Have Your Cake...

After someone at work mentioned I hadn’t posted in months I made a mental note to post soon. Fast-forward several months later, and look, I’ve actually done it! Yay me!

(Paste gold star here.)

Anyhoo, I hosted a huge summer reading cooking program. Some would call me insane (I prefer ambitious) but we made a boat load of food. Now that I’m on an “eating plan” (the polite term for diet), I’m glad I went all out because I can’t have any of the foods we made, meaning right about now the only thing stopping me from braining someone for a peanut butter cookie is that I don’t feel like calling Hyjentec. We made toaster oven pizzas, BBQ pulled chicken with crackers, chocolate dipped strawberries, dinner salad, peach cobbler, popcorn, carrots with dip, decorated cookies and made cake pops. The kids loved it, one saying, “We should do this again!” before I even had a chance to recover, pat her gently on the head and say, “That’s nice, dear,” and another telling her mom she wanted to do some of these things for her birthday party, which made mom happy since it’s a lot cheaper than a bounce house.

My work here is done.

After watching someone make cake pops from scratch on TV, I concluded the process made the time I amended my taxes by hand seem downright joyful. I went online for easier ways. The easier ways weren’t quite easy enough for me, so I came up with my own because sometimes making something doable sometimes trumps my Martha Stewart dreams.

Sometimes...


Easy-Peasy Cake Pops

Ingredients:
Donut holes (purchased a box of 55 at Safeway)
Vanilla Frosting (room temperature)
Sprinkles (I got the tub, put them in small cups with spoons)
Food coloring (optional)

Other materials:
Popsicle sticks
Butter knives
Paper plate
Spoons
Cups

1. Spear a donut hole with a popsicle stick.
2. Smother said donut hole with delicious, sugary, ooey gooey I-wish-I-was-allowed-to-eat-this frosting. I made several batches in different pastel colors.
3. Over a paper plate, sprinkle the cake pop with sprinkles.
4. Use the paper plate to funnel the leftover sprinkles back into the sprinkle container.

Okay, I’m off to eat some more broccoli now, but feel free to enjoy your cake pops. Just not in front of me, seeing as that would be totally wrong...

Getting Back Into the Groove

27 Things is kinda like a diet.

You start out all gung ho, talking about how you’re only going to eat things that taste like tree bark (it’s good for you!) and drink 10 glasses of water minimum, this despite the fact that your bladder is the size of a thimble and you’re not supposed to have liquids after 7 pm. (At least not if you want to sleep.) The old exercise clothes get blamed for your lack of fitness---who wants to be seen at the gym in a number 23 Bulls jersey and sweatpants that have holes up and down the inseam? You're too old to pretend they're for ventilation, meaning new clothes are in order for the new you! You send the food pantry your stash of Top Ramen, Snickers bars, fudge brownies, and frozen lasagna and buy a bunch of heads of lettuce and low fat dressing to kick it all off because you’re getting into shape.

Fast forward to a month later.

You’re sitting on the couch eating cookie dough while watching Dancing with the Stars. Sure, you spent a ton of money on yoga pants, but no worries. They’re soooo comfy and stretchy, and since they’re long and black, you figure you can get away with wearing them to work with a tunic without anyone noticing. You’d like to salsa dance like you see them doing on TV, but since that would require actual movement of something other than you’re right thumb, you’re fine with just staring at the LCD screen. Though you didn’t actually accomplish your goals, you got off to the great start (at the mall) and that’s what counts, right?

I’ve been busy. Really busy. I knew I should get back to 27 things between hosting a job fair, putting on movie nights, doing Toddler Time, timesheets, and constantly disinfecting between touching icky children’s materials (and riding public transit, LOL), but honestly, I didn’t feel like it. And I didn’t feel bad about not feeling like it, because neither did you.

Feel like it, that is.

Don’t lie. (Not that you would---it requires too much thought.) I saw the links on the 27 Things blog. Some of you haven’t posted in 4 weeks. Instead of it making me feel bad, it made me feel better to know, not only was I not the laziest person here, I was better than some of you by default. (Gives me a warm fuzzy feeling right where my heart should be.) Though it’s a bit off (by like 6 days), it stated I last posted 1 week ago. I kinda did the assignments for the last two weeks, but since I haven’t digested them enough to come up with something really snarky to say, I’m going to wait until Sunday or Monday (or July) to tell you all about it. I just didn’t want to go 2 whole weeks without posting something.

Don’t want to look bad, right?