or am I a born party planner?

Smoke Alarmed French Toast

This morning I decided to make an old favorite, French toast. Mind you, in this house between the hours of 6:30-7:30 I am like one of the folks on "Iron Chef", making lunches, getting breakfasts ready and getting people out of the door in 3, count them 3 shifts. Now add a little kindergarten neighbor who is extremely, cheerful in the morning and you have a recipe for fire. So her I go, Mr decides he wants a different lunch than the one I packed for him, Spring chick got up late, Science dude is chatting away, Cali girl is sleeping late and Queen E is I don't know where in the morning. So I get Mr and Spring out the door, get the French toast started, cut on the iron to iron some "out of the black hole" clothes for E and bake some cookies that Wyndon mixed last night. (The recipe follows this blog.)

So I get the first batch of French toast out and start the second one. The little folks are eating and I'm enjoying the moment of silence (rolling out cookie dough) when all of a sudden, from the next room, Science dude says, "Mom, I smell smoke!" Not a lot, I tell you, but just enough to trigger the loud and oversensitive British smoke alarm. That's not what you want to hear when you have 20 minutes to get hair done, cookies baked, bags checked, coats on and children out the door. Here we go, Science dude runs upstairs to baby who is screaming in terror, Queen E, covers her ears and hovers in fear and I'm yelling for a fan to cut on and blow away the cough of smoke that triggered that stupid thing on! Nobody hears me and I'm running to get the fan, open a door and window, plug up and aim the silly thing, shut the door to the screaming baby and cover my ears! Oh Lord,help me! Now the fan on and aimed,I endured the eardrum piercing shrill for 6 minutes before that thing finally went off. Then, seconds after the air was clear, the phone rang, someone was knocking at the door and I can't remember what else happened.

I did get the cookies to the children and they made it to the bus on time with ears still ringing. But the kicker was that the toast wasn't burnt, but just a lovely dark brown.

Now, how can I disconnect that thing?
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Mama Reed’s Tea Cakes- Recipe from www.southernplate.com

1 C butter or margarine
1 C sugar
3 eggs
3 1/2 C self rising flour
1 tsp vanilla

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and mix again. Add vanilla and flour and mix well. Roll thin on floured board, cut with cookie or biscuit cutter. Bake at 350 for ten minutes. Sprinkle with sugar while warm or ice with simple icing.

Simple Icing

2 T softened butter or margarine
1/2 C Confectioner’s sugar
2 Tablespoons milk (can add another if needed)
1 tsp vanilla
Few drops food coloring

Cut butter into confectioner’s sugar. Add milk and stir until lumps are gone. Add one teaspoon of vanilla and a few drops of food coloring, stir until combined. Spoon onto cookies or tea cakes and spread with back of spoon. Top with sprinkles while still wet, if desired. Let dry before stacking.

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What expiration date?

Okay, last week I hit upon a great deal on this German yogurt we love and is a bit expensive. Instead of $1.95 it was .50 cents!!! Woo-hoo, so I bought some, or to be exact, a LOT of it. Was I thinking? Probably not, but hey,I got a good deal. So with this plain yogurt that I bought comes granola. But we just happen to be out of granola in any shape, fashion or form. The yogurt was to expire 48 hrs later and the clock was ticking. So I decided to make granola. My good old standard recipe given to me by Leslie A. of Grandview. My oldest, aka,"Spring Chicken", dosen't like this kind and wanted me to make freezer granola (Rachel U. of Squaw Valley's recipe), which I have deemed impossible due to the size of our miniature freezer(that's another story). So with the clock ticking on the yogurt life span, I forgot about it. Yes, another forgetful episode of mine-rare indeed. Saturday comes, we have overnight guests and I am running around with Mr. and didn't have time. Then Sunday came around and I went to the bazaar, blah, blah- we blew out the lights in the dining room and I was making Sunday dinner and -no time again. Monday comes and we are out again, me and the Mr. He blew out the lights upstairs and we were really in the dark until he went out to the garage (I know it's an insane place to put it, but the circuit breaker is in there), so we could have light. Was I distracted? Well yea!!
So, Mr. goes to work on Tuesday and I have to go to the allergy clinic for "Spring Chicken"-has allergy treatments twice weekly, go by the school for paperwork for "Royal E", and drop off "California Girl" for her first time at the baby sitter.
Can you see the miles rolling by?
Okay, after all of this, I make it home 20 minutes before the bus pulls up with Royal E, Science Dude and neighbor boy, Xander. So I get to working on dinner and spy the dying yogurt in the fridge. Oh, I have got to make granola NOW!! Dinner is cooking and I need peanut butter for the granola.Mr. has insisted that I use this natural peanut butter we brought from the states that expired- let me finally check the label. Hold on, drumroll.......... in APRIL 2008!!!
Oh, I feel sick. I know it's mental, but it's real. So I make this granola and bake it, finally tasting it with Spring Chicken when we look at each other and say, "this dosen't taste right!" I , being of sound mind and tight pockets declare that i am not going to throw it away and will save it by adding MORE peanut butter, but Spring Chick says use Jiff!So I remix honey and pb, mix in the recycled granola and put it back in the oven. Nearly forgot it this time due to an emergency bath needed by Cali girl so Science Dude got it out of the oven. We finally ate dinner and went to taste the granola again. This time it was more palatable and we decided to keep it. If we didn't, there were going to be some ducks and cows having a good time down the road tonight!
It was getting late and Mr wasn't home by 8:45 so I got everyone to finish their chores and we were in bed by 9pm. Whew!!!
So, the moral of this story is, don't stay up too late helping teenagers because your faculties will not be up to par for several days beyond and always check the expiration date even after your hubby says "It's all right to eat". Someone has to survive the mass poisoning!
At 6:30 am, in his lunch today was packed: 2 yogurts, a fat ziplock bag full of granola and some cottage pie!
I hadn't checked the date before I wrote this..................