Sayyay

Setting:  The bathroom

Mama:  Do you need to potty, honey?
Child:  Not now.  I want to sayyay.
Mama (puzzled):  Uh, OK.  I'll go first.

Cue sound effect.

Child:  Yay, Mama.  You did it.  Yay!

I read And Tango Makes Three to Froggy.  So far she's neither gay nor a penguin.

Songs of Germany #1: Sexy Back

Oh, Justin Timberlake.  Oh, how you mocked me.  The year was 2006 and you were hot, hot, hot you little twat, twat, twat.  Do you know what an increasingly pregnant woman doesn't want to hear?  "I'm bringing sexy back" repeated 9 million times over three minutes, break for commercial and play it again. 

As I was driving the A6 back and forth from Schwetzingen to Mannheim and puking into my grocery sack you were bringing sexy back.  Months later my daughter kicked the hell out of my belly dancing along to your club mix.  You know what's not hot in the club?  A hugely pregnant woman. 

You slacker you still didn't have sexy back by the time I quit work in late June 2007 but you were still talking about it.  I couldn't type because my hands were too swollen.  A lack of air conditioning, an office downwind from the dump and fifty pregnancy pounds combined to make me leave a job I loved sooner that I would have liked.  I thought I was leaving you behind too but no, it was not to be.  My daughter adored you from the day she was born and occasionally I'd have to whip out the Timberlake to quiet the Froggy.

Meatcakes

I am not a person who should ever allow herself to become bored.  I used to be a bit wild but these days I just don't want to call the babysitter's mom to explain that she's going to be late because I'm in jail. I have a nice homelife I don't want to disrupt so my appetite for destruction has to be well directed.  I'm more blowtorch than flamethrower these days.

But alas a bit of boredom did hit and I unleashed the meatcakes.  I blame Cake Wrecks.   She did a bit on April Fool's jokes.  She linked to an entire meatcake gallery.  A gallery of meatcakes!  And like any crazy person all I could think was, "I can do better than that."  And frankly I did.

The original recipe is basically three layers of meatloaf covered in mashed potatoes all in the shape of a cake.  Meatloaf is disgusting.  Flour based foods are fine in loaf form.  Meat is not.  It also requires a ton of meat and I only wanted one meal's worth of meatcake so I decided to wing it.

Meatcakes recipe
Mix 1/2 pound ground beef with 1/2 pound hot Italian sausage.  Press into a 12 slot cupcake tin.  Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes.  I don't remember which and it depends on how well done you want your meat anyway.  Dump them out on papertowels to drain and blot a bit if your meat was fatty.

Meanwhile, make some mashed potatoes.  I used instant.  Yeah, I'm a slacker but my two year old helper can't be trusted with a masher or beaters.  She can stir the heck out of some potato powder though.  Mmmm.  Potato powder.  I used Betty Crocker Potato Buds.  They're non-dairy non-soy unlike most other instant potatoes.  I used also olive oil instead of butter, rice milk instead of regular milk, and garlic powder to give it a bit of zing.  Also, garlic icing gives me the giggles.  Put down the bucket, its not that gross.  Really quite tasty in fact.

    Mmmm.... Low chemical, dried, flaked, potatoes.

The mashed potatoes didn't quite look like frosting at this point.  They're a bit yellow to begin with and then the garlic was making it a bit spotty so I decided to dye the whole thing.  Search Amazon.com for gel icing color wilton I let Froggy pick the color and she chose green.  Frankly I expected pink but we were making cake for Daddy and I suppose in her mind he likes green.  He does wear it every day.  A bit of gel icing, a bit of stirring and ta-da a big bowl of green garlic mashed potatoes.  It was even more disturbing in person.

To assemble place a meatcake in a foil cupcake paper.  It needs to be foil or the weight of the mashed potatoes will knock over the paper.  Mine shrunk a bit with cooking but no worries when you're coating the whole thing in "frosting".   Put the mashed potatoes in a piping bag with a star tip and squeeze them on there.  This was my first experiment in piping and it wasn't visually distressing.  It wasn't attractive either but it definitely looked cupcake like.

I planned to tell my husband we were having dessert first when he came home for lunch but he seemed to sense something was up.  He saw the tray of cupcakes on the table and got out the camera.  Froggy immediately ratted me out.  "Daddy it's mashed potatoes!! Hahahahah!!!"

 

More mashed potato shenanigans in May.

First night in the big girl bed went wonderfully. First nap is leaving a bit to be desired.

Every time the track changes on the CD Froggy runs in to show me how to dance to it.

Negotiations

Me: Do you want Cheerios or MiniWheats for breakfast?
Froggy: Meatballs.
Me: Ketchup or mustard?
Froggy: Yellow ketchup.

And I wonder why I'm tired.