2012 March | RooSays

Officially

Posted by on Mar 21, 2012 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

The girls and I went to see the midwives today so that I could get cleared for running and working out and lifting and that vacuuming I started doing a few weeks ago. She proclaimed a number of things.

About Greer:
She looks like the Gerber baby!
She looks nothing like her sister.
She is GOOD.
The midwife would take her with her if I wasn’t watching.

About Piper:
She is obedient.
She has wonderfully curly hair.
She is so GOOD.
She loves her little sister.

About me:
I have plenty of estrogen!
This line will go away around month four and I can wear a bikini then without noticing it (ha!).
Everything is back in its rightful place.
This is all just skin. It will shrink back slower than the last two times.
I am doing just fine.

Straight from the mouth of a professional. We are all GOOD.

Good.

So good.

Tasty Tuesday: BBQ Chicken Pizza & Flourless Chocolate Cake

Posted by on Mar 19, 2012 in Food | 0 comments

A friend recently celebrated a birthday. When celebrating a birthday you have to have a delicious cake. I always think that a person should be allowed to eat what they want on their special day, so she chose the menu for the evening. BBQ Chicken Pizza is her favorite thing that I make, so I wasn’t surprised when she wanted to eat at on her birthday, but somehow I didn’t know she loved chocolate cake. I made a flourless one (because I’d never tried one before but it sounded decadent and that’s what everybody wants in a cake). Here’s what we ate:

BBQ Chicken Pizza

1 Rhodes Frozen Bread Dough, defrosted
2 Tablespoons butter, melted
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dry mustard
1 Tablespoon Italian seasoning
dash of pepper

1/2 – 3/4 cup Prepared BBQ Sauce (I use Famous Daves Texas Pit or Sweet & Sassy)
1 cup Cooked chicken breast cut into bite sized pieces
1/2 cup Purple onion, sliced very thin
6-7 Mushrooms, sliced thin (I love baby portobellas, but button work too)
2 cups Mozzarella Cheese
1 cup Cheddar Cheese

Preheat oven to 400. Prepare baking sheet/pizza stone with non-stick spray or butter. Roll out dough. Mix Butter with seasonings and spread onto dough. Bake 5 minutes to set the dough a bit. Remove from oven and spread BBQ sauce on top. Add chicken, onion, mushrooms. Top with mozzarella and cheddar. Bake 15-30 minutes – until cheese is bubbly or starting to get crusty, as you desire. Enjoy!

Flourless Chocolate Cake (from Tyler Florence)

1 pound bittersweet chocolate, chopped into small pieces (I used Ghiradelli)
1 stick unsalted butter
9 large eggs, separated
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 cups heavy cream, cold

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare springform pan with butter or non-stick spray.

Put the chocolate and butter into the top of a double boiler until melted. Whisk egg yolks with granulated sugar until light yellow in color.

My lovely assistant performed the mixing. She did a fantastic job, as usual.

Whisk a little of the chocolate mixture into the egg yolk mixture to temper the eggs – this will keep the eggs from scrambling from the heat of the chocolate. Whisk in the rest of the chocolate mixture.

You need four of these blocks of chocolate. FOUR! I chose three bittersweet and one semisweet because I love the sweet. SWEET!
(oh look, there is bread dough rising in the background for the pizza. HI BREAD DOUGH!)

Melting! Okay. Full disclosure. I dorked this recipe up. There is no butter melting with these chocolates. I forgot to add it. SO LAME. The entire cake was in the oven when I turned around and saw the butter sitting on the counter. I freaked, pulled the cake out. Melted the butter in the microwave. Mixed it into the batter and then put it back into the pan and then back into the oven. Perhaps it would have been fluffier if I'd done it properly, but it still rose and was just fine.

Beat the egg whites in a mixing bowl until stiff peaks form and fold into the chocolate mixture. Pour into the prepared pan and bake until the cake is set, the top starts to crack, and a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out with moist crumbs clinging to it, about 25-30 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes, then unmold. While the cake is cooking, make the whipped cream.

Whip the cream until it becomes light and fluffy. Serve the room temperature cake with a side of cream. Enjoy.

No cracking in the top. I pulled it out before then because I was nervous about over baking. Don't fret, friends! Let it bake. Let it crack. Mine was slightly underdone in the middle (which made it kind of like fudge and not bad at all, but for sure not done).

This was the most delicious chocolate cake ever. It is rich and delicious and I could not love it more. You’ll cut tiny pieces because this will be so rich that you wont be able to eat more than a sliver at a time. Serve it with some raspberries or strawberries to freshen it up and you’ll probably get marriage proposals.

On Tones and Talking

Posted by on Mar 19, 2012 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

I’m sure you already know that I am often overflowing with sass and opinion. I’ve always been this way. Since I was able to put words into our language and even when I was speaking my own, I would offer up my own ideas with too much power, too many words and a general idea that I was right about them all. I’m raising someone very similar to me now and while it is often amusing to watch it all unfold, the thing that sits directly in the middle of those folds is not pretty. I know all of that because I live it and because the Word tells me that my desperately wicked self cannot survive on its own and achieve beauty.

The past six weeks have been survived. That is my post baby mantra – survive, survive, survive. This time I blinked and we made it. Six weeks of allowing a tiny human’s every whim to rule my minutes. And now begins the process of stamping out self – not her personality or her ideas or her uniqueness – but her self will that is bent to rule and ugliness and sin.

It starts small. Sleep when it is best for you. Wake when you need to eat. Tiny steps to remind her tiny soul that this world is not spinning around her.

Somehow I’ve got to remember this same thing. I need more time spent in quiet, more time meditating, more time devouring the things that transform me – the Word and the Spirit working together to change me. I’ve got to let go of the house running perfectly and remember that its more important to say the words gently to these tiny ears than it is be ten minutes early. The earth isn’t spinning around me.