Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients:


1 pkg. yeast, dissolved in 1/4 cup warm water
6 tbs. melted butter
2 eggs
1 cup milk, scalded
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
4-5 cups flour
2 tsp. cinnamon, combined with 1/2 cup sugar

Frosting:
1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)
~2 cups powdered sugar
~1 tsp. vanilla
~1 tbs. milk

Actions To Be Performed:

• Sprinkle packet of yeast over 1/4 cup water (warm, not hot--hot water will murder yeast). Also a teaspoon of sugar. Set aside.
• Scald cup of milk with 5 tablespoons of butter, or a butter-like substance. Do not boil under any circumstances (but it doesn't really matter if you do).
• Take measuring cup out of dishwasher; rinse it with left hand.
• Add 1/4 cup sugar to milk.
• Gradually mix in 2 cups flour. If you have a mixer, why not use it?
• Add teaspoon of salt and 2 eggs to flour mixture.
• Get mad at dad.
• When yeast looks bubbly and fizzy, add it to cooled mixture. Mix it.
• Add 2-3 more cups of flour. Mix it.  If you have a mixer with a dough hook, please for the love of Pete use it. Bread-making is not a science, it's a freaking art.
• Set aside, and cover with clean towel.
• Do other things with your life for 1 1/2 to 2 hours while dough rises. Work on your memoirs.

• After the dough rises, poke it. If it pokes you back, it needs to rise longer.
• Grease a baking sheet.
• Mix 1/2 cup sugar with 2 tsp. cinnamon
• Melt 6 tbs. of butter
• Spread out some flour and roll dough on it. Knead in extra flour if too sticky.
• Roll half the dough flat to about 12 x 18 inches.
• Spread half the melted butter on surface. Sprinkle half the cinnamon/sugar over melted butter.
• Roll up the dough with the butter and friends inside.
• Slice into ten rolls.
• Do all that stuff again with the other half of the dough.
• Cover and let rolls rise about 1 1/2 hours. Write a letter to someone you love. 

• After it has risen again, bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes (until starting to brown).

• To make frosting: soften 1 stick of butter (half cup).
• Pour in powdered sugar to taste (about 2 cups). 
• Add a little milk.
• Stir in 1 tsp. vanilla. Or a capful. Again, it's an art.
• Frost cinnamon rolls. At this point, they are traditionally eaten. 

PLEASE NOTE: The above receipt, while delicious, will cause celiacs to die.

Southwestern Pumpkin Soup

Just in case anyone has misplaced this recipe, I thought that I would post it before Thanksgiving.

Ingredients:

3 cups chicken Broth or chicken stock
1 cup whipping cream
1 15-oz. can pure pumpkin
3 tablespoons (packed) brown sugar (dark brown is recommended)
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
3/4 cup (packed) grated cheddar cheese (we like to use pepper jack)
chopped fresh cilantro

Directions:
Bring chicken stock and whipping cream to a boil in heavy medium pot. Whisk in canned pumpkin, brown sugar, cumin chili powder, coriander and nutmeg. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until soup thickens slightly and flavors blend, about 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (Soup can be prepared up to 1 day ahead. Cool cover and refrigerate. Rewarm over medium-low heat, whisking occasionally.) Ladle soup into bowls. Garnish with cheddar cheese and cilantro.

Giraffe

Family Pictures and Pictures of the Boys!

Halloween Card

Harmonica Virtuoso

I'm not sure what she's telling me in the little spoken interjections. But I like when she tells me what song she was playing.

Roller

Great Pumpkin

Eliza's Stories

I meant to post these long ago, and I don't think I ever did. I just found them again.




Eliza's latest story, filled with sorrow:


Long ago there was a fairy, lost.
She snuck into a castle, and then she got dead.
And then an ant eat her up for his dinner. And she didn't be alive ever again; she was in the ant's tummy.
The End.

Another story:

Once upon a time there was a girl. Her name is Anya.
Anya was a good little girl. And when she growed up she was nice. But when she was a little girl she was mean. But she got bigger and bigger and bigger.
And then she got even more bigger.
That's a little story.

A Good Recipe (I hope)

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 package (8 oz) lite cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cups packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup canned solid pack pumpkin (or homemade puree)
• 1 egg
• Red, Yellow and Green food colors, optional
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips, 12 oz package
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons flour

Method:

Beat together softened butter, white sugar and packed brown sugar. Stir in vanilla, pumpkin, egg and a couple drops each red and yellow food color (enough to make cookie dough orange); stir in chocolate chips. Add 3 cups flour, pumpkin pie spice, salt and baking powder; stir to thoroughly mix. Remove approximately 1/2 to 2/3 cup cookie dough and set aside. Roll remaining cookie dough out between two sheets of lightly floured wax paper or parchment paper into a 12x15x1/4 inch rectangle. Freeze dough while preparing cream cheese filling.

Knead a couple drops green food color into reserved 1/2-cup cookie dough. Roll dough into approximately 36 small marble size balls, refrigerate/freeze until ready to use.

