Amish Friendship Bread

The baking equivalent of a chain letter.

I received a bag of starter mix from a friend 11 days ago. He also gave me a Friendship muffin - they didn't have a loaf pan.

The muffin was delicious, so I decided to make the friendship bread. I've been given starter mix before and I usually "kill it." I typically forget about it and lose interest. But here is where all previous Friendship-Bread-Starter-Mix-Givers have gone wrong. They never gave me a taste of the bread. That's key. It's pretty delicious. So I had a reason to stick with it.

If you've never gotten this before, you basically have to massage the ziplock for 10 days and feed it some flour, sugar and milk half way through.

After 10 days you can start baking.

Well....I kinda freaked out because it says you're suppose to make it 10 days after you receive it. But I didn't have time and was missing 1 ingredient.....so I had to make it on day 11. Uh oh. No worries, I checked the internet (where there is a surprisingly high amount of Amish Friendship Bread literature) and I was A.O.K.

Ironically, the bread mix requires a package of instant vanilla pudding.....that doesn't sound like something the Amish would just have laying around. But oh well.

I also decided that I wanted more bread...so I'm not giving very much away.

I made mini muffin....

I also made a loaf. Here it is, baking in the oven. Trust me, it's there.

Finished product. I just finished a slice and it's delicious....but anything with almost 2 cups of sugar is usually pretty tasty.

So, the next time you get some Amish Friendship Bread starter, give it a try. It's delicious!

Websites

Here are some cool websites that I frequent and what they are good for:

Woot - 1 daily deal! Recently taken over by Amazon, you can often find awesome deals! The day after Amazon took over, they had kindles for $100 (I think)

Groupon - each day Groupon has a "coupon" or 2 for a particular metropolitan area (Seattle, San Francisco etc.). Last Wednesday, the deal in Seattle was "$15 for $30 worth of grilled cuisine at Flat Iron Steak in Issaquah." Sometimes it's laser hair treatment for 85% off. Sign up for emails and you'll get a "Daily Groupon" in your inbox.

Restaurant.com - pay $2 for $25 worth of food. Always search for a coupon code before purchasing. For more on this, visit Nick's site.

Hautelook: Everyday there are deals on designer clothes, furniture, baby clothes, makeup, jewelry etc. You have to be diligent, but you can often find 7 jeans for <$100 or a L.A.M.B. bag for 65% off.

Ruelala: Similar to Hautelook. I recently got a $108 hobo wallet for more than 50% off!

Gilt: Also similar to Haute and Rue, but Gilt includes Jetsetter - hotels at a big discount! I haven't purchased any yet, but I've got my eye out.

All I have for now. Happy Friday!

iTunes

You can sort your iTunes songs by most played. Nick did this the other day on my iTunes list, and we got some entertaining results.

First, we learned that I like to play songs to death. If I find a song I like, I play it over and over until I'm sick of it. Weird? Maybe.

What's on my top 10 you ask?

10. History in the Making (Darius Rucker)

9. Down (Jay Sean)

8. Somebody to Love (Glee version)

7. Chicken Fried (Zach Brown Band)

6. I'm Yours (Jason Mraz)

5. Love Song (Sara Bareilles)

4. Whatever it is (Zach Brown Band)

3. Everything (Michael Buble)

2. I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing (Aerosmith) (I went through a Ben Affleck stage...what can I say?)

1. Leaving on a Jet Plan (Aerosmith?) (Ben Affleck stage coupled with a long distance relationship)

To be fair, I think some of the iTunes data has been lost as I've switched, iPods, computers etc.

I guess I should be happy that none of my NSYNC popped up in the top 10. Might have been a little more embarrassing.

Registering

Ok, so Nick and I are getting married in a few months and we weren't planning on registering. Why? Because we don't really need anything and we didn't want to make our family and friends feel like they needed to get us anything. We really just wanted them to come.

Well, we finally became convinced when one friend told us, that if we didn't register, they'd get us something hideous that we couldn't return. Point taken.

So we registered. It's painful. Horribly painful.

We went to Macy's last Friday because they were having a registering event. What's cool is that there were delicious appetizers. What's not cool is that there are a million sales people (not just Macy's, but actual reps from kitchenaid and cuisinart and calphalon) that are all trying to get you to register for their stuff. You have a scanning gun that is just aching for you to scan every cool thing in sight, but you feel bad asking for stuff you don't really even need - the lady tried to get Nick on board with a cuisinart panini press/griddle and Nick goes, "I have a George Forman that works great."

We left with a whopping 11 items on our list.

We did it again on Saturday at Crate and Barrel. We heard Amazon let's you register. That might be more up our alley.

The good news, we're finally getting rid of the teal/pink dishes.

