Pancake Art: Butterflies

Because of our travels on Saturday, I moved our pancake morning to today. It really takes a while to do this. Like... an hour. I'll be looking at large griddles because I really do enjoy this!!

Despite receiving a request for a tutorial on how I do my pancake art, I forgot to take pictures until they were already cooking. So instead, I'll give you my pancake recipe plus my pictures from today.



Pancakes
Original recipe from Joy of Cooking. I grew up with this recipe memorized in its tripled form. That's what it took to feed my family and in my memory, I almost always made them. I've tried other pancake recipes and this one is definitely my favorite. I have made a few changes from the recipe and it works for me but I'll make note of what I think is the original recipe amounts. It makes 14 4-inch pancakes. If you're making them regular-like.

Melt in microwavable bowl 2 Tbsp butter. (I use unsalted butter.)(Original recipe is, I think, 3 Tbsp butter. Eliminating butter means you have to grease your pan.)

With a whisk, combine a pinch of salt, 1 egg, 1 Tbsp sugar, and 1 3/4 tsp baking powder with the melted butter. (Oops! Totally forgot the baking powder this morning. It does make a bit of a difference as Jared mentioned how they tasted this morning.)(Original recipe calls for 3 Tbsp sugar. I've done it without and it tastes fine. I just prefer that little bit of sugar in it.)

Add 1 1/2 cups of flour and 1 1/4 cups milk to the bowl. (To make lump-free pancakes, alternate adding your flour and your milk making sure each addition is whisked smooth before adding the next thing. I usually do roughly 1/3 of the milk, then 1/2 cup flour, 1/3 more milk, etc.)(This morning I used powdered milk. That substitute is 1 1/2 cups water + 4 Tbsp non-instant powdered milk.)

On my electric stove top, I cook them over low heat (#2 on my dial) because my stove gets HOT and I don't like burned pancakes. Haha, I should show you what I think a burned pancake looks like... most people call them NORMAL. I put my oven on WARM (roughly 150 or 200 F) and put the pancakes in there until they're all cooked and we can sit down as a family to eat  them.

You can use any pancake recipe but you don't want it really runny or really thick. You definitely don't want chunks.

I don't have black food coloring so I created my own. You know when you have a ton of leftover icing on a plate because it's nasty and you just wanted the cake and then you were lazy and didn't want to get up to throw the plate away so you just sat there playing with it while listening to the conversation around you and you made this really gross grey color? That's what it looked like when I mixed it up.

But it cooked up all pretty and black! And purple always mixes up blue but then turns purple after it sits for a few minutes.

I'm not sure why there's all those spots on the pancakes because I don't remember them from last week. This was just one of my fun must-use-up-all-the-batter pancakes.

I made a few hearts. Kaelyn ate all the small pancakes. She refused the butterflies until we broke them up into small pieces.

I didn't take a picture of it, but I made this circle chain and Kaelyn picked the circles apart one by one to eat them. She still called them cookies at first but then she switched to pancakes.

Yes, I created a scene directly on my table. It was cute though!

Visiting Kirtland, Ohio

Jared has never been to any of the historical sites for our church out here. The easiest one to tackle first was Kirtland, Ohio. We were pleased to learn that the hotel we booked was only a 2 1/2 hour drive. Perfect for a day trip. And because we wanted to spread out the driving, we went up Friday and left Sunday (this morning).

Hope you like a lot of pictures!

We stayed in Cleveland. As we were driving to our hotel, we drove down "the strip". Cleveland is definitely more city-like than Columbus is. Luckily, our hotel was not amid the strip. This is the view from our hotel. This was one of the bajillion churches around.

Another view from our room. The mega parking garage, the hotel valet parking (which was as expensive as parking in the garage would have been), and the pole.

Kaelyn wanted to wear my belt so I looped it around her twice and it worked!

Shortly after the last picture, she tripped and banged her head right into the corner of a door jamb. Sorry, girl.

I should have taken more pictures of the hotel and lobby. It was nice. There were these retro kind of chairs. Surprisingly comfortable. Kaelyn liked that they spun.

