Homemade Egg-nog

Here is the long awaited egg-nog recipe...because like I said before, friends don't let friends drink store bought sludge egg-nog.

I won't write a whole long spiel about it, other than to say, you can modify it however you want.  I took this recipe here (Non-Alcoholic Egg-nog from, A Sweet Pea Chef) and tweaked it a bit.  I like creamy things, but Joseph does not like them as much as I do ... so I lightened it up a bit and expanded the recipe so that everyone could have some.  We also like a lighter spice blend as well.  If you like nutmeg and clove, add them, I didn't.

You will need:

6 C whole milk
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon (more or less to your taste, though)
4 egg yolks
1 1/2 C sugar
3/4 C sweetened condensed milk
2 C half-and-half
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp rum flavor (optional)

Method:

Over medium heat, bring the milk, S-C milk, and cinnamon to a low boil.  In a separate bowl combine the egg yolks and sugar till they are a fluffy slurry, and the color has lightened up.  After the milk has come to a boil, temper the eggs, by whisking a 1/4 C at a time, of the hot milk into the egg/sugar mixture, till you have about half the milk left in the pan on the stove.  At this point the eggs should be tempered enough so  you can add the egg/milk mixture back into the pan on the stove.  Continue to heat on med-low for about 5ish minutes.  Remove from the heat, and add the half-and-half, vanilla, and rum flavor.  Allow to cool in the fridge for several hours, but it's actually really good warm too.  If you want a richer egg-nog use cream and 2 more egg yolks.

Christmas 2014

Here is the story of our Christmas ...

On Christmas Eve morning I slipped on some ice, trying to take our garbage barrel out to the street.  Thankfully nothing was broken, but I did feel like I'd been in some sort of car accident for the rest of the day, and for most of Christmas Day itself.  In fact, I spent a nice few hours in my bed on Christmas with my tablet watching Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries on Netflix. 

But, but, but ... things were good, and went well for the rest of the people.

We ate well, recipes to come later this week, as I finally remembered to write down my eggnog recipe and photograph it.   You see, friends don't let friends buy and consume store bought sludge eggnog, it's just wrong.  My recipe is better, and you can make it with stuff you have in your fridge right now.

Also, if you received a Christmas card from us, you noticed that I made a note about atomicdays.com.  A few months ago I bought my own domain name and am going to be moving the blog(s) over there.  I still have to figure that out though.  So, come January 1st, or 15th or 31st, and possibly 32nd if that is still not up and running, then just come back here and visit.  I give you no guarantees of what I will do, or when I will do it.  I'm tired, and mostly unmotivated these days.  The only thing I get right all the time, is getting James to school on time, which is a major miracle considering my aversion for mornings.

But I wax verbose and you want to see pictures...well mostly the grandmas want to see the pictures.  The rest of you hooligans want that eggnog recipe, and I pinky-promise I will get it to you ... by New Year's Eve.  

The Boys opening their Christmas Eve presents from Grandma Brinton.  Fish-bots.  

 

The horde all arrayed for your Christmas convenience.

 

The destruction of the Christmas tableau.  Everyone gets their own color of wrapping paper.  James was telling Jeffy how to unwrap present, which was totally unnecessary.

 

Opening ...

 

Displaying ....

 

Playing .... actually, it was very cute to watch Pinocchio with his new Pinnochio toys.  He had them acting it out, as the movie went along.

 

Playing with the Fish-bots in the sink ...

And in a bowl...

 



 

And together ...

 

Finally, a video of the boys playing with their fish:

 

I hope your Christmas was great.  And now, back to Christmas vacation and Miss Fisher Murders.

Muddy Buddies

On Independence Day we had a picnic with some of our friends at one of our local picnic grounds.  It was nice -- Ramada, tables, restrooms, playground, and a drinking fountain that shoots water 4 feet into the air.

I'll give you one guess as to what held the attention of the children.

