Harvest Moon Pies

I usually make a dessert for our annual Thanksgiving dinner at Great Grandpa & Grandma Vernoy's. This year I wanted to utilize all my extra pumpkin puree & one out of the ten cake mix boxes I had in my pantry. There was a Buy 2 get 3 sale on cake mixes at Vons, I was hungry & confused!

I was inspired by a Moon Pies:

My version is Pumpkin-Carrot Cake/Cookies filled with cinnamon frosting and drizzled with white chocolate ganache.

Ingredients:

1 box carrot cake mix
4 eggs
1 box butterscotch pudding mix
1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter
1/2 cup pureed pumpkin
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp all spice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup butterscotch baking chips

For Filling:
1 tub cream cheese frosting
1 tbl cinnamon

Ganache:
1/2 of Ghiradelli's White Chocolate Baking Bar
1 tbl butter

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Sift cake mix, pudding mix, all spice, and cinnamon into a mixing bowl.

3. Add eggs, pumpkin puree, and butter mix well by hand.

4.Fold in butterscotch chips.

5.Place on a greased cookie sheet by rounded spoonfuls or a 1-1/8-Inch Ice Cream/Cookie Dough Scoop.

6.Bake for 13-15 minutes or until firm to the touch.

7.Remove from oven and let cool completely on a wire rack.

8. While cake is cooling mix together cream cheese frosting & cinnamon.

9.When the cakes are cool, spread the flat side (bottom) of one cake with filling. Top with another cake, pressing down gently to distribute the filling evenly.

10. In a double broiler melt white chocolate and 1tbl butter.

11. Drizzle melted chocolate onto cakes. 11. Sprinkle with cinnamon.

The Pioneer Woman

My favorite mother in law introduced me to my new idol...

A lot of my meals in the past few weeks have derived from her website:

The Pioneer Woman

Along the lines of Paula Deen, butter is her friend. Her recipes are the epitome of comfort food. The best thing about her recipes, besides the carbohydrates, are the vivid step-by-step photos, and witty banter. She makes you feel like you are right in her kitchen, without the benefit of taste-testing. Fortunately, her recipes are simple enough that you'll be taking a bite.

I'll be posting some of my versions of recipes, I use a bit less butter and try to tweak a seasoning here or there.

Lessons Learned From Homemade Pumpkin Puree

So after hours of opening the pumpkin, removing the guts, roasting, scooping, & pureeing, the most valuable lesson I learned from this process is...

...buy canned.

Forget Tricks We Want Treats! Treats! Treats!

To carry on the superhero theme for fall, the boys were Spiderman & Batman for Halloween. Sean was a bit relieved, since my original idea was Mystery Inc. Connor would be Scooby, Colin would be Shaggy, I would be Velma, & Sean would be Fred.

Mystery Inc.

But since I was able to get all of our superhero costumes for the price of one Scooby Doo, crime fighters we were. (But it could have been worth it to see Sean in a red ascot aka. neckerchief)

It's amazing how you can overcome your fear to ghosts, the dark, & strangers when candy is involved.

SuperKid & Captain Cookie

Take a sunny day, two restless boys, two pillow cases, a digital camera and you get...

So This Is What I'm Missing Out On?!?

A rare moment when Connor can eat ice cream with his older brother, thanks to non-dairy frozen yogurt. I think he enjoyed it...

We Can Help You With the Laundry Mommy

Grandma's on TV!

Colin's Grandma had the unfortunate luck to be caught talking on her cellphone while driving. What makes it worse is that it was not the police that caught her, it was channel 9 news. She became the feature interview to highlight the crackdown of talking while driving in Santa Paula. (The irony is that she was talking to me at the time!)

I showed Colin the video and he went nuts! He ran to the TV, falling on the way there. When I asked he who it was he just shouted, GRAAAAANNNNNDDDDMAAAA. (He needed a nap at the time).

The Unholy Union of Pork & Coco

I love bacon. I love chocolate. But as I recently discovered at the Ventura County fair, I love them equally but separately. We almost skipped the fair but reading an article regarding the latest fair phenomenon piqued my interest. I consider myself adventurous when it comes to food, but this adventure was one I should not have taken. I should have gone for the Pork Chop on a Stick.

We Warn You, You Might Feel Some Slight Gusts...

Every year for the past years I've gone to the Vernoy Beach Camping week. I never really considered myself the outdoorsy type. Before I met Sean I never understood why people camped on the beach. But every year that goes by I've learned more and more about the wonders of the great outdoors. Some of pearls of wisdom include but are not limited to:

- Biscuits on a Dowel (My personal favorite)

- Cobbler in a Bag

- Boogie Boarding

- Surviving a week without technology

- Eventually You stop noticing how dirty you

This year we camped in Gaviota. It was windy. I could elaborate but it is really one of those instances that really requires first hand experience. Every night the winds would claim an unsuspecting group of campers. Not us, we held fast, grit our dirt covered teeth, shielded our eyes, and enjoyed our nightly Pier Parties.

