Chocolate: The Exhibit

There's a special exhibit right now at the Utah Museum of Natural History about chocolate.  That was all the information we needed to hear to make plans for a day trip to Salt Lake.  I actually saw this exhibit in 2005 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, but it's been a long time and I remembered liking it.

 Miles is grinding chocolate.  It smelled really good over there!  He was very excited about how he was making his own chocolate.

 Playing in the giant box of chocolates.  They were having chocolate tastings at the exhibit, but they were all sold out by the time we got there.  Unfortunately, I had told the kids we would eat chocolate at the museum.  Both of them spent a long time yelling "Chocolate!" or "When can I eat some chocolate, Mom?"  We went to Trader Joe's afterwards to get some apology truffles.


Since we were already there, we also decided to look at the rest of the exhibits.  They both had a lot more fun than the last time we went!  Granted, Molly was 2 months old the last time we were at the museum, but I was surprised to see how much more fun Miles had at almost-5 than he did at barely-3.

 The little bug catching river is wonderful.  Molly also enjoyed wearing this awesome dragonfly costume.

 Dinosaurs just might be big :)

 Gerrit thought this creepy beaver was awesome.  I was just glad that the kids were more interested with the DNA exhibit behind him so we didn't have to stay there for too long.

Russian Olympics Party

If it's time for an Olympics opening ceremony, it's also time for an Olympics party.  Russian food was a new experience for all of us!

 The whole spread.  I had plans to make cute centerpieces like these, but ran out of time.  Dollar store tablecloth it is!

 Brooke made borscht.  You can't have a Russian party without borscht!

 This is basically Russian potato salad.  You also can get a better look at the labels I made.

 Russian tea cakes (the white ones) and ezhiki.  The ezhiki were everyone's favorite!  They mean hedgehog in Russian.  They're a very soft cookie with chocolate chips in the center, dipped in chocolate glaze and rolled in cream wafer crumbs.  They are so good!

 Joel made vatrushka.  It's pretty similar to a cheese danish.

 This a drink made by boiling dried fruit.  I think it was authentic, but we would have probably liked it more with more sugar.

Mmm...piroshki.  These would usually be fried, but I baked mine instead.  Half of them have a beef filling and the other half are mushroom and cabbage.

The opening ceremonies were pretty fun.  The unit on Russian geography that I taught to my 9th graders many years ago came in handy :)  Gerrit is very upset that the giant mascots weren't televised.  I'll agree that they are pretty cute as stuffed animals, but I'm not sure why he was so intent on them.

The "giant animatronic bear" in the Opening Ceremonies.

And what they would look like normally.  Maybe not as cute as the Vancouver mascots, but still pretty good.

Please and Thank You

Teaching my children manners feels like an uphill battle.  It feels like there's a lot of kicking, pushing, toy-taking and tickle attacks around here.  There's also a lot of time-outs around here.  I feel like they go from playing together charmingly to nuclear meltdown in about three seconds flat.

Some more charming developments:

*If you ask them to do something like smile for the camera, they will both hide instead.

*Miles often refuses to say please when he wants something.  He will occasionally agree to spell please instead.

*Molly says "Share it!" often.  Sometimes she means that she wants to share.  Usually, she means that she wants Miles to share with her.  She also says "Sorry" all the time, whether or not it fits the situation or not.

*There's a very narrow window between when they are done with dinner and when they have decided to throw dinner all over the floor.  I look forward to the day when I don't sweep five times a day.

*Molly does love to say "Hi!" to everyone.  She is at least friendly if not particularly well-mannered.

Hazelnut Pear Cake

This is my latest published recipe!  It's fancier than I usually make, but it's a great special occasion cake.  Here was my process on this cake:

-I started out wanting to make a strawberry swirl pound cake, but I couldn't get it to work like I wanted it too.  The strawberry was just not quite flavorful or colorful enough.  Time for Plan B!

-Also, I actually put two recipes into this contest.  I put in a recipe for English toffee cupcakes too, but I agree that this is the better of the two recipes.

-I knew I wanted to do a pound cake.  It's one of my favorites because I love dense, rich cakes, and I like that they already look pretty without needing seriously decorating skills.

-Pears are one of my favorite fruits, so I knew I wanted to include them.  I thought it would pair well with nuts, and decided to go with hazelnuts.

-Full disclosure:  it is an obnoxious pain to get the skins off of hazelnuts.  If you boil them briefly with baking soda, it is a bit easier.  For this cake, some of the hazelnuts are ground and mixed with the flour, and some go in chopped.  You get more nut flavor that way.

-I used ricotta in the cake instead of milk.  

-There's a brown butter glaze on top.  Everything in the world tastes better with browned butter! 

I knew that this recipe was coming, but I didn't know I was going to be featured in the issue!  The publishers get your picture when they first publish you, so they've had it on file for a while.  It was a really fun surprise!

Gerrit's Fondest Wish

All Gerrit wants is for all of his children to become engineers.  He's always delighted when they show any sign of this.  So, when Molly loves building with blocks, or counts to three, you have a very proud dad.  When Miles starts learning to add or wants to learn more about science, Gerrit is thrilled.  I think they're all going to be poets, drama majors, and artists at this rate ;)

Home All Day

It's getting to the point of the winter where I am really missing playing outside.  We've been trying to come up with other things to do in the meantime to stave off cabin fever.

 We took a trip to Animal Ark.  Tragically, there weren't any puppies and kittens that day!  Molly loved the birds and Miles loved the fish.  We were all creeped out by a particularly terrifying snake.  Seriously, that thing was just sticking straight up and staring at people.

 Talking to Grandma!  Molly also accidentally dialed 911 one day.  That was embarrassing.

 Taking Waffle Love to Daddy and Uncle Joel at work.

 We go to story time twice a week (technically, once for Miles and once for Molly.)  I love story time!

 Visiting the fish at Cabela's.  Molly could have stayed here all day.  That fish on the top picture stayed and stared at her for a long time.

 When in doubt, nothing is quite as much fun as harassing Uncle Joel and Aunt Emily.  As far as the kids are concerned, their aunts and uncles are the most fun people in the entire world.

I brought a bunch of old boxes out of the garage.  So far, we've built towers, cities, boats, cars, and a chrysalis.

Ice Castles

A few weeks ago, we started hearing that there would be an ice castle up in Heber this year.  We'd seen the Lindsey Stirling video, and I'd seen several photos and it looked beautiful.  When a Groupon showed up, I bought it and we waited for a relatively warm day and headed up the canyon.

On the one hand, it was definitely beautiful!

Molly thought this was really cold.  She's probably right.

Miles and Molly were also thrilled about the presence of Olaf.

However, it may not have been the ideal family outing for the four of us.

*There was a lot of slush in the entryway, so Gerrit got a ton of slush in his shoes and was miserable the whole time.

*There's plenty to look at but not necessarily a lot to do (besides a slide with a really long line), so the kids got bored quickly.

*Miles accidentally got separated from us  It was terrifying!  It was so crowded that it was really hard to find him.

Gerrit ranked this as his second-least-favorite activity ever. He really hates having wet feet and missing kids 

:( In case you were curious, his least favorite was a Savion Glover concert we went to a few years ago.  He judges everything against that.