Saturday, August 17, 2013

Holy Fall-like Day, Y'all

Between the nearly every day rain, my surgery, and sundry other reasons, I haven't spent a whole lot of time outside of my climate controlled home this Summer. I see friends posting on Facebook how hot it is outside and I'm just like, Is it really?

Then day before yesterday I saw everyone was posting about how nice the cooler weather was, how close Autumn must be, etc. Since my a/c (central air) was still coming on, I figured this cool weather they were talking about must just not be here.
Until later that afternoon, I did some oil-based paint-primering and it stunk up the house so I opened some doors and - BRRRRR. It was cold. My house, with the a/c running, was warmer than it was outside.

Yesterday morning when I got up it was 64*. Everyone else was in alt about it, but that's nearly the same as freezing temps to me.

It's really the perfect temps for cooking/baking. I popped some bacon in the oven to fry and mixed up some homemade biscuits. I was feeling Chocolate Gravy and dug around in my kitchen drawer for the recipe, but the one I came out with wasn't the right one. I don't know where I got it, but it it more like the recipe for chocolate pudding or pie filling, not gravy.
I kept it for awhile, figuring chocolate is chocolate, somebody'd probably eat it. But then I decided it just wouldn't do, and poured it out.
I found up another recipe and was fixing to make another batch, but my biscuits came out hard and tough. Not enough shortening, I'm thinking. Anyway, they weren't biscuits that rated Chocolate Gravy, so I whipped up a batch of milk gravy. Which turned out too thick. So thick, all it needed was some chicken to be a batch of chicken & dumplins.

Somehow, the bacon came out fine without me burning or otherwise messing it up.

I had also had plans to try and make Ooey Gooey Butter Cake, a St. Louis classic, which we had never heard of or tried prior to our Road Trip last week.
The recipe I found actually had two versions, one using a yellow cake mix, and one using a from scratch cake mix. For some reason, I fixated on the from scratch version, and I didn't have any sour cream so ended up I couldn't make it until I went to the store.

I didn't make it to the store yesterday, nor was in the mood to go today, but my son had plans to go a friend's this evening for a cookout and some game play and he wanted to take some kind of dessert. I was looking around on my food shelves and saw the box of Yellow Cake mix and a lightbulb clicked on over my head.

Here's the recipe, if you want more/better details.


For the crust, you just mix a box of yellow cake mix, 1 stick of melted butter (it says Unsalted, but all I had was "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter". I don't know what difference Salt makes), and 1 egg.

I'm cracking my eggs separately into bowls these days because we've been getting eggs from a local man with free range chickens. Sometimes you get little or stinky surprises in real, farm fresh eggs, lol.

I used (2) 8x8 inch pans instead of (1) 9x13 so Ryan could take one to his thing, and we'd have one here at home for us, too.


The filling starts with 8oz of Cream Cheese, beaten until fluffy. Add 2 eggs, 1 melted stick of butter, and a teaspoon of Vaniller.

Mix in 3 and 3/4 cups of Confectioner's sugar one cup at a time until all mixed in.
Pour it on top of the crust and spread all out.


Bake at 350* for 40-45 minutes until browned but still jiggly in the center.


Let cool 30 minutes and sprinkle on Confectioner's sugar topping.


They turned out really good, and tasty but sweeeeet. Goodness gracious sweet. I didn't remember the one we had in Saint Louie being as sweet.

Then again, we had that one as dessert after dinner. I had this one for breakfast, so maybe it was a bit much for me first thing in the day.

BTW, in case you're wondering - which I'm sure you're not - but I waited all the way up until about lunch time for the Roofer the other day, then J called and said the guy had called him and said "Something had come up" and it'd be Saturday before they got out here.

So Friday morning I'm lounging in bed, reading my book, doze off, and...'Knock, knock, knock'.

And no, I never did make the phone call.
I commenced finding things to do to make myself too busy to do it, and then later I figured her kids were probably home and she would be too busy to talk. J was home yesterday and I surely didn't want to try to make that call with him here. And he's at work today, which means her husband probably is not, and I certainly don't want to call when/if he's there.
Tomorrow's Sunday. I'm already pretty sure I won't call her on Sunday.


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