I’ve always been a bit of a germ freak, too, so constant hand-washing didn’t help matters much. In high school, I worked at a Pizza Hut, which meant hand-washing to the n^th degree, and nowadays I sometimes bake cakes for other people and am über-paranoid about giving somebody salmonella, so the hand-washing madness continues. As of late I’ve tried using food prep gloves, but water still seeps in around my wrists if I try to wash with them on. I did finally break down and buy some cute pink rubber elbow-length gloves for dishwashing, though, and they’re awesome! Now if only they magically made me WANT to do the dishes, they’d be the perfect kitchen accessory.

In addition to my poor cracked and bleeding hands and sad chapped lips, I also have generally dry itchy skin across the rest of my face and body, occasionally interspersed with bouts of eczema. Not fun. So for about a year now I have been on a quest to find products that get me nice and squeaky clean without ripping my skin to shreds. Believe it or not, I have only used cleanser on my face a handful of times since May of 2010. At that time I replaced my dermatologist-recommended Purpose cleanser and moisturizer with – surprise! – oil. Yes, oil. An approximately 3:1 mix of olive oil and castor oil, to be exact. [Small side note: I sent Andy to CVS to get the castor oil for me, and he was mortified when he asked for help finding it and they directed him to the children’s laxative section. If you try to track some down, consider yourself forewarned.]

I was worried that I would break out in horrible acne, but the internet told me I probably wouldn’t, because acne actually can, in part, be caused by letting your skin get too dry (as often happens with regular cleansers), which prompts your glands to go into oil overdrive, which is why most people have to use cleansers in strict conjunction with moisturizers. Putting oil on your face and gently wiping it back off simply moisturizes. Your own glands are free to kick back and relax. And your face still gets clean, because “oil dissolves oil”.

I tried to take about a week’s worth of progress photos so I could note any alarming or amazing changes. Frankly, I didn’t notice any, aside from the simple fact that my face rarely had that frustratingly tight, dry feeling. I would offer to share the pics, but they’re pretty goofy.  So I won’t.

My general bedtime routine was to take a nickel-sized amount of oil and rub it in all over my face, then drape a steaming hot washcloth over it for a minute or so. Then I would just wipe it all off, and in the morning I could splash my face with water and go. Then I decided it was easier to do the oil bit during my morning shower, so I would apply it while I was in the shower and let it soak in while I washed my hair and stuff, to let the steam do its work before I rinsed it off and hopped out.

Both of those methods were incredibly easy, but I am lazy and almost always pressed for time. So what revolutionary simplifying change did I make?

I stopped using any kind of cleanser or moisturizer whatsoever on my face. I wash with water. That’s it. It is so far from being problematic that it’s laughable. Some caveats:

- If I do start feeling really dry, I will rub in a couple drops (a little goes a loooong way) of oil before I put on my makeup in the morning, but that’s honestly very rare. Maybe once a month? And mostly in the winter.

- I don’t wear heavy makeup to begin with, so I don’t have much to wash off. Could be totally different if you use liquid foundation or something.

- I didn’t have a major acne problem when I started this. I still get a few occasionally, but they are almost always brought on by stress or hormonal changes, same as they have been for the last few years.

This has only been step one in my quest for amazing, natural, and frugal body care products. I’ll bet you’re on the edge of your seat, trying to figure out my secret for fantastic hair. Err, well, if you’ve seen my hair, “fantastic” may be stretching it. A lot. Sigh. I’m all for truth in advertising, but trying to get my readership (Ha. I don’t really take myself seriously enough to use words like that without a bit of a snicker.) pumped up for information on how to achieve “adequate” hair seems like an effort in futility.

In any case, stay tuned for my next couple of installments, where you can at the very least find out which of my mistakes you do not want to repeat.

But there was a little highlight: while I lounged around, watching all of season one of Supernatural, I also finished #11, a piping piper, from my long, long, long-term Christmas cross-stitch project.

Cute, isn’t he?

Now all I need to do is find some spare time to take care of one little drumming drummer, then do the backing for all 12 of the little doodads, then either frame them or turn them into ornaments, all before Dec. 25, 2012. Sounds doable, but I make no promises.

This came about because I volunteered to make a cake for my friend Parwana’s surprise birthday party last week.  I knew she liked chocolate, but even with all the baking I’d done so far this year, I still hadn’t come across a truly delectable chocolate cake recipe yet.  So I trotted off to one of my most favorite places in the world (the library) to peruse the baking section.  Nothing really popped out at me until I came across this beauty:

“The Essential Baker” by Caroll Bloom (amazon associates link)

The chocolate section of this divine cookbook contained recipes for tarts, soufflés, madeleines, cookies, brownies, cheesecakes, roulades, profiteroles, and, of course, “plain” old cakes.  What baker could resist the siren call of a Devilish Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Buttercream?  Not this one, that’s for sure.

Sadly, as is to be expected when I am in the kitchen, there were setbacks.  I thought I followed the recipe exactly, but somehow when all was said and done, the batter was stiffer than any cake batter I have ever made.  Like, solid, essentially.  Like, I plopped globs of it into the pan and then nearly broke a spatula trying to spread them.  Like, I cried.  I didn’t want to add more liquid only to find I had ruined the recipe and thereby wasted 6 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, a stick of butter, 3 eggs, and a whole tablespoon of my good Mexican vanilla.  I also didn’t want to bake it as it was, fearing the absolute worst, but I just rolled up my sleeves, stuck it in the oven and hoped for the best.  Lo and behold, it actually turned out pretty good, though perhaps a bit dry.

If I make it again, I will by all means keep adding sour cream until the thing looks more like cake batter than like play-dough.

But the cake wasn’t even the best part.  Oh no.

Next I got started on making the caramel.  This bit was actually really simple, which makes it sort of horrendous that I had to do it not once, not twice, but three times.  But at least at this point I was laughing.  (I don’t have nightmares about throwing away sugar the way I do about other, more precious ingredients.)  The recipe called for me to leave my sugar mixture boiling on the stove, on high heat, for 10 minutes.  For the first go-round, I had it set on one notch down from high for about 6 minutes when I turned around to see my kitchen full of smoke, and my pan full of black goop.  Whoops.

For the 2nd go-round, I had the heat set one notch lower, and all was well for the first ten minutes.  Then I tried mixing in some cream with a silicone spatula.  Bad, bad idea, unless you want your guests eating silicone-flavored caramel.  That puppy melted instantly.  Grrr.

Needless to say, I used a metal spoon for the third go-round, and my caramel turned out just magnifique.

At last, at last, it was time to make the buttercream frosting.  I looked at step one and immediately realized I had done a major cooking no-no: I did not read over this recipe one single time before I got started on it.  If I had, I would have realized step one involved eggs. I have never made frosting with eggs, and in fact have actively avoided even the contemplation of such an act for fear of the dread salmonella monster.  But at this point, it was far and away much too late to think about subbing in a different kind of frosting.  For better or worse, I was making this extremely intimidating one.

My terror increased incrementally with every ingredient I threw into the mix.

Step two called for 1 1/4 cups of granulated sugar.  My normal recipe calls for 4 cups of powdered sugar.  Step three called for an entire pound of butter. My normal recipe calls for half that.  My mixer appeared to be full of curds and whey.  The outlook seemed bleak.

However, having few other choices, I just let the KitchenAid keep doing its thing, and, hallelujah, the frosting came together until it looked nice and smooth! But when I grabbed a spoon to taste, I was still anticipating a mouthful of butter.

I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I was to be proven wholly and utterly wrong!  That frosting was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten.  The texture was silky and smooth; the taste was simply phenomenal. Unlike my normal “spoonful of sugar” buttercream, in this I could actually detect the subtle flavors of vanilla and caramel.  It was sublime.

I didn’t even realize until I did some researching the next day that I had just made a French buttercream (using whole eggs), as opposed to an Italian or Swiss (just egg whites) or the regular old American kind (no eggs at all). The French sure have an awful lot to offer this world, don’t they? Their frosting is also known as pâte á bombe. (I choose to amuse myself by translating that as “bomb batter.” I’m assuming the egg yolks are the “bombes,” but if any knowledgeable cuisiniers are reading this, please correct me.)

Et voila, le gâteau!

