Bazinga Update

Bazinga is now 22 months old and wears size 3T clothes and size 8 shoes.  At her 18 month checkup, she was the size of the average 27 month old.  Mom weighed her last week and she was 30 pounds.

She now answers, "Yeah," to questions, sometimes very enthusiastically.  Sid the Science Kid is still her favorite show, and she can identify "Id" (Sid), May, "Arrow" (Gerald), and "Eee" (Teacher Susie or Zeke, depending on who's onscreen).  Gabriella is "Uhuhuh."  Sesame Street is a close second, with Elmo as her favorite character.  She really likes the "Elmo's World" segment, but they just dropped that for "Elmo: The Musical."  That's okay with me!

All birds are ducks, and all ducks say, "Duck duck."  The alphabet song is a series of rhythmic grunts.  Occasionally she'll identify a letter, but I think it's usually a lucky guess.  She doesn't do it consistently.

We got a swingset with a fort attached from Craigslist.  The fort portion is about four feet up, and Bazinga can get up both the ladder and the climbing wall all by herself.  She likes to send things down the slide before she goes.  She also enjoys playing with bubbles in the fort.  Sometimes the wind will catch the wand just right and blow them for her, but other times she blows on it herself, with mixed results.  And sometimes she just shoves the wand in mommy's face.

She knows that granny lives two doors down, and sometimes she'll just take off in that direction while we're playing outside.  If I go with her, she'll walk the entire way on her own.  She likes to come up to mommy & daddy with her arms up and ask, "Ho?"  (Hold).  She'll let us hold her for two seconds and then she wants down to go play for two more minutes before the next hold request.

She's figured out how to put the big chunky puzzles together without twisting the pieces.  She has a jigsaw puzzle, but Max keeps eating the pieces.  She also loves to brush her teeth.  Okay, she mainly sucks the toothpaste off and chews on the brush, but I figure that has to help some.  She tries to spit sometimes, but it's mainly just leaning over and saying, "Buh."

Scotch Chocolate Cake Recipe

Cake Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 stick butter
1/2 cup shortening
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 cup water
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs

Icing Ingredients:
1 stick butter
6 tablespoons milk
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 box (16 oz) powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla

Cake Directions:
Grease & flour a 9x13 pan and preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix flour & sugar in large bowl.  In a saucepan, bring to a boil the butter, shortening, cocoa, and water.  Pour this mixture over the flour & sugar.  Mix in buttermilk,  baking soda, cinnamon, vanilla, and eggs.  Pour into pan and bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes, or until done.

Icing Directions:
Five minutes before the cake is done, put the powdered sugar in a large bowl.  In a saucepan, bring to a boil the butter, milk, and cocoa.  Pour this mixture over the powdered sugar.  Mix in the vanilla.  Spread the icing over the hot cake.

Pizza

My favorite crust recipe is from Better  Home & Gardens Biggest Book of Italian Recipes.  But, of course, I've modified it.  So here's my version:

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 2 teaspoons honey or sugar
• 1 1/3 cup warm water
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
  
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  
• 6 ounces marinara sauce
• 8 ounces shredded mozzarella
• Various pizza toppings (we like pepperoni because it's easy to freeze)

Directions 

1. Put yeast, honey or sugar, water, and olive oil in a large mixing bowl and let it stand for five minutes. 
2. Stir in flour, salt, garlic powder, and Italian seasoning until combined.  Dough should be moderately stiff.
3. Place dough in a greased bowl and cover with a damp towel.  Let it rise in a warm place until nearly double (about an hour).
4. Place pizza pan in cold oven.  Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
5. When oven and pan are preheated, pull the pan out of the oven and spray with non-stick spray.  Dump the dough ball onto the middle of the pan and use your fingers to spread the dough all the way to the edges.  
6. Bake crust for 20 minutes.
7. Stir 1 tsp garlic powder into melted butter.  Brush onto the edges of the crust.  Add marinara sauce, cheese, and toppings.  Bake for another 15 minutes. Check every five minutes to see if the cheese has started to brown and to make sure the crust isn't TOO brown.

Crockpot Creole Sausage

Original Recipe
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Slow-Cooker-Creole-Black-Beans-and-Sausage/Detail.aspx?prop24=etaf

Changes

• I only use one pound of sausage, or one package if that's what I have.
• Instead of 3 cans of beans, I use one bag of black beans from the freezer.  Anything more than that is too bean-y for me.
• I don't always have a can of tomato sauce on hand, but a can of diced tomatoes will work just fine.
• Substitute plain black pepper for the white pepper.  Who keeps that on hand?
• I typically only use one bay leaf because I don't want to fish two of them out before eating.  I'm lazy that way, and I'm okay with it.

Notes

• This one could easily be a frozen crockpot meal if you don't add the water until you are ready to cook.
• Serve over rice.

 Ingredients

• 1 pound smoked sausage, cut into 1 inch slices
• 1 package frozen black beans
• 1 1/2 cups chopped onion
• 1 1/2 cups chopped celery
• 1 1/2 cups chopped green pepper
• 1 cup water
• 1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce OR 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 teaspoons dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon chicken bouillon granules
• 1 teaspoon white pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2 bay leaves

Directions

1. Place a large skillet over medium heat, and add sausage. Cook, stirring, until sausage is browned, about 5 minutes. Drain fat, and transfer sausage to slow cooker.
2. Stir the black beans, onion, celery, green pepper, water, tomato sauce, garlic, thyme, bullion granules, white pepper, cayenne pepper, and bay leaves into the sausage in the slow cooker. Cover, and cook on Low until vegetables are tender, about 6 hours. Remove bay leaves before serving.

Tasty Noms

It occurs to me that I should document the recipes that my family likes and are easy to make.  So I'll be posting some recipes and trying to link to the original.  Yes, you're going to see a lot of crockpot recipes.  Deal with it.