Bomb Diggity Quick Bread

I am not a baker. That isn't saying that I'm bad at it, I just don't do it often. I have friends that love to bake and they are always talking about the cookies, cakes and breads they made. I on the other hand detest measuring cups. I learned to cook by watching my beautiful Grandma Alice use her palm to measure and describe recipes by saying "a bit" or a "pinch" of seasoning. To be a great baker you need to be good at making sure that all your ingredients follow the recipe to a T.
Well, occasionally I dust off my measuring cups and spoons and bake. Yesterday I was skimming my new Food network magazine and saw a great quick break mix and match. It gave tons of different choices for your quick bread--carrot, bananas or zucchini? Walnuts, raisins or coconut? Vanilla Bean, brown butter or cream cheese glaze? Well, I hate bananas and only had carrots in the fridge so carrots is it. I'm allergic to most nuts so that limited the choices in mix ins therefore I settled on chocolate chips. As for the glaze I picked chocolate. One other small change had to be made to the magazines recipe. I only had strawberry yogurt and it required plain. I won't tell if you don't.
Whatever recipe I followed, this bread turned out fantastic. And the strawberry flavor made it better.

Bomb Diggity Quick Bread
1 cup shredded carrot (I put mine in my mini food processor)
1 3/4 cups chocolate chips
1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp each: baking powder and salt
1/2 tsp each: baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg
2 eggs
1/2 cup cooled melted butter
1/2 cup plain (or strawberry) yogurt
1 tsp each: vanilla and citrus zest
GLAZE
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 tbs cocoa
2 tbs milk
1/4 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

Pre-oven 350 and spray 9 by 5 loaf pan with pam.
Mix flour, sugar,baking powder, salt, baking soda,cinnamon and nutmeg in a large bowl; add chocolate chips/ In another bowl mix eggs,butter,yogurt, vanilla, zest and carrot. Fold wet ingredients into the dry until combined.
Put into the loaf pan and bake for 55 min. Let cool.
For the glaze whisk the conf. sugar, cocoa, milk, vanilla and salt. Then pour on the bread and let set for 15 to 20 minutes.
I then topped mine with some more chocolate chips.
enjoy

Black Trash Bags and Me

Do your kids have a ton of toys? Mine do.
That being said, every so often I reach my breaking point with toys and snap. Today was one of those days. It got pretty ugly and a really unattractive barbie met her fate... the black trash bag.

