Testing, testing...1...2...3...

This weekend I did some cupcake trials. I bought a couple of mini cupcake tins, some liners, and a few boxes of cake mix (because I am lazy and don't want to make everything from scratch).

First I made a batch of lemon cupcakes - I added lemon zest to the plain yellow cake mix, threw in some lemon juice in place of some of the water, and then made a simple glaze of lemon juice and powdered sugar. The mini cupcakes turned out great - they cook in 13 minutes at 350, and cool in about 5-10 minutes, so they're ready to frost quickly. Unfortunately the frosting didn't hold up very well; it kind of melted into the cupcakes by the second day, so they looked all patchy and odd. I think I may have to switch to a buttercream frosting (ugh), but if I do that I'm hoping to find some passionfruit puree to use as flavoring. Mr Wonderful & I went to a catering/wedding fair event a while back that had a lemon/passionfruit cake sample we both loved, and I'd like to be able to reproduce it. It would require a bit more work though, as I'd have to pipe the frosting on the cupcakes.

I also tried making chocolate mini cupcakes. I used a Devil's Food flavor of cake mix and when I made the "plain" chocolate cupcakes, they tasted like nothing much. Even the kids didn't like them. However, I did also spice up some of the batter towards the end of the batch, with cinnamon, orange liqueur, and a bit of chili powder. The cinnamon flavor came through, but the orange and chili powder were completely lost. I think I may need to use cayenne instead of chili powder and only use the orange liqueur in the ganache. The ganache was a whole other story - my first try (with half the chocolate chips) turned out grainy & gross; I used Barefoot Contessa's method of melting the chocolate & cream in a double boiler. The second try turned out perfectly; in this instance, I heated the cream just until it boiled, then poured that over the chocolate chips and let it sit for a couple of minutes before whisking together. The cupcakes were super easy to frost with the ganache, too - you just dip them in and swirl a bit, then pull them out and the frosting is beautiful and glossy and smooth. Even better - they still look beautiful the next day. :)

A couple other updates: I found the perfect shoes on sale at Kohl's, ordered my bouquet & Mr Wonderful's boutonniere from a local florist (yay, white tulips!), and we figured out the music situation. Tomboy has a boombox that is battery-operated, has detachable speakers, and has an auxiliary input that accommodates an iPod. We tested it out last night, with batteries & everything, and it worked beautifully.

Wedding & job update

Oooh boy, things are in full swing now!

Still no job, but I've been doing some contract work for individual clients and for my old supervisor, who quit working for The Boss and is now opening up her own consulting business. So there's some money coming in. In fact I'm hopeful that I'll be able to just do consulting, as that would solve my issues with telecommuting quite nicely.

The wedding is set for May 2, at a large regional park. We've reserved a lovely picnic spot with a bunch of picnic tables, BBQs, a small deck for dancing, and a beautiful flagstone patio area that will serve quite well for the ceremony. I built a wedsite & found a free web host, and then sent out email invitations. We're doing a potluck BBQ reception, telling guests not to bring presents, but to bring food instead. I'm actually really excited; this is just the kind of wedding I would have wanted originally - something fun and laid back that we could invite all of our friends & family to. We're getting a great response - most of people we've invited are coming, I think.

My dress is in, and it's gorgeous and needs almost no alterations - just a bustle and maybe to tack down the sleeves to the elastic underneath. I made a beautiful silk flower hair clip for about $10. Mr Wonderful is renting a jacket for his tux, and we're getting some of the more esoteric accessories (sporran, hose, etc) at the Scottish Games in Woodland on the weekend before the wedding. And the kids? Well, Kohl's had an enormous sale and we ended up getting Tomboy a dress and Rugrat a pinstriped suit for less than $100. Awesome.

We got our rings too. Mine is a just simple white gold band, so it doesn't compete with my engagement ring. I already had a tungsten ring purchased for Mr Wonderful, but then he lost about 20 pounds and it ended up being too big. Unfortunately you cannot resize tungsten, so we bought another tungsten ring for him (one full size smaller!) on Overstock.com, for about $50. So now if he gains weight, he can wear the bigger one, but if he stays all skinny like he is now, he can wear the new smaller one. They're very similar; just the celtic knot pattern in the center is different.

