This is one of the pictures of the cake I made for my nephew Brian's birthday party yesterday. In case you're wondering it's supposed to look wonky like that. It's called a topsy turvey cake. They're really very stable despite their look although not quite stable enough to handle Ethan's curiosity. He knocked the top two tiers off, but it's not too bad off considering; just a few lumps and wrinkles.
We’ve gotten tired of the boys breaking everything they look at, so we’re trying something new now. We emptied their rooms of everything-we even took apart their beds-and put it all in a storage unit. They’re sleeping on the floor with a blanket, pillow and stuffed animal each for the next month. They have no toys or books so they’re going to have to entertain themselves some other way. I did keep a few books out for them to use during ‘quiet time’ each day though. I keep those in my room and get them for them when it’s time. They’re learning to appreciate what they have and that’s good. They play a lot of games using their hands as puppets now and I'm glad it's helping them use their imaginations more. We’ll leave it that way for a month (we paid for the storage unit right?) and slowly phase most of their stuff back in after that, but I think we’ll donate quite a bit too.
Due to this new arrangement, Christopher and Ethan are in one room and Ryan and Timothy are sharing a room. Timothy’s sleeping through the night now, so Ryan is getting way more sleep as his roommate than he did as Ethan's. Timothy doesn’t wake up until about 6:30 usually and that’s so nice because Ethan is up by then normally anyway. This morning Timothy woke up first though and it was hilarious. I went in the nursery to feed Timothy and closed the door so we didn’t wake up Christopher or Ethan. Ethan woke up a little bit after I started nursing Timothy and went into my room as usual to ask for a snack. When he saw that I wasn’t there he freaked out and started screaming and crying and ran in their room to wake up Christopher. The funniest thing is how Christopher reacted. He checked my room and when I wasn’t there he decided that he was in charge now and they were going to watch movies. He wasn’t even concerned. I was in the nursery cracking up but trying to be quiet about it. They only found me because"Grand Czar" Christopher decided Ryan could watch movies with them and he was coming to get him out of his crib. You should have seen their faces when they found me in there. Ethan’s face was pure relief and Christopher looked like he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Poor guy; I ruined his little coup.
The recipes this week were: Healthy Country Fried Steak with Mushroom Gravy, Asparagus Primavera with Couscous (47), Spicy Shrimp over Rice, and Crème Brûlée (both vanilla and dark chocolate). The first two are from the Clean Eating magazine I wrote about before and the other two are my own recipes. The dark chocolate Crème Brûlée doesn't have exactly the same mouth feel as the vanilla. Judging by what I've read online at various sites that seems to be the case across the board when chocolate is added to it. Still it was very good if you like dark chocolate (which I do). Even my 3 year old niece liked and and I'm including it in this weeks blog at the behest of my nephew Brian who also loved it. Even if you don't like dark chocolate, the vanilla recipe is really the best one I've used and it's a good base for whatever flavor you want to go with. Don't be afraid to give it a try because-even though it seems intimidating to a lot of people-great Crème Brûlée is almost as easy to make as instant pudding it just tastes SO much better. My evil plan to sabotage Jon is working because he can't resist Crème Brûlée and I made him several for Father's Day. Waahh Haaah Hahhh (<--evil genius laugh). Hey, he REQUESTED for me to make it. So I'm not THAT evil.
For the recipes and a few more pictures...
