Author Archives: Tessa

Simply Perfect Pancakes

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If anyone is looking for a pancake recipe (a fantastic pancake recipe!!!) this is for you. We like pancakes around here and I’ve tried many, many recipes. I made these for breakfast the other day and EVERYONE was in heaven. I made a double batch and froze them. We had pancakes for breakfast yesterday and today, and for dinner tonight. Alan said they were the best he’s ever had. I did half plain and half with blueberries and the general consensus is that blueberries are yummy, but the plain ones are just perfect. Simply perfect!

Simply Perfect Pancakes from King Arthur Flour (who else?!?)
Ingredients
* 2 large eggs
* 1 1/4 cups milk
* 3 tablespoons melted butter or vegetable oil
* 1 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
* 3/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 2 tablespoons sugar OR 1/4 cup malted milk powder (I used sugar)

Directions
1. Beat the eggs and milk until light and foamy, about 3 minutes at high speed of a stand or hand mixer. Stir in the butter or vegetable oil. (I was too lazy to get out the stand mixer, so I just used a whisk for a minute or so.)

2. Whisk the dry ingredients together to evenly distribute the salt, baking powder and sweetener.

3. Gently and quickly mix into the egg and milk mixture. Let the batter rest for at least 15 minutes, while the griddle is heating; it”ll thicken slightly.

4. Heat a heavy frying pan over medium heat, or set an electric griddle to 350°F. Lightly grease frying pan or griddle. The pan or griddle is ready if a drop of water will skitter across the surface, evaporating immediately.

5. Drop 1/3 cupfuls of batter onto the lightly greased griddle. Bake on one side until bubbles begin to form and break, then turn the pancakes and cook the other side till brown. Turn over only once. Serve immediately.

Check out the King Arthur Flour recipe page for photos and tips including a cool one (that I’m trying next time) about how to make blueberry pancakes.

PS. Grandpa Tom, I was telling the kids about world famous french toast and they are now excited to try some of that next week :)

Baby Zig

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Baby Zig

Baby Zig - 12/17/04

Probably no one but me will care about this, but I just imported the Baby Zig blog into this one, so now all of my blog posts ever (well, family related blog posts anyway) are here and searchable. Cool, huh?! I think so :) Someday I’d like to go back through them all and make all sure everything works perfectly and tag everything and blah, blah, blah, but for now the posts themselves are here and the pictures and that will be good enough. :)

Fastachios

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On our nut-binge-grocery-trip the evening after Eve’s allergist appointment I grabbed a big bag of mini-Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups (YUM!!) to make cookies that I had been drooling over for many months. We made the cookies, ate too many, ate even more peanut butter cups, and made more cookies. When they were finally gone Lex was very sad and asked me to buy more at the store. I promised him I’d buy him a treat, but silently committed to NOT buy of those candies because I eat way too many of them. Put me in a room with chocolate and peanut butter and I loose all control. It’s really quite sad. Anyway, Eve and I picked up a big bag of pistachios at BJs instead and Lex, my darling Lex, was even more excited about them than the candy! He eats pistachios (and calls them fastachios) at every meal and every snack. Every. Single. One. Can a kid eat too many pistachios? I hope not! I have trouble resisting those too, but not as much trouble and I figure at least they are healthier than candy.

Movies

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While I was adding a video Alan took to the “Beautiful Bedtime” post he made earlier this week (Lex reading to Eve, adorable, scroll down to see it) I came across this little blast from the past. Lex was almost 3yrs, Eve was 1yr.

Fun with friends

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We had a fun day today with a visit from Jim and Julie, and Molly, of course.  It rained and poured but we managed a trip to King Arthur Flour.  Sooo much to see there… and so very crowded on a rainy day in November.  The kids had fun playing together.  Julie’s birthday is this weekend so we had a little birthday celebration with angel food cake (yum!!!)

Fun in the playhouse

Fun in the playhouse

Hugs!

Hugs!

Going on a trip

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Eve has become such a gatherer.  She cracks me up.  Everwhere she goes she gathers things and carries them with her.  She’s had several potty accidents even because she’s trying to carry to many things to the bathroom with her. Silly girl.  Last night she gathered up all this stuff and announced that she was going on a trip.  To where?  The office!  (she frequently goes “to a meeting” too, with all her stuff.)

Eve, all packed for a trip

Eve, all packed for a trip

Happy Birthday to me!!

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Real quick, before bed, just a quick happy birthday to me post :)  We had a usual Thursday with school, work, daycare (H1N1 shot for Eve, a champ, remind me later to tell that story).  Then we had a surprise visit from the neighbors.  I was making the kids pancakes for dinner (with every intention of eating a WW friendly salad myself) when the neighbors stopped by with a birthday card from Parrish and chocolate chip cookies with sprinkles on top.  We invited them to stay for dinner and we all enjoyed pancakes (maple and blueberry), wine (a gift from Alan), and cookies for dessert.  How’s that for a birthday dinner!!!  Another year older, a few (ok, a lot!) more gray hairs, and more love than I know what to do with!  I’m a lucky lady!

Kill and Guns (what are words I’m not ready to deal with yet?!)

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Lex went back to school today after being out sick for most of last week.  He probably could have gone back Friday, but I decided to keep him home and let him fully recover before going back.  He’s mostly recovered now, still has a runny nose, though that will probably last all winter :(

Over the weekend he made a K’Nex car (he makes LOTS of them!) and told me that the wheels of this particular car could kill any bad guys that got too close to it.  I was a little surprised by this since he’s never made a killing machine before.  I asked him if he knew what “kill” meant and he said no.  He also said he got the idea for the car from a book we borrowed from the library (bad mommy for not better vetting the library books!)  The book talks about robbers who steal from carriages.  They carry a pepper sprayer to stop the horses, an ax to break the carriage wheels, and a blunderbuss to frighten the passengers.  The book doesn’t talk about killing, but apparently he deduced that.  As much as I hate that he’s thinking about such things I know it’s bound to happen sometime and I tried to take the opportunity to talk about killing and death.  Yuck.  Then he changed the car to have wheels that “capture bad guys and bring them to the police.”  :)  He’s still such a baby!  Or not.

Tonight he made a K’Nex gun!  Eeek!!  It was a “fire sprayer gun” and he started shooting it at Eve.  Needless to say I put a halt to that!!  We had another conversation about death and killing and I told him that he can make guns, but he may not point them at people.  Ever.  Ever.  He argued that it’s just a K’Nex toy really and I held my ground.  I told him that he can make guns and not point them at people, or he can choose to not make guns.  He threw his toy at me.  We had a rough night.  Sigh.  I think back to school took it out of him!  Fortunately bedtime was smooth and quick.  Maybe he’ll wake up a little boy again and not be interested in guns for another million years!  Or not.

A budding artist

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Check out the artwork Lex did this morning!  He got sent home from school with a fever so Alan stayed with him while I took Eve to the allergist.  Alan said he was working at the table while Lex colored and Lex made these drawings all on his own, unprompted or anything.  The bouncing ball (and the path it took) is cool, but the beach scene just floored me!  I have never seen him do anything so involved!  I asked him tonight who the person was and he said “Umm… the person doesn’t have a name.  Unless I give it one.  But I don’t want to give it a name.”  So that’s that.  I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen him draw a person.  And look at the face on the sun!  He was even showing Alan that the orange and blue together looked like purple.  I know kids develop in bursts, but it’s fun to watch and sometimes catches me totally off guard.  I’m really enjoying this artistic burst.

Bouncing balls and beach scenes

Bouncing balls and beach scenes