Flour and Sugar and Oatmeal... Oh my!

The three oldest kids are getting confirmed (joining the church as an adult member) in the church this weekend. Even Bear has been participating in the classes and activities, although suspicious me always assumes it's just so he can get out of the house and away from us. There is a reception on Saturday for family and friends and the families of the 18 confirmands have been asked to bring snacks. We could sign up to bring cheese, fruit, or brownies/cookies. I decided it was cheaper to make the brownies/cookies than to purchase cheese or fruit plates. So that's what I signed up for... for all 3 of my kids... 6 dozen cookies/brownies... EACH!

So for the last few days I've been making and freezing 18 DOZEN cookies and brownies. Having no idea what all I'd need I bought in bulk. I AM AN IDIOT. I bought a 25lb bag of white flour (we only use whole wheat)... used maybe a pound... at most. Bought 4 lbs of butter - used a little less than 3. Actually that worked out about right. Bought a 10lb bag of sugar (we don't use sugar at our house). Never even opened it because we had some left from something else. I think it's 2lbs of brown sugar which I used a little of. Bought a pound of cocoa we never opened because brownies call for chocolate squares not cocoa. Bought a case of quick oats (we only use old fashioned). Used about 1/2 of one of the two packages.

I now have 16 1/2 dozen cookies (oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip) and 4 dozen brownies in my freezer.

So what do I do with the rest of the ingredients?!

Ponito's school is having a carnival this weekend and they could always use items for the cake walk. Do I spend the next 2 days baking billions more cookies? I'd have to buy more ingredients (eggs and butter mostly) to use up the ones I have.



Plus Kitty's birthday party is this weekend, she claims she invited four friends, and I need to make the Harry Potter cake she wants that looks something like this ----------->
and get the house and kitchen clean. Something is wrong with the dishwasher or the water softener so when the kids wash the dishes they open the dishwasher, decide it isn't clean, and re-run it! Needless to say it still doesn't get clean and neither do all the rest of the dishes that are piling up in the sink (and counters and stove top...).


I might be able to take back the sugar and cocoa since they haven't been opened, but I still have over 20lbs of white flour. YIKES! No one in this house needs to be eating more baked goods - especially those with white flour and real butter and sugar.

Adventures in Cooking

I never seem to have a camera around, so you guys are just going to have to settle for "way back when" pictures! The boy was sooo much cuter then! (Just kidding - he's still way too adorable!)

So yesterday I was tired and cranky and didn't feel like dealing with anything at all. Hubby was judging a business plan competition and wasn't going to get home until after 11pm. I sat down at my computer and started making the pictures for the homemade cinnamon roll tree for my friend. It took a lot longer than I thought I would, but that's the advantage of having older children right?! They don't need constant supervision (as long as they're all in the house, all downstairs where I can hear them, and I'm close enough that I can lean out of my computer cubby under the stairs and handle anything desperate).

Meanwhile, Kitty and Ponito want to make cookies, and Bob wants to make dinner so she can decide what we're going to have. Finally I give my permission as long as I have veto power (and can continue working at my computer - which is right next to the kitchen).


Kitty and Ponito dive into a children's cookie cookbook I have that's full of lots of cutely shaped cookies. Some of them are vetoed because one of them doesn't like it. Some are vetoed based on missing ingredients. Finally they agree on ladybug cookies (?!). I toss out a veto because black and red icing are almost impossible to "make" using food coloring. They consult and come up with a compromise. Cream cheese frosting dyed red (turned out pink of course) and chocolate icing for the spots. in the search for icing recipes they switch cookbooks (unbeknownst to me) and apparently finds one they like and have the ingredients for in Daddy's gourmet cookbook.

Kitty starts on the cookies (they have cornmeal in them?!).
Ponito starts on the chocolate fondant icing! He's following the directions well, but needs to boil water on the stove. He gives me a saucepan with a quarter inch of water in it (I do all stove top cooking). Of course it boils almost immediately. I ask him what he would like me to do with it as he's frantically stirring chocolate chips and butter with a wisk "until they melt" (which of course isn't going to happen with no heat!). He tells me to pour it in the chip mix. This doesn't sound right so I check the recipe (discovering the cookbook change). He is supposed to boil about an inch ("that's about an inch isn't it Mommy?") of water in the saucepan and melt the chocolate mix in a pot on top. I had him reread that section of the recipe and he figured it out. Then I mixed the chocolate. He finished the recipe. It was bitter, but not too bad. We didn't have confectioner's sugar which I believe was in one of the icing recipes (not sure which one), so I'm sure he made a substitution (or left it out).

Kitty put her 12 cookies (was supposed to make 24) into the oven, and helped Ponito with the cream cheese frosting they'd chosen for the "red" frosting. We had one ancient sealed package of fat-free cream cheese in the fridge. A little while later she pulled out the cookies which had melted - growing bigger and were now dripping off the cookie sheet. When she tried to put them back in the oven they all slid on the overly Pam coated cookie sheet into a smoosh at the back of the cookie sheet and globbed off the end to land in a smoky mess on the bottom of the oven.

*Heavy sigh* I got up - stopped Kitty's hysterics - and rescued the cookies. I tried to divide them back into real cookie shapes - using the spatula, but there was still apparently too much dough and once back in the oven they melted back into one solid sheet. But at least they weren't all on the back half of the cookie sheet and didn't drip on the bottom of the oven - much. They were left in a little too long and were brown and crispy, but at least not burnt. (Don't worry, we still had plenty of smoke from the mess on the bottom of the oven). So of course the cream cheese frosting never got stiff so they just poured it on, and then dotted a small portion of the chocolate on the top.

By now it's dinner time. We all stop to eat Bob's gourmet meal of 2 boxes of macaroni and cheese with a handful of green beans and 1! cut up hot dog in it?! This lasted about 10 seconds and everyone was still hungry (I reheated some leftover rice and threw some cheese in it - What?! It was better than starving! - which they obviously weren't since no one ate the rice). Kitty insisted that no one could eat the cookies - they were for tomorrow's afternoon snack. Of course by morning they were half gone, and I had to stop her from putting the other half in a bag to take to school for lunch (don't even get me started about the Lunch Wars!).