Let's Play Catch Up

My blog has been bare lately!! You'd think I have a new job keeping me busy or something!

All kidding aside, I have had people tell me that my blog hasn't been updated in a while. All I can say is "I know!!" But I even had an extra long Christmas break to get updated and still didn't make a new post. I have no excuses!

But alas, a snow day has come to the rescue! I have coffee that is warm, slippers that are cozy, and a laptop ready for some furious typing on this snowy Tuesday! This will be just a quick post with mostly pictures of what has been keeping us so "busy" the past couple of months. (Wow, it has been months since my last post!)

Taken from inside our apartment on 2nd Street after about 2 inches of snow this morning, January 11, 2011.

I will hate making up all of our snow days in June, but  I have coffee and Martha Stewart to keep me happy! I am ready to do some blogging!

Fresh Bread. Did you notice the toast in the picture above? That is not just any toast. It is toast made from bread that I made Sunday night with my new breadmaker I got for Christmas from Dan's grandparents. I have never made fresh bread before; I have always been very willing to try new things in the kitchen, but there is one ingredient that has always given me an excuse to skip over certain recipes: yeast. But I thought that now was the perfect time to "man up" and face my nemesis; after all, the breadmaker does all the work for you! I literally threw everything into the pan and pressed Start. 3 1/2 hours later we had warm fresh bread to eat with our bowls of Karen's Potato Soup.

The "Country White Bread" was perfect with our soup. I also had some for breakfast this morning. It was the perfect time to toast the bread and top it with some items I've been waiting to try. Item one: blackberry jam made by Dan's mother using blackberries from her garden. Item two: cranberry bourbon compote I got at a holiday gift exchange. Both were very good!

Christmas cookies. Each year I make decorated sugar cookies to take home to Flip for Christmas. I think I first did this 2-3 years ago and have enjoyed making it a part of my holiday baking checklist ever since. (And yes, we all know who loves these cookies the most. Karen Dean: fan of Christmas cookies.) And since 2010 was our year to spend Christmas with Dan's family, I got to make a huge batch of cookies early and ship some of them to Fulton and save the rest for our trip to Williamstown. For some reason this year's decorating experience was more frustrating than most (due to cheap plastic piping bags); caution: do not wear brand new pajama pants while icing 4 dozen Christmas cookies. Nonetheless, the cookies turned out looking great as usual.

My cookie decorating station.

A samping of the cookies. On the left are my personal favorites: the argyle and houndstooth patterns. :-)

And just to tease Milton and Micah a bit, their very own cookie-versions of the iPad and iPhone.

More holiday baking. Before Thanksgiving I decided that I wanted to do something for my fellow 6th grade teachers to say "thanks for helping out the brand new teacher-even as far as breaking into her car and rescuing her keys that she locked inside on her 2nd day of school." So the Sunday before Thanksgiving I made mini loaves of pumpkin bread for my team teachers. I adapted a recipe I found that uses white cake mix as the base, and they turned out very nicely. (The drizzle of pumpkin spice icing on top helped out some!) And I loved wrapping them up and making them look pretty just as much as I loved baking them. The teachers really loved them; one said that her entire loaf was gone before she got home that day!

Also for Thanksgiving I decided to try a dessert I'd never tried before: cheesecake from scratch. I found a recipe for a Pumpkin Cheesecake on one of my favorite blogs: Smitten Kitchen. I just had to try this recipe to take to Fulton for Thanksgiving. Sadly I didn't get a picture of the final product, but here are a couple of pics of the progress.

I was ready to go: taped the recipe to the cabinets for clear viewing and laid out all the ingredients.

The crust was made of graham cracker crumbs and crushed pecans. Yum!

In the oven it goes! Trust me, you need to try this recipe!!

P.S. If anyone wants to see what is going on at school and keep up with Mrs. Tepe's 6th grade, you can visit my school blog: Bernheim Middle School and click on Tepe on the blogroll on the left.