Julia Child I am NOT!

Bon Appetit everyone!! I went to the movie theater tonight with my two friends, Liz and Becky. We saw: "Julia & Julie. I give it TWO THUMBS UP! I really really liked it, there were so many funny, laughable parts to this movie and gosh darn it, I sure wanted to have some "beef bouillanase" (how the heck do you spell that anyway?) by the time the movie was over! Had to settle for "Chile's", however the company was great! I showed off some cards that I have made over the course of several weeks, and I gave Lizi her birthday card and a little box I made that held 4 (four!!) dark chocolate Moonstruck chocolates! Dark chocolate is Lizi's most favorite chocolate and she deserves the best for her 60th birthday coming up next week!

After watching this movie which featured Merrell Streep as Julia Child and then Amy Adams as Julie Powers, (who happened to start a blog featuring all the recipes she made in one year from the Julia Child Cook Book), I thought maybe every once in a while I should post a favorite recipe here in case anyone wanted to try it out. The other night at Bill's birthday dinner, Scott was asked to name his favorite restaurant. And try as he might, he really couldn't come up with a favorite (although we both love Mexican), he turned to me and said, "You have really spoiled me with the meals YOU make". AAAHHHH, isn't that sweet? Or was this a hint to start cooking again? I kind of go in spurts of cooking a lot and then not at all! Of course, that doesn't count lunch cause I do that everyday for him and Joe...although Subway, Papa Murphy's, 5 Guys Burgers and Fries, Big Town Hero, even the chinese restaurant in Willamette (Essence of China) helps me out with lunches. So, okay, I do pretty good following a recipe and I do get a lot of kudos from my sons-in-law when we have family gatherings....especially if it is 'Italian' food!!

So lately, Scott has been having a hunger for Monkey Bread. Have you ever had it? It is easy peasy to make, so I am going to share the recipe here and I want you to know that I did not make this up, you can find this on many websites just by typing in Monkey Bread. The version I use is from OurBestBites.com. You really should check out this site, I have made many of the dishes from this site and they have all turned out really good. So now for the recipe:

Bundt pan butter and floured (I actually use Pam spray and flour!)
1/2 cup sugar
2-3 Tablespoons of cinnamon
2 cans of the buttermilk Pillsbury or store brand name is fine refrigerator biscuits
1 stick butter
1/2 cup brown sugar

Combine sugar and cinnamon in zip lock bag (gallon size)
After you "pop" open the biscuits, cut each one into 4's!, toss them into the sugar/cinnamon bag in batches to cover all the sides of the dough. Melt the one stick of butter and add brown sugar and bring it to a boil, then add the nuts if you are using them! Place all the pieces of the biscuits into the Bundt pan spreading them out evenly. Pour the butter/brown sugar mixture over them. Bake for about 30 minutes. Remove from the pan fairly soon while it is still hot! (Now, this is just me...but I actually save a bit of the butter and brown sugar mixture..just a bit and heat it back up quickly when I pull the bread out of the oven and when I turn it over onto a plate, I pour the remainder of the caramel over it, so now what was on the bottom gets all that nice gooey syrup on top. That's it, easy peasy, I told ya!

Okay, so a side note here: This is NOT low cal!! AND I think you need to make this when you are having a small crowd. Of course, when I make this for the 4 men building our house, it gets almost entirely devoured! But..."I am just sayin'" make it when you know others will be around to help you eat it all gone...and especially while it is nice and hot fresh out of the oven!!

So let me know what you think! Are you wondering why it is called "Monkey Bread" I think because of all the little pieces (you know the dough biscuits you cut into fourths) in this bundt pan get "picked" at just just like monkeys who pick at each others hair to ummmm, you get the idea! Now the recipe I posted here is actually one from Paula Deen, but in comparison, they are quite similar. Sometimes I even double the butter and brown sugar and really make it yummy!

An Addie story

Wished I had taken a picture, but I didn't have my camera...darn. Poor little thing was vomiting starting at 5 Am and still doing it at 12:30, plus she was running a pretty high fever. She couldn't keep any liquids down, when she would take a drink, she would throw it up. Finally Lacey decided to take her to Urgent Care and I came down to babysit little Tristan and Caleb. She spent a couple hours at the Urgent Care and they told her to go to the hospital as Addie was very dehydrated and needed an IV to get fluids into her! So more hours were spent in the Emergency room at the hospital. She was running a fever of 103.8 and was just like a limp rag doll. She didn't even flinch with the IV going into her arm, she just laid on her Mommy's shoulder and slept.

Finally at 6 PM she was released from the hospital and her temperature was down to 101. She is still feeling the results of that day...cranky, moody, tired, sore. Needing lots of TLC! And on top of all this, Aaron was on a Men's Retreat! So Lacey was trying to handle all this by herself! Fortunately, her mother in law was in town and staying with her, so she had help with both Tristan and little Addie. And I brought Tristan to the hospital when he was needing to be fed! Thank goodness for GRANDMA'S!!

Grandma stories...

Okay, so I told you about the customer appreciation days, right? While the kids are working the store, I am doing my part by babysitting. (At this point I have to tell you how HAPPY I am that Aaron does his own thing aside from Papa Murhpy's!) Dina's children. Fortunately, Aaron was home to watch his own children. And actually I only had Jalen and Lily! And Lily was easy peasy to watch as she mostly watched TV. However, Jalen and I spent about two hours playing 'hide and go seek'! And that little guy is so good at hiding....and he stays quiet! He doesn't answer you when you call his name.