And, as you may have noticed, my cake had another international aspect that I haven’t mentioned yet. I was thrilled when Parwana walked up to get a look at it and said, “I see Dari!!!”  She has only lived in the U.S. for a year, and knowing that every day she has to deal with homesickness, culture shock, and all the other difficulties that come from being far from home, I wanted to put a little something Afghan into her cake. I had just been crossing my fingers, hoping that the internet hadn’t led me astray when I tried to hunt down the equivalent of “happy birthday” in her native language. Evidently my efforts were at least somewhat legible   Oh, and an interesting bit of trivia: Parwana says that bakeries in Afghanistan commonly put both Dari and English on their cakes, even though English-speakers are obviously greatly outnumbered there.

Maybe this should inspire a new international goodwill venture: Bakers Without Borders!

Me: Hey, your birthday’s coming up! Do you want to have a party or something?
Him: Eh. Why bother?
Me: Fine, party-pooper, then sit at home by yourself; that sounds like fun. [Sighs. Walks away.]

Me: Do you want to go out to dinner for your birthday? What sounds good?
Him: Oh, um, yeah, I guess we could do that. I don’t care where we go.
Me: Ok, wet blanket, please try and rack your brain for a cuisine you might possibly enjoy. [Rolls eyes. Walks away.]

Me: Is there any kind of gift, anything at all, that you’d like for your birthday?
Him: No, not really.
Me: [Shakes head in silent despair. Walks away.]

Veering off on a slight tangent here, you may think it takes some of the fun out of gift-giving to just ask somebody what they want and then go buy it, and I quite agree. However, I have learned the hard way that it is even less fun to get your husband a thoughtful gift only to find that it is viewed with incredulity:

“Why in the world would you think I need another pair of jeans? One pair is obviously more than enough for anybody.”

“A second K-State sweatshirt? Seriously? This is going straight back to the store.”

“Whoa whoa whoa whoa. You’re buying me dinner and a movie and a board game? Who do you think we are, Thurston and Lovey Howell?”

[Veering off-topic even further, I have to admit that Andy is not at all likely to reference pop-culture icons of the '60s during any conversation. But I find my own little joke here incredibly amusing because it perfectly expresses the spirit of this particular rant of his.]

But, as noted, I digress. The original subject of this post was all the fun stuff we did for my husband’s actual birthday. We went to his parents’ on the 5th to have dinner with the family and also celebrate his mom’s birthday. We ate chicken alfredo and brownies (yum), then played games and (everyone but me) watched football. I had a few spectacularly bad rounds of dominoes, but didn’t mind losing to Rick (Andy’s dad) nearly as much as I mind losing to Andy himself. Of course, he solved his Mastermind puzzle about five tries quicker than I did mine, but I still had fun with it, mostly because I was assisted by our little nephew Garrett. A few more years and he will be holding his own in this competitive board-game-playing family!

On the 15th I offered to take Andy out to the fancy-pants version of dinner and a movie. We saw J. Edgar at the Cinema Suites, and the experience was pretty fun, although it probably would have been better if we had actually enjoyed the film. It wasn’t the worst thing ever, but we both agreed it was overly long, was pretty boring in parts, featured goofy old-person makeup, and had a confusing timeline. But the food and drinks were delish! Andy had an Irish coffee and Bistro Chicken Mac and Cheese, while I had a Blue Laguna and Thai Coconut Chicken Tenders. Our server also provided us each with a tiny cup of “gourmet” caramel popcorn, a pre-packaged warm washcloth, and a Ghirardelli chocolate mint, which were nice little perks. The only issue I had with the Cinema Suites was, oddly, the seats. They are incredibly comfortable, but every time you recline them, the leather-on-leather friction creates a very loud whoopie-cushion-type sound. I did a fair amount of immature giggling for this reason during the 2+ hours we were there. If I had been really into the movie, or if the theater had been full of people moving their seats up and down, I might have been annoyed instead of amused.

On the 16th, Andy’s actual birthday, we didn’t do much at all, just stayed at home, watching X-Files while I baked a pie. It was raspberry, as he requested, and I had fun making some pretty cut-outs to decorate the top.

Unfortunately I discovered that, unless you want a big runny mess, you really just can not cut into this type of fruit pie until it has completely cooled overnight, so Andy went to work that night without even having a bite of pastry on his birthday. Of course, being generally very practical and, as I’ve mentioned before, full to the brim with ennui about the whole occasion, he wasn’t too shaken up about it.

But on the 17th, he humored me by good-naturedly blowing out his one little candle.

Here endeth Andrew’s 31st birthday celebration!

Yup, that’s right, it’s “Old Recipe” Red Velvet Milk.  Is this an autumnal tradition I have been missing out on lo these many years?

