Amongst Giants

Last night was the TnT Management/Office Holiday Party and it's a potluck.... Bryan's been so busy with work that I offered to make something. After offering, I realized that bringing food to a catering company holiday party is no small deal. It must taste great! It must be presented well! It must hold well! You must make enough for everyone and not run out! Or... just make a dessert and hopefully after a few celebratory glasses of champagne, no one will judge the dessert. Luckily, with this crew, they're not too judgmental. It still feels like a big deal to me, though!

Last year, I made the Hamilton Family Cream Cheese Pound Cake. It was a hit. So, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I went with that again this year. I have to admit that it felt pretty good to walk in with the pound cake and hear "Oh yeah! You brought that again!" It's a winner.

This pound cake is awesome and easy. Typically, we serve it with apricot preserves mixed with amaretto (~1/4 c + 1T) on top of a small dob of mascarpone cheese and sprinkled with sliced almonds. Mmmmm. That's what I decided to do again this year. However, this pound cake is awesome by itself, with powdered sugar, or whatever topping you fancy. Enjoy!

Hamilton Cream Cheese Pound Cake

3 sticks unsalted butter

1 8oz cream cheese

3 cups sugar

6 eggs

3 cups self-rising flour or cake flour

1 T vanilla

- Preheat oven to 325. Grease bundt cake pan (or tube pan or whatever dish you want)

- Cream butter and cream cheese until fluffy

- Mix in sugar until well mixed

- Add flour and eggs, alternately, beginning and ending with flour (this may or may not be an important rule to follow, but it's easy enough: 1 c flour/3 eggs/1c flour/3 eggs/1c flour)

- Stir in vanilla

- Bake ~1 hour and 15 minutes or until top is crusty and toothpick comes out pretty clean... However, if you undercook it, your mother-in-law will like it better :-)

The Holiday Mix

Well, yes, we have been fairly horrible about posting here lately. It gets so much harder the longer you wait... just like anything else (laundry, dusting, etc.). The amount to catch up on is difficult, so here's the short of it.

I'm on Winter Break right now from school and it is my first true break without anything hanging over my head for the past year and a half. Ahhh. I'm still working on fully decompressing. School's been going well- ups and downs, of course, but well.

Bryan just finished doing 7 weeks worth of catering jobs in 3 weeks. He's still working on that decompressing part, too, but we had a great past two days off together and have done some great relaxing.

Erin and Matt got married just over a month ago and it was SUCH a blast! We had so much fun celebrating their awesome relationship. Congrats guys! (As you can see from the picture below they had a photo booth... FUN!) That weekend we also got to celebrate the future addition to the Hamilton clan- Garrett and Kenzie are expecting! YAY!

For Thanksgiving, Kristen came up and we had a huge gathering at Grandpa & Georgette's. The cousins went around the "kids" table saying what we were thankful for, and it was quite the neat moment that I will remember for awhile. The days after Thanksgiving were amazing, too. One of my favorite moments of the Holiday season was coming up to Mom & Dads, sitting by the outside fireplace in the snow, drinking peppermint schnapps and hot chocolate made by Kristen, listening to Christmas music and just... being... with the family. It was amazing.

Oh, I'm missing so much more, I know.... (Christmas shopping, walks at Lincoln Park, etc.)

Lastly, in my classroom, I have tutors who help out anywhere from 1 to 4 days a week with my students and a paraeducator who is there everyday in 1st period. I wanted to do something nice for them for the holidays and ended up making this great mix and putting them in mason jars with ribbon and little notes written on top in Sharpie. It's an easy mix that is super addictive, makes a ton, and is ridiculously good! You can find the original recipe here.

Yummy Holiday Mix

2 cups Chex Cereal (I used rice chex)

2 cups Honey Nut Cheerios

1 cup cocktail peanuts

2 bags M&Ms (holiday colors, of course!)

1 bag mini pretzels

3 T vegetable oil

2 bags white chocolate chips

- In a large bowl, mix together cereals, peanuts, M&Ms, and pretzels. I actually mixed together half of the recipe in one bowl and the other half in another bowl because it makes a lot of mix!

- Heat oil and white chocolate chips in a small sauce pan until chips melt, stirring constantly to keep from burning the chocolate.

- Dump melted chocolate into bowls and mix really well until all pieces are covered

- Immediately after stirring, spread mix out on parchment or wax paper to cool

- Let sit about 10 minutes and then enjoy! :-)

Fun Blog I'm loving right now

habit

This blog posts nearly daily, and it's such a neat little glimpse and reflection on the beautiful moments (and perhaps not so beautiful moments) in everyday life. Each author posts a picture from her day and then writes a mini reflection on the day. The "about"section describes the idea a little better than I can....

Enjoy! :)

Loving Fall

Hi everyone! I know (yet again) it's been awhile. For me, school has started and is going well... Bryan had one of his busiest months in the past four weeks and we have seen very little of each other! Things appear to be calming down, though, and we have some fun stuff to look forward to in the coming months. I absolutely love fall and am excited to have the cool nights and mornings to greet me on my way to and from work.

In some exciting news, we have two new cousins to welcome into the world! Brett (my cousin) and his wife Georgette welcomed their second child, Ryan William Venn on October 5th at 7:10 pm (central time, 5:10 pacific time). Chris (Bryan's cousin) and his wife Sue welcomed their second child, Benjamin Michael Coccaro on October 5th at 9:45 pm (eastern time, 6:45 pacific time). So, two new additions to our extended family in the course of an hour and a half! Welcome little ones and congrats!!!

As things ease up for me (well, ease is a relative term), I have found myself itching to bake again. I was inspired this weekend by a great blog I follow (3191 miles apart) to make some granola. I am a big granola lover I found the recipe to be a "pantry emptier" meaning you can mix and match whatever you have around... I had slivered almonds, pumpkin seeds, crushed hazelnuts, and honey. But, if you have other fun stuff in half-full bags, you could toss whatever you want in! That's the fun part about granola :-)

Pantry Emptying Granola

Inspired by this recipe from 3191 miles apart. I made this recipe in half-ish quantities and it made quite a bit (enough for cereal for a week for one?).

6 cups rolled oats

2 cups mixed nuts and seeds (this is where you get to have fun)

1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut (I forgot this in mine, but would add it next time)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3/4 cup honey/maple syrup/whatever (I used all honey, but had a ton laying around, so use whatever you have)

1/4 cup brown sugar

Dash kosher salt

- Preheat oven to 325F.

- Place a baking pan (I used a 9x13 cake pan, but the original recipe says a roasting pan works great, too) over medium heat on the stove top. Add oats and toast, stirring for a few minutes. Add coconut, nuts, seeds, and spices and continue to toast for a few more minutes until everything begins to brown and become fragrant.

- Warm brown sugar and syrup/honey in a small pot until sugar melts. Pour over toasted oats and mix well. Sprinkle with salt.

- Bake for 15-20 min, checking and stirring every 5 minutes.

- Cool in roasting pan and store in an airtight container

- ENJOY! Ymmm... It was great a little warm to pick at!

Vote for MayDay!

FWHS had their first home game last night and one of our awesome students (i.e. first in his family to go to college, wants to go to college to provide a great example for his younger brothers), DJ May, is up for "play of the week" on Komo 4 news. Check out the link and vote for him!

http://www.komonews.com/sports/hsfootball/129576693.html

Octopus Camouflage

I showed this video to my classes today.... It's part of an NPR series on "Science Fridays", which I thought might be perfect to reward my students in the last 5-10 minutes of class on Fridays. They were absolutely enthralled by this one :-) Enjoy!

Scifri Videos: Where's The Octopus?

Yay for FWHS!

An article from the Seattle Times yesterday...

High School Sports | Federal Way nose guard Uso Olive carries through on plans he made with his mother | Seattle Times Newspaper

Things are going great for me in my first few days of staff training. I am a little overwhelmed (to be expected!), but am feeling pretty good about being ready for kiddos tomorrow! WOW! Actually, tomorrow is a nice lead-in.... there will be freshmen and new students only and they go through workshops with the student mentors. I'll have to facilitate a few discussions, but will have the rest of the day to get ready for school actually starting. On Friday, there are canned lessons all day long (and new teacher "initiation" at the assembly!). So, luckily, my actual-factual teaching doesn't start until after Labor Day. However, I'm planning on preparing everything for that week today! Yay!