I should have known today was going to be unfortunate. It is spring break and we for once are staying in town doing absolutely nothing. This sounded lovely last week while I was busy driving the kids to their various extra curricular activities and helping with homework. The thought of waking up in the morning with a completely blank agenda appeared to be heaven. I pictured days filled with organizing my drawers and cupboards while the kids amused themselves by playing games and coloring. I know that to you those things sound lame but if you suffer from mild OCD as I do, organizing drawers is porn. Since we have already concluded that I have Clark W Griswald-type expectations from some of my previous blogs, we know that I blew this up a bit big.
The beginning of this week went well. Elliot's preschool is not on spring break so she was gone during the day on Monday. Aiden and I ran errands, bonded over scary TV shows and I got 2 drawers cleaned in the kitchen as well as the entire play room organized. I was able to have enough patience to make a delicious dinner and all was right with the world. Tuesday was a bit more challenging. Elliot went to spend the morning with my mother in law while I attempted to work on the drawers in my bathroom. I started feeling a cold coming on and after looking over my 1 year old I found the source of my symptoms. I nearly forgot about Elliot's kindergarten check up and had a flop with a new recipe I was writing. At about 7 o'clock I felt a fever brewing and passed out on the couch. Today I woke to a irritating feeling of doom. I was pissed off the minute I discovered a dirty kitchen, no coffee, and sinus drainage. The older 2 fought like cats and dogs all morning and I literally got nothing productive done. By 3 I was shaking mad. I had stepped on the last lego I was going to step on for the rest of my life. I looked around my house and saw nothing but evidence of children. I know that I have them obviously, but I don't think I need to be reminded of their spoiled lifestyle in every room of our house. Before Sophie came Scott and I had successfully removed all toys and child related junk from our kitchen, bedroom and living room. We explained to them that they had their bedrooms and an entire play room (Scott painfully relinquished the "man lair" for this) to house their things. Fast forward 15 months and my living room is yet again filled with toddler toys. I can expect mild mess from the baby but will not tolerate overflow from the original 2.
To be fair the barbie that lost her life belonged to our cat Dexter. He has become an excellent barbie thief and Ellie lovingly gave him a barbie she deemed ugly. This stupid doll is always on the floor and today got in the way of my rampage.
After first explaining to the kids that it wasn't fair that mommy clean up things that she didn't mess up (blank expressions indicated that they were not listening to me), mommy snapped. I first gained a creepy calm domineer before turning around and walking quietly to the garage and grabbing my trusty black trash bag. Aiden saw the bag first and his lip quivered. Elliot started running around the house grabbing various junk that she hoped to keep from the bag. I set a timer for 20 minutes and explained (sadly not in a loving manner) that I was done. Done stepping on toys, done picking up underwear off the floor, done wiping the toilet from the poor aim of my son, done finding moldy sippy cups under beds, done vacuuming 3 times a day from the various snack messes or pencil shaving. DONE. The kids had 20 minutes to clean their messes and I slowly roamed the house searching for things that I was gonna toss. The sad part is that I am super cheap and the thought of actually throwing things away sickened me. So I grabbed stuff like fake food from their make believe kitchen and that stupid ugly doll. I also happily tossed the nerf bullets and broken crayons. These selections were just enough to ensure for now that mommy means business.
This evening has been quiet and the kids are as we speak cleaning up the playroom again (this time without the black bag being waived).
Last year my brother in law Tom and I were discussing how our kids seem to have 100% more toys than we had as kids. I was a spoiled brat and still had less junk than my 3 kids. Tom told me that he and his younger sister had one big toy box. Their toys had to fit in this toy box or else. When holidays or birthdays loomed they had to decide what toys in the box were maybe babyish or under-used and toss them. My parents didn't subscribe to those rules. We had a huge basement that had arcade games and tons of toys. I had a huge train set and at one time an entire room devoted to my barbies (that I re-enacted scenes from Young and the Restless with). My kids have tons of people in their lives that love them and shower them with gifts. I will say that Aiden and Elliot have always been grateful and taken moderately good care of their things. The problem is that their things are everywhere.
While I am not going to buy one toy box for the kids to share (it would have to be a really big box). I am definitely in the market for some tips on handling the overflow.
Today my kids will go to bed remembering that their things can be removed if mommy is having an off day. Tomorrow they will most likely go back to their routines of dropping junk wherever they want and expecting mom to follow like a servant. So I will continue buying my black bags at Costco and hopefully one day when they're much older I will receive a phone call that my mother got from me a couple years ago. "Mom I'm so sorry, these kids are driving me crazy-how did you do it?" I'll tell them it'll get easier and that I love them and will pray for their patience--then I'll hang up and go to Toys R Us to buy my grand kids loads of annoying crap they don't need.
Pay Back, it is a...

Holy Schnitzel Batman

My husband and I love going to a local restaurant called Cafe Med. It's been our go to date night spot for 10 years. During this decade long love affair with my husband and this restaurant he has ordered the same thing every time--chicken schnitzel. He loves it. Needless to say my darling hubby has been droppin' hints for years for me to make it at home.
Today through a series of texts and phone calls I realized that Scott was having a tough day at work, so I decided that since I had all the ingredients that schnitzel would require today would be the day. I couldn't find a decent recipe online so in true Sarah fashion I made one up based on the flavors the dish at Cafe Med.
For a side dish I made mashed potatoes with gravy. If you are a fan of the boxed potatoes I will not judge...totally. I used to use them back when I was a terribly cook and they did the trick. If you don't make homemade potatoes because they're time consuming, well I'm about to flip the script on you. I peel up the potatoes (I only use 4 russets with my fam) cut them into chunks and toss them in salt and pepper then put them in a ziploc steam bag. Steam them in the micro according to the directions, mix with your desired amounts of milk and butter and mash away. Takes no time at all--I promise.