As you might guess, it tastes pretty much like liquid cake batter.  Not bad, and better yet when combined with Bailey’s and Kahlua.  It’s sort of a pretty shade of pink, too.  But I think one carton of the stuff is enough for me; when this one’s gone I’ll give the Mint Chocolate variety a whirl instead.

The biggest problem was that I didn’t consider that layering round and square tiers was very different from layering just round tiers.  Normally you can stack 6″ on 8″ on 10″ on 12″ tiers with no problem, but I should have remembered my geometry enough to realize that a 10″ square would hang over the edges of a 12″ round.

Secondly, my frosting is just messy.  I would like to think if I didn’t have to deal with a full-time job, not to mention this week’s long dentist appointment and car trouble, that I would have had more time to get all my details worked out, leaving me more time yesterday to get my frosting nice and smooth.  As it was, I was rushing around like a chicken with my head cut off and, well, the final product was just not up to my standards.

But, I will say that Kara, the birthday girl, really seemed to love it, probably because Kelly spent a lot of time brainstorming her sister’s favorite things throughout the years, like Charlie’s Angels and Weebles for the ’70s, Bon Jovi, Michael Jackson and roller-skating for the ’80s, wedding bells, a baby and KU for the ’90s, and her little girl playing basketball and Tanner’s, her old workplace, for the ’00s.

This cake was a long, long, long way from perfect, but I did put a lot of work into it, and I daresay it tasted all right (white cake, cream cheese filling, and buttercream frosting) and fed a lot of people, so on the whole I have to take some level of satisfaction from it.  But here’s hoping the next project I try is a nice, simple, confidence-booster – say, maybe a single cupcake?

First, some Goblin Grog (aka a slightly-adjusted-version-of-Emeril’s-Tin-Can-Margarita [And can I just say that, although I'll go ahead and link to it, I hate the Food Network website. It is so super slow with its darn pop-ups! Is it too much to hope that an FW exec will read this and take it to heart?])

I have to thank Target for its awesome 90% off after-holiday clearance sales, which allowed me to pick up orange rimming salt and cool little spiderweb wine glass coasters last year for like 10 cents each, without which I may never have been inspired to attempt homemade margs.

If you’re wondering why my grog is orange instead of green, that would mainly be because I didn’t have any triple sec and used orange juice instead.  Also, I made them once before with that little alcoholic addition and they were crazy strong, so it was all for the best for me to have a somewhat watered-down version.

Unfortunately, though the grog was quite popular with my girlfriends, I thought I should serve something a little tamer to the college kids who came to my house on Saturday night.  Andy and I had volunteered to participate in a “Host Home Dinner” for the Navigators’ Main Event conference held in Kansas City, and though I was nervous about hosting eight strangers in my tiny little house, I think it went pretty well.  They were all from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln and it was very cool for me to hear a bit about their lives.  I doubt that any of them would stumble across my blog, but if any happen to be reading this, I just want you to know it was a pleasure to have you all over!  Come back any time

Anyway, they only got to drink boring (though yummy) Newman’s Pink Lemonade, so I tried to make dessert a little more fun by channeling Bakerella and her spiders.  I baked up a chocolate cake, crumbled it, mixed in a can of frosting, rolled up some balls and let them chill overnight.  I had wanted to get some black pull-and-peel licorice but my tiny Hy-Vee just wouldn’t cooperate, per their norm.  But I did find some chocolate licorice, which seemed like  a better choice anyway, since I could just cut them up and then have all-brown chocolate spiders.  Well, these things always sound great in theory, but as it turned out, dipping the little suckers in chocolate and attaching Christmas sprinkles for eyes and fangs is rather time consuming.  And cutting licorice into thin little pieces and trying to get them to stick is very time consuming.  And when you have 40 goofy little balls to do, well, you get the picture…  I did finish dipping them all and attaching faces, but I gave up on the legs after the 4th spider or so.  Happily, my very polite company had no complaints and dug right into eating some legless spiders.

But when they headed out after dinner, I was determined to go back and bestow limbs upon the leftovers. And then after about 10 minutes my determination faltered and they got less leg-ified, and more stump-ified.  However, I am still very proud of my little herd of arachnids, including the good…

…the bad…

…and the ugly!

Here’s hoping your Halloween is happy! (And also alluringly alliterative.)

Inspiration for my icy craze came from the ever-delightful Simple and Delicious magazine. I mean, just look at this cover:

Who could resist that???

Step 1 was obvious – I needed to go buy some popsicle molds. This was surprisingly difficult. My first trip to Wal-Mart was sorely disappointing. They had slushie makers and tons of “homemade” ice cream packets, but I only found two lone molds, neither of which were impressive. One was in the shape of Crayola crayons, and one was a bomb pop. I might have settled for either of those if they had been of decent size, but they seemed tiny. So I determined to try elsewhere. My local HyVee, again, had TONS of summer items…but not a single popsicle mold! I started getting a little angry. Was corporate America trying to sabotage my summer? I thought it through carefully and came up with one more store I was willing to try: Bed, Bath & Beyond. I mean, they have everything, right? Well, yes, actually, this time I was right! They had perfect little molds that just made my day, and for a very reasonable price. I believe they started out at about 4 bucks, though of course I used 20% off coupon. This gave me four traditional-looking pops of pretty good size. I thought the little straws for slurping up the melty leftovers was a pretty cute idea, although in reality it didn’t end up working so well. Andy was quick to complain when it dripped on his hand.

Step 2 – fill ‘em up! I started off pretty easy, by simply freezing some Minute Maid Cherry Limeade I already had in the fridge (and wasn’t too crazy about). Surprisingly, it tasted much yummier as a
‘sicle. I tried to jazz a couple up by adding in lime juice and chunks of lime. This backfired, as limes get real bitter real fast. If you want to try this at home, go ahead and add a bit of the juice, but stay away from the chunks.

I got slightly more creative with the second batch by attempting to create an orange julius pop. I took some regular oj and mixed in a couple tablespoons of powdered milk and a teaspoon or so of vanilla. These were decent but not terribly impressive – mostly they just tasted like orange juice. I haven’t tried it yet, but I think mixing some oj concentrate with slightly thawed vanilla ice cream might be a better option.

I also tried my hand at “breakfast pops” by mixing up a normal batch of smoothies (random combo of bananas, frozen berry mix, milk, oj, plain yogurt, and occasional ground oats or peanut butter). I thought these were pretty awesome, though there was always a fear of dripping all over myself as I was rushing to work, trying to eat one. Megan and Andy, my lovely taste-testers, thought they were ok, but both thought the addition of pb overwhelmed the other flavors. I just like to throw some in to make the smoothie a wee bit more substantial.

I had a big winner with my Vietnamese coffee pops! Cold-brewed coffee + sweetened condensed milk + freezer = heaven. I mixed a little cocoa powder into one for a mocha variation, which was, of course, scrumptious.

Eventually I made my way back to the source of my inspiration, and went to the store, long shopping list in hand, to hunt down the ingredients for some really fancy ‘sicles.

I ended up making the Blueberry Fizz Pops and the Cool Watermelon Pops. The watermelon ones were by far the most eye-pleasing of any of my creations.

However, they were a pain in the butt to make. For one thing, I couldn’t find watermelon cherry Kool-Aid mix (used watermelon-kiwi instead) or watermelon juice blend and didn’t bother buying limeade, for another, this recipe makes wwwwaaaayyyyy too many for a couple with no kids. I halved it and still ended up filling the freezer with dixie cups. Secondly, they took a little more time and effort than the other varieties. Thirdly, they didn’t taste that amazing, although of course I made so many substitutions that I can’t really claim to know what the original version would taste like.

The overall winner in terms of taste and ease were the blueberry fizz pops, by a landslide. They were scrumptious, although again I must admit to subbing fruit punch fizzies for grape ones (cuz that’s all my Hyvee had) and some plain yogurt for the banana (because I didn’t realize we had already eaten the last one until after the other ingredients were already in the blender).

So there you have it, a plethora of popsicles! Now I guess I’ll just have to cross my fingers in the hope for a little Indian summer to come my way so I can feel justified in making more!

Movie 1 – The subject matter is mostly serious but often relayed in a playful manner. Good.

Movie 2 - Again, a mostly somber (though ridiculous) storyline, but this one takes itself MUCH too seriously. Awful.

Movie 3 - Absolutely, deadly serious in almost every way. Great, but I missed the lightheartedness.

Now I’m actually kind of excited to see what Mr. Cruise has in store for Mission 4!