Beat cream cheese until smooth; add powdered sugar and 3 tablespoons of flour; beat until smooth and creamy. Remove cookie dough from freezer; peel off top parchment paper; spread prepared cream cheese over 2/3 the width of the rectangle (keep cream cheese on one side of dough and spread out to both ends). Using the parchment paper to carefully lift, roll cookie into a log, starting on the long cream cheese side (jelly roll fashion with cream cheese in center). Wrap log in parchment, return to freezer for 2-3 hours, preferable overnight (or until stiff).

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray cookie sheet with non-stick spray or line cookie sheet with parchment paper. Remove cookie dough from freezer, remove parchment wrap, cut into 1/4 to 3/8-inch thick slices; place on prepared baking sheet. Place a green marble size piece of dough at the top of each cookie and slightly flatten to form a stem. Bake about 12-13 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool cookies on rack. Enjoy with a glass of cold milk.

Makes approximately 3 dozen cookies

* NOTE: Pumpkin Pie spice may be replaced with mixture of 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ginger, 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves.

This is a recipe I saw on a Talk-type show on KSL Friday (I didn't have school that day.) I told Steve about it and he wanted the recipe, so I thought others might like it as well. I want to try making a gluten-free version with our left-over Halloween pumpkins.

Sam Katz NOT for Mayor 1

Mischief

I was in the kitchen cooking. Things got quiet. Too quiet. This is what I found in the living room when I went to see what the girl was up to.

I asked Eliza to make a face that showed how she felt about the mess she made. This is her face:

Pretty sly.
I made her clean it up.

Some Photos

Watching a movie with all her inanimate friends.

Eliza likes to request that I make pop ups for her. They are tricky to improvise, but here they are from the other day.

And here she is passed out on the floor after school a couple weeks ago.

Flame

Eliza's drawings are improving. It's getting easy to tell when she's just scribbling, and when she's actually drawing something. So when I saw this drawing today, I had to ask her about it.

She told me excitedly, "It's that fire thing!"
"Fire thing...?"
"Yeah! From that art museum!"
We had gone to the art museum for the first time earlier in the week and seen this Dale Chihuly piece in the lobby:

Pretty great.

Statue

Eliza's new game is pretending to be a statue. She stands on her stepstool and holds perfectly still, and then suddenly runs away giggling.

Flower Girl

Eliza's Deal

Tonight we were gathering books for bedtime. I told Eliza we could read three, and she wanted four. So I said we could read three in the chair, and fourth after she got in her bed. She agreed, so I shook her hand and said it was a good deal.
She nodded, and then said, "I have a good deal for you."
"What's that?"
"How about you only shake hands when you meet people, and not other times. That's a good deal."
That's good comedy.

Growing Boys

So at long last, I'm sitting down and putting up some more pictures of the boys! Hopefully the cuteness and adorable factors they bring offsets the tardiness of Daddy's posting them...

No without further ado:

Our boys love the kitchen, the microwave, and anything about food...

Fun at Hillsborough Hog Days (yes, it's a real event, with yummy BBQ!)


Guess who takes after his Daddy in enjoying playing in the cupboards? Peekaboo, Hyrum!
(even if he's not trying to imitate the great Oscar...)

Sometimes Daddy pretends to be a pirate...

We couldn't have a better Mama!

Joshua figured out how to play with dining room chairs.

Fun in front of the N.C. Museum of Art!

Not to be left out...

And much fun was had by all...

Here's a video with Hyrum doing a little dance! (Sorry for the weird camera orientation and finger in front and all... that's especially for you, Davey!)

Joshua dancing a little jig...

So yeah, basically we have pretty awesome little boys!

"The Best of New Play Project"

Me and Bianca's show opened last night, and, with the exception of our light board being possessed by a demon, the show went better than I ever would have imagined. The show is a set of five ten-minute and one-act religious plays, all of which are included in our recent anthology Out of the Mount: 19 From New Play Project. I wrote one of them ("Adam and Eve"), Bianca acts in one of them ("Gaia"), we sorta kinda co-directed one of them after the director dropped out ("Prodigal Son"), and we produced the whole set (producing a play is a lot of work--producing five plays is even more). It was a great performance, and the audience was very responsive, getting very much involved, laughing, and offering some terrific questions and insights in our post-show talkback session. It was a great night. It's been awhile since I've felt as excited, proud, humbled, and fulfilled creatively. Hopefully the rest of the shows will be as good as last night (and the lights won't freak out anymore), and hopefully lots of people will come see the show.

Eliza's Inferno

Eliza just told me an amazing story on the way home from school today.

She said she dreamed about a girl and boy who each had four arms and used them to catch Mean Guys and put them in jail. There are many different kinds of jails, one for each Mean Guy.
Here are the jails we could remember when we got home. I call it "Eliza's Inferno," because it sounds an awful lot like Dante--especially the first three:

Arm Jail:
"Lots of arms with hands that catch mean guys."

Head Jail:
"There's a head with a big mouth that eats the mean guys up."

Poky Jail:
"They get poked with sharp knives."

Blue Jail:
"Blue Jail is a swimming pool jail. They dive in the pool and pretend to be a mermaid, and they drown."
(originally, Blue Jail was filled with blue jays who chased the Mean Guys around)

There were many more, but they are lost now. I seem to recall Truck Jail, Gate Jail (where the key was hidden), White Jail, and Green Jail (environmentally friendly, I hope).