Holy Schnitzel

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts pounded very thin
1 cup lemon juice
1 cup flour
1 tbs pepper
1/2 tbs sea salt
1 tbs paprika
2 tbs dried oregano
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 shallots chopped (you can use any onion but shallots are best)
2 cloves garlic chopped
one lemon sliced into wedges
FOR GRAVY
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 1/2 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup flour
dash salt and pepper

Soak the pounded chicken in a zip lock full of the cup of lemon juice.
In a shallow dish add flour, pepper,salt,paprika and oregano and stir together. In a large skillet add the olive oil, shallots and garlic and heat til good and hot (keep stirring as to not burn garlic). Remove chicken from bag and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Dredge in the flour mix on both sides until fully coated (no chicken showing through) and place in hot oil. Do this for both breasts and heat until browned and cooked through. About 5-6 min a side. Remove from oil and place on paper towel lined plate.
The oil should have reduced to less than 1/8 cup so you can now start the gravy for the mashed potatoes I hope you prepared from the above mentioned directions. Add in the lemon juice and chicken stock stirring while scraping the sides of the pan to get all the drippings from the chicken. Bring this to a boil and then begin spooning in the floor a bit at a time whilst whisking it to prevent chunks. Reduce heat and dash the salt n pep. I also spritzed a bit of fresh lemon into the pan with the gravy.
To serve the chicken spritz with the fresh lemon wedges and if you have fresh dill that would be an awesome herb to sprinkle on top. Use the bomb diggity gravy with the taters or on top the chicken. Enjoy

Traditions

Wow-this year is just buzzing by. I have been a busy bee with all the holidays and traditions that keep popping up. When the kids were really small I didn't fuss too much with all the ins and outs of holiday traditions, but now that I have 3 kids in an age range of 7 to 1 I seem to have a full plate. First we had New Years and Sophie 1st birthday. Next up came Valentines day and all of it's fan fare (see valentines day blog). St. Patty's came with all of it's Leprechaun hunting and green food, and now it's Easters turn to flow into the Cooper house. Easter is a bittersweet holiday for me because when I was a kid I loved it. It wasn't just the Easter baskets that my mom would hide in weird places (the oven was a favorite) or the chocolate bunnies. Easter was a huge family holiday when I was little; Christmas's little sister. We would wake up early and search for the baskets and then go to my Grandmas tiny church.
The majority of my moms family lives in Salt Lake City and I have a ton of cousins, so in the afternoon we would gather at our house or my aunt Irene's to hunt Easter eggs and eat tons of food (usually Mexican). I have so many pictures in my memory of my cousins and I dressed in pastels with little baskets hunting dyed eggs (we started hiding the plastics later in life after one too many rotten eggs were found stinkin' up the joint in June). The reason this is bittersweet for me now as a parent is that my kids really have no cousins. They are the only kids looking for eggs in our yard, the only kids with chocolate smeared faces, and the only kids being forced to eat ham and funeral potatoes. I have one brother and he has no kids-Scott has one sister that will never have kids so our 3 are it, and to me that is sort of depressing.
Scott and I had totally different upbringings. I have like a billion cousins and if given enough time I can name all of them and recall a personal memory that goes along with about 90%. Some of us were very close and some are still total strangers to me. Holidays were spent with lots of kids around that resembled me and tons of aunts and uncles standing around us, patting our heads and feeding us candy. Scott did not have this experience. He has like 12 cousins and if given enough time he can come up with like 7 names and hardly a memory to go along with them. I used to joke that it was a white people thing to not know your family but I could be just stereotyping. For my husband the importance of family being around is well...not that important. Our kids have fabulous grandparents that without any other grandchildren spoil my kids with their attention. They have awesome Godparents and surrogate "aunts and uncles" that are actually of no relation to them, just close friends. Luckily I have also remained very close with my "cousister" Alicia and our kids are each others cousins yet sadly they do not live near us. So this Easter will be like last ones: brunch at the country club (i dislike ham greatly and don't enjoy cooking Easter food), egg hunt at home and bbq'd dinner ala Dad. I will hide the baskets and recite the Easter story as to keep some traditions going.
Someday I will look back on these smaller scale holidays as our own personal traditions, and someday my kids will maybe enjoy a few of them with their families. I guess there comes a time in every parents life when they have to accept that their kids are not going to have the exact same experiences that they had and that it is okay...or I can just pressure my brother into getting married and having kids so mine can have some fun.

