Quote

"I long to accomplish a great and noble

task, but it is my chief duty to

accomplish small tasks as if

they were great and noble."

-Helen Keller

Cranberry Upside-down Cake

When I was a teenager, my good friend's Mom was one of those amazing Italian cooks. One time while I was visiting, her Mom made this glorious cake which she called Cranberry Upside-down Cake. I never was a big fan of cranberries, but this recipe makes the tartness of the berries melt away with the sweetness of the glaze and cake. I raved so much about it to my friend's Mom, that she was nice enough to print me out the recipe. I made it many times, especially during the holiday season. I always got big compliments on it. I lost this recipe a few years ago, to my dismay. I almost forgot about it altogether, until about a month ago, when I realized that Thanksgiving was around the corner and I had not thought up of what I was going to make. Later, while shopping, this recipe popped into my head at the grocery store when I saw a sale for cranberries. So I looked it up on All Recipes, which gave me this recipe. This new recipe is a huge improvement from the original recipe I lost. It asks for sour cream, which I think gives it it's rich texture. I did change some things when I made this recipe, I've changed some ingredient amounts, and skipped a step. So try this one out, it is actually really easy and will become one of your favorite cake recipes!

You Will Need:
For the Bottom(which turns into the topping):
2/3 Cups Brown sugar
1 1/2 Cups Fresh Cranberries
1/2 Cup Walnuts

Cake Batter:
1/2 Cup Butter (1 stick)
3/4 White Sugar
2 Eggs
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Cup Sour Cream
1 1/2 Cups Flour
1 1/2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 Teaspoon Cinnamon
1/4 Teaspoon Salt

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Unwrap the stick of butter and use one end to grease a 9x9 inch glass dish. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Set aside.


• Put fresh cranberries, brown sugar, and walnuts into baking dish. Mix together with your hands until combined and pushed down.

• In a large bowl, cream together the butter and 3/4 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the sour cream.

• Pour batter into prepared dish.

• Bake in the preheated oven for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, run a knife around the edges to loosen, then invert onto serving platter and carefully remove pan. Serve warm. This cake goes even further if you have a piece with some Vanilla Bean Ice cream.

This recipe is not only very delicious, it is also very versatile because you can replace Cranberries for just about any fruit or berry, I think next time I will try this with blueberries. It is a great way to impress guests as well. Give it a try!

Broccoli Cheese Soup

I made a new recipe last night. It turned out amazing! My kids actually asked for seconds. In my world, that is a miracle. I will definitely be making this again. I got the recipe from Allrecipes, but changed it so much that I thought I would just post it here. It should make about 6 servings. I think next time I make this, I will double it and freeze the leftovers in zip lock bags for a quick meal.

8 Tblspns Butter
1 Medium Onion chopped
1 Carrot shredded
3 Cups Chicken Broth
6 Cups Chopped Broccoli (including the stem)
1 1/2 Cup Shredded Cheese
1/4 Cup Parmesan Cheese
1 1/2 Cups Milk
Salt and Pepper to taste


Directions: Melt 4 tablespoons butter in a medium sized
stock pot, and saute onion and shredded carrot until the onion is
translucent.

Chop the broccoli into small cubes. (You can also substitute frozen chopped
broccoli). Add broccoli and broth to pot and let simmer for about 15-20 minutes,
until tender.

Spoon out most of the chunks and puree it in a blender or you can also use
an immersion blender. Put puree back into pot and mix. Add milk, cheese, parm.
cheese, 4 tablespoons butter, and salt and pepper.

So there you go. I wish I had taken pictures of this one, I'm going to try to add step by step pics next time. Oh, and you can suck it Panera Bread, this soup tastes way better than your bagged gloop!

If I Save Time, When Can I Get It Back?

It's one of those days. I'm starting to feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I have to get done before the year ends. Before this decade ends. By the way, has anyone else realized that this decade is about to end? Because that is pretty profound for me. In this decade I have had 3 children, gotten married, and flown out of the coup. This has definetly been the most roller coaster crazy decade of my life! Life sure does fly through time doesn't it? In another decade, I will have three huge teenaged boys, and I'll be in my thirties. Wow. Okay, well now that I've just overwhelmed myself some more, I want to talk about Black Friday. It is an insane day for shopping. We all know. Especially since it's the day after Thanksgiving, and most of us are tired, full, and hungover. But the savings....think about the savings! So I have planned a shopping date with Sarah. She has been reminding me to get to looking at ads. Which I need to do. And have done. And my findings? I found a great blog that has every Black Friday ad. It is located here. Enjoy. It is amazing......now to figure out what I'm going to get.........oy.


***UPDATE***: After checking out the website I clicked on the tab that said Shopping Lists. It allows you to create your own list by browsing all of the item sales for each store and adding them to your own personal list. Very, very, awesome! If you want to make Black Friday a little easier for yourself, I highly suggest you make a list.

Doing Some Homework

So I have added about 15 blogs to my bookmarks in the past 10 hours. I plan on reading all of them....pretty sad. Well, no it will give me insight on how blogging is done and it's actually really entertaining. Here's one from one of my faves, Post Secret:

Sometimes I Need What Only You Can Provide: Your Absence.

Ahhhh, what a day! It was mahhvelous dahhling. Yes, I feel like a Queen. Why? Well, today at about 1PM I was able to drop the heathens off at Mother's, and they are still there!! I. am. Spoilt. For now, at least. So after I dropped my pack of animals off at the zoo, I commenced to have my girl date with Sarah. Soooo much fun ensued. We went to Ruby Tuesdays for lunch and got blasted off of $5 drinks. That is right, you read it correct, it was the cherry and whipped cream on top of the cake for me. I got the Long Island Iced Tea, it went straight to my head. Did I mention I haven't had a sip of alcohol since getting totally wrecked at my family reunion back in August? :/ Sarah got a Peach Martini which was good, but then she got "The Relaxer" and it was fucking delicious. Anyhoo...after a great lunch, we headed off to the mall. I didn't have to use my navigational skills to find the hidden elevators. No, I finally got to use the escalator with no hassle. A concept long forgotten. We checked out the Gap, which was ever dissapointing. WTF happened to that store? Did it get taken over by Kurt Cobain's ghost? We spent about 32 seconds in there. Then we decided our drunk decadance was not enough and headed to Kohr Bros. for some fruit. Not. We got Reeses and Snickers McFlurry type thingys. So fattening..so good. Not really the best combo with mini-burgers and LIIT (Ha! No wonder they are called Long Island Iced Teas! The abbreviation says it all!). Did I mention I had no children with me? We ended up having 4 amazing hours of shopping bliss. Sarah picked up a Snuggie for her future mother-in-law, and a cute Betsey Johnson bracelet for her future sister-in-law. I picked up an awesome & cheap Thomas the Train set for Jake and the hot wheels wall caddy that Rocco claims to literally dream about having. Ah, my son so takes after me. He dreams about organizing his toys.

Then, I headed back to Mother's to hang with the kiddies and to find a big box of Church's Chicken and a meat lover's pizza. Wow, today probably wasn't so awesome for my figure. Woops....well I don't get many days to slob out like that so I'm gonna let it go. Mother asked if the kids could sleep over, and this time I just couldn't resist. I probably should have taken them home, I still get little guilt pangs for leaving them there. But then I think, they have their Uncle Sam and Xbox so they are completely happy. Let them have it. And in the process I get a little slice too. :)

Blueberry Crumb Bars

So today Sarah & I baked some lovely Blueberry Crumb Bars. Thanks Sarah for finding this one! My expectations of this was not very high to be quite honest, but I have to say, they turned out FAN-fucking-TASTIC!! I sent Crusader on a quest to get some vanilla ice cream with this. Which the children and Crusader are all enjoying right now as I write this. Oh how I love the peace and serenity of dessert time. Bliss. Then pure hell when the sugar kicks into the kids bloodstreams. Oh well...TGIF! So when making crumb bar, we started by putting the flour, sugar, and butter into my handy dandy food processor. It created a perfect crust consistency. We put it into a 9 x 13 glass dish and pressed it down.

Then we realized we should have added egg & vanilla extract to it, so Sarah took it all back out, put it into a bowl and mixed in the ingredients we forgot. After that we basically followed the recipe properly....and well....it came out DELICIOUS. I will definitely be making this again soon! Especially since we have a freezer full of blueberries. YUM! :)