I'm Derelict

...in my duty. I know I'm in danger of losing all (3) of my readers...but this is the busy season. Don't bother school people in August or April-May. The week of my birthday I had three concerts to go to. Best song, "This show is over, this show is done!"
Yeah, it's all over in 24 school days. Mike is still uneasy about the whole retirement thing. But I listen to some of the ranting and think, "this show is over".

Happy Birthday, Erin Maureen!

March 28 was the day, but she's celebrating all weekend.
From this...


to this..in 25 years!! Michelle and little sis, Erin.
Here are the bookends--aren't they gorgeous? We are so blessed to have you, Erin. We lost a baby between you and Sean, but decided to try again. Thank God! You have brought such joy and love to your parents and your brothers and sister. And then there's all those neices and your nephew! We are proud of you and wish you the best birthday ever.

Mom and Dad

Easter eggs, a family tradition

I've spent two days creating our family fav, the Easter egg. I started making these in the 70's when I sent for an Eagle Brand recipe booklet. The booklet was lost when we moved and no eggs were to be had for nearly 10 years. :( Then! Along came the internet! I was able to find an updated version on the Eagle Brand website and have been making them again. So here's the recipe. And some tips.

Easter Eggs

1 stick butter, softened

1/2 t. salt

1 can Eagle Brand condensed milk

1 t. vanilla

9-10 C. pwd. sugar (a 2# bag)
almond bark
decorating frosting

With mixer, beat butter and salt together.

Gradually add milk and vanilla.

Beat in 6-8 cups of pwd. sugar, one cup at a time. Stir in by hand as much remaining sugar as you can.
Now this is where it gets fun. You decide what flavors you want. I'm sure you could get lots of inspiration from Truffles recipes. I have always made two kinds: Pecan, and Cherry Coconut. This year I experimented with a Chocolate Fudge.

For Pecan: Divide dough in half. Knead one half on pwd. sugar covered surface. Add 1 C. chopped pecans and knead into candy dough.

For Cherry Coconut: Into other half of dough, add 1 C. coconut and one small jar of marachino cherries which you have drained and chopped and drained again. Knead again. This dough will get sticky, so add more powdered sugar as you knead.

For Chocolate Fudge: Go back to the beginning of recipe. Add 2-3 melted squares of semi-sweet chocolate. I also added 1 C. cocoa to deepen the flavor. It was a drier dough, so more butter might be used. (I'm guessing, can you tell?) There is a chocolate eagle brand condensed milk that could work in this, but I didn't have that.

Divide the dough into equal sized pieces. Roll in your hands to an oval or "egg" shape. Mine are about 2 inches long. The chocolate batch is a whole recipe and yielded 36 eggs. You can see the powered sugar dusting they have.

Place molded eggs on waxed paper, cover and chill for 4 hrs.

Coating: Using Almond Bark, (I don't remember what I used in the 70's) or dipping chocolate, melt the bark. I don't have a great way of doing this, but 2 forks and a spoon worked. Drop one egg in the coating, spoon coating over it, pick up with serving size fork, tap on bowl (this smoothes out the coating, and helps extra coating to drip off), then use other fork to gently move on to waxed paper.

I used both chocolate and white coating. I made two recipes, about 6 dozen eggs. For 18 eggs, I used 2/3 of a pkg. of white coating. In all, I used about 1 1/2 pkg. of chocolate.

The next step is decorating. I made a simple buttercream frosting, dyed it three colors and decorated the eggs. Sometimes I use the color of decoration to keep track of the egg flavor. This time I used two different muffin papers-green for the chocolate eggs, white for the cherry coconut eggs and the pecan eggs are in white coating.

They're rich! Enjoy!

Spring babies

Luci is really happy!! Those eyes are getting darker. She grew 3 inches since the last dr. visit.

Katie--no teeth yet, but she's crawling and walking around the furniture.

I didn't get a picture of Madeline last week. I'll work on that this weekend.

The wee one got away!

Patrick and the kids made a Leprechaun Trap and put it outside to catch the little guy. When they checked this morning, all of Gracie's "gold" was stolen, and a scrap of green cloth was in the trap! I'm hoping there are pictures!

Thanks, Pat! Here is Gracie setting the trap. Note the "gold coins".

Happy St. Paddy's Day!!

It's too cold to parade, so instead I'm cooking. I'll share a couple of recipes.

Irish Soda Bread

4 C. flour

3/4 C. sugar

1 1/4 stick oleo or butter

1 t. salt

2 t. bk. pwd.

1 1/4 t. bk. soda

1 1/2 C. raisins, soaked in warm water to plump (I don't use them)

2 C. buttermilk

1/2 C. ch. walnuts

Cut oleo into dry ingredients until the crumb is fine. Slowly pour in buttermilk. (Drain raisins and add.) Add nuts. The dough will be very sticky and thick. I use a wooden spoon for the nuts.

Divide into two greased pie pans. Bake in preheated oven at 350 for 30 minutes or until top is golden brown and toothpick comes out clean. If serving for breakfast, I glaze with a thin powdered sugar frosting. Most Irish soda breads I see commercially are very dry and dark. This one is quite moist.

For the kiddies, you might make Paddy's Potatoes. This is a candy that looks like a miniature potato.

5T melted butter

1 C peanut butter

1/4 t. salt

1/2 t. vanilla

1 1/2 C. pwd. sugar

Mix butter and peanut butter together. Add salt and vanilla. Slowly add pwd. sugar until dough is stiff enough to mold. Roll small balls (potato shaped) of mixture into 1/2 t. cinnamon and 2 t. cocoa mixture. This gives the dusty potato appearance. Stud small pieces of nuts into ball for "eyes". Chill. Makes 2 dozen.

Since this Recipe Day, maybe you would like one for Unleavened Bread-we use this at our non-orthodox Seder. It's good for Holy Thursday's dinner too. From Rev. Bob:

1 C. flour

1 C. whole wheat flour

1 t. salt

1 t. sugar

3/4 t. bk. soda

Mix all dry ingred. together. Add 2 T. shortening, cut into dry ingred.

Mix 1 T. honey with 3/4 C. hot water. Add to dry mixture. Form a ball. Dough should not be so moist you need to flour the rolling pin and surface. Knead if necessary. Roll out to 1/4 " thick. Cut into saucer sized rounds. Score with knife like you're cutting a pie. Preheat 425. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8-11 min. Yield 3-4 circles.

And yes, the corned beef is in the pot!

Caroline the Photographer

We stopped to see the girls and Caroline wanted to borrow my camera. Here's a selection of her shots.

Mom

Her pet rat

Sister

The cookies we brought them

An artistic shot from the stairs