We took a guided tour at Historic Kirtland. This is us in front of the Newell K. Whitney store. It was something like 95 degrees out. Kaelyn did awesome until the last 15 minutes of the tour when she really wanted a drink. Who can blame her? I let Jared finish out the tour since this was his first time.

From Historic Kirtland, we went up the hill to the Kirtland Temple. The tour starts with a video and that is when Kaelyn fell asleep. Luckily she stayed asleep for all the shifting I did from one arm to the other. Up the stairs.... down the stairs... sitting down... walking lots.

Still crashed on our way back to the hotel. Oh wait, to dinner before the hotel.

We got a little bit of dessert that night at the hotel. I loved this simple flower arrangement.

I also liked the tray and the liner.

Hazelnut chocolate mousse.

Something cheesecakey.

It split. :( But still good.

Upside down picture but I liked this simple arrangement. I think it'd be good if I were hosting a luncheon or tea party. 

I split up the goods so we could share.

I cut everything in half except for the raspberries because there were equal amounts of those and didn't need splitting.

This one was messier than the other because of the cheesecake split thing.

I asked Jared how he liked the chairs. He thought it was comfortable but didn't like the lower chair arms. He likes the pattern. He liked the pillow on the chair and thought it made it more comfortable than if he took the pillow off.

The chairs at the little table had this subtle pattern on it. Loved it. The pattern was also on the bed ... foot thing. (I don't know what it's called but it's not an actual bed spread. Just something to be decorative at the foot of the bed.)

On our way home, I tried to get some of the awesome architecture that The Cleveland Churches had to offer.

Not a church but an interesting garbage can.

Since it was Sunday morning, some of these had open doors ready for worship services. This church was one of them.

Not a church building but cool designs.

Planters. :) This was somewhere on the Cleveland strip.

This was my attempt at the stadium for the Indian Braves.

Since we were gone, we had no Pancake Saturday OR Sunday this week. I do aim on making them this week though!

Pinterest #2

I should take you on a full tour of my house so that when I say the master bathroom is small.... you know what I mean. I definitely do not have a vision of what I would like in a master bathroom in terms of style.

A few things are clear from our time with our current bathroom. I want more counter space. I don't want to leave things out but when I get out something, I don't want to be spending the majority of the time balancing eye shadow on the edge of the counter or catching bobby pins before they go down the drain. I also want a bath and a shower. Separate. We just have a shower. And even that drives me crazy.

Pinterest has some lovely eye candy for me. Let me share just a few with you.

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 This first bathroom is too ornate for my tastes but I love the arches and the column. And the stone/tile/marble/whatever it is. High ceiling. Pretty light (although I'm very open to pretty chandeliers anywhere in my house). Functional space. Enough space to share the space. Big window. Nice tub.

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 I'm not sure what is in that little door straight ahead because there is a bathrobe hanging up in there so maybe a tub? I'd like the toilet to be kinda closed off like that. I love the seat in the shower. The wood work on the walls. The floor and how there's so many different shades of gray. The hook right outside the shower. And the faucet. It's hard to see but it looks real pretty.

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 I don't know if I'd ever be so bold as to ever have an outdoor shower or tub beyond something for a pool or lake. Maybe at my vacation home. This just looks so serene and peaceful. That feeling is something I'd like to inject in a bathroom.

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 I love this half wall shower. The white helps make the room feel open. It also kind of looks like there is two shower heads in there. Love the floor.

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This shower is big enough for shelves! I love that. I really want that. I think I would feel exposed in a shower this big at least for a little while. I'm sure I'd get over it. It's just too fabulous not to! Love the seating as well.

What do you look for in a shower or master bathroom?

Sticky Rice Attempt #1

One of the yummy food pictures I came across on Pinterest led me to a recipe for Thai Coconut Sticky Rice. (That website is Thai food related so if you're looking for some recipes or information about it, check it out. Some good stuff there.) It seemed easy enough. I even read the additional articles on peeling a mango and what type of rice to use. And then I promptly used whatever rice I wanted to. I did make sure I purchased the recommended brand of coconut milk (Chaokah which is what I would have bought anyway).

