Soup for the Sick

SOUP FOR THE SICK

I am at home today sick. BLAH! I know there have been A LOT of people out sick recently, so I am going to share my recent experiment with Steak and Potato Soup. I took pictures of it, but it was during the few hours before the Super Bowl and I was running around like crazy destroying my kitchen before leaving the house. FUN!

I will list the ingredients first and then go through a few pics and tell you what the heck to do with them.

You will need: green onions, bacon bits, shredded cheese and sour cream to garnish. If you don't care about the garnish (for example, you have a cold and you're near death!) don't worry about these items. Replace them with crackers instead.

For the soup, you will need a steak of your choosing, 5-6 large potatoes (diced), 1 lb. Velveeta cheese, salt, pepper, garlic, and 1-12 oz. can of evaporated milk.

Directions:

Peel the potatoes and dice, if not done already. Put in a pot and cover with water. Boil for about 25 minutes.

While the potatoes are boiling, you can broil the steak (here I have mine cooking in the same pan as some chicken breasts I'll be eating for lunch during the week).

While that is going, you can dice up that cheese, (asking you to "cut the cheese" would just be so wrong. You're in the KITCHEN!)

When the potatoes are done cooking, drain them into a colander. Put back in pot and add milk, salt, cheese, pepper, and garic to taste. Cook on low,  frequently stirring until cheese melts.

Make sure soup does not boil. Dice up steak (or cut into whatever size you feel comfortable with) and add to pot.

And there you have it, to garnish or not to garnish. I hope you're feeling better too!

VALENTINE'S DAY

Yes, it's getting HOT in here...

So, I like to play with food. Did I mention that somewhere already?

Oh well, we all have our weaknesses. Another one of mine is "going to class". If I have any inkling at all that I can get out of it, I don't go. This is a rationalization feature that has been part of my brain since at least high school. I think when I showed up at my high school graduation some people looked at me and wondered WHY I was there or WHO I was. LOL

So, now my excuse today to miss class, unless I'm a good girl, is "I have to work on my blog!!!" I have been one busy girl! I am posting pics now of my Valentine creations (LOL) and later will have more of One Bowl Brownies and Banana Muffins, along with recipes.

For now, enjoy these pics:

Started out with some little guys and they were SAD! They needed FRIENDS!

Oooohhhhhh, and look! They found some!

Close up shot :-)

View from the rear...

And, the side!

Aerial shot

Then we had to add a female just to make it more Valentine-ish!

I might just have to go to class tonight. It appears I've already been a little too naughty.

Thank Goodness Christmas is nowhere in sight!

Which brings me to also add- I was a bit upset while doing these because I was lamenting the thought that the next holiday up was Easter and, really, they may have paired toys and Santa with the birth of Christ and Easter eggs with a cross, but I didn't see HOW I would get away with doing any cakes like these for Easter. I was saddened until I remembered that the next holiday is

ST PATRICK'S DAY!!!

I am sure I can created some little drunken peckers for that!

LOL

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

Shifting Gears a Bit

I AM a Libra, which means I balance things. And I DO balance things, I love Accounting so I'm used to all the debits and credits, etc. Which made me realize this morning upon reflecting on the blog-business lately that I have to take a day to "be light".

I have named this blog "Spacie Stacie" and people might read this and go "DAMN, how is she spacy?" TRUST ME...LOL I am...Recently I was out to breakfast with my hubby and Sarah Palin was on TV. He told me about a quote from her he read in Maxim magazine where she said she grew up her whole life hunting, etc. and if anyone didn't like killing/eating animals that they had plenty of room up there in Alaska for all the world's animals "right next to the mashed potatoes". ??? I spent the next five minutes asking my bewildered husband WHERE the mashed potatoes were. I thought maybe she was making a reference to Canada...

I have earned my nickname and there's not a lot I can do about it.

Another thing came to mind about COMPLACENCY. I realize not everyone has a lot of energy and might be able to relax just fine. I am NOT one of those people. Then again I am probably a little more caffeinated than most. I start my day with a Crystal Light energy drink followed by Monster low carb then a Peach Mango Green Tea Crystal Light (for metabolism, it says) and then a Propel. So, I (probably) have issues sitting still.

I have a few pics of how I'll be spending my time after graduation. I said this would be my un-serious post so here it is. Ha Ha...In my defense, and to give credit where credit is due, this idea was NOT mine. I got it from the Bachelorette Superstore's website.

Take a look and have fun...

Yes, they are what they appear to be!

These are just flesh colored ones I did a different day...

They got their close up...look at those googly eyes...LOL

Well, I'm off for a night of Biggest Loser and American Idol.

I have no idea who is really reading this. If you want to contact me and you don't have the proper account to comment, write to me at stacieschultz@aol.com

Have a great night!

The Status Quo

COMPLACENCY

Yes, I had to look up the spelling. LOL I don't normally write or type this word but it was HEAVY on my mind earlier as I was making dinner, making lunches, and washing the kitchen floor.

It is VERY EASY to say I am "doing all I can" or "doing enough". If I sat down right this moment and did not do one more thing, I don't think anyone would point a finger at me and say, "She could be doing more." Not at all. BUT, what more am I capable of? I mean, I'm working full time, making great money, going to school and getting my degree in May, cooking dinner every night, the kids are out of the house, I plan outings for us, I agree to go to Hooters every Friday night (LOL), and consider myself to be an excellent wife.

This is where my upbringing is a BIG problem. I care about not failing. No one else seems to care!

I am a stubborn person. I do not believe in complacency.

From Merriam-Webster: "Complacency" means:

self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies

I am one aware chick

My mother told me that when I had my first child (Jackie) that I should not work until she was potty-trained. I then had another child when Jackie was 2-1/2 (Christie) and another child when Christie was 2 (Brad). Had I followed my mother's advice I would not have worked for ten years! I know this because I bought diapers for ten years straight.  

School?

Why am I going to school?

To better myself???? Make sure I'm qualified for any jobs I apply for that ask for a Bachelor's Degree even though I have plenty of experience...to CMA...

In the end I think I have to answer my dad's question yelled at me many times when I was younger:

"Are you stupid or something???"

Let's just say the answer is:

"NO"

But thanks for asking...

Next? One SMART Cookie...

HERE COMES FEBRUARY

AND THERE WENT JANUARY

Well, my thoughts started with Bikini Girl's waist and naturally has turned into "weight" LOL

I DID address the issue in one of my earlier posts (the first one, as a matter of fact) that I had always hoped for a better body. Maybe I expressed that on Bikini Girl? LMAO In any case, based on the feedback I have gotten, next time I do bikini girl, she will have a more realistic waistline.

Now onto MY waistline. As nearly everyone does, we set New Year's Resolutions. I had set out with one of three paths, they all ended, of course, with me losing weight. One path said lose three pounds, then four pounds, then three pounds per month. The other was four-three-four, the other was after I read one of those "super-pump-you-up-you-can-do-anything-you-want-in-life" books (which I know is in my house still, but I haven't finished it and it's exact location in unknown...) that said I should have or could have lost seven.

Well, I lost three pounds, which was fine, as long as I lost something. After I read the aforementioned book, I had it that in the end (by the beginning of June) I would weight what I weighed in high school. We're even talking "freshman year of high school weight". LOL Ummmm, I don't care what the book says I can achieve, I think I should aim for something a little more doable. Maybe pre-first-baby weight?

And hell, if I reach THAT by June, and I'm extremely bored with nothing else better to do, I can wow the world and go to my freshman year of high school weight. Sounds like a plan to me...

Bikini Cake Pics

BIKINI GIRL

OK, so I've been told (advised???) that this girl has one skinny waist and huge honkers. Hubby thinks next time I should give her a thicker waist.

Well, anyway... we'll start with "my canvas". Most artists use canvas board. I use cakes.

MY CANVAS

Here it is! I have always used Pillsbury cake mixes. Everyone has always commented that they're so good they thought I had some homemade secret recipe of some sort. Nope. ;-)

MY CAKEBOARD

I make my own buttercream frosting and dye it with paste colors. For this bikini girl cake, it was my first time playing with fondant icing, so I did not make that frosting, although I will teach myself how. For starters, I thought it best to start with ready made. The white frosting here is NOT made with any butter. To get the "whitest" white frosting you should not use butter OR brown vanilla, you should use clear vanilla. The recipe is NOT a secret either: I use Wilton's recipe. Watch out for crumbs!!! They are a cake decorator's worst nightmare, especially with a brown cake.

SKY AND SAND

Brown sugar is "sand" and is very fun for any beach-themed cake. You can also take a pile of cookies and attach them together with frosting to make sand castles. No sand castles here. I did not have enough of blue fondant to cover the whole sky but that is OK because I planned on adding green trees. I thought of this cake while laying in my tanning bed and couldn't wait to get home to do it. LOL

BIKINIS NEED BOOBS

And here we have them. I have a "boob cake pan" bought from a local naughty store. I recently did a boob cake for a girl's boyfriend and I had used for the first time a butter cake recipe that called for "real butter" instead of vegetable oil. She reported back to me that it was out of this world, so I decided to try it (eat it) myself. The "waist" is from a second boob cake I had done (cut in half). The boob cake pans makes two cakes and I was planning to do something else with the second one but then when I suddenly thought of this cake while tanning, I figured the gal would need a midsection and this would be the best way of providing it.

FROSTED BOOBS

Now here is where I made a little mistake and is one of the reasons for my rant on "PLANNING" and "PERFECTION". I am a perfectionist. The problem with this cake here is that I frosted the boobs without realizing they were too far off to the right. They were not centered. I did TRY and pick them up and moving them but it wasn't going to work. TOO LATE. So, what to do?

As much as I try to make it seem like this is new to me, those who know me know better! I have been doing cakes since my kids were babies. My kids are now 17, 20, and 23.

EVERY CAKE CAN BE RESCUED WITH FROSTING! I call it "cake surgery" and I am awesome with it. I had already planned to do trees. So now one of those huge tall trees would now run alongside to the left. The brown frosting is not homemade. Darker colors are very hard to create. The brown tree trunk frosting is ready made. I piped it out using the reverse side of the basket weave tip which is flat.

Now, the green frosting...LOL Remember, I mentioned that I had ready made fondant frosting? The package came with the four primary colors: red, yellow, blue, and green. I had envisioned red and yellow: bikini, blue: sky/water, green: trees. I opened up the package of fondant and each color was wrapped in silver foil with a sticker on each one indicating what color it was except for the fourth package. The others were stickered with "yellow", "red", and "blue", so I assumed the unstickered one would be the assumed "green" (what a way to save money on labels? Let them deduce that its gotta be the green one...)

NOOOOOOOOOO, I opened it and it was YELLOW! So, naturally I opened up the package marked "yellow" thinking "Maybe its really green?" NOOOOOOOO so I now had two yellows and no green and I'm about to provide tree leaves to my already piped tree trunks!!!!!

WHO has green frosting in their possession at any given moment?

ha ha

ME!

Yes, I just happened to have a bit left over from a recent cake I did. I am a pack rat and I hate throwing things away and this is one of those instances that keep me holding onto things I have no idea how I'm ever going to use. I had put that green frosting in the fridge with no clear idea on how I would ever have any use for it and here was my answer: I needed trees (and grass!)

The only thing I would have done differently is pipe the grass with the hair/grass tip. