I did it!

Yay!  I did it!  I used a "perfect mom" tip, and it actually worked for me!  :-)


Tonight I made a zucchini bread recipe that I have been dying to try.  I really needed to get some dishes done and the kitchen and dining room cleaned up since tomorrow is produce day.  I pack the produce bags for the co-op on Mondays and Thursdays.  A semi delivers tons of boxes full of delicious produce to my house, and S.H. (my good friend and partner in witty rhetoric) and I organize it and pack it all into bags to be delivered to the folks who ordered them.  We've had zucchini a lot lately, so S.H. gave me her recipe for zucchini bread.  What better time to whip up a batch than when I have an hour's worth of cleaning to do while it bakes?!  


So, as I was mixing the ingredients together, I realized I would not have quite enough vegetable oil.  I remembered that some people use applesauce in place of oil.  Never me.  I'm a VERY Southern cook.  I use real butter, lots of seasonings and spice, and you could pour my sweet tea over pancakes, the way God intended.  But WAY better try something like applesauce than make a run to Publix, right?!  I was 1/4 cup shy of having enough oil, so I grabbed my applesauce.  Oops.  It's chunky with cinnamon.  Well, luckily there is cinnamon in the recipe already.  A little extra umph never hurt anyone.  But the the fact that it was chunky made it significantly less liquidy than the oil.  So, knowing nothing about this, I figured it'd be better to add a little more than the missing 1/4 cup to replace the needed liquid.  I added about 1/3 of a cup.  


It smelled amazing while it was baking!  AH-mazing.  And, as I'm sure you've already guessed, it tastes amazing, too!  Very moist and flavorful.  I doubt I'm ready to replace all of the oil with applesauce, but this definitely worked out for me.  Here's the recipe in case you'd like to try it:


Zucchini Bread
3 cups of flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3 tsp cinnamon
3 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup oil (remember here I used 3/4 cup oil and 1/3 cup applesauce)
2 cups grated raw zucchini
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped walnuts


Combine flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon.  In a separate bowl, beat eggs until light.  Stir in sugar, oil, zucchini, and vanilla.  Add dry ingredients and then nuts.  Pour into greased pans.  Bake in 350 degree oven for 1 hour.  Makes 2 loaves.


Today was quite an interesting day as far as my frustrating and awesome moments are concerned.  So instead of separating the two, I'll just tell you about them together.  


Poor Mike was up a lot last night.  His stomach was really cramping, and he was spending a lot of time in the bathroom, which, of course, kept me up. So we finally are able to drift off to sleep for some length of time, and our dog barks at something outside.  With our dog, this could be a raccoon or a person or a leaf fluttering by.  Mike is always super good about going to check it out, though. Last night it happened to be a flipping huge tree limb that had fallen right over his car.  I say "over" and not "on top of" because the way the tree landed it did no damage whatsoever to his car.  This is super significant to our family because two years ago we had a tree fall in our driveway and land on and total BOTH of our vehicles.  So having another huge tree limb fall was super annoying, but the fact that it did no damage to Mike's car is nothing short of miraculous.  Plus Mike got some great fire wood for grilling out of the deal!  God was watching out for us in a big way.

We missed Sunday School because we were just so darn tired from having been up more than half the night, but made it to worship.  It was a fantastic service.  If you're in the Jacksonville area and need a church home, Fort Caroline Christian Church is where it's at.  


We were enjoying a nice lunch at Crispers, thanks to a gift card and free kids meals with the purchase of an adult meal, when I remembered Bryant had been invited to a birthday party today and I had completely forgotten to RSVP.  Luckily it all worked out, and he was able to go.  I had to think of a fairly inexpensive gift, and quick!  I went to Party City and bought a little treasure chest money bank for $1.  Then I bought a bag of assorted chocolates wrapped in gold and silver foil and added a lot of change that totaled $6.00 (it's the boy's 6th birthday) and some of the candies to the chest.  Bryant's friend is on his t-ball team, and they're the Pirates.  I was pretty proud of my idea, and Bry's friend seemed to like it, too.  :-)  


So, on that note, what are some super simple, fairly inexpensive gift ideas you've used in the past?