Lettuce vs. Cabbage

The other day I asked Nick to pick up some cabbage at the grocery store. Before getting home from work, I learned that he, instead, picked up a head of lettuce because they "looked the same." Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the grocery shopping and thought that this was a pretty funny response - so I just stopped at the store on my way home from work and picked up cabbage.

Sunday morning, Nick's mom made the following facebook post (Steve is Nick's dad):

Jody Loper I couldn't figure out what was so different about the Black Russian Bundt Cake that Steve made yesterday. Turns out he thinks yellow cake mix=lemon cake mix. Well it is yellow!

I guess it runs in the family.

Draw your own conclusion...

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Disney. I love it so much I'm running the half marathon in September. BUT, I couldn't help but notice an interesting similarity between this 2006 Josh Turner video and the 2009 Disney/Pixar movie, Up.

I love the song and the movie. I'm just saying...

If you haven't seen the movie, Carl and Ellie meet in an old abandoned house when they are kids. They get married....and the clip begins...

SF Half Marathon

We just got back from SF for the (half) marathon.

Yesterday we dropped Mochi off and then drove into the city to get Nick's bib and check into the hotel.

The race has been dubbed "The race even marathoners fear!" because of the crazy hills. The Wall Street article talked about a pro marathoner who was 20 min. slower during the SF half than any of her others.

We had some carbo-loading the night before....sympathy carbo load from me :-) And you should really end the night with dessert...

Then it was a 5:42AM start for Nick. Ick!

I drove to the Presidio and caught him running - he's so fast that he's blurry!

Then I drove to the finish and snapped this. Again, too fast - so he's blurry.

His goal was under 2 hrs and he finished at 1:59:15. Nicely done! You can see him 10 ft out. I couldn't get him right under the sign. Oh well.

He said "screw you" to the bananas and gatorade - instead he went straight for the Irish coffee. (Don't worry, he had plenty of water, cytomax, bananas and bagels). He says he's done now that he broke 2 hrs. But we'll see how he feels next year. Nicely done, kid.

Tetons

So the Tetons are grand. But they are really just mountains. Special mountains, literally named after Boobs.

There you have it.

Sniper

Stace and I take pictures of random people. It's kinda fun.

So these people were standing around and looking very tourist, so I took a picture through the car window.

This little guy was LOVING LIFE! Decked out in a cowboy hat, gun holster and pistols, he's climbing a stuffed bear. Where are his parents? No idea....but had they been there, I probably wouldn't have gotten the shot.

Ol' Faithful

Old Faithful is a geyser, a famous geyser. See all the people waiting.

We were told he/she would go off at 10:38AM. He puffed a few times and then a few more, and then finally went off around 10:55AM. Do we need to give the name to another geyser? I'm just saying.

Then we had lunch and on our way out, we caught him/her erupting again. That's fun.

Egg Farts

So there are a lot of bubbling pools of "stuff" in Yellowstone. And it's very sulfur-y. So it totally smells like a really bad fart.

When we drove up to the Sulfur Pits, the little boy that was there was plugging his nose. I laughed, but then I did the same thing. Mmmm nature.

Eat that, Niagra

The Lower Falls of Yellowstone is waterfall almost twice as high as Niagra.

You can hike down to the top of the falls (sounds like an oxymoron, but it's true).

It's a little scary to look over the edge, but also kinda cool.

The next morning, we drove to a scenic vista and took a picture of the falls from another angle.

Boiling River...no really

So Nick's brother went to school in Montana and gave us the low down on the best places to go. Have you heard of the Boiling River? It's an incredibly hot, river that flows from a hot spring. It meets up with the Gardiner River (which is normal temperature). If you stand near where the 2 rivers meet, it's like being in a hot tub.

Actually, it would be awesome to be in the river if you were trying to recover from an injury. Ice/Heat/Ice/Heat.....

Anyways, we went and it was really cool (and hot). I recommend it.

Animals

We left Red Lodge and drove the Bear Tooth Highway en route to Yellowstone.

When we got to Yellowstone, the first thing we saw was a bear. Ironic. Do you know how to see animals in Yellowstone? Look for the big group of people pointing and taking pictures.

And then we saw Bison.

And then we saw deer - Mochi does this stretch all the time.

And then we realized that Bison are a dime a dozen. One even got within 4 feet of the car.

Fabulous

So this might be my favorite picture from the whole weekend. This is Matthias. He flew all the way from Germany to be in the wedding.

At the rehearsal, he wore this outfit. 6'5"? German with skinny pink "trousers" - he's the only person that could pull this off and I was mighty impressed.

Novak/Klein Nuptials

Charlie and Nick have been friends since grade school and I've known Charlie since middle school. He got married to Andrea this past weekend in Red Lodge, Montana. We had a great time, despite my apprehension - the closest Trader Joe's is in Issaquah, WA. Middle of nowhere.

But there's obviously something to be said about being in the middle of nowhere. It's not my cup of tea, but I can see the draw. Here's the cold hard truth - the groom's father needed a pair of black pants. He had to drive 45 minutes to get them.

Back to the wedding. Nick was one of the groomsman, and did a great job walking his lovely bridesmaid down the aisle. He was also super pumped about his outfit - no rental tux here! He gets to keep all the pieces. Score!

Charlie and Andrea getting married during a brief rain hiatus.

Nick received this awesome Ray Bans as his groomsman gift. Bad ass.

The rif-raff table with the bride, groom, Nick and Lizzie (Charlie's "little" sister all grown up!).

Not looking at the camera....well, I was.

This is Max. He's from NY and we became friends because we both needed people to hang with during wedding party stuff.

He sweats when he dances, so he wears a bandana. And he looks like a shorter version of Nick.

Red Lodge, MT

According to Wikipedia, 0.46% Asian. Population 2,177. To be fair, that was in 2000.

There's a lot of charm in a (very) small town. Like this cute wall.

And this little place. It's called the candy emporium and it carries all sorts of delicious treats! I bought taffy and gummy bears and jelly beans and sour apple heads. I went there twice.

And in the evenings, you can head 15 minutes to an even smaller town, and watch (and bet on) the pig races.

Naked piggies.

We also took the opportunity to do a little rafting. So naturally, we headed to Absarokee, Pop: 1,234. Rafting was great - but no pictures because I didn't want to ruin the camera.

After rafting we headed to the Dew Drop Inn - don't be confused, it's not an Inn at all, it's a drive up restaurant. And we had a delicious lunch of fried food and a huckleberry shake made with REAL huckleberries. SOOOOO good.

Spelling mistakes will cost you

We started off the weekend by flying into Billings. We had to kill time in the Billings airport so we collected to reading material on the place we would be visiting, Red Lodge.

Montana is funny. "Close" by Montana standards is nowhere near close by ours. There was a guy on the plane that had to drive home - 5 hrs away. No biggy.

Now back to the reading material. We grabbed this lovely pamphlet only to notice something a little funny.

Doesn't "LODGE" typically have an "E" at the end? Well, perhaps that's the actual website. And since we had time to kill, I checked. Nope. Nothing at myredlodgstyle.com. But interestingly enough, there WAS something at myredlodgEstyle.com. It's so unfortunate. I can forgive spelling errors in almost everything. I misspell stuff a lot. BUT, when it's something like this....it's inexcusable.

#6 Getting on the plane

We literally just walked in the door.

Nick and I spent the weekend in Montana/Wyoming for a friend's wedding and some good ol' American tourist-ing.

Then it was time to come home. We arrived at the Jackson Hole Airport only to learn that our flight was delayed, thus causing us to miss our connection in Salt Lake City. All other flights to OAK/San Jose/SFO out of Salt Lake were already full. So they put us on standby.

We were convinced we'd be spending the night in Salt Lake.

But then, when we arrived at the gate in Salt Lake, we were miraculously granted seats. Incredible. And after more delays, we're finally home.

More to come in the next few days, but for now, it's time to sleep.

Sparklers

We bought sparklers this year and had fun lighting them. But here's the deal, I think they've changed. When I was little, they looked like a REALLY skinny corn dog. Now, they have all sorts of paper wrapped around it. They also shoot away from you. When I was little, they sparked in all directions and I had to use pliers to hold the end. True story.

So yeah

I'm in Montana right now. Not a place I ever planned on checking off my list of places to visit, but I'm here. I'm trying not to get my hopes up for Yellowstone. I've only recently gotten into "nature."

When I tell people I'm going to Yellowstone, the next thing out of their mouths is, "Are you going to the grand Tetons." To which I reply, "I think." I have no idea what a Teton is. I'm assuming it's the biggest and best Teton - since it's "grand." I've purposely stayed away from any pictures or websites about the Grand Tetons - I want to form a picture in my head and then see how accurately my imagination has captured the true essence of the Teton. Teton sounds like teeter (As in teeter-totter) so I'm hoping it's a really big rock that looks like a teeter-totter. But I imagine that's not what it will be. I'll report back.

Mochi's 4th of July

Mochi got to go "swimming" in Auntie Lisa's pool. He wasn't thrilled about it and tried to get out as soon as he was near the edge. BTW - these are our new favorite floaty. They are AWESOME!

Later that night, Mochi was a little tired. He was pretty un-fazed by the fireworks. Or he's deaf. One of the 2.

His excitement level grew to an all time high when he got his glow necklace. His excitement was palpable.

