Slip and Slide

Does anyone else have fond memories of a certain long, yellow, vinyl contraption in their yard as a kid? Well, does anyone? Cause I don't! I don't think we actually owned one ourselves, but childhood friends certainly did, and I remember it being quite the kick in the pants. Thinking about the old slip and slide takes me back to days when I would run and ride my bike until the sun went down. It was PUNISHMENT to have to come inside early. Me and the neighborhood pals would climb trees, sit around the pond, walk, talk, hatch evil plans to snag the boy of our dreams, etc. Do kids even still do that these days? Without the use of a cell phone or text messaging? It's bizarre to me (and has been for awhile) that kids spend hours on end playing video games and chatting on the computer and texting each other back and forth...don't kids play anymore???

Of course, that makes me sound like an old, stodgy person, so I'll stop with that little diatribe right there. What I really want to talk about is my baby, playing in the good old (HOT Florida) outdoors. Specifically, in our backyard, with a slip and slide.

At first, he didn't quite get what it was all about. Mommy had to break out her bathing suit and show him. (Mommy is forever grateful to Daddy for not snapping unflattering pictures of her behind on the tiny, fragile Slip and Slide.) Once he saw the old SNS in action, though, the boy was hooked!

The approach:

The sizing up:

Going for it!

Monkey Boy just giggled and giggled and begged to do it again, over and over. And of course, we let him - until the thunder started, then we high-tailed it back in the house. He was covered in dirt and grass that his daddy had mowed earlier that afternoon, and happy as a clam.

I love that he is developing a sense of adventure outside of the normal climbing all over the furniture and jumping off of things. We just finished our first round of "swim lessons" in which I was a willing participant. We did a parent/child class, and his real, no-mommy-or-daddy-in-the-pool-or-anywhere-near-him classes start on July 10. I am excited to pass along my love of the water to my little man, but nervous with the whole "not being right there" deal. Oh well, what's a mommy to do? Gotta go for it!

I had to get a few action shots in - he was concentrating too hard to really ham it up for my ever-present camera, but I did get a few good ones getting down on his level. I love having a record of these moments and the memories we make as a family.

As long as we continue to omit those of my behind on a slip and slide :)

I like...

Lots of things, actually. Today I like these:

Sushi

Air Conditioning

Scrapbooking sessions scheduled a mere 8 hours away!

Good friends

Laughter

Casual Fridays :)

It's Friday! What are you liking about today?

As requested...Lemon Cupcakes w/Raspberry Buttercream

Is a recipe without glorious pictures to go with it still a good recipe? Let's hope so, cause here comes one! (Well, there is one picture...I don't think that really counts, though...sigh)

Lemon Cream Cupcakes, adapted from Allrecipes.com

1 cup butter or margarine, softened
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon lemon extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups sour cream

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add lemon peel and lemon extract; mix well. Combine dry ingredients; add to creamed mixture alternately with sour cream (batter will be thick). Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups with 1/4 cup of batter. Bake at 350 degrees F for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Remove from muffin pan to cool on a rack. When cooled, use a paring knife or offset spatula to make a cross in the top of the cupcakes to allow them to be filled with lemon curd.

Ina Garten's Lemon Curd

(http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/lemon-curd-recipe/index.html)

3 lemons
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 pound unsalted butter, room temperature
4 extra-large eggs
1/2 cup lemon juice (3 to 4 lemons)
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

Using a carrot peeler, remove the zest of 3 lemons, being careful to avoid the white pith. Put the zest in a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Add the sugar and pulse until the zest is very finely minced into the sugar.*
Cream the butter and beat in the sugar and lemon mixture. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and then add the lemon juice and salt. Mix until combined.
Pour the mixture into a 2 quart saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened (about 10 minutes)**, stirring constantly. The lemon curd will thicken at about 170 degrees F, or just below simmer. Remove from the heat and cool or refrigerate.

*I don't have a food processer, so I used a Microplane to zest my lemons, then just smashed the sugar and zest all to hell with a wooden spoon. The taste was divine, so I imagine this will work for you, too.

**This took me about 15 minutes to achieve the consistency I wanted, but I was a fraidy-cat and didn't want to scald my curd. Nor do I own a candy themometer to find out what the actual temperature of the stuff I'm cooking is at. Guess I need to compile one of those kitchen wish list things and start buying stuff, huh?

Raspberry Buttercream

This one is a little hard to provide a recipe for, but I'll give it a shot. Frosting has always been (cause my mama taught me so) more of a start-here-but-realize-you-may-have-to-add-a-bit-more-of-this-and-then-that-to-get-it-right kind of thing. Mama is not usually wrong about these things, and this recipe is no exception. Start here and hold on to your apron strings!!

1 stick of butter, room temperature

1/2 cup Criso

1lb powdered (10x) sugar, sifted

1 tsp raspberry extract

1/4 cup frozen raspberries with juice (thawed)

Sidenote: fresh berries sure are yummy, but I wanted the juice, so I used frozen. Also, it turns the buttercream a delicious shade of pink...let you conscience be your guide!

Cream the butter and Crisco together like a mad man - light and fluffy, people, light and fluffy. Add the extract and your berries and whip it...whip it good!

Either slowly add your sugar in while it beats or dump it all in at once and let it go. To me, it matters not, let it beat for a good 7 minutes or so and you will end up with a delightfully creamy, berryriffic frosting!!

At this point, if it's too stiff for your liking, add more berry juice, or extract or both. I added more of both for flavor, then balanced out with more sugar. I didn't want a "Hint of Raspberry" buttercream, so I took it up a notch - I was not disappointed and I hope you won't be either.

So you have your cooled cupcakes, your cooled lemon curd (if you haven't managed to eat it all already) and your fabulous buttercream. I found that the curd in a plain piping bag worked great for filling the cakes. Use your preferred method, and if it turns out to be the easiest thing you've ever done, drop me a note, I'll listen! Using your bag full of curd, insert the tip about a 1/2 inch into the crosshatch you cut on the cupcake and squeeze gently. The cupcake will puff up a bit and that should do it. Too much filling tastes mahvalous, dahling but makes an awful, drippy, sticky mess. Take it easy. Fill 'em all up and slap some of that lovely pink-ness of a buttercream on top and consume in droves.

(Piping lovely mounds of frosting and a delicate sprinkling of disco dust, edible glitter or other such embellishment is also an option. It just keeps them away from your mouth longer. Your choice, lovelies)

They are delicious! Make them!! If you do, and happen to take step-by-step pictures that you then forward to me to post in this blog, I'll be your best friend forever and ever so help me, Betty Crocker.

**UPDATE** I made these again and got a picture of the finished product!! Yay me!! They got rave reviews AGAIN, so I'm guessing this is a safe bet for my go-to cupcake :)

Girls Girls Girls

A few weeks ago, after much planning and deliberation, "The Girls" took of for a much-needed weekend of fun in the sun in fantabulous Destin, FL. Friday was travel day, we all met up at the hotel after dinner and headed out (in a taxicab, natch - responsibility first!). We had a great (short) night of drinking and dancing it up, laughing and talking. You know you're getting old when you hit the sack before 2 am on a GNO! Of course, that doesn't include the additional 2 hours of hard-to-remember conversation and laughter...I remember the laughing, just not the why...

Here is the whole motley crew, about 2 drinks in at The Village Door, a cool little bar with good music and a friendly bartender, whose name escapes me at the moment...but he did snap a nice little photo for us!

My girls, left to right: Tonya, Julie (in back), Stacie, Jessica, Marion and troublemaker-in-charge, ME, up front and rockin the hot pink! (Pink was a trend for me that weekend, not sure exactly why yet) I'm also bent at the knees at a crazy angle - I'm a good 2-4 inches taller than any of these girls, barefoot, AND I was wearing big old espadrille wedges to boot. Poor short friends o'mine! Stacie is not bent at the knees, just for some perspective :)

Before the sweating and drunkiness ensued, I snapped a few quick shots - this is Julie and I posing pretty - she hates pictures!

Tonya, Julie and I, post lemon drop shot #647...of course not really, but you can see there is (liquor-induced) happiness all around! And pink cheeks!!

Sorry about the gratuitious shot of Julie's girls. Sometimes they have a mind of their own.

This shall be henceforth known as "the point of no return". So funny. Tonya gave herself bunny...forehead?? And if that isn't t-rex arm on my part...well, I don't believe I will have ever seen it's equal. We were feeling it, to say the least. There are many fuzzy details of the night thereafter, but the important elements are fixed in my memory: we were TOGETHER and we had F-U-N!!!

This is the deliciousness that greeted us the next morning, after an early breakfast, much-needed coffee and a couldn't-have-made-it-without it "hair of the dog".

This, my friends, is the Emerald Coast of Florida. With any luck, any luck at all, the oil spill of catastrophic proportion won't ruin it for the next 5 generations. Cross your fingers.

I do feel very fortunate to have had some time to spend on this glorious stretch of coastline before it gets ruined with ugly sticky tar balls and nastiness. I hate that the thought even has to occur to me, but I couldn't help but drink it all in while I sat on the beach with the best of friends...it may never look like this again. But I digress...

I do that a lot. Bound to happen again, my friends, forgive me.

A few hours later, a few beers for some (who me? noooooooo), some much needed sunshine and it was time for lunch!! We cleaned up, hopped in the car and went to grab some yummy local seafood on the beach!! No we did not plan our ridiculously matchy-matchy outfits. Hard to believe, but true nonetheless. Sometimes we are just dorks.

Shocker of all shockers, we all ordered grouper sandwiches - fried, fried, fried - just what the old girls needed to feel 100% for some shopping! After lunch, we headed over to the Silver Sands outlets and shopped the afternoon away - unfortunately, no one scored any major items, but I picked up some stuff at Harry and David and found a few items to add to my kitchen wish list at Le Creuset! Julie skipped shopping in favor of a nap. Probably should have done the same...

Saturday night we fought off the exhaustion of too much sun, prettied ourselves up and headed out for a nice seafood dinner at a local joint that's been around for ages, Captain Dave's.

We are laughing in this picture because the little dude that was taking the picture for us had three cameras to juggle and the poor thing was getting heckled by one of the girls (who shall remain nameless). Typical us.

We had planned to make a night of it, but as I hinted before, we aren't as young as we used to be and we had a bit of sun that day, so we went back to the hotel and fixed a drink, got in our jammies and just hung out, old-school sleepover style. There were no pillow fights, sorry guys! (Like there are any men reading my blog. Ha!) It was hilarious and a perfect close to the weekend.

Oh, what an exercise in friendship and patience and love a girls weekend away is. I truly, truly love each and every one of these girls and I am grateful for the time we got to spend together hanging out and enjoying each other. As there always is with a gaggle of girls, we had a bit of drama, a bit of whining, a bit of trying to get everyone on the same page. At the end of the day, it was all worth it, but the next time I plan one of these adventures, someone please remind me of what I am getting myself into, m'kay? ;)