Resurrection Cupcakes.

Okay, yeah, I'm not sure it works, either.

But whenever I looked for Easter cupcakes on the Internet, all I got were eggs and chicks and green-tinted icing.

And that's not what I mean by Easter.  And I thought that maybe the whole celebrating-the-resurrection-with-cutesy-cupcakes thing was probably a bad idea.  But I kept trying.

I tried googling "resurrection symbols," which turned up a lot of hits for the Resurrection Eggs thing, which involves putting symbols of both the Passion and the Resurrection in plastic eggs, with, I guess, the idea that they actually could then be Easter eggs.

And I liked that idea, and a lot of the symbols seemed like things even I could turn into cupcake decorations.

But then I thought that cupcakes with torture devices on them were, you know, not quite it, either.  I didn't really want crucifixion cupcakes.  I wanted Easter cupcakes.

So I went back to the actual resurrection stories, and came up with a handful of symbols I thought would work:

An empty tomb, because, duh.
Coins or a money bag, for the bribe for the soldiers (Matthew).
An angel, also duh.  (In Mark, he's a young man, but in the other three, one or two angels show up.)
Strips of linen (Luke & John) and a folded headcloth (John).
Broken bread (Luke).
Fish (Luke, and, in a different way, John).
Dove (Holy Spirit, John).
Hand with nail mark (John).

I was actually planning to try them all.  But 1) tummy bug, 2) nearing the end of the semester, and 3) my general sculpting inadequacy.

So this was the best I could do:

I've no doubt some of you could take this and make it truly Pinterest-worthy.

If you could get all eight of the ones I came up with, you could probably make a scripture activity of it--find the story the cupcake applies to, or hide a little scripture verse on the bottom of the cupcake or something.

But the [our last name] boys, who can't even manage matching socks, will not mind, I think, my rudimentary success.

The Way-back Cuisine

Quick!  List ten foods you used to make/eat that you don't make/eat any more.

How many of them are used-tos because you 1) know better now, 2) can't afford them anymore or can afford better now, and 3) don't frickin' have that kind of time any more?

Most of my list falls under category 4: We don't live in France any more, and consists of my five favorite cheeses, two favorite wines, and snails.  (Seriously.  I used to make snails.)

But the other two things on my list are from The Grad School Years (Take One)--during the Master's degree, when money and time were short and when I didn't actually cook everything from scratch.

Hot Pockets, and ramen noodles.

Oh, how many Hot Pockets and Cup O'Noodles we took to school.  How many weekend lunches were ramen noodles.

I will never, ever, EVER eat Hot Pockets again.  If they were paying shoppers to take them out of the grocery store, I would pass.

But I did get an unaccountable yearning to have ramen noodles again.

They're actually pretty tasty, if you dispense with the "flavor" packet and use actual soup ingredients.

Voila.

Real chicken broth, veggies (including some from our own garden), and a lovely soft-boiled egg.

Isaac had three bowls, and then asked why we didn't have ramen noodles all the time.

I, of course, answered, "Grad school."  (Dave Ramsey often says he doesn't eat tuna fish, EVER, because when he went bankrupt, he ate tuna salad sandwich for lunch every day for years.)

Isaac was uncomprehending, even after I explained about the "flavor" packet.

In fact, he asked if he could add the flavor packet to his (fourth) bowl, at which point the other two chimed in and begged for the same.

Rotten little ingrates.

Wake-up Call

Nothing will get you out of bed faster than certain sounds.

Previously, the top performer was the sound of a child retching, because, well, you know.  Second place was the baby gate being pushed over, because that meant the Kraken had escaped.  Sounds of potential home invasion were way, way down the list.

But we added a new one yesterday: the sound of a seven-year-old saying, "Don't worry about the ironing, Mommy!  I did it while you were sleeping."

Yes, he did.  A napkin, one of his brother's school shirts, and a pair of gym shorts.

The shirt looked great.  And he remembered to unplug the iron when he was done.

He left the iron face down on the ironing board, but, well, singe marks don't hurt anything.

So.  That was exciting.

We decided that it was past time to teach him to cook, then, since his appetite for Doing Dangerous Grown-up Things had clearly been unsatisfied.

Scrambled Eggs À La Theo it was, then.

If you want to make them, here's how:

Mix eggs (one per person, plus one extra), salt, and cream in a bowl.

Pour eggs into hot pan with melted butter.

Burn your finger a little, so that Mom remembers that people should wear shirts while cooking.

Stir gently to keep eggs from burning.

Enjoy a good breakfast with Mom.

Leaves

This is what I'm looking forward to most about our first summer here in [our town]:

I have four tree seedlings--two of them rather sizeable, and two rather not.

I really, really, really hope I get at least a few figs out of this.

It doesn't have to be enough to make all the fig things I'm planning--fig jam, fig ice cream, fig pie, roasted fig and blue cheese salad, fig and chevre pizza, etc.

But, you know, some figs would be nice.

What would you make if you had an abundance of figs?

Oh, Pinterest.

Pinterest promised me that I could make heart-shaped cupcakes without a heart-shaped pan.

They promised.  Marbles.  That's all I needed.

Well.  They didn't exactly turn out heart-shaped.

In fact, they look skull-shaped to me.  (So, I'll keep it in mind for my next Dia de los Muertos celebration.)

But a little judicious decorating helped.

And, of course, the benefit of living with a bunch of Y-Chromes is that no one fargling cares what the cupcakes look like.  They just shove them into their mouths as fast as possible.

Okay, so, sometimes Theo appreciates my alleged artistic skills.  That's why we keep him around.

Christmas Eve Recap

I did a lot of baking in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  But none of it was for us.

It was for teachers . . .

. . . nursery workers . . .

. . . neighbors . . .

. . . and other assorted folk.

But we did have a lovely Christmas Eve dinner, just for us.

Hope you all had a lovely holiday.  A very happy New Year to you.

Sugar it up!

When the kids--ours and a few other people's--started to get a little energetic last night, Stephen said, "We better get them dessert."

Normally, I would question the notion that adding sugar to an already over-energized crowd of under-tens will somehow help.

But, last night, it actually did.

We decorated cupcakes for dessert.

It was fun.

There is, I suppose, a point past which a cupcake becomes un-yummy in its overdecoration.

But we didn't seem to get there last night.

Everyone enjoyed their creations.

And then they all played quietly (no, really!) for another hour.

Experiments

I made some cupcakes this weekend.

I wanted to try a few new things, since I felt as though I was getting into a cupcake rut.

So, I tried this recipe for salted caramel buttercream.  It was very nice.  Maybe a little subtle with the caramel flavor, especial in comparison with the other cupcake I made.

Oh my gracious heavens, this cupcake was insane.

Okay, the cupcake on the left is a chocolate cupcake with the aforementioned salted caramel buttercream.  It really was a nice cupcake.

The cupcake on the right is a lime-coconut cupcake with a lime buttercream.

The lime-coconut cupcake was just your standard 1-2-3-4 cake batter, with coconut milk substituted for the milk, a little lime zest and coconut extract added with the liquid ingredients, and about half a cup of shredded coconut added at the end.  It was pretty subtle in both the lime and the coconut departments.

I may as well have made plain white cake, because it was the buttercream that did it.

I made my usual French buttercream recipe.

Then I zested and juiced two limes.  I added the zest to the finished buttercream, which made for a very subtle, but very nice, vaguely lime-ish flavor.  If you wanted to stop there, you could.  No one would say, "Oh, this is lime!" But everyone would say, "Oh, this is good!  What's that flavor in the background?"

Well, then I took the juice and boiled it down until it was syrupy.  I added the syrup to the buttercream.

It was yowza.

I probably would use a smidge less of the condensed lime juice next time.  It was perhaps a little too assertively lime.  Or if I did it this way again, I would put it on a little more flavorful cupcake--something that could really stand up to the lime.

And it did make the buttercream a little soft.  It started to slump pretty quickly in our warmer-than-room-temperature kitchen.

But I will definitely do buttercream this way again.  Just not until I lose the seventy-eight pounds I gained "sampling" and "testing" this one.  ("You know, it's for company.  I'd better make sure it really does taste okay.")

Pizzaiola

Anybody up for some pizza?

From the front, we have arugula and sweet potato, pepper and salami, more arugula and sweet potato, and bacon and spinach.

I've been trying to branch out beyond my usuals (pepperoni, barbecue chicken, and mushroom and chevre).

Do you have any more ideas for me?

Scratch and Dent Food

This is a great idea, and I'm glad he's doing this:

Former Trader Joe's Exec Wants to Reclaim Expired Food, Reduce Waste

But, honestly, I'm a little sad to see how few grocery stores take the initiative to deal with this reality themselves.

I've seen many--although decidedly not all--that with throw a little $1-off sticker on expiring meat, or put their ultra-ripe bananas in a special bag on a discount.

That's, you know, nice.

But I think they could take a more comprehensive approach.

I've only ever seen it done in one store, but it really worked, and it didn't detract from the store's upscale vibe.

This store, a Harris Teeter in North Carolina, had a special section in the meat department and a special rack in the produce department.  All the expiring meat got a nice little discount--often about 30%--and was conveniently located all in one place.  Meat that was expiring that day often got a more substantial discount--maybe two-thirds or three-quarters off.

Scratch-and-dent and super-ripe produce was similarly repackaged and all placed together on that special rack.  It might contain damaged apples or pears (I often used them for pie or applesauce), cut melons (that had been, presumably, bruised on one side but were salvageable), old-ish mushrooms (wrinkled was fine, slimey was not), smooshy avocados (fine for guac), or plantains that had ripened black (which is the exact perfect time to use them!).

Here's the thing: even though Harris Teeter tended to be pricier and more upscale than Kroger or Food Lion, I always shopped at Harris Teeter, once they started doing this.  It really did help the budget, I really appreciated the convenience of having all the sale stuff in one place, and I really liked patronizing a store that was trying to eliminate waste.

In fact, I thought of those scratch-and-dent sections as a small way for the grocery store to redeem the manipulative practices that grocery stores routinely use to separate you from as much of your money as possible.

I never make applesauce anymore.  I don't have time, first of all, and it's been over four years since I moved away from that Harris Teeter.  (The idea of making applesauce from full-price apples makes me grumpy.)

And I've never--never--seen a grocery store with the same concerted effort to do what that Harris Teeter did.  (I don't think my current grocery store even puts little $1-off stickers on its expiring meat.)

I shop at Publix now.  Maybe it's time for a little letter to the manager.