Long Time, No Sea

Target's Archer Farms Espresso Beans

Something that I have really appreciated is the Archer Farms brand at Target (we pronounce it Tar-szhay). I recently went all out and bought their Fair Trade Espresso beans (unground of course). ANd I was pleasantly surprised!

They were around $6 and the coffee is really good! I might just be buying this from now on.

I threw together an interesting dish yesterday that I wanted to share with you. There isn’t an exact science to it, but it was still good! You can alter it to your tastes and even add other stuff, so there is a lot of room for variations and potential!

Rice AlaJyn

Jyn's Rice Meal

First, take a pot and put in about 2-3 cups of water and turn on the stove to a Med-medium High setting.

I cook everything on HIGH so this is quite conservative for me, however I am thinking about your safety here!

In the meantime, crush some savory herbs into the water along with some tarragon, some ginger powder, garlic powder, 1 tbs of sugar and some pepper, 1-2 tbs of chicken boulion and throw in about 1 cup of rice. Bring to a boil. Add a dash of sesame oil, but be careful not to pour a lot in like me. I forget sometimes that it doesn’t have a hole at the top to dash the liquid in and end up pouring it all in >.< .

At this point you can cut up some cubes of ham (which is what I did in the picture) or chicken, beef, etc- or you can add some vegetables such as bamboo shoots, carrot sticks, etc. And let it come to a boil. Cook for about 10 minutes like that and then take a cast iron pan, put it on the top of the pot, and turn off the heat. Im sure you can use a lid- but this did a great job of reflecting the heat back into the pot and I felt cool doing it.

I integrate cast ironware into as much cooking as I can- something about the RAW iron of it that makes you feel special.

From here you let it sit a few minutes, you can peek and stir it until it suits your consistancy, but it doesnt take very long.

My kids have seconds on this dish, and if you put more vegetables in it, it could easily pass as a skillet meal.

-Jyn

And that is the very cake that my daughter, Eva Bella, who is turning four tomorrow- wanted for her birthday.

She has been bugging me all year to have a crocodile cake for her birthday. Last year we dropped $50 on a frog cake that was cute- but unappetizing. The kids barely touched it and we ended up cutting it up into peices and freezing it… because we couldnt stand to throw it away.

So this year I decided to try my hand at making Eva’s cake. My last extravigant cake I made one of my friends named the Melted decapitated dragon cake. The story behind it was that it was Jacob’s 2nd birthday and he wanted a snake cake. It was getting late and he had fallen asleep, so I hurridly took the cake out of the oven and started to assmble it and decorate it before it was fully cooled not wanting to miss his birthday. It was a wonderful cake at first. It had cool green icing, tiny m&m eyes and a licorice string tongue. I woke up Jacob to come to the table for his cake and he was crankily rubbing his eyes not really feeling like having cake yet.

We sang happy birthday as the frosting melted the face of the snake into a distorted demonic figure. I cut the head off (the most desireable peice- right? It had all the candy on it!) and put it on a plate in front of Jacob. He took one look at it and started crying. Yeah, brithday cake disaster.

So I researched what it would take to make a proper fondant cake and got to it. It took me about 8+ hours today, but I got it done!

This was my first experience with fondant. I was set on making something nice and took time to add details, studying a dozen or so pictures of crocodiles and trying to figure out ways of achieving similar effects.

When the kids got home, it was a hit! Everyone loves it.

Here is the process my cake went through:

fondant before and after

Larger cake of 3 with anotomical parts cut

Cake assembled but not sculpted yet

After frosting, starting the fondant cover

Fondant covered and front legs on

Finished product