I caved

Well it's official:
I am a Wisconsin resident.
After two years of freezing my feet all winter long, I decided to quit borrowing Skott's boots so much and cough up the money for a good pair of winter boots.
I bought some Columbia boots rated for -32 degrees last weekend.
(If they sold a lower rating, I would have gotten those instead.)

This may look like a beautiful bridge:

and it is a gorgeous walk when it's not freezing cold outside.
This is the bridge I walk across every day to get to school.
During the winter, I lose feeling in my toes about half way across.
By the time I have completed the 15 minute walk from my car, across this bridge, and to the science building, I can't feel my legs.

This bridge made David Letterman's Top 10 Coldest Places.

I will not argue.

But I am ready now. Me and my new boots.

A delicious new recipe

Skott is an amazing cook! I really got lucky. His latest is this awesome recipe he found in Coastal Living magazine. He made it for Thanksgiving dinner and it was AMAZING! We try to limit our sugar intake so we are always on the lookout for dessert recipes that don't contain a ton of sugar. Anyone needing a new idea:

_____________________________________________________________

Plum Upside-Down Pudding Cake

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 25 minutes

Cool time: 30 minutes

4 small red or black plums, sliced

1/2 cup sugar (we used splenda)

1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice (we used vanilla extract + what's below)

3/4 tsp. salt

2 large eggs

3/4 cup whole or low-fat buttermilk

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

3/4 cup flour (we used whole wheat pastry flour)

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

whipping cream

1. Combine plums, 1 Tbsp sugar, lemon juice (vanilla), and 1/4 tsp salt in a bowl, tossing gently.

2. Grease sides and bottom of a 9-inch cast-iron skillet or deep dish pie pan (we used glass pyrex pie pan). Cover bottom with plum slices, overlapping slightly.

3. Whisk together eggs, remaining sugar, buttermilk, vanilla, and butter until well blended.

4. Combine flour, baking powder, and remaining salt; whisk into egg mixture. Pour batter over fruit. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown (the longer you cook, the more cake-like it becomes instead of pudding/cakey).

Cool in pan 30 minutes.

5. Run tip of knife around edges of cake to loosen. Invert onto a platter and serve with sweetened whipped cream.

Skott has also made this with apple slices and pecans. It is a nice touch if there is extra fruit, to slice and lay on top after you have flipped the cake onto a platter.

He is going to try various fruit combinations in the future.

We found we liked it better without the whipped cream (but we are weird like that, we don't like sweet things)

P.S. all mentioning of "we" above actually means "He" (Skott) hahaha!

_________________________________________________________________

And one last tip:

Don't forget to shut the beaters off before you plug them back in after walking across the kitchen to have your wife sample the whipping cream! :) if I could have captured the entire kitchen, you would have seen the whipped cream across the entire thing and up onto the cabinets!

Our furry "kidz" licking the beaters

Random happenings

Skott has been working A LOT of double shifts the past few months and I have been buried in homework. Needless to say, our lives have been fairly uneventful. I guess that is ok.
Skott's double shifts involve him driving all night so I try to send him funny texts and pictures while I, myself, am awake pulling all-nighters (clearly getting too old for this).
This one I titled: "Me and my new lover":


We have these awesome chairs in our bedroom that I love to sit in and do homework. The dogs fight over the other chair and the ottoman. Izzy is in the chair and Fucie is at my feet on the ottoman.
This is titled: "waiting for daddy to get home":


Izzy showing love:

Thanks for working so hard babe!
Just two more semesters

Fall-ness

I was going to title my blog "Halloween" but I don't want to scare any fragile children that might see the title and get "scared"
Puhleez
Sometimes all this political correctness crap really bothers me!

Anyways, my nephews Mason and Aundray spent the night. Skott made cupcakes with them:

and I made this disgusting jello foot:

next year I want to try my hand at a jello brain mold....

grape juice

We have a grape vine on a trellis in front of our house and also one along the fence in our driveway. The vine in the driveway gets picked clean by critters but they seem to miss the one up front. Last summer we didn't do anything with the grapes. This summer, the grape vine went crazy and actually destroyed the trellis under the weight of all the fruit.

I went out last Sunday afternoon to "hurry and pick the grapes". Three plastic bags later... this is what I hd soaking in the kitchen sink:

I didn't have the first clue as to what to do with them so I put them in a strainer and smashed them with a big ladle. Two hours later, this is my reward:

The entire time I kept thinking.... "there has got to be a better way to do this....".
It did smell wonderful though! -and tastes amazing.

Admist all the drying foliage popped this little beauty: a random late bloomer in my wildflower garden.

not a leaky window

I went into the bedroom to open the blinds before leaving for school. I almost panicked when I saw this puddle of "water" on the floor. It was huge! My first thought was that the window (or roof) was leaking.

But if you can tell from this picture, it was just Confuscious drooling. He is developing a bit of a drool problem in his old age. He loves to sleep on this ottoman under the window. I guess it's a good thing his head WAS hanging off the edge a little with that much drool.

this just struck me as funny

Maybe I am just in a bizarre mood today but I actually laughed out loud when I was walking to school and saw all the city snowplows and sanding trucks scooping and hauling LEAVES.
This is one of the many gigantic piles in the school parking lot: