Be Still and Know...Then and Now

I have made lots of German Chocolate cakes in my time…from a BOX that is. German Chocolate is my husbands favorite cake so birthdays, holidays this is usually on the menu. What I had never done was made one from scratch. Again I ask the age old question: How Hard Could It Be? Well not really hard, time consuming, utensil heavy and lots and lots of ingredients. Cake Flour came to the party as well as… Salt Baking Soda Crisco to grease the pans Parchment paper to line the pans Sweet Baking Chocolate (4 ounces melted) 2 secret Be Still and Know ingredients Condensed Milk Egg Yolks Beaten Egg Whites (stiff peaks if you please) Butter Sugar Vanilla Flaked Coconut Chopped Pecans Lots of these came to the party. Lots of Butter was invited as well as a generous helping of Buttermilk! It felt like I used every baking and cooking utensil in my entire kitchen as whisks, measuring spoon, pans, mixing bowl, knives and my kitchenade got a goo

The day started with Stuffed French Toast served with warm Syrup, Bacon, Grapefruit and Orange Juice. A Holiday traditional at our house. While I am slaving away in the kitchen (NOT…as most of it was done ahead, I am all about pre planning) the dog was taking it easy and lounging around. Every once and a while he would muster up the energy to wander through the kitchen to make sure nothing had landed on the floor during the meal preparations. It holds us over till our meal. At about 2:00 PM I set out a plate of crackers and my Pepper Jelly over cream cheese for an afternoon tide me over snack. Super Yummy if I do say so myself. The Hubs did not like the jelly but that just means more for me! Y’all it happens every year. I should have used this one for my last Random Dozen. Without fail we manage to fix enough food for twice as many people (3 times probably). But isn’t that what Thanksgiving is all about. A celebration of a bountiful harvest and being thankful for God’

  PS 100:4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.   Blessings Robin

Joining Lid over at 2nd Cup of Coffee for this weeks Random Dozen 1. Are you sticking to traditional Thanksgiving foods this year, or are you being culinarily adventurous? Traditional! 2. Tell me something concrete that you're thankful for. (Something you can literally touch, see, etc., not a concept like "hope.") My House. I now have a home that can accommodate a large family gathering. We can host thanksgiving now without having people eating in the living room balancing a plate on there knee! Everyone will have a chair and can sit at the table and eat dinner together. We will have a grown up table and then a Tween table in the dinning room. Yea!!!!!!!!! 3. You knew the flip side was coming: Share about something intangible that you're thankful for. Maturity. The knowledge that thankfulness does not depend on tangible things. Thankfulness starts with recognition of something greater. Something beyond what you have or what you can buy. PHP 4:11 I

How do you guarantee you will find something you lost?   Order the replacement part online. Receive the placement part in the mail. Attach new stylus to cell phone. Go to meeting at church and use new stylus multiple times. Return home from meeting and sit on sofa enjoy a handful of Licorice Jelly Beans. Spill a handful of Licorice Jelly Beans in-between the sofa cushions. Retrieve Jelly Beans as well as the lost stylus for my cell phone which had fallen down into the deep recess of my sofa. I even commented to my husband after I ordered my replacement stylus “You just watch! As soon as it gets here I will find my old one!” Blessings Robin

Y’all it felt like we were on an episode of HGTV’s Ground Breakers. In a nutshell, my weekend started on Thursday with a trip to a local grower. I returned home with three Leland Cypress, three Autumn Twist Encore Azaleas and two flats of Liriope New Blue, that’s Monkey Grass in normal people language! Not all of this lovely green-ness belongs to me. Some of it is now in Skoots1mom ’s yard, plus one of my other dear friends as well. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were a whirl of backyard activity!   I got almost a third Liriope planted on Thursday! and two thirds left to go…it seemed like I had about a million of these little suckers to plant but in reality it was only 36 small plants. I finished up part of my planting on Friday and then the really hard work started. Ever moved a fence line? ON A HILL!!!!! Let’s just say that there was much digging, sledge hammer wielding (by the hubs, not me) hauling bags of concrete, and yes I managed a few bags

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 it rained and it rained, it rained all day! My trees got a nice long drink! Look how much rain we got! The next day the sun came out and a sweet feathered friend came for a visit in my new tree! Blessings Robin

Joining in on Fall Into Flavor hosted by 2nd Cup of Coffee today. For more recipes go over and check out the other participants! It has been great fun over these last five weeks! This has been a holiday breakfast tradition at our house for a very long time. The variation on this on are only limited to your imagination. 10 to 12 slices of the bread of your choice. I usually use white bread but it works well with whole wheat. It would be very good made with raisin bread also! 8 oz cream cheese (you can use fat free or 1/3 less fat) depending on how much cream cheese you like you may need two blocks of cheese??) 12 eggs ( you can cut back on the egg yolks too) 1/3 cup maple syrup (if you cutting calories you an use reduced calorie syrup also) 2 cups milk (depending on how much fat you want you can use skim, it will not be as creamy but it will still be very good, or you can go for it and use whole milk or half and half) Spread the cream cheese on the bread and make sandwi

Y’all this is just to exciting. If you tossed you name in the wooden shoe over at 2nd Cup of Coffee and did not win well never fear the “I Won…You Win” continues! Now is your BIG chance. Head over to Bug’s Eye View for your chance to join in on the fun! Blessings Robin

Just sharing the bloggy love for all interested parties. Y’all check out Marsha’s Kitchen for this dipped in chocolate piece of blog heaven! Sound like to much sweet dipped in chocolate fun! Dipped in Chocolate Blessings Robin Let’s just use the phrase dipped in chocolate one more time shall we!

Joining Linda over at 2nd Cup of Coffee for this weeks Random Dozen . 1. What was the last song you listened to? I wish I “loved” music more, however I much prefer the peace and quiet of quiet! Silence is golden in my book. If I am in the car I either don’t have the radio on or I am listening to talk radio. 2. Have you ever had “buyer’s remorse” over anything? I lack the shopping gene. I shop out of necessity rather than for enjoyment. I will say that if I buy something and I get it home and I don't like it it goes back to the store. But now that you mention it, the brown shoes I bought at the Wal-Mart that I wore all over San Francisco that don’t fit and can’t take back. I am remorseful over that one! 3. What is something in your life that you are thankful for now that you didn’t think you would be at the time of the event? (Something that seemed ill-timed, inconvenient or hurtful which turned out to be a good thing) My answer is a spring board from a previous

When it comes to certain things I am a bit obsessive. I once spent an entire winter trying to make homemade marshmallows. I saw Ina do it one afternoon and it looked really simple and really cool. So again I asked the age old question “How hard could it be?” Well by now I am sure you know the answer to that one. It was a bit more difficult than it looked but after multiple failures I succeeded. But then it was winter time and I didn’t have anything better to do. You all have not lived until you have had a cup of hot chocolate with a homemade peppermint flavored marshmallow floating on top. It was totally worth the effort and I probably will never do it again either. I will live with the fond memories of how fabulous it was! But I digress… After the shame of the Great Sourdough Disaster of 09 I was determined to prevail and emerge from my kitchen the victor. Emeril , Better Homes & Gardens , Martha , Betty Crocker , Alton what do these people have in common? All their sourdoug