The fountain.  Why, you ask?  Because when water shoots four feet into the air it makes fantastic puddles, and lots of them.  And what good are puddles unless you get into them to dig and get dirty, right?  The kids from age 10 down to 2 were engaged building what they dubbed "water works".  The water works were just puddles and little canals in between.  But it kept them engaged for 2 hours.  Side bar, of course it was Jeffy who was operating the fountain too ... he's a smart kid to figure it all out.

The boys surprisingly did not get dirty that evening.  Neighbor Julia's kids on the other hand.....she will just have to tell the story.   I haven't checked to see if she got their clothes clean or not.  If she did it's a laundry miracle.

So, the last few days in our yard, James has been digging what he calls "water works."  And then it rained yesterday and today, to fill up said water works.  Normally, I cringe at the thought of dirty children.  Are we surprised at this? No, because I was the one child at the Wiggle Worms Preschool, Class of 1976, who asked for a paint brush to finger paint.  For some reason, though, I just have not cared that the last two nights the boys have been out in their water works making mud.  Joseph has totally taken care of the clean up and mud disposal.  I'm not sure how he did it, and I'm sure I don't want to know.  It would spoil the miracle.

So here we have the Muddy Buddies ... of Family Home Evening fame ...

Christmas Morning 2013

We finally made it to Christmas, and frankly I am glad.  My kids were going bonkers, as it was the first year James realized it was coming, and there were some not pretty incidents waiting for the blessed day to get here.  If I never hear another thing about Santa, elves, and everything else, I will be a happy camper.  :)

We started things off last night with our hot tamale dinner.  Of course, Joseph and I are the only ones that will eat a tamale.  Oh, too bad, more leftovers for me.  But this morning when I was having a tamale with my breakfast, Jeffy, in his typical Hobbitish ways, toddled in looking for a bite, or 10.  So much for that breakfast.  The kid has taste buds of steel, I'm sure of it.  Because last night he insisted on eating a whole, raw cranberry out of the punch.  He ate all of it, and then wanted another.  Just like his mama.

On Christmas Eve we all open one present.  The kids were lucky this year and got to open three presents.  Our neighbor Bibi came over with a present for them (tshirts from Rainforest Café and cool stretchy lizards), and Grandma's Christmas books (yes, I will have a list of the books we read, and the books you all suggested soon) and then the presents from us.

I enjoyed looking at everyone's nativity plays on facebook.  Of course, we don't have enough people to do that, so we tried, and I stress tried to watch a scripture video of the Christmas story.  Joseph and I enjoyed it.  See also, my kids were going bonkers.

We don't do Santa in our family, but we still had the kids convinced that they had to go to bed early.  Tomorrow can't come if they don't go to sleep.  And also, I had turned into a pumpkin about 11:30 that morning.  I was dragging....

After they were all tucked in their beds we got to work setting up the presents:

James was a good boy and woke Joseph up before going down.  We were able to get all the lights on and the video set up for their grand entrance....

Let the apocalypse begin...

 

There are no pictures of Joseph or I.  You all know, I don't do mornings, and well, Joseph respects that.  No one wants to see my morning glory.  No one!

But,   Joseph did give me a few nice things -- some bonnet movies, a book,  a CD that I'm enjoying right as we blog together, a coupon for a dinner date without kids, and ....

and.....

(say it in your best Rod Roddy voice...)

A TRIP TO BYU WOMEN'S CONFERENCE IN MAY!!  And he's going to put me up in the Provo Marriot, and rent me a car to boot.  It's going to be the fanciest vacation I've ever been on myself.

Really, though, I love Women's Conference.  It's a great way to recharge my batteries every couple of years.  I love going to BYU and being there on campus and in Provo.  It's such a special place for me.  So many good memories of Provo and BYU!

I hope Christmas was good at your house ... I look forward to reading your blogs and seeing your pictures.  I will share recipes, book lists and so on later this week.

