You Capture. Emotion

When I saw that the challenge for this week was emotion I immediately wanted to capture my almost 3 year old having a meltdown and throwing a tantrum. Which has been happening quite frequently at our house as of late.

But every time we are in the midst of an all out meltdown I forget to take a picture. I guess that is the farthest thing from my mind at the time! Maybe I will get one sometime today and add it?! But hopefully there won't be any tantrums today....Yeah....right.

Here is a picture of my oldest son, Brock. We went to the zoo a couple of weeks ago (I guess I cheated because it was in my archives) and I wanted to ride the sky glider. He was not in the mood and thought that it looked scary. We had to bribe him with riding the train afterward. He reluctantly agreed and had a blast. This picture shows his emotions of excitement, happiness and pride of his accomplishment. I think that we will be riding the sky glider every time we go to the zoo from here on out.

Be sure to check out Beth's site for everyone's You Caputure shots!

Jambalaya with Shrimp and Turkey Sausage - CEiMB

I have never eaten jambalaya until this evening. But I was excited to make it because it has lots of good stuff that I like. Rice. Shrimp. Ham. And Ben loves tomatoes so I had high hopes for this recipe. After reading the Tell All I decided to substitute Italian Turkey Sausage for the ham after someone suggested it. I love turkey sausage as well and though that it sounded good.

The recipe can be found HERE. It is a really good one. There are plenty of spices that give it a little zip but not too much zip that your mouth is on fire. After reading some of the reviews on the recipe others thought that it was bland and needed something else. I am not sure if my spicier turkey sausage gave it that or not. But I thought it had plenty of spice. I also liked that the boys ate a little of it too. They sure didn't scarf it down but they certainly tried it and are getting more daring. They actually liked the turkey sausage much better before it went into the jambalaya.

Ben thought that it was good and Ellie was another winner in our house again tonight. He is even looking forward to the leftovers for his lunch tomorrow. Check out what all the others Elliers did with jambalaya too.

Next Thursday: Vegetable Cheese Strata (another new thing for me!)

Honey Peach Ice Cream - TWD

This is a really bad picture and it does not do this ice cream any justice! We really enjoyed this honey peach ice cream in delicious, crunchy sugar cones. YUMMY!

Tommi from Brown Interior was the recipe chooser this week. It was a good choice. I just wish that it would get a little warmer here to really enjoy ice cream outside. You would think it was the beginning of fall with the awful weather we have been having. At least get to 70, please. I shouldn't complain though because yesterday was 80. I just wish it would stay like that.

You can find the recipe HERE or on page 437 in Dorie's cookbook.

Double Chocolate Pudding Pie - CEiMB

I was late for TWD and I am late again for CEiMB. What a slacker I am!! But this was actually made on Thursday. I just didn't get around to eating, taking photos or posting about it until Friday and today. Better late than never.

This pie was chosen by Tessa at Handle the Heat. When CEiMB was in the beginning stages the banana cream pie was chosen. I think this chocolate pie of Ellie's was better than the banana cream one. Both of them are a tad gelatiny for me though. It is not bad...but I am certainly not running to the refrig to eat the leftovers!

You can find the recipe HERE or HERE. Be sure to check out all the other CEiMB participants as well.

The only modifications that I did to the recipe was substitute dark chocolate cocoa powder and used 1.5 cups of 2% milk and 1/5 cups of skim.

You Capture. Nature

I took all these nature pictures while we were out for a bike ride with the kids tonight. Sorry there are so many. I had a hard time deciding which ones I liked the best.

Make sure to head over to Beth's to see how everyone else captured 'nature' this week.

Parisian Apple Tartlet - TWD

I am late with this one. I realize that today is Wednesday, not Tuesday. We have been so busy with last day of school stuff, cleaning the house, etc. I made this tonight.

The recipe was chosen by Jessica from My Baking Heart. You can find the recipe HERE. Her pictures are great and her tartlet looks fantastic.

My tartlet was not so pretty. I went with a puff pastry made from scratch. I really wish that I would have just used the store bought stuff though. I may try this again at some point. It was really simple and would be so easy just to put together with some frozen Pepperidge Farm puff pastry some night after dinner. I used this recipe for puff pastry that I found from reading the TWD P&Q. It was OK. Maybe a little bland and very greasy right after removing it from the oven. I had to place the tartlet on a paper towel to attempt to remove some of the grease. I also read the directions wrong and cut my fuji apple into smaller pieces than necessary.

This would have been better if I hadn't of run out of vanilla ice cream to put on top. Ben didn't care for it. My sister and her boyfriend thought that it was good. They gave it a 7 or 8 rating out of 10.

Greek Celebration Bread

This bread is also known as Artos bread. It was the 2nd bread that was baked for the BBA Challenge. Some who made the bread got really fancy and put dried fruit or nuts in it. Some made theirs into fancy braids. I just stuck with the plain version.

This was really fun to make and I have discovered that I enjoy making bread. I made it last weekend and determined that I should have halved the recipe. This makes a huge loaf of bread. It was monstrous! I put together the poolish the night before as the starter. It is a sweeter bread with a bunch of spices (cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg) and honey. I brushed the top of the bread when it came out of the oven with honey, lemon and sesame seeds.

The bread was delicious. It was soft and worked perfectly for french toast that the boys inhaled. Everyone really liked it.

This weekend I may attempt to make bagels. We'll see?