Brothers Keeping in Touch

Connor calls Colin "Be Be"

Proof that Colin is Half a White Boy

Look Mom I'm Painting my Head!

Whenever we visit my mom in Kingman, we don't venture outdoors too much. On the rare occasions we do, the boys take full advantage of it. This is the product of two boys with cabin fever and six tubes of finger paint.

The Hardest Part is Waiting

I like warm fresh baked cookies. I like S'mores. One afternoon I came up with the idea to combine the two. I was pretty excited to taste my concoction, but not as excited as the boys. It's a pretty simple recipe bake your favorite cookies, 3 minutes before they are done add mini marshmallows and chocolate chips.

Snakes & Snails & Puppy Dog Tails

Colin is in a bug phase. Unfortunately, for me, he overcame his fear of anything creepy crawly. One beautiful afternoon instead of joining me on a game of "laying on a blanket in the yard and napping", Colin chose bug and worm hunting expedition. He even recruited his younger brother as backup. Needless to say there was a lot of soap used later that evening.

He's kissing it not eating eat, yet it's equally as disgusting.

Stingray Bay

Sean had a rare weekday off so we all decided to trek down to the beach. This particular beach is enclosed on both sides by jetties so there are almost no waves at all. About fifteen minutes into our relaxing beach day, Sean decides to take a dip and Connor wanted to go along. I stayed on shore with Colin.

After a couple minutes I look up and Sean is waving, so I wave back thinking he's just saying "Hey look at me, I'm having fun at the beach with my son, on my day off, life is good…" It wasn't until I heard "Hiyas! Hiyas! Get Connor!" that I realized that it wasn't a happy wave. He was ACTUALLY thinking "Something just stabbed me, I'm in excruciating pain, you'd better get your son before I drop him!"

I run in the knee deep water and get Connor. Sean limps out of the water. I thought he had stepped on a rock or a broken bottle. I look down at his leg and his ankle is bleeding and he is in obvious pain. We somehow managed to wrangle all our belongings and the kids to the car. Even Colin could tell that something was wrong, I had never seen that little boy gather up his toys and leave somewhere fun so quickly. His exact reaction was "Daddy got blud? Daddy need a doctor?"

The "doctor" (lifeguard) bandaged Sean up and was pretty skeptical that it was a stingray, despite the fact that someone had been stung just days before. Sean was in agony, we raced home to treat his sting. Here is an educational tidbit thanks to Google.

If you are stung by a stingray, immediately immerse the wound in HOT water (as hot as you can stand), and keep it in hot water until you see (stop reading if you get squeamish) a stringy pus oozing out. That's the poison. This could take a couple of hours. So poor Sean had to spend his day off sitting in the bathroom with his foot in the bathtub.

Here are a couple of pictures from our 20 minute beach trip.

Just a few minutes before the attack!

The Aftermath....warning gory.

Don't Eat the Play-Doh!

When I was about eight years old, my mom played a practical joke on me. She convinced me that gum and peanuts went together like ice cream and cake. If you've never tried it, go ahead, I dare you. In order to avenge the loss of my last Hubba Bubba I concocted a clever plan.

The next day I asked her to if she wanted to join me and play with my Play-doh. I painstakingly molded a "hamburger" consisting of two neon yellow patties, neon green lettuce, and neon blue patty (only had the four pack of basic colors). I handed it to my mom on my finest plastic tea plate and said "Here Mommy, I made this for you." She eyed it hesitantly and asked, "You can eat this stuff?". I smiled my most innocent eight year old smile nodded. She took a bite, I laughed, she spit it out. Ironically she didn't think it was as funny as I did. Go Figure.

Now here I am 23 years later, enjoying Play-doh with my own children yelling,

"No! Don't eat the Play-doh!"

American Idol 2022

Hello All. It has been a while since I've regaled you with stories of the Carr Clan and will soon take the time to remedy that. As for now, here is a little morsel. This is what 2 weeks stuck indoors in Arizona will do to a three year old. Colin has discovered the power of karaoke ...

The Tiger Woods of Air Hockey

My mom and I came to the United States for the first time when I was five years old. The very next day my Dad took us to Disneyland, talk about culture shock. Despite being very young, I actually have very vivid memories of that day.

This year, we decided to go to Disneyland for my Birthday. I had free Birthday admission which they upgraded to a 2fer. This was also the last month Colin could go for free. Some people would say that three is too young to take a kid to Disneyland since they won’t remember anything. But if you asked Colin about his trip, he'll talk your ear off about Dumbo, Small World, and the "scary pirate boats in the dark tunnel, and I got wet".

Colin will occasionally ask if we can take him to Disneyland, needless to day with the steep ticket prices, we won't be going again anytime soon. However, I did promise Colin that we would take him once he was fully potty trained. The money we save on diapers alone can pay for Annual passes!