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.

Recent Baking Endeavors...The Calm Before the Storm.

A couple of weeks ago I volunteered my baking services for a couple of special occasions. I was getting together with some college friends one night, and the next night was a Tepe birthday celebration. There were a couple of recipes I had been wanting to try and these opportunities presented themselves. (Little did I know that this very weekend would be the calm before the storm.)

I receive weekly emails from Pillsbury which include everything from recipes to coupons. A recent email included the recipe for Grand's Little Pies. They looked simple enough so I decided to give them a try. (My friend Alecia referred to these as "Barbie Cups.") They are simply biscuit dough placed inside a muffin tin, filled with a fruit filling, and topped with a pecan crumble.  I chose to fill mine with an apple filling; they were a big hit with my college buddies.

These little pies were quick and simple, and very tasty too. Would be great with ice cream!

My second baking endeavor came after I found a recipe for homemade Funfetti cake. I follow a few baking blogs and Sprinkle Bakes is one of my favorites. She posted a recipe for the cake several weeks ago and I was just waiting for the perfect opportunity to give it a try. My father- and sister-in-law were both having October birthdays and the family was getting together to have a dual celebration. And after finding out that Jess had a personal love of Funfetti, I knew that this cake was destined for the occasion.

The recipe was a simple white cake with lots of colorful sprinkles added right to the batter! These sprinkles are made to add to ice cream and worked perfectly in the cake.

See all those wonderful sprinkles??!!

I made the mistake of skipping the step where I was supposed to line my baking pans with parchment paper. Did I learn my lesson? I think so.

I was left with one cake that was salvageable, and one pile of cake pieces. So instead of a beautiful two layer cake, I had to settle for one and hope it would be enough to feed everyone. But those scraps were happily eaten by Dan and I throughout the next several days.

The final product turned out well, complete with homemade buttercream frosting and more sprinkles on top. It was a perfect birthday cake.

The very day that I spent baking, having a relaxing time in the kitchen, was the day that I received the call from a principal offering me a job teaching 6th grade math! So I now refer to this weekend as the calm before the storm. It was my last weekend before starting a full-time teaching job, which I knew would change my life dramatically. I was terribly excited and nervous at the same time, but knew that I was up for the challenge!



Bloggable

Well once again I haven't made any posts in a while. Dan and I have been up to our normal routines: work for him and class for me. Nothing too special to report about last week. Last Friday night we ate at Chick-Fil-A (one of our favorites) and saw Toy Story 3. It was really cute! The Toy Story movies are classics in my family, but somehow Dan escaped seeing the first two. I tried to fill him in on what was going on with Woody, Buzz and the rest of the gang. We both enjoyed it and I think Dan even cried a little at the end. (Just kidding.) I thought it had some funny parts and was a good ending for the trilogy. My favorite character was a new edition, Ken (yes, like Barbie's boyfriend...or whatever.) And once again, the animation was incredible.

I spent the rest of the weekend working on a school project. (**If you're not a teacher, you may want to skip ahead to the next paragraph. ) The assignment was developing my own classroom management plan including rules, guidelines for success, proper classroom procedures, etc. I worked hard all day Saturday researching and writing, and of course called my best resource, Karen Dean aka Mom, to read through my first draft. Who knew that teachers had to think about all of this?? Little things like how a student is supposed to ask a question. Growing up it seemed like all of these rules/procedures were common sense, but I guess it was the work of great teachers ingraining them in my brain all those years. This project is due tomorrow (Tuesday) so I will be sure and let everyone know how it turned out.

Today I have done a bit of baking once again. Tomorrow will officially be "Day 0" of my trip to Gulf Shores, AL with my family. (And yes, I'm going to try to blog at least every other day about the trip.) My mom, Micah, aunt Cathy, cousin Katherine, and Morgan will all be heading down to Gulf Shores for the next week. It just so happened that this week my class has time off, so I was able to go on the trip with them. We had a "girl's trip" to Gulf Shores two years ago and I think we're all looking foward to returning to relax at the beach pool for a few days. So come back to hear about how the trip is going. I'm sure Dan would want me to remind everyone of what happened last year when I went to the beach without him...

Last year while I was away with my family, Louisville experienced huge amounts of flooding, especially around our neighborhood and UofL's campus. My car was ruined and was towed away a few days later. RIP Contour.

So naturally I had to bake some goodies for the big trip. I decided to make the same cookie bars I made a few weeks ago (Dan's friends approved). I also decided to try a new take on banana bread. Because strawberries are in season I tried strawberry bread. I have a recipe that I think is excellent, mainly because it calls for sour cream, which makes for a very moist bread. I made the cookie bars first and then, after a minor setback, started on the strawberry bread. I got ready to cream together my butter and sugar, whipped out my hand mixer, only to discover that it was broken! "I have to go out and buy another one! Or maybe I can call my friend Sarah and borrow hers!" But like I learned in class today, I remained calm despite the little bump in the road. "No big deal, I'll just mix it the old-fashioned way...with a spoon." So I continued to mix all my ingredients "by hand," and the batter turned out just the same.

(Speaking of batter, I know that I could never be on my own cooking show simply due to the fact that it would be "improper" to lick the spoon  or beaters I mixed with. I mean how can you resist licking the spoon when it is covered in batter full of fresh strawberries, sugar, and practically an entire carton of sour cream? Dan always looks at me when I do this, but I can't lie, it's one of my favorite parts about baking!)

Yummy strawberries ready to be chopped up!

I could have eaten all of it just like this!

End product!

Now off to start packing for the trip! Oh and by the way, like a good wife should, I left Dan with plenty to eat while I was gone. I baked a full lasagna today so he should be good for several days. Then when he's finished with that, there's always frozen pizza!

A Busy Week

Well it's been about a week since my last post, so I thought today would be a great time to get caught up! This has been a pretty busy and eventful week for the Tepes, and I guess I forgot how much actually occurred until I sat down to type. Most of our 'business' was due to celebrations of different kinds, so maybe our busy week was more of a 'count your blesings' week!

First of all, last Sunday was our 1 year annniversary! Neither of us can believe that it has already been one year since our wedding. It's really crazy to think about all that has happened in our first year of marriage. We've experienced many highs and lows and have discovered that everything we experience is so much better because we are together.

On Monday in addition to going to class everyday, I helped with JCPS (Jefferson County Public Schools) during their summer school. For my grad program, we are all required to spend a week of the summer helping with summer school, 4 hours everyday. I spent the week in Algebra I, mostly tutoring students after the teacher had given instruction. I also got the opportunity to teach a couple of times, which went very well I think. My supervising teacher was great about getting me involved and she let me do anything I was comfortable with. The class had 24 students. I expected these students to have poor attitudes and and no motivation...it was summer school after all. However, I was very impressed with their determination and work ethic. It was a very fun week with them and the teacher told me I could return any time for the rest of the summer. This was a very valuable experience for me. I was exposed to new and different challenges and issues. I learned that being a teacher involves so much more than instruction. Teachers, sometimes, really are the only positive role model a student has in their life; and as their teacher I need to be a catalyst for positivity and encouragement. I learned that every student is different-comes from a different home, background, culture-and that understanding them individually will help to instruct them based on their needs. I also learned that there are circumstances in life that just aren't fair. I left school on Friday realizing that some of these students were facing huge injustices that they had no control over, and that made me very sad. I am still processing this information and experience, and as a follower of Christ, I have to know that they are still loved by God and that He has their life in His hands, whether I see it or not. There is no one outside of God's reach!

Wednesday, the 16th, was Dan's birthday!! We have been a couple for Dan's last 4 birthdays, but three years ago he was in Costa Rica, and last year we were in Jamaica for our honeymoon, so we haven't really established Dan's birthday tradition yet. (My birthday tradition=Cheesecake Factory!) So I got up early and made him sausage balls for breakfast and decided to make strawberry cupcakes for his 'birthday cake.' Dan loves strawberry cake and my mom has a really good recipe, but I decided to try something new and make cupcakes instead of a cake. I told him dinner was his decision, that we could eat whatever he wanted. So if you know Dan, you probably know what we ended up having...pizza. Yes, we enjoyed a wonderful birthday pizza for dinner and yummy strawberry cupcakes afterwards. Yum!

The cupcakes right out of the oven!

Strawberry cupcakes with strawberry buttercream icing. The recipe is a secret, right mom?

Friday night we decided to go out to eat to celebrate our anniversary/Dan's b-day. We ended up eating at Cheddar's. It's not a fancy place, but Dan loves their country fried steak. About halfway through the meal we both decided not to get too stuffed, so we asked our waitress for to-go boxes and boxed up our leftovers. We thought having them again after spending Saturday out of town (see below) would be perfect. However, just as we have done numerous times before, we forgot to get the to-go boxes when we left. :-(

Saturday we travelled to Bowling Green, Ky for yet another wedding. One of my roommates from college, Laura, was getting married so we drove down for the afternoon wedding. (My 6th wedding so far this year.) It was great! It was in the chapel of the church where Laura and her husband, Drew, met and attended. It was a very intimate ceremony with lots of personal touches. Both Laura and Drew come from musically inclinded families, so the bride and groom and their siblings led the congregation in the singing of How Great Thou Art, which was really neat. We spent the reception visiting with college friends and eating good food and cake. In addition to the groom's cake, Drew had mini Cheesecake Factory cheesecakes...you know I loved that! When the reception was over we drove back to Louisville...thinking about how we could have been looking foward to our Cheddar's leftovers....but no.

It was a great week of celebrating and seeing how blessed we are as a couple. We are blessed to have each other, blessed to have a year's worth of marriage and memories with family and friends, and blessed to celebrate the marriages of others-always a great reminder of what great gifts love and marriage really are!

Over the past year, we have kept mementos from all the different events we've done. This is where we put wedding invitations, sporting event tickets, birthday cards, anything we've collected that reminds us of things we've experienced. I guess you could say we have a rich life together!

Class, Bars, and a Wedding gift

Today is Friday. This means I have survived my first week of grad school! Yeah! It was a bit overwhelming, but also encouraging and made me excited about what is to come! The most overwhelming class was yesterday, during which we discussed for the entire 3 hours about interviewing. I left feeling, in a way, less prepared for my school interviews. Now I have huge lists of things I need to research and think about before my interviews come....and let's all pray that they will. I am very appreciative of this time though; I think I will feel very prepared for any interview question the panels may throw at me.

I spent some time baking again today. Once again Dan is going out of town, and I get to use it as an excuse to bake something for him to take with him. This time I chose to try 2 new recipes. One is from a friend, Nikki. She made these cookie bars for our friend Laura's wedding shower a few weeks ago and I couldn't keep my hands off of them! They were soft and chewy with a layer of caramel in the middle. Yum! So I asked her for the recipe and tried them out today, with a little tweaking. The second recipe was from the 2009 Pillsbury Cookbook, a wedding gift from a year ago. I love this cookbook because the recipes are very simple and use some of the greatest ingredients on Earth: Pillsbury ingredients! You know, things like biscuits, crescent rolls, cinnamon rolls, cookie dough....need I say more? Both bar recipes turned out well I think and should serve quite nicely when Dan and his friends have a serious sweet-tooth.

The Pillsbury Recipe, Mexican Brownie Crunch Bars, called for Cinnamon Toast Crunch as the bottom layer. I'm not sure what made these "Mexican" bars..maybe because they called for cinnamon to be added to the brownie batter.

Some of the ingredients I used today. Like I said in my first post, I really like to bake things from scratch, but both of these recipes had nice "shortcuts" in them, like using brownie/cookie packaged mixes. I also used caramel ice cream syrup instead of the real thing.

These are the bars soon after they came out of the oven. (Just ignore the missing corner pieces. As Milton always says, "I had to test them to make sure they were okay for everyone else." )

Both recipes turned out well, but I prefer the caramel cookie bars on the right; they were much easier and it would be easy to change the recipe to suit a variety of tastes.

Disclaimer: I know what you're thinking. "Gosh Maegan, you just keep making all this unhealthy food for Dan and yourself. It can't be good to consume all that oil and butter and chocolate all the time." Believe me, I usually don't make things like this. We try to eat pretty healthy during the week...if only I could Dan to like asparagus...so I don't feel too bad about having a sweet treat on the weekend. But I can't lie: I am an eater. I love to eat. I love food, especially dessert. Everyone in my family knows about the infamous home video of me describing my favorite foods...

...My name is Maegan Worley. My age is 5. And my favorite things to eat are chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, biscuits with gravy, rice...and my favorite things to drink are milk, chocolate milk, juice...

Just so you know, this is what I had for lunch today:

Tonight I am going to a wedding of some friends of mine that I met here in Louisville. When I was the intern at the U of L BCM I was in charge of overseeing small groups of leadership teams. One of my main responsibilities was leading the freshman ministry, FLT. My second year serving there, Jonathan and Jessi were my co-leaders for FLT and we became good friends. Jonathan met his fiance, Emily, through the BCM and they are getting married tonight. Congrats to them! As most of you know I love wrapping gifts! (Micah, your Christmas gifts will never be better than mine, haha) So I thought I would include a picture of their gift.

I made the flower in the middle from tissue paper. Don't be too impressed because it really is super easy! Just go to Youtube and search for 'tissue paper flowers' and you can find lots of how-to videos.

It's Official...I'm on the Blogwagon!

Well here we go, my very first post. I thought long and hard about material I wanted to include. A "welcome to my blog" post...a "I have high expectations for this blog" post....no, not intereseting enough. What IS interesting enough? Why cookies of course!

Most everyone that knows me knows that I love to bake. Dan is one spoiled hubby because at least once each week I am baking some sort of muffin, cookie, or bread. (Yes, he is very thankful.) The regulars are usually chocolate chip cookies or banana nut bread...always from scratch of course. But then there are the decorative sugar cookies I make for holidays....right Mom? Each year for Christmas I take home a tin full of sweet stockings and snowflakes. "You didn't make these," says my mom every year.

Speaking of home and mom, Dan and I will be taking the 4-hour trip to my home, Fulton, or what we all affectionately call "the Flip," this weekend. Our good friends from college, Bo and Susan, are getting married in Murray, so of course this warranted a weekend of fun with the in-laws, the Deans. Oh, there's nothing like a weekend with the in-laws huh? I know Dan secretly tries to get out of these weekends, but I see right past his schemes. (Just kidding...sort of. My family loves Dan and he loves them. You just have to know my family; it is overwhelming, and loud, and lots of fun.)

So of course this trip to the Flip is really just a good excuse to make something sweet for us to nibble on late at night or while sitting by the pool. Sometimes I like to play it safe and make a simple chocolate chip cookie or brownie. However, there are times when trying a new recipe is in order. The most memorable example of this was when I made brownies for our "girl cousins" trip to Seagrove Beach, FL last summer. My sisters and cousins tasted the brownies.."these are good"...."these are so moist." They were at this moment unaware of a secret ingredient used in making these brownies. Needless to say, they will never eat brownies made with black bean puree in them. (They really are good and the puree is a good substitute for eggs and oil.) Now whenever I make something new they are sure to ask, "Is there anything weird in here?" haha

So for this weekend's trip to Fulton I decided to try out a recipe I found in Martha Stewart's monthly publication Everyday Food. I buy this mini-magazine most months. It has good recipes and information. It really encourages quick meals and using fresh ingredients, but let's be real: Martha's idea of quick and my idea of quick are often quite different. The recipe I tried is from the Cookie Jar section, Salted Toffee-Chocolate Squares.

And no, there are no weird ingredients in these squares.

These squares are definitely tasty...just don't ask how much butter I used. They should make for a nice snack this weekend....just don't let Duke have any!

Welcome to the blog!