Wacky Weather Wed. Easy Peasy

My husband and I love Daniel Tosh. He is a very crass and crude comedian but he's also hilarious. You feel like you're going to Hell every time you laugh along but so be it. Anyhow he has this bit where he says (I'm para-phrasing) 'I hate people that say the love seasons. They want to live where there are seasons. Well, I love seasons too, that's why I live somewhere that skips the sh*&&y ones.' Well I live somewhere that skips the "crappy" ones.
I have already experienced enough weather for one year. I have lived through a full on blizzard and now home in Bako the towns weather is becoming bi-polar. One day it'll be gorgeous and my perfect temp (sunny 65 with a slight breeze) then it's steamy hot (for me that is 85) and then you get today--frickin' freezing and windy.
I owe my dinner tonight to my lovely firey redheaded friend Erika. She posted on facebook that chili was in the crock pot and I thought "YUM". So I looked in the fridge and saw our left over tri tip that Scott grilled on one of the lovely days. It was super yummy so I thought-why let it go to waste.
So, tonight I chopped it up and made my chili and cornbread with tri tip instead of hamburger. I also used less veggies (only used onion and carrots) and more beans. It was of course delicious. Scott of course just reheated his lunch since he dislikes my chili; and I'm ok with that...for now.

Hello April-Need vacation from vacation

Hello peeps. I am sorry for the long break in posts but this broad was on a week long vacation in Lake Tahoe and required a couple days before and a couple days after to get back to normal. This vacation was well, tiring. We got a sweet deal on a condo in North Lake Tahoe for the last week of March and thought "why the hell not". Knowing we may get bored just hanging out with our kids we somehow convinced my parents, whom are allergic to snow, to go along with us; add in my 25 year old brother home from a school break and BAM a full family vacation.
Our vacations when I was a kid generally involved the oil business. My dad owns an oil related company and we saw beautiful places like Taft, Ca. If it wasn't a business trip then it was visiting family members that didn't reside in Utah with us. Sadly a vast majority of the Swenson/Padilla crew live in furiously lame places. Small towns in Washington, Houston, Tx (sorry Texans but that place is awful), Corona, Ca, Mountain Home, Idaho etc. I love my parents but we definitely didn't summer in Hawaii. Scott and I hope to give our kids a large scope of travel memories. We've realized that since Aiden is the oldest he will have the weakest travel scrapbook since we were busy and less affluent when he bounced into our lives. Needless to say we feel as if we are starting to run out of quality time with our son because every year he gets less attached to us and it is mildly depressing.
I pictured this trip like so: Sitting around a big oak dining table eating warm pancakes, followed by hours of snowman building (our kids had never seen snow before this trip), ending our days sipping hot cocoa while playing board games. Stop laughing.
Now that you've heard my Clark W Griswold expectations let me tell you how it really went down. For starters my fabulous best friend and biggest "supporter" Alicia (my cousin) was already betting that we'd kill each other before the end of the vacation so imagine her lack of surprise when she got a frantic phone call before we'd even left my driveway. My dad (a taller grumpier version of moi) and I got into an argument regarding the impending blizzard that if timed correctly we would be driving through. I assumed that he was being dramatic since he really didn't want to go to the snow (a seasonal symptom that he moved away from in 1992). It is safe to say things didn't start well.
We headed north at 1030 (the fight caused us to miss our desired 10am departure time) and drove in lovely weather through a large portion of northern California. Then we passed through Auburn. We stopped at a gas station to let a fussy Sophie get out of her car seat and allow everyone else to use the potty. Scott and my Dad decided to play it by ear on whether or not to even open the boxes of tire chains for our 2 wheel drive Southern weather lovin' trucks. After piling back in the car and heading back up the highway we see the beginnings of beautiful white, fluffy snow. Followed by more snow. Lots of snow. Piles of snow.
Suddenly with only 2 hours left in our trip traffic halts. It seemed every stinking idiot in the state was headed towards Lake Tahoe. We see lights flashing warning that chains are going to be required and inspected ahead. We pull over and after reading instructions and exchanging the occasional irritated sigh and curse word the chains went on (it had started heavily snowing).
IT TOOK 5 HOURS TO GO 120 MILES. No I didn't stutter.
I'd like to say now that I have fully apologized for the complete and utter nervous breakdown that I unleashed on my husband and children while trapped in our car appropriately named Chevy Avalanche. Snow began to pile so high on the sides of the road that I started to feel like we were trapped. Our lovely little Sophie June had begun to fully freak out in the back seat and Aiden and I had to switch seats. The panic attack came on slowly as I (a sufferer of claustrophobia) sat trapped between two car seats in the back seat of a truck. I started having serious visions of piles of snow falling from the mountains beside us and burying our car. I counted granola bars and capri suns and began making plans for rationing them out. Let me tell you, it is an ominous thing to pass a half buried sign disclaiming DONNER PASS while you're in a snow covered nightmare. I would also like to mention my husband is a descendant of that damn family.
After hours of driving 2 miles an hour we approached the town of Truckee which I knew was close to our destination. Only 20 miles. Took another hour. During the break in the traffic and snow the two leaders of our group, Scott and Big Daddy, made the absolutely absurd decision to remove the chains so that we could drive a bit faster since it was now pitch dark out and we thought the road ahead would be clear. This decision was quickly regretted as we slid all over the icy mountain roads. We also couldn't find anywhere to pull over to put the dang things back on because every building, hotel, parking lot etc was under at least 12 ft of snow. My breakdown increased once all 3 kids had fallen asleep and I was able to "discuss" my feeling of impending doom. The husband (who had remarkably remained quite calm during this excursion) had grown tired of listening to what I assume were my dramatic cries in the back seat.
Soon we saw the first street that we needed to turn on approaching on our cars navigational system declaring 0.5 miles and began getting very excited. I had once labored for 16 hours on pitocin with no pain meds and that was still a better day than this had become.
Don't worry it got worse...
We were about to make the final left turn onto the street that our cabin was located when our back tires spun out and got stuck. Picture this: My hysterical self shivering outside the car door holding a flashlight (I chose a simple hoodie as I am an idiot from Bakersfield that had forgotten how cold winter could be) while my poor partner attempted to apply at least one chain in the dark, freezing snow. Oh don't worry about my parents, they zoomed up the hill right away not realizing that their first born and her ENTIRE family were stuck freezing to death behind them. Once they realized this they headed to our rescue and assisted Scott in the chain dept while I, convinced I was frostbitten beneath my converse, snuggled next to a now very awake and panicked Aiden.
At 11 o'clock pm (12.5 hours after we began what we thought would be a 6.5 hour trip) we pulled up to what we assumed was our cabin. It was completely covered in snow and the only entrance we didn't need a permit for (get it--like we needed to climb a mountain.) was the garage. Home. Finally. Thank God.

Now why did I feel the need to tell you this long winded story about our dramatic venture through a blizzard? Because it didn't matter what things I thought were going to happen. The snowmen and the cocoa were not important. They were things that families do on TV (or Mormon ones because we all know they accomplish snowmen and board games) not things that generally happen for us regular folk. Vacations will never add up to insane expectations, but being with you family and knowing that you can get through scary times together is whats important and unexpected.

Plus we could have literally been carjacked by 3 gang banging grizzly bears and then had a home invasion from Charlie Sheen and a gaggle of hookers armed with violent tornadoes of truth and that still wouldn't have topped our harrowing adventure to our vacation.
I am happy to report that Alicia was wrong this time and no homicides happened. I had a great bonding time with my parents, brother, hubby and kids. I got to see my dad actually play cranium and attempt to act out bungee jumping only using his arms. I made a butt load of chicken and waffles and got to see a friend I hadn't seen in 10 years. We watched a ton of movies including a classic Jimmy Stewart called Mr. Hobbs takes a vacation. The snow was always too fresh to make a proper snow man and my kids only like the marshmallows on cocoa. I had a very good time with my fam and was actually sad to pull away from the cabin almost a full week later. It's taken 3 days to unpack and Sophie is currently struggling with her sleep schedule but this trip was worth it. Blizzard, panic attack and all.