My gmail is broken

And I can't complain to anyone. Why? Because it's a free service. You get what you pay for. Nothing. It's been broken since Saturday. The page loads just fine, but as soon as I click a message, it's an infinite loop of loading. If you know how to fix it, please let me know. Thankfully, I synched the gmail with my apple client, so at least I can read and respond. But it's driving me nuts.

Update: Works now.

Reunion!

I went to grad school at UW and made lots of friends! One of my friends, Blake, has family nearby and is often in town. He was in town this past weekend and we met up for some World Cup action and a little bit of Fro Yo.

Our other friend, Big John, has been in the area for a year or 2 and was able to meet up with us as well. It was one big engineering reunion!

Here we are at fro yo, posing with our biodegradable cups (sugar cane) and spoons (potato).

The Yogurt store has a white baby grand and we heard rumors that playing said piano can get you 10% off. Pretty sure my rendition of heart and soul and or the first 8 seconds of Titanic would not warrant me the discount.

I asked the guy behind the counter if he could play. His response, "not well." So I asked him to play. He busts out this awesome little diddy. So I asked what it was. His response, "Well, I wrote it." Seriously?! If that's playing "not well," he would have been horrified to watch Blake and I bust out a song that may or may not have involved using our knuckles.

All in all a very successful reunion. Let's go DAWGS!

Mammoth Calves

So I have really big calves. Not small cows, but the muscle in the lower part of your leg.

When I was little, I started out in gymnastics and then progressed to ballet. They say the muscles grow long and lean in ballet....but somehow mine managed to grow short and wide. Nuts!

I've started taking ballet again and the calves have returned! They are currently 14.5" in circumference. Remember I'm all of 5' nothin'. Nick's are 15.5" but he's 6'2".

Don't get me wrong, I've learned to embrace the muscle. But there are times when it's rough. Like this weekend, when I was trying on boots. The calf volume is proportional to the foot size. The larger the foot, the larger the calf volume. My calves are not proportionate to my size 7 feet. I can't wear most boots. I tried to force them on and ended up needing help to get them removes. Blast!

But hey, they helped propel me up hills during the Nike Women's half....so they're good for something!

How to make the flag cake

The Flag Cake

I'll probably not make this cake again because it was such a pain. But here's how to make it if someone out there wants to be patriotic.

1. Pick your favorite red velvet cake recipe. I used 2, 8" pans. The cake was a little on the tall side, so perhaps 9" pans would work better.

2. Find a white cake recipe that you like. I found an awesome one by Rose Levy Beranbaum. Search her website for "White Velvet Cake" and you'll find the recipe. You'll need to bake this cake 2 different way - one with no food coloring and the other with a small bottle of blue.

3. Make some delicious frosting. I like cream cheese/whipped cream frosting AKA best frosting ever.

Here you can see the evidence, 6 - 8" cakes. Technically, I have 2 red/white/blue cakes and could probably have just frosted them and been done. But I like a challenge. Nick actually thought that all I was going for was a stacked red, white and blue. Little did he know.

4. First things first. Get a cake leveler - this is a fancy wilton leveler, but I used one from ikea and it worked like a charm!

Level all the cakes (cut off the tops). Then cut the reds and whites in half.

5. Now we need to make the bottom half of the cake (the easier half). Alternate between the red and white layers, putting frosting between each layer. Piece of cake! Badum ching! Set this to the side and do it again. That's right, now you have TWO red/white layer cakes.

6. Now you need to cut a hole in one of your red/white layer cakes. I used a large circular cookie cutter as my template. You are trying to get a red and white core. The hardest part about all this was removing the core. I was trying to keep the toroid (doughnut in laymans terms) intact. In the end, I broke the toroid into 2 halves and removed the core.

The red and white core!!!

7. Now you need to do the same thing with the 2 blue layers. This should be easier since they aren't all frosted together. I found it to be quite simple.

8. Now it's the easy part! Assembly! Put your fully intact red and white layer cake on the bottom. Frost. Then put 1 toroidal blue layer on, slip in the red and white core and add the 2nd blue layer.

Ta da!

Then continue to frost. I needed 1.5 batches of frosting to cover this beasty.

Things I'd do differently:

1. 9" instead of 8" - don't get me wrong, 8" looked great, but 9" might be more manageable.

2. You need frosting between the 2 blue layers AND between the blue and the red/white core. When it came time to slice, we had to put some of the slices back together.

And the real question you're all wondering? What did you do with the red and white toroid and blue core? I made another cake with it! It's technically a flag cake as well. So this recipe actually makes 1, 7" cake and 1, 3.5" cake.

We don't waste anything in this house and are still eating the tops of the cakes that were cut off to make them nice and level.

Again, I'm not the creative genius behind the cake. Check out 17 and Baking.

And if anyone has any ideas for a cake like this - i.e. put a random design inside a cake - let me know. It's kinda fun.