Baked Donut Recipe 6.0

I continue the search for the perfect baked donut, I ran across this recipe for vanilla muffins and I think it is the best so far!

What's your reading level?

I found a treasure at the local thrift store a few months back and it not only brought back a bit of nostalgia but it spawned an obsession.  When I was a kid in elementary school, it was a BIG deal to bring home the latest collection of Garfield comics in one of those soft cover, brightly colored books from the library.  My husband and son were so excited the former hopped on the interweb to see if he could find a few more.  We now own 19 volumes (of 30) and my son is just tickled, so instead of reading sensible things like 'Goodnight Moon' or 'Green Eggs and Ham,' we are reading Garfield cartoons, and as the word count per strip is about equal to one of those horrid little books he brings home from school, not to mention it is a lot more interesting, I suppose it isn't a bad thing (that and I haven't been this excited about story time in a long time!).   I wonder if they have Shakespeare in comic form?

Of mice and...mice!

Yep, I have a snake, not exactly the first pet I thought we'd have as a family but that's life, and as it happens, this particular reptile is even more picky than my five year old when it comes to the gastronomical side of things: he doesn't eat vegetables either, or dead rodents for that matter, which necessitates live rodentia, and as I live 100 miles from the nearest purveyor of fine rodent specimens, the easiest thing to do is breed my own.  So now I have a snake and mice, but my rodent breeding attempt got off to a bad start, namely my original foursome of mice all turned into gentlemen mice, and as progressive as our modern world has become, it has not yet made any impact on the rodent world.  It took several weeks to figure that out and a grand trip to town to procure female vermin, it also meant that my population dynamics were very much behind schedule, as the snake had to eat in the interim, but not to fear, we had a plan.

But as with all brilliant and diabolical plans, something went wrong, namely my dear hubby decided not to make the journey into town the other day to procure more rodentia to tide over said snake until our mouse population is self sustaining, it was only a blizzard after all and now the poor snake will have to go hungry for a bit.  But that's the weird thing about snakes: they don't have to eat like us mammals.  The books says this particular species has been known to go months and up to a year without eating and still does fine, so I suppose he can survive a few days until we again can make the grand trek to town.  If only you could buy live mice on amazon!

From utter terror to laissez faire

I remember bringing our son home from the hospital and wondering what I was supposed to do now, I'm in charge of a life!  I called a friend who had also recently brought her first child home for moral support and we survived the first few hours and then an entire night and then an entire day...  Then you bring your second one home and casually hop on a plane two weeks later, child in tow!  With the first you observe all the 'rules' be they pediatrician guidelines or governmental regulations, with the second you can't remember what the rules are, except they aren't supposed to have tomatoes until they are twenty three or was the thirty, and I think egg whites?  I've found myself adding a little salt to those mashed up carrots and even resorted to letting her cry instead of getting up three times a night (she's now sleeping through the night after only 2 weeks of gradually cutting back on night time excursions on my part).  A friend (with 2 kids at the time, now up to 4 and expecting 2 more!) told me once that she 'hadn't slept through the night in 4 years,' and I really didn't want that to be me.  So at six months of age and twenty plus pounds, I decided she could at least cut back to once or twice a night and as it was going so well we pulled an all nighter and she does just fine.  Sleep, my old friend, how I have missed you!  Parenting does get easier with experience, but I'll never be an expert, as there's always a new phase or personality quirk!

New Year's Resolution Breaker

If your new year's resolution is to lose weight/eat better, run away, run away fast, because this recipe for cheese sticks (in your waffle maker) is amazing and even better than the restaurant appetizer.  So if you are still here, enjoy!