Now, I might need a nap!

 

Snoopy, The Great Pumpkin and how I totally McGuyver'ed Halloween

Observe, The Great Pumpkin, is real, as Linus always said he was, and he smiles.

 

So it's fall, and everything is autumn, and orange, and pinterest looks like spirit week in The Great Pumpkin's high school, and it is getting colder and I'm just "meh" about it. Yep, just meh. Fall in Arizona is great. Fall in northern New Mexico just means it will be cold and snowy soon, and that I might not be able to drive off my street one of these days. Fall is also the beginning of the holiday (read: non-stop eating) season which lasts well into the spring, and that my friends is when I step out of "meh" into panic mode, because of food allergies and food everywhere. I do not like Halloween. And I already have issues with food, so food everywhere makes me want to cry.

The Great Pumpkin and Snoopy before the adventure.

But, as Sweet Baby James is now, almost 5, he understands things, and understands Halloween and trick-or-treat and all of it. Thankfully he is unaware the there are numerous trick-or-treating venues here in The Atomic City for the next week and a half and is happy enough to just go to the church's trunk-or-treat and call it good.

Contemplating trick-ot-treating strategy, I'm sure.

 

James was also happy to be Snoopy again. I think I will always have the rule that if we cannot make the costume from a craft store tshirt a piece of felt, or with things in our own closet, we're not going to be whatever that was. I need easy. The thing was, the Snoopy ears I made last year had mysteriously disappeared. Not really, I remember putting them somewhere "safe" about 2 weeks ago, where that place is, is now lost, like my sanity. "No problem", said I. I had exactly 1 piece of black felt left and a stapler. Yep, totally McGuyvered up some new Snoopy ears, along with a head band for Jeffy. Jeffy went as The Great Pumpkin. Again, tshirt, this time purchased from Walmart for $5... WINNING!

 

 

After the party, with their buckets of candy

 

 

We skipped the dinner portion of the ward party, and just came for the candy part of the party.  Yes, we're those people!  It took us a whole 20 mins to make the circle in the parking lot and then we went home.  But I will say this, it took Jeffy about 2 cars in to figure out what was going on.  "Oh those people are giving me candy?  Not a problem!"

 

We had just enough fun and just enough candy to fit into a one gallon, zip lock bag.  We can do that.  The other thing was that so many of our friends shopped with us in mind, when they were picking out their candy to give away.  Most everyone had a peanut/treenut free option, or had saved something specifically for us.  Guys, I was very touched by this kindness.  I had been drilling into James' head all week that he might not be able to have all the candy he got trick-or-treating, because it would not be safe, but it really turned out to not be an issue.  In the end, there were only about 5 pieces of candy that were not safe, and which we easily removed.  The Atomic City moms look out for their friends, and that is awesome!

 

 

The Great Pumpkin is happy.  He has decided to return to this pumpkin patch next year.

 

 

The next Halloweenish things will be the "Where the Wild Things Are" party at preschool and the baking of a pumpkin pie from scratch.   I might not be so "meh" after all.

 

 

It's BUTTER y'all!

I LOVE Pioneer day! I just do. When we were little, I remember dressing up for Primary (on Wednesday) and decorating our bikes and wagons and having a wagon train thru the neighborhood to the park. We even made the local paper with our little parade. It was the height of excitement in my five year old mind.

Since I am not in charge of primary and I don't think those kinds of things are sanctioned anymore, I decided that for our Pioneer Day activity we would make butter and talk about how the pioneers used to grow and make all of their own food, instead of going to the store and just buying it. The gals over at Our Best Bites were my inspiration. Their post is HERE.

You will need:
1 quart of heavy cream
Some jars with lids
Kosher salt
Garlic or anything else you want to mix in your butter.

