Ken becomes a convert

Ken has been supportive through my quitting my job and all the hare-brained ideas I have to make money, but today Ken may have caught the reselling bug.

We were killing some time at Goodwill, where I have been pretty lucky finding things to sell, when out of the corner of my eye I see Ken with a big grin on his face walking up to me.

In his hand he held an Oberon leather day timer.

Ken is knew it was worth something because this is the same brand as my Kindle cover he bought for me last Christmas.

I practically ripped it out of his hand to look at the price, turning it over I saw the yellow sticker that said .99 cents. I about fainted. Yeah Ken! This baby new is $80!! We are sure to make some money :)

I told him that he was my new Goodwill shopping partner, so he may live to regret his find, but for now anyway we both felt lucky.

Baking = chemistry

I spent the day with Tami and Rachel on Friday trying to find ultimate cupcake recipes.
Good news, we found a yummy vanilla one.
Bad news, we failed chemistry when making chocolate ones.
Imagine; 3 friends merrily baking away..
all the ingredients bought, organized, measured, mixed



Cocoa powder added (we are not doing boxed cakes here people)
The delicious chocolate scent filling the house.
We are bakers!
We are making cupcakes!
We rock!

Then, proudly opening the oven door to encounter this.

oh man

not good

What happened???

Well, near as I can figure we have the baking soda/baking powder/cocoa mixture wrong for the cups we were using. Nestle cocoa powder is natural, not dutch-processed. And those are two very different things. Natural powder is an acid and that reacts with baking soda to create LEAVENING (refer to above picture).

So today, I am going to go into the kitchen again and try these 1 more time, paying close and strict attention to exact measurements.

Who knew that chemistry class I got a C in would come back and bite me like this?

Podcast I love

I spend a lot of time in the car. The car and I have a very long and lasting relationship. Just the other day I made 4 trips to town and back. #1 drop the kids off, #2 Ken and I went out and ate, #3 pick the kids up, #4 go to work. It would have been 5 trips but I chose to sit in the school parking lot and wait instead of drive home and drop off one child and then go back and get the other since they got done at different times. Total time in the car that day including the sitting and waiting part?--about 4 1/2 hours. I am not kidding.
The best part about being in the car so much? PODCASTS!!
I love them; I listen to a Disney World one, a travel one, a history one, a NPR one, and a couple book ones. I only listen to them when I am alone in the car otherwise I find myself telling everyone to be quiet so I can hear the podcast. Children do not take kindly over me essentially telling them I want to hear a stranger talk about Disney World over their minute by minute stories of band camp. But I digress.

My Favorite book podcast is Books on the Nightstand.

The format consists of 2 reps from Random House talking about books they love, books they can't wait for the listeners to read, and other bookie type news.

I am not sure if they only talk about Random House books but regardless I love the format and get many ideas for books to read.

Their reviews of books I sometimes disagree with and I get the feeling they do not love the whole ebook topic but overall I really enjoy the discussion.

The podcasts are released weekly and are usually around thirty minutes long.

If you don't have a mp3 player you can also listen to the podcast from your computer. Do yourself a favor and check it out, it makes those long drives and wait times fly by.

ETA

omgomgomg!! check out the comments people...One of the podcasters, Michael Kindness, left a comment! (((fanning myself)) now that does it, you have REALLY got to check out the podcast, get to clicking!

Epic fail of volume and scale

Don't you love how life always teaches you lessons?
Here are some lessons I learned just in the last hour!! I know you are impressed but read on dear reader and I will impress you even more. no really
When reading a recipe, the recipe may not indicate exactly how much of something you might end up with.
In this case, I am working with a established cake recipe. I wanted to make a test batch to see if this is a good recipe and passes my taste test for possible commercial cupcake sales.
While measuring, mixing and stirring I missed several clues about how many cupcakes I would end up with.
Here are a few that seem important now:
1) how many cups of batter will the recipe make? This will mean nothing to you when you don't know how may cups it takes to make a dozen cupcakes.
1) Be suspicious about recipes that say 'grease and flour the PANS'.
2) 6 cups of flour should be a clue as to how much a recipe will make.
3) another clue is 12 egg whites.
4) 2 cups of milk? In retrospect that seems like a lot!
5) when beating the eggs white to a 'stiff but not dry state', ahem, be aware that this will cause 12 egg whites to grow to approximately 1000 times their previous volume. Then during the next step of 'gently fold the eggs whites into the batter' a note would have been nice indicating that I would need a bathtub to hold everything. (clean up would be way easier)

Here is a lovely pic (be kind enough to dismiss the messy bowl and handle of the scraper..they went through a lot). This is after 1 batch was put in the oven. Hard to tell the scale of the bowl, but trust me when I say there are at least 4 dozen more in there.

I just pulled the first batch out and put in the next. There is for sure at least 3 more batches to go. This may be a long process since I only have 1 cupcake pan. So far they look nice but I haven't tasted them yet.

Live and learn people, live and learn.

favorite friday--garage sales

Well, I missed a couple of my favorite Fridays.

But I did go to some garage sales today and found a few goodies.

I bought about 3 dozen assorted canning jars for .10 a jar. I felt bad though. It was at a estate sale and the poor little lady who the items belonged to was so old and cute. I felt like I was stealing from her. I did buy a couple of other things from her but cannot post them here because they are destined for Christmas gifts

One of the cool things about garage sales is finding things you never knew about before. I bought this 8" tall Anne Boleyn by Peggy Nesbit doll for cheap. I Googled it real quick on the old iPhone while I was at the sale, and while it's not worth a lot of money, I think it was a pretty good purchase. Turns out that Peggy Nesbit is a doll making company in England and makes historical dolls. If you were a huge Tudor fan, you could get a set of Henry XIII and all of his wives. Who knew? I believe this one is from the 1960's. She still has her tag and orginal box.

I decided I need a estate sale mentor. We went to one where you had to get a piece of paper that gave you a time to return and all the people waiting there looked like they would rip you limb from limb to take something out of your hands. We skipped that one but it would be interesting to check one of those out someday.