So he managed to get into his Mommy's bathroom and grab a lipstick! (You know where this is heading, right?) Well, I was on the phone to his mommy when he flew by me and I caught a quick peek at what he had in his hands. So, I was nearly on his tail, but not nearly fast enough...he disappeared right before my eyes. As I talked to Dina I walked through every room and looked in every corner...TWICE! And still I could not find him. I asked Lily (who was by the way sitting on the pot!) if she had seen Jalen. She asked if I had checked her mommy's closet...I looked in there and said, "yes! no Jalen!" She comes running in, slides onto the floor on her belly and looks under the shirts all hanging in the closet and pulls them back, sure enough, there he is on his back, tucked against the wall, under the shirts and pants painting his face with the lipstick!

We got his face all cleaned up and proceeded to play more hide and go seek! And chasing...he especially loves to be chased and to chase. Well, I have those two bum knees, you know, so I can only run so much and then I am wiped! Finally he started hiding from me and I decided it was time for me to hide! I chose the BED!! Covered me all up with a blanket, thought I was nearly invisible, we had not done anything with the bed, so why would he even look this way. I left a little pocket open so I could see his feet as he came into the room. He stopped just feet from me and then all of a sudden he gives my leg a big WHACK! I jumped up and laughed and asked how did he know I was there! But he was off to hide in the closet....again!!

So much fun...but so exhausting. But he and I are definitely BUDS!!

Papa Murphy's Customer Appreciation Days

This last week Papa Murphy's had "Customer Appreciation" days! So I was busy babysitting while the daughters and son-in-law were knee deep in dough! The first day was overwhelming and we did more than we had planned and anticipated, so Dina was making runs from her store to the Oregon City store bringing dough and other products that they were running low on. Two of our stores had to close early because we simply didn't have any more crusts to sell! Now that is not necessarily a BAD thing, however, considering this was 'customer appreciation' days, that was not a good thing at all for our customers! So we made some adjustments, increased our dough production and tried to get ready for the second day. We have some of the most AWESOME employees anyone could ask to have. At Oregon City, we had our ' young pizza makers' stay until 3 AM to finish cleaning up and washing all the dishes from the chaos of the first customer appreciation days sales. And then at 3 AM our very loyal, dedicated prep crew, managed by Debbie showed up at 3 AM to start the prep for that day which included sheeting out over 1400 pizza dough balls, grating all the cheese needed to go on those crusts, open many cases of pineapple, olives and every other topping that needed to be prepped and ready for the second days' sales. They had not ONE bit of cheese left in the store from the first night, so Jamie had to make a run to our supplier and he loaded up the pickup truck with over 2600 # of products! Well, the second day was FABULOUS and our Oregon City store has a new record sales for pizza ...1352! That breaks all past records, including all Halloween's and that is normally our biggest day ever! We all survived and are now getting the much needed rest we need after those two big days. WE LOVE OUR CUSTOMERS!! At our Westwood store, we had only one person to make all the dough - 32 batches by himself! He was there until 4 in the morning! Next year we will be more prepared and know what to expect...unless they change the offer, then everything we know will be out the door. But $10 for any pizza any size! Yahoo, what a great deal!

9.11 - 87 and going strong!

We celebrated Bill's 87 birthday at their favorite restaurant, Castagna, on 19th and Hawthorne . It is always nice to get together with John, Robin, Bill and Elsa and have good conversation and good food. We are so blessed to be celebrating birthdays with our parents, the only one we miss is my mom! We look forward to many more!

Back to School!

It's that time of the year again...for students and teachers! My good friend, Mary, is back in the classroom. She teaches kindergarten at the Boones Ferry Grade School in Wilsonville. Mary is a very dedicated teacher so actually she has been in her classroom for several days of the past two weeks (her own time!). And her classroom shows it! She is all organized, ready and just waiting for next Tuesday. She is teaching full day kindergarten again this year. So far she has 20 students, however 4 of those have some kind of special educational needs! We were wanting to get together for lunch, so I brought sandwiches to her and we sat at the little tables (brought back memories, I tell ya!) and ate our lunch in the classroom and had a great visit. She made me feel like a very 'special guest' as she brought me around to all her coworkers and introduced me as her friend. And even though all teachers had been back in the classroom for two and a half (paid) days, there rooms were nearly not ready for children!

But that is my friend, organized and ready to do battle -- with peace of mind knowing everything is in place! Her mom is 97 years old and is living with her...so she feels the need to be particularly ready in case she needs to take some time off. We had a great lunch and I loved seeing all her interest centers. I just LOVE her period!!!

Want a Kitty??

Yesterday I had about three phone calls from Ellie asking if I could please take her and Lily to the PAWS store (it is a 'kitty' shelter and adoption store in Willamette). I was trying to get my windows clean...you know all the 'junk' that accumulates inside the runner of the windows, not to mention the ledge and then all the box elder bug "poop" that is all over the frames and windows! However, after the third call, I decided that taking them was more important than clean windows. After all, there is still tomorrow....

So off we went to the cat shelter, except Dina and Jalen came also. Jalen was so excited when a kitty would 'jump' from the floor to a ledge. He would say, "bump (jump in Jalen talk), kitty"!! It is soo cute! He managed to get a hold of a kitty and I thought he was going to strangle the poor thing, so I quickly snapped the picture and we rescued the cat from his clutches! The girls are so anxious to move into this house so they can adopt two (2) kitties...you know they prefer the kitties go to homes in two's so they have a play mate while the girls are at school!!