There's not much left to do -- find a solution for music (speakers or boombox, battery-operated, that will accommodate an ipod), get a bouquet (Grandma has graciously offered to pay for my flowers!), decide on shoes (whether to buy some new ones, if I can find something good and cheap), find someone to do my hair, and figure out the cupcake situation. My wedding shawl is well on its way, and if I continue knitting a full repeat each day, I'll have it done in plenty of time. I'm working my butt off at the gym, so I should be in better shape than I have been in years when I walk down that aisle. Oh, and we have to get our marriage license.

Things are falling into place, and I am so excited! I'm not nervous at all about marrying Mr Wonderful - there hasn't been any doubt in my mind about him. I just can't wait to make things official, and to celebrate with all of our friends and family. :)

Mmmm...fooood.....

Mr Wonderful and I are now at the point in the wedding planning where we need to make a decision about a caterer. And the best part about this is that you get to run around meeting various caterers and tasting free food.

On Sunday, we went to a caterer-sponsored "wedding faire" kind of thing, where there's a few vendors hawking their wedding-related shit (like photographers, officiants, etc.) but mostly it was a way for the caterer to get a bunch of people in one room and show how awesome their buffet can be. And I gotta say...not so impressed with the food. The problem with a buffet is that it always feels like you're at Bob's Big Boy smorgasbord, and the food has been sitting around for a couple of hours and picked over by a few hundred people, even when there's only like 50 people in the room and they are constantly bringing out fresh food. It still LOOKS ghetto, no matter how much you pretty it up with fancy table linens and stuff. And it still pretty much tastes like cardboard, because they are serving food for the lowest common denominator. You know, you can't make anything too spicy, because people have varying levels of spice-tolerance. So everything ends up tasting pretty much the same.

We really only liked two things about the event: one was a table setup (flowers, napkins, etc.) that I took a picture of on my phone, and the other was a cake sample that was absolutely delicious: lemon cake with passionfruit buttercream. It sounded like an odd combination, but it was so light and bright and uplifting - really an excellent flavor combination.

Tonight we're heading out to Concord to meet with a caterer & do a tasting, and I'm in discussions with a couple of other caterers as well. It's difficult sometimes to schedule the meetings because Mr Wonderful works swing shift and when he's got the weekend off, we have the kids. So it's a bit of a shuffle, but the catering is the most important part of our wedding, as far as I'm concerned, so I'm willing to spend extra time and actually go out of my comfort zone and talk to people on the phone (gasp!). Truly, I hate talking on the phone. I'd so much rather email - you always have the option to revise your statement before the person actually sees it. I just feel so stupid when I have to talk about something - I can never get my thoughts straight before something dumb pops out of my mouth.

Anyway, so...caterers. Anyone have a caterer they've used for a special event and thought was absolutely fantastic?

Schwingtown

I broke down and ordered Swingtown on DVD from Amazon. I just love that show; watching half-naked Grant Show and his glorious porn 'stache was one of the things I loved best about last summer. So now I can watch this horribly underrated show whenever I want, even if I never get to see a new episode again. Stupid CBS for sucking me in to an awesome show and then dropping it like a hot potato.

Speaking of weird show cancellations, WTF with Pushing Daisies, y'all? I cannot believe they've dropped that show. Didn't it win Emmys last year? And this year, ABC just unceremoniously drops it...without even airing the final three episodes! ARGH!

In fact the only show that I absolutely adore that's still on the air is LOST. Yes, I watch a bunch of other shows, but nothing else gets me as excited as Wednesday evening. And I'm trying SO hard to unravel all the mysterious crap that's going on, that I've decided to have a LOST marathon. I watched season one this past weekend, and am a bit more than halfway through season two now. I've got all four seasons on DVD and the fifth season (so far) is stored on the DVR.

So tell me, what shows do you adore? What should I load my DVR up with? Because Grey's Anatomy is boring as hell now, and even Ugly Betty is tiresome this year.

Free

Nothing better than free stuff, right? Well, today, I got a FREE tooth whitening kit from my dentist. Not just any crap-ass whitening kit either; he made custom molds of my teeth and gave me the good stuff. This is like a $300 tooth whitening kit that he just gave me.

I totally love my dentist. And that is saying a LOT...my dentist phobia is near-legendary. In fact, I won't go to the dentist - even for a routine cleaning! - without sedation anymore. I have had countless dentists dismiss my fears for years, and guess what? I would go once, and then never again. It would be literally years before I would get up the guts to visit a new dentist. Once I had a dentist who gave me nitrous for a cleaning and that didn't help at all. But this dentist prescribes me valium before each visit, no questions & no hassles, and I happily lay there in a fog with my ipod blaring while he scrapes & polishes my teeth.

I know, it seems extreme. But this is what makes it possible for me to lay down in that chair once every six months, so that's what I do. I'm just glad I found a dentist who's willing to do what it takes to make sure I get regular checkups. So if anyone in far east CoCo County needs a new dentist, hit me up in the comments. I'd be happy to refer you to the best dentist in the world.

Gin 'n' Juice: redneck version

One of my favorite cover songs, like, EVER. Imagine a country band covering Snoop Dogg. This is worth the price of admission, folks.

Darth Vader

Seeing James Earl Jones in a movie other than Star Wars is just so surreal. I keep hearing Darth Vader's voice coming out of this big black man and it's totally freaking me out.

One more reason why I love him

Because he once had a dream in which he was the ShamWow guy.

Black hole

I lost my camera, y'all! I have no idea where it is...I haven't seen it since before Christmas. We didn't even take pictures on Christmas morning! I think the cleaning ladies may have put it somewhere odd and we just haven't run across it yet. But this means that my food blogging is STILL on hiatus...I can't even put up the yummy lentil soup recipe I made because I don't have the picture that is still on the flash card in my camera. *sigh*

However, I do have one thing to report on: I got samples of the new Quaker True Delights granola bars from Foodbuzz. There are three flavors: Dark Chocolate Raspberry Almond, Honey Roasted Cashew Mixed Berry, and Toasted Coconut Banana Macadamia Nut.

The first one I tried was the Honey Roasted Cashew flavor, and WHOA! That thing is SWEET. I admit, I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but it was extreme even for Mr Wonderful, who's got a bit of a thing for candy. Strong honey flavor. I couldn't really taste any berry at all, but the cashews were nice. I love cashews.

Secondly, I tried the Toasted Coconut Banana one. I was a bit wary, because I usually find banana-flavored things either disgusting (faux-banana flavored candy, for example) or just okay. This was pretty nice though; it tasted mostly like banana bread with macadamia nuts thrown in. I couldn't really taste the coconut at all, which is a shame because I'm a big coconut fan.

The last one I tried (and of course the first one Mr Wonderful snagged) was the Dark Chocolate Raspberry one. So sue me, I'm not much of a chocoholic. ;-) There was less chocolate than I expected, and not a whole lot of raspberry or almond either. It was pretty hit or miss - some bites were strongly chocolate or strongly raspberry, if you got a big chunk of one of those in that bite, but I didn't taste the almond at all. I think the almond is so close to the natural oat flavor, and the almond pieces are so small (maybe slivers of almond? I didn't see any big chunks) that they don't really come through.

All in all, they were nice if you're looking for a substitute for a candy bar, but I wouldn't call these health food by any stretch of the imagination. They were far too sweet for me (except maybe the chocolate raspberry, oddly enough), and I thought the balance of flavors was a little off in each one. If you're going to advertise "Mixed Berry" in the name of the product, you should have that flavor at least be detectable.

KILT!!!!

Mr Wonderful's kilt is here! It just came in the mail today, and I cannot wait to see it. (He said I can't see it before him, so I have to wait until he comes home for "lunch" before we open the package.) This is no cheap mass-produced kilt, either. It's a custom kilt, with his clan tartan, all the way from Scotland!

In other squee-worthy news, we've decided on our rental cabin for our Vermont honeymoon. We'll be staying in Bristol, right on the river, very near Lake Champlain and surrounded by trees. I cannot wait! Also, Mr Wonderful talked to our preferred officiant this morning, and he is available for our wedding date & said he'd be honored to perform the marriage ceremony for us. :)

Everything is coming together and I am so happy. Now, if I can just find a wedding band to go with my lovely engagement ring...