I fully expect this week to be just as rough as every other week this summer. However, I am looking forward to Friday, when I get to escape for awhile.

In the mean time, another game of sorts.

When I was a child:

Pluto was a planet
You had to lick stamps

I have Black Eyed Susans along the driveway where the bulbs come up in the spring. It works out quite well, since they black eyed susan foliage comes up just as the leaves of the bulbs are starting to die.

It is somewhat amazing this bee could even fly.

I still have some day lilies blooming.

Firecracker flower with aster in the background.

Maow?

I got nothing. You can:
1) continue yesterday’s game of word association
2) go check out my book blog
or
3) insult me in this comment thread.

Ready? Go!

Yup. It’s Wednesday.

Today’s Word is: pie

Tasty Tuesday: The All-American Dessert Book by Nancy Baggett

As I’ve repeatedly whined, I’ve been too busy to do much of anything recently, and unfortunately, that includes cooking and baking–I haven’t made anything since my birthday. Boo!

So lacking anything of my own for you today, I want to tell you about one of my favorite cook books.

I picked up The All American Dessert Book on a whim, but immediately fell in love. First it was with the pictures. The book is full of color pictures of the desserts in the book, but what I love best about the pictures is these are desserts that look like they were made by a real human being. Often cookbooks present photos of perfect food that you know you are never going to be able to recreate in your own kitchen, and so instead of even trying, you decided to fall back on an old standard. But these pictures show pans and dishes that have been used, and food that looks like you could easily recreate it in your own kitchen, instead of some ideal food made by an artist.

These are the kinds of pictures I want to see in my cookbooks. That’s not to say that my desserts look as good as the ones in the book, only that the photos in the book don’t look unachievable.

But enough about the photos, what I really want to talk about are the recipes.

Oh. Yum.

I have tried many of the recipes in this book, and loved almost all the recipes I’ve tried. And here are some of my favorite recipes from the book: Deep Dish Apple Pie, Molten Lava Chocolate Cakes, Chocolate Pudding, Chocolate Chunk Coconut Pecan Chews, Pumpkin Whoopie Pies, Sugar Cookies with Strawberry Icing.

You’ll notice that several of those recipes are familiar and I’ve featured them here. And there are many more recipes I want to try.

So if you’re looking for a cookbook that has a little of everything, with clear and easy to follow recipes, I highly recommend The All-American Dessert Book.

I’ve known Del since I was 19. That would make it… er…. twenty years. (Yikes!)

When he and Kathy got married, I was in their wedding, and Del was one of the bridesmen when Michael and I got married.

Here are some pictures from our quick visit this weekend. Notice that both their kids seem to have inherited Del’s sense of humor.

Poor Kathy!
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I’m still adoring my new camera.

On the garden end of things, we haven’t had rain in awhile, so I’m actually having to make sure to water my flowers or I’m going to lose some of the my hydrophillic ones. But it’s not too painful a task, since I have a soaker hose set up.

Balloon plant. I love the color of these flowers.
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Kat and the edible packing peanuts.

Thank you Anne!

Edible packing peanuts. Tasty cat snacks!

There you go Eric!

Skipped last week for my birthday, however, today is another birthday. So for this week’s game, we celebrate the Alaskan Amazon, sender of catnip and chocolate, and all around hot chick.

So for today’s game you have a choice. You can play off of the previous word as normal, or you can go back and associate from the original word.

And today’s word is: Tania

Here are the cakes I made for my birthday.

These pictures don’t do justice to how delicious these cakes are.

Do. Not. Drop.

The toaster oven was perfect for these, since it didn’t heat up the entire house.
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I’ve always been delighted to celebrate by birthday–it’s an excuse to eat lots of dessert and make people be nice to me. What more could anyone wish out of a day?

Because of that, I’ve never been upset by the passing of the years. And more importantly, to be honest I never thought I’d live to see 30. No, this isn’t due entirely to me depression. I was a child in the 70s and 80s, and I was quite sure Ronald Reagan was going to start a nuclear war with the Soviets and the world as we know it would be destroyed over political differences. Thus living to 39 so far has come as a surprise and a quite a pleasant one at that.

Though my depression did play a small part in that, which is why a couple years ago I decided that by my 40th birthday I wanted to accept myself for who I am: good, bad, or indifferent. So for the past two years I’ve been working on being OK with myself. This has in no way been an easy task, but I’ve been learning things to make it easier: eating well and exercising are probably at the top of the list. That accomplishes two things: First, I know I’m doing what I can for myself, so that makes acceptance easier. Second, eating decently and exercising make me feel physically better. And feeling physically better makes me feel mentally better.

I’m also doing what I can to learn to deal with my “faults.” My hair is troublesome, so I learned that I have to pay extra for good haircuts and stuff that keeps my hair from being frizzy. I get stressed out and cranky, so I learned that I have to take time for myself, or I make everyone miserable.

Doesn’t mean I still don’t have work ahead of my in the coming year. I’ve never been comfortable in my own skin, so accepting my body is still something I have not truly learned to do. But I’m getting better.

And I think I can do it.

In which case, I think I should have a big celebration next year! Three years of work to accepting myself as well as simply surviving longer than I expected seem like an excellent reason to celebrate. So I’m taking suggestions for how I should celebrate my 40th birthday next year.

Anything within reason will be considered, but please keep in mind that I don’t like the sun very much, so a trip to the beach is not even within the realm of possibility.

So what’da’ya think?