suck it Martha

For the record, I like Martha.  I subscribe to her magazine because the photography is excellent , the recipes are good and her party ideas are slammin (albeit a bit too perfect).  But I am not Martha, nor am I her food critic, food stylist, or the chef that makes those beautiful concoctions in the photos.  I wonder if those photos are supposed to make one's self esteem disappear completely when you try the recipe and by God it doesn't even remotely look like Martha's version?

It's my own fault, I get a little too crafty when it comes to my kids birthdays.  Today is the day Addie gets to celebrate her birthday at school.  I was required to bake something for her classmates.  I declined on the 60 cupcakes because that's a ton of cupcakes.  My initial thought was cookies but then I saw this photo on the cover of the June issue of Martha Stewart Living and right then and there Addie and I decided that was the cake I was going to make for her to bring to school.  It was perfect!  We can get strawberries and whipping cream here.  The cake looked simple enough...

This is not what my cake looked like.  Not even close!

Boy was I wrong.  The cake is an angel food type cake with a trillion and a half eggs that rose and puffed beautifully in the oven and then within 30 minutes of cooling completely collapsed into a wrinkly mess.  This is even after I adjusted the recipe for baking at high altitude.  This high altitude thing is really cramping my baking style!  Anyway, I decided to cut the two 9 inch wrinkly cakes so there would be four layers and try to disguise the wrinkles with whip cream.

I assembled the cake before school today and oh man-it did not go so well.  The cake was supposed to be light and airy and my wrinkly fallen mess WAS NOT.  The strawberries in the middle were fine but the whip cream just squished out the sides of the layers and the entire four layer cake had slid apart twice before I just popped the portable cake carrier's lid on and put it in the back of the car with a note that said "I failed.  I hope it tastes better than it looks!"

I was in tears in the kitchen apologizing to Adelaide.  "I'm so sorry honey.  Mommy was trying to make a beautiful cake for you to bring to school!"  She came and gave me a hug and  said "I love you, I don't mind a silly looking cake".  "It was wrinkly and now it's falling, it's ok".  Bless her heart.  She's such a sweet girl.

Anyway, I hate failing at cakes.  I'm a stay at home Mom. I've known about having to bring a cake today for weeks now and so the idea that I failed at it is depressing.  Seriously?!  I could't have just made a batch of brownies or a boxed sheet cake? That's where I failed completely.  I got a little too crafty and it backfired.  I'm sure the kids won't mind their scoop of cake today. No doubt it will taste delicious but I should have just sent her to school with a box of cookies like everyone else!

UGH! Martha and her beautiful cakes!

the bomb chocolate chip cookies

Everyone has their favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. Lord knows I've tried many.  Can you honestly say you make the very best chocolate chip cookies possible?  I can! Believe me, it's not my baking skills, it's this recipe I found!  Finally, a chocolate chip cookie recipe I can settle on and make a million times because I know without a doubt, it's the best damn chocolate chip cookie recipe on Earth.

While we were in the U.S. all the Borders book stores closed and it became a family hobby to head to the closest Borders and pillage the shelves during the sales. We are total book geeks. Everything was so cheap we felt like we were stealing books.  Justin and I picked up stacks of great books, puzzles, games and movies for the kids all for a fraction of the original cost.  I ended up with this cookbook for $3 that I have used a ton.  The Hunka Chunka Chewy Chocolate Cookie recipe makes the most amazing cookie I have ever tasted.  I'm telling you.  You must try it!

The other day I made these cookies and I added 1 1/3 cups Heath Bar pieces and 1 2/3 cup chocolate chips instead of the all chocolate chips the recipe calls for.  They were the BOMB!  The cookies spread and flattened more here at our high altitude but they tasted amazing!  Anyway, since I altered the recipe a tad with the Heath, I figured this version needed a new name.  I can't possibly take credit for the original recipe in the book.  

party planning

We have another birthday party coming up that we are preparing for.  Adelaide turns 5 on May 29 and we are having a Mad Hatters Tea Party for her un-birthday on June 2!  We're all pretty excited since Alice in Wonderland has to be the coolest party theme ever.  I'm especially in love with all the vintage Alice in Wonderland drawings and prints from the books.  We have pink flamingos and spiky balls for the Queen of Hearts' game of croquet and we're going to paint white roses red!  It's going to be a pretty slammin tea party with all her little friends at school.

The girls helped me with these invitations.  We brewed strong coffee and they painted the paper with it so it would look old (coffee scented too).  I was the one who burned the corners with matches.  Addie helped me with the stamps!  

buns!

HA! I bet you thought you were going to see one of the girls' adorably cute bottom in the bath or something.  Sorry, not those kind of buns!

America is the only place you can buy decent hamburger buns.  In Manila we spent three years complaining about the tiny sweet flimsy hamburger buns we could buy there.  You can't even buy anything close to a burger bun in Ethiopia.

So I made some last night.  We ordered a ton of beef and chicken patties from Kenya in the last meat order through the embassy.  ("Meat order" kind of tickles my funny bone-HA!) Anyway, we had all these patties and no buns and I figured I could make some pretty decent hamburger buns as long as I found a recipe.

I was right.  Homemade hamburger buns are way better than the store bought kind in the U.S. I'm not sure why I never thought about making them while in Manila.  It was super easy and they were extremely tasty.  I highly recommend continuing to buy buns in the States because, well it's a million times easier to grab a bag of buns at Safeway. I'm not going to begin to pretend that I would make homemade burger buns if I were living in America.  Just like I wouldn't be making homemade bagels, tomato sauce, and chicken broth.  If I were in America I'd be buying these things.  No doubt.

But I'm not living in America and some things are done out of necessity.  So if you are overseas like us or you just want to impress whoever you are cooking cheeseburgers for, make your buns.  They are way yummy!

So this is the recipe I started with.  I made some changes because I hate tough rolls.  Bread making is about not adding too much flour and not over kneading.

I warmed the liquids, butter, sugar and salt in a microwave bowl and let it cool to lukewarm.  In my KitchenAide mixer (with dough hook attachment) I put 3 cups of flour and the instant try yeast (2 1/4 tsps is how much is in one packet).  I added the liquid mixture to the dry and slowly mixed it together.  I then added the flour cup by cup until the dough  was no longer pooling at the bottom and had completely pulled away from the sides of the bowl.  I think in the end it was a total of 4 1/2 cups of flour (not the 51/2 cups of flour the recipe calls for).  Basically the dough had all adhered to the hook and was spinning around attached to it.  I then let the dough mix slowly on the dough hook for a few minutes (maybe 3 minutes not 8).  I then followed the recipe and let the dough rest for about and hour until it had risen and doubled it's original size.  Cut into twelve pieces and formed them into round bun shaped balls and let it rise again.  Egg washed them and baked the buns at 400 degrees for about 11 minutes.  They were fluffy and tender and moist.

Chinese food in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The Chinese have staked their claim in Ethiopia with investments as they are doing in the rest of the world right now. Shoddy Chinese built roads are going up everywhere which begs the question; Are shoddy roads in Addis Ababa better than no roads?  That's besides the point, because what I'm trying to say is that I'm grateful for the Chinese presence here if the only truly good thing they bring to Addis is their food.

Chinese take-out is pretty good ("Addis good" is what we call it-mediocre tasting if we were in America but since we aren't; it's pretty tasty).  We've found a place close to the house where lots of Chinese people eat.  It's a nice reprieve from cooking every night.  The past two weekends I've braced myself to feel tummy troubles a few days after eating this Chinese.  Luckily I haven't felt crummy yet so that's a good thing.  It will be nice to live in a country some day when indigestion can just be indigestion and not make me worry about the beginnings of some nasty parasite.

Our Asian babies love it our new Chinese take-out meal!

freezing our tails off

I made the executive decision that we were  going to the pool on Sunday. It's gorgeous and sunny here but the pool at the embassy is freezing.  The girls lasted short bursts of swimming in the pool before their lips turned purple.  Ashlynn was the only one without purple lips from all the extra layers she's carrying!  

sunshine and...

lots of flies.  The short rainy season is over.  The heat is back and the flies are disgusting right now.  I guess the flies hatch and invade Ethiopia for about a month until rainy season hits.  I'm the fly hunter in the house.  All our Economist issues are rolled up and covered in fly guts right now because I don't know about you, but I cannot handle flies hanging around the dinner table.

Other than that, we are enjoying the sunshine.  Adelaide seems to have moved past her separation anxiety stage.  Drop offs at school are sans tears finally and her handwriting is amazing! Arabella is rocking her new bangs and in general acting more like a big girl now that SHE has decided it's cool to do so.  Ashlynn is on the move.  She's on the verge of the crawling breakthrough which means my life is about to get a lot more chaotic!

But seriously, all three of my daughters are pretty darn sensational.