The beginnings of greatness...

Food woes...

Each meal is an adventure...half-way through it our girl spits out whatever is in her mouth, even though she's not full. She's bored. Tony is her daddy after all. So we do acrobatics, I stand on my head and then she chews, swallows, and smiles. However, each millisecond I turn away from her she pinches my arm. Hard. Good piano fingers. So I back up, feeding her at arm's length... She also loves to extract food bitlets from her mouth and squish them between her chubby fingers...before dropping them of course. She's even more bored now. And if I try to pick them up off the floor, she yanks my hair even though I'm on my belly trying to stay away from her lethal talons. At the end of the meal (or my patience, whichever comes first) I let her down and where does she go? Right to all those yummies she threw down & devours them happily. That's it. Next meal will be served on the floor to the stinkin' cute baby.

The Cubmaster got pinned....twice

Yes, I am that cubmaster...along with being the choir director/music chairman & unofficial Relief Society Pianist...I feel so needed...

We are the proud parents of two Bobcats!

A Review...

Not too long ago I checked out this cookbook so I could go to the "Cookbook Book Club" that was held during the same time the boys have scouts, but that was before I found out I am the new Cubmaster (that's another post for another day...)

My take: beautiful photography, mouth-watering dishes & elegance out the wazoo. Totally fun to look at, but dinner parties for 30 with 20 course meals? Hardly realistic. Oh, and did I mention expensive?

Here was my next pick as I was browsing through the library just for fun. The Amish certainly know about simple ingredients, speed being important & low-cost--my kind of cookbook! Not only that, but as I read through the book I gained so much knowledge about the Amish through their baking traditions. I would highly recommend this book! It's fascinating, and...

Here was our first try: Mystery Biscuits. The mystery being the "mayonnaise" in it I suppose...to ensure moist biscuits instead of dry ones (though I substituted plain yogurt)! Not only that, but I'm a big fan of not rolling them out, instead just dropping them into muffin tins. We all give them 4 stars (it will be 5 next time when I take them out of the oven just a little sooner...)

Our second adventure: Shoofly Pie. Arguably one of the things they're most known for (along with elephant ears, funnel cakes & big, soft pretzels). Weeeellll....I think if you like the raw molasses flavor, you would love this! The crust on bottom & top was great, but none of us were too keen on the molasses taste. So, we each had a taste, took a big slice to our older neighbor who loves molasses & then...threw the rest away *gasp.* I felt guilty, I really did, but not enough to eat the rest. We're not done though...soft pretzels are next on the list, along with a multitude of the other goodies. However, watch out, since lard & sugar seem to be the main two ingredients in many of the recipes...