We started with two freezer jam jars. I filled them both half full of heavy cream and we began to shake. James lost interest in about 10 seconds, so I commenced to shake the cream for about 7-8 mins. It was at this point I noticed that it had gone from liquid to solid. However, when I opened up the lid, the contents were not butter yet. There was no way I could shake hard enough or fast enough to finish separating the butter from the buttermilk. So I plopped the cream into a bowl and finished whipping it with my hand mixer....the results being this...

At this point I scooped the butter out and strained it thru a dishtowel to get this...

It was beautiful, creamy and didn't taste like anything -- but it melted in our mouths, like butta.  No really, it did. We kneaded some kosher salt into half and into the other half we kneaded in some kosher salt, garlic and fresh thyme. Both were EXCELLENT! Of course we spread our home made butter on fresh rolls that we defrosted ourselves. See we are not pioneers and have evolved ... frozen bread dough is the way to go people, progress!

It was butter that Paula Deen could have been proud of y'all!

Root Beer Float Pie

You know we are pie people around here. I make myself birthday pies, not cake, every year. I always make a strawberry pie, the recipe for which can be found HERE and a second pie, which I choose based on my mood. I was thumbing around on pinterest the other day and I saw a pie recipe I'd pinned a while back for Root Beer Float Pie. It was a no-bake pie, which here in The Atomic City, without an air conditioner, is the only way we survive ... by not baking and keeping our cooking to a minimum.

The recipe can be found HERE. The author of the original recipe used sugar free and fat free ingredients, which you can do, but I didn't.

Here is my version:

1 tub of cool whip, defrosted in your fridge
1 box of instant vanilla pudding
3/4 C cold root beer
1/2 C whole milk
1 pre-made, 9" graham cracker crust

In a bowl combine the pudding, milk and root beer and mix till smooth. Fold in half of the tub of cool whip till completely combined. Pour out into the graham cracker crust, smooth the top and freeze. Remove from the freezer 15-20 min before serving and top it with the other half of the cool whip.

This was the HIT of the party among the old and the young alike. I'm sure too, you could make this with any flavor of soda pop you like and it would be just as good ... oh yes, Dr. Pepper, you are NEXT!

Happy Birthday America

Here is a link to a blog post I did five years ago on my favorite patriotic hymn, America the Beautiful.

And of course we need to sing about it... :) 

This is a clip from John Adams...grab your Kleenex because it's that moving.  What they did, is still so amazing, so revolutionary, so divinely inspired, so very much reverenced...

 

Happy Birthday America!

1973

 

Today is all about 1973 .. you know, 40 years ago, when I was born. 

 

 

 

The Fantasy Island Car was popular...

 

 

Music was a bargain...

 

 

Or you could just skip the kitch and go with something really good...

 

Oh the theater, the theater, what's happened to the theater?  The 1970s were not kind to Broadway.  Sondheim saved it, sort of.

 

 

 

Or if the theater was not your thing you could go to the movies.  Of course, you might fall asleep in this one...

 

But happy in this one, because you know Ron Howard AND Harrison Ford...

 



 

And if you got hungry during the show...remember Soylent Green is people.  No, really, it is.

 

 

And of course, this is my favorite...

 

 

 Back in our living rooms we were watching the final season of this family...GROOVY!

 

 

 I tell you what I love, that lollypop, Kojak.

 

 

 

They say he was Six Million Dollars, but we all know he was much more...Lee Majors!

 

 

And these were your best friends...

 

 

 

We did our book reports on this...

 

Or this.  Of course, I love Uncle Bulgaria the most.

 

 

 

Naturally, we wanted to look super cool and groovy...

 

 

And our homes were well appointed...

 

 

 

Our toys were super crazy and reflected pop culture:

 

 

We had Poloroid cameras and Dodge Darts...

 

 

We ate Super Sugar Crips, back when they had decent prizes in the box, drank Shasta Cola and made our own Barbie clothes...

 

And of course if my uncles had, had their way, I would have been named Liberty, so they could sing this jingle to me:

 

 

And there is me, your 1973 Special: