Cooking Class

For Alicia's birthday I signed us up for a cooking class at Gygi to make French Macaroons! It was so much fun! I haven't taken a cooking class since I was in 7th grade. Even then we were making stuff like lumberjack casserole. Strange though that in that class I won first place for my bread and then failed miserably with my pie. It's been backwards ever since. Anyways, we made French Macaroons, possibly one of my most favorite cookies ever. They are so amazing. They change my life every time I bite into one. Partly because they cost somewhere around 2-3 dollars each from a fancy bakery and partly because they have the most incredibly crunchy crumbly texture with a mouth watering chewy center that you can't find in anything else no matter how hard to try. There's some mystique about making them and little tricks and such to make them turn out just right so the class was fantastic. We got to make the Strawberry Lemon flavored ones and I must say, I think ours were the best. It was fun being in that big kitchen too. I've been dreaming of that oven and Kitchen Aid mixer ever since. We all got to share the results and take them home. Macaroons are so expensive that I think the class paid for itself in the amount of cookies I came home with. Alicia took some better pictures of the finished product and put up the recipes on her food blog here. I devoured them all and left the next morning for a week in the Tetons.

A snowy spring hike to Donut Falls

Alicia and I hiked up to Donut Falls with her kids…the snow is really sticking around late this year as you can tell and Alicia and I didn't make the best choice in foot gear either. I baked some donut muffins to eat at the falls, Alicia made sandwiches, Zoe got put in the backpack and we headed up the trail with the boys. Navigating the unexpected snowbanks in our sandals and stopping to examine all the worms in the runoff slowed us down a bit, but it's not like we were trying to get anywhere fast. In the end me and the boys could just barely get close enough to see the falls in the distance. The snowmelt runoff was so high that it was going over the donut hole as well as through it. Still a fun hike and a day out in the mountains with friends. (and sorry Jake, but Alicia's better at this kind of (baby)backpacking that you were)

The buttermilk donut muffins!!!!!!

Alicia's Birthday Desserts

For Alicia's birthday she wanted a berry themed dessert table. She made a delicious blackberry chocolate cake that had the most fantastic marshmallow chocolate frosting, and some really good mini strawberry shortcakes that we will definitely be putting on our list of wedding options at Sweet Lime. Then she modified our cake balls and instead of using normal cake and frosting in the middles she used fresh raspberries and pound cake (genius!) They were amazing. I brought some marshmallow surprise cookies and foraged around their yard for flowers to put on the table. It was a minimal spread but everything we especially fantastic. She made a cake for my birthday back in May and it was amazing too. I never wrote about it though. You can read about it here and if you want any of her recipes she used read her post here.

My dad turned 70

I kinda felt old when I turned 30. Since I'm the youngest in my family, I always wondered if it made the rest of my family feel old too knowing their baby sister was 30 but who knows. My parents came through town on their way Nauvoo where they'll be on a temple mission for awhile and my dad was at my house to celebrate his 70th birthday. It didn't seem like it affected him too much, but I think it sure made all us kids feel older. We had two of my brothers over and I baked him some of his favorite desserts. He always loves my marshmallow surprise cookies so I made a batch of those. They brought me some of our beloved tangelos from the tree in the backyard so I made him some mini tangelo bundt cakes which are just incredibly good. And of course no table of dad's favorites would be complete without a lemon meringue pie. It was my first try at one and I have to say it was fantastic. I think it was the home grown lemons from their yard at home that gave me the beginners luck.

I think he liked the hugs and kisses from the grandkids the most though...

Cookies with Simon

Simon came over to my house while Nate and Carrie went on a birthday date and we made her cookies. Simon helped with every step.

Home for the Holidays

I went home to see my parents for Christmas and New Years. No one else in my family went so the three of us spent the time doing whatever we wanted to without having to worry about kids and other complications that come along with large groups.

We walked around in San Francisco and I melted with envy at the year round farmers market with produce and artisan cheese. My dad was nice and bought some.

We stopped at Golden Gate Park so dad could throw some frisbees and we found some geocaches there as well and then found some more over on Treasure Island.

(I miss the big trees)

We did the usual Christmas Eve dinner on the pier in Santa Cruz and I went down and put my feet in the water and watched the surfers and metal detectors out doing their daily routine.

There was also the usual(unusual) quirky stuff that makes Santa Cruz fun and I think I found my official dream house. The white one, not the one with the lights. It was mostly the porch and the location.

On Christmas Day I opened my requested presents of socks and underwear...Santa brought mom a bike. I think it's the third or fourth time I've seen her get a bike under the Christmas Tree. Then we ate some of our fancy cheese and went out for the best Chinese food dinner I've had since I moved out of California. Duck, lobster, soup, dessert, noodles....it was so good! Then, because we had nothing better to do and the idea sounded good, we took a road trip up to Oregon and puttered around in the rain on the coast up there for a few days. Then we drove back home just in time for me to finish up my last New Year's resolutions from 2010 by making some dutch oven food with my dad and finishing reading The Bible cover to cover. Then it was off to celebrate New Years with Steysi. My uncle Jim and Debbie paid a visit on their usual family visiting trek around the country. They came with us for a mini crab/cheese/chocolate feast in San Francisco before I flew back home to find the cats still alive, slightly feral and shedding like crazy.

All in all...a great trip home.

P.S. I just want to say how awesome cats are as pets. I left them both home alone for 12 days and no one checked on them the whole time. They just fend for themselves and it's great!