This is what I did. You can read what she wrote at the link above but it's almost the same thing. I fully intend to change this recipe and I want to see my path there.

1/2 cup rice (I used Jasmine rice) - I tried her method which is steaming rice. Totally didn't work for me. Maybe it's the type of rice I used. I'll just cook it normal next time. This was supposed to take 20 minutes (+ 10 minutes soaking) until cooked. I tried 20 minutes soaking and closer to 40 minutes cooking and there were lots of hard middles of rice grains.

1/2 cup coconut milk, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 1/2 tsp salt (definitely just did an approx pinch) - combine in bowl and microwave for two minutes. Sugar should be dissolved and mixture hot.

Combine rice + hot mixture. Cover with plastic wrap. Let sit for 30 minutes. (Mine sat for... yup, you guessed it. Longer! More like 45 minutes.) Your rice is supposed to soak up the milk mixture. Mine did a fairly good job of that.

Plate it pretty and pretend you take good pictures.

The mango was perfectly ripe. But it was a normal big mango which aren't my favorite. I haven't seen the little mangoes in a while. They are much tastier though.

The rice was super duper sweet. It was so sweet that my stomach turned and it made the mango taste not sweet and yummy like it should have. It was too sweet even for Kaelyn.

I will definitely be trying this again because I have leftover coconut milk. And another mango.

Brag Post: Jared

It is 11pm and I am drawing a blank as to what to actually blog about tonight. And to think I was just complimented on how impressed someone was with my blog. That was maybe a little bit too early to be said...

I don't generally like to call attention to my husband on my blog because he doesn't really like the attention being called to him. However, I want to shed a spotlight on him tonight.

Often we hear that you can never tell your children that you love them too many times. It is equally as true for spouses. I hate it when I go to bed upset with Jared and try to either let go or work through it. Over the last several months, I have put a lot of effort into really creating this close marital relationship because sometimes it can take a back burner when you have kids. I realized that I was feeling neglected and I wasn't sure if he was feeling the same way or not. Taking matters into my own hands and doing things for him helped me feel more loved.

There have been a few matters that were big deals to me but never seemed like big deals to him. With one of them, I would bring it up and we'd talk about it but no action would occur as a result. I was too scared to bring up the other issue.

We have made such a big headway recently. I've had to learn how to not get defensive when he expresses his feelings and opinions. And how to not attack when expressing mine. He had to learn to not walk away or laugh. Communication is not an easy thing to master. Ugh, I can't even say that because I'm still an amateur (um, why did the word "padawan" enter my head?). A little progress is still progress.

Jared has made many decisions that I have been so impressed with. I couldn't believe when he came downstairs earlier in the week and said "so, I was researching the caloric counts of fast food" (okay, not an exact quote but maybe a little similar). And some of the decisions he's made to NOT eat something that he normally wouldn't think twice about eating. Or we have discussions about how healthy we consider certain meals and it actually feels like he cares what I'm saying and he has something to contribute.

Or some of his decisions to help us be able to meet some of our financial goals. The biggest one is that he works two (or three or four depending on your thinking) jobs. It's a sacrifice sometimes but a good decision, nonetheless. This is the first time since we met that he's really enjoyed what he does and has very few complaints.

I still struggle with occasional feelings that my needs aren't being met but it's getting easier to take a step back and see all that we have been blessed with, all the opportunities in our lives, and all the good people and family that surrounds us. And all that my husband does for me. I am truly blessed to have him in my life and I thank God for him every day.

I don't know if he actually reads my blog posts so he may never see this, but let this be a declaration to the {extremely small part of the world that actually read this post} world. I love you, honey! I don't want to know what my life would be like without you. Some of my greatest comforts in life come from you. You support and encourage me in my.... whatever I do.... even when you don't really understand my final vision.

(This is where I insert a recent picture of the two of us--or just him. But really... that just doesn't exist.)