this girl's on fire

!

Been cooking up a storm this weekend.

Yesterday, made an incredible lc chocolate cake, with the kids' help. It took like an hour to get it into the oven. I frosted it with a chocolate version of this frosting. It is insanely good -- as good as any high carb cake I've ever had. So good, in fact, that I'm thinking about ways to make it into a Sacher Torte and/or Black Forest Cake (with cherries).

Then for dinner I made a kind of turkey cacciatore. I adore Italian food (even though I very, very rarely eat pasta). It was actually a "clean out the fridge" recipe. I had turkey breast cutlets that I dipped in egg wash and then some parmesan cheese, which I browned in olive oil, a little butter, and some garlic. Then I took them out of the pan and added more butter and more garlic, then 8 ounces of sliced mushrooms, a diced tomato, and a diced roasted red pepper, then let that all cook for a few minutes... added about 1/2 cup white wine and about a tsp of Italian seasoning mix, let the wine cook off, and finally stirred in about a half cup of tomato sauce that was left in the bottom of the jar. It was insanely good. The kids didn't eat any of it, so DH and I got to really enjoy it.

Then for dinner tonight, I made a shrimp thing with julienned zucchini, red, yellow, and orange peppers... more garlic, red pepper flakes, white wine, butter... would've been even more awesome with just a little fresh grated ginger, I'll have to remember that next time. But the shrimp were fantastic. They are fresh water shrimp and last time I forgot to salt them so they tasted incredibly bland and flat, this time with the salt they were awesome, not too chewy or anything...

And then we had chocolate cake for dessert! Hee.

Other than cooking and a couple of random errands, didn't do much this weekend at all. Had cheer yesterday morning with DD, that went pretty well. Next week I expect sparse attendance, as 3 folks have already told me they are not coming because they have plans for Mother's Day weekend. We'll see. I'm not going to stress about it, it's not worth it.

I talked to a bunch of my family yesterday because my nephew's son was christened and they had a party. I really do hate that I miss all these family events, being so far away. It was nice to talk to everyone, though.

So 2 movies this weekend I actually enjoyed very much: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and The Cooler. My only complaints: for the first, some of the dialog was too murky for even me to discern, no matter how much we cranked up the volume -- it had to do with impenetrable accents more than anything, and for the second: I don't want see William H. Macy having sex with anyone, I don't care how beautiful Maria Bello is, I just don't want to see it. They were very different movies but I did enjoy them both very much.

In a fit of insanity, I have scheduled a Southern Living at Home party for June 5, the day after DS1 gets out of school. Again, I am going to try not to stress about it... I just want it to be fun. I really like the stuff they sell although it is a little on the expensive side, I don't care if anyone buys anything, it will just be nice to have friends over. This gives me incentive (and time) to get this place in order. I did buy some beautiful new frames for the kids' pictures, to put up on the new picture wall in the living room. I'm looking forward to getting that done, too!