Someone's in the Kitchen

ROSY:  Between this weekend and this morning, we spent an inordinate amount of time in the kitchen.

Before dawn's early light, I was pondering the scene below.  

How to turn thin slices of apple and some puff pastry into pretty little roses? ... 

You see, we'd received an email last night, after dinner, asking for donations to a teacher's breakfast just 15 hours later.  What to do, what to do? 

I somehow remembered a video we'd watched months prior about making little pastry roses using apples. I figured that would be great - an apple for the teacher and all - and the video made it look so easy! ...


I cored the apples and sliced them super thin (I thought). I cooked them for four minutes in water and lemon juice in the microwave (to soften them for rolling). 

I rolled my (store bought, she admits with embarrassment) puff pastry out, and cut it into 9-by-2 inch strips, and brushed those with apricot preserves (I think it is to not only add flavor, but to act as 'glue' for the slices). I carefully laid out the apple slices on the puff pastry, folded the puff pastry up over the bottom edges, sealed the sides and started rolling the strip up. Snap, crackle, pop! My apple slices started busting up like crazy. NOT good. And now it was about 6:45, I had to have these things baked and in my car by 8. And I had no Plan B. What to do? What to do?

I decided the best bet was to re-slice the slices, basically trying to cut them half as thick as they presently were. And even then, I only used the thinnest of the thin slices. Happily, that seemed to do the trick. I was able to roll the roll (redundant, I know), seal the edge, stick it in a greased muffin tin and hope for the best when I stuck them in the oven.

I had visions of them unfurling or somehow otherwise exploding. Happily, they actually looked better - more rose like - with each passing minute in the oven. Hooray!

 I was so happy when I took them out, and then said a little prayer and held my breath when extracting them from the muffin tin. 

Fortunately, they held their shape. 

By then, it was 7:55, and we had to be in the car with them in five minutes. I asked Annabelle to whip us up a little sign to go with the tray. 

I love her happy apple!

When we handed them off to the school secretary she smiled and marveled how they were still warm. That wasn't by design - it was right down to the wire, like an episode of "Chopped" or something!

HAWK-Y: Saturday and Sunder were all about prepping for a big opening game for the 2015 National Football League season for the Seahawks. 

Early Sunday morning, before the 10 o'clock kick off, CJ and Annabelle tackled a fruity art project. We printed out a pattern of the Seahawks' logo and put it on a big cutting board, measuring about 2-by-1.5 feet. Then the kids used raisins covered in white yogurt, green grapes, blueberries and some sliced kiwi to fill in the pattern with the right colors in the right spots to bring the logo to life. I thought they did a great job!

One of our other colorful projects were deviled eggs in Seahawks' blue and green. We hard-boiled eggs, peeled them and then dropped them in water dyed with blue food coloring. After about an hour we cut them in half and that produced the cool ring-around-the egg effect. We made an avocado flavored mash to fill them with. They were a hit!

We made a whole lot of other food, but it wasn't as photogenic.You know, you can only make so many things green and blue. ...

WALK AND WRITE: During this morning's 1-hour stroll 'round Magnolia, we spent a fair amount of the times talking about the kids' current writing project - a story for "The Empire Writes Back" program through The Museum of Flight. 

CJ's working on a back story about the Cantina band. Annabelle's involves a certain wookiee we all know and love. 

Annabelle is opting to illustrate her story, which ups the amount of work, of course. But projects like this are great, because they force us how to learn new tricks in Photoshop and Illustrator, such as how to create a cartoony comet in a starry night sky.  

They're inching ever closer to their final drafts. We'll share them once they're done.

HALFWAY THERE:  The International Space Station flew over our house about quarter to six this morning, and I couldn't help but think about how NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are at the halfway point of their historic ISS residency. They've been up there for six months, and will continue to live up there for another six, making them the first humans to live off planet for a continuous year. 

You can send a 'best wishes' message to Kelly and Kornienko by following this White House link: https://www.whitehouse.gov/webform/send-well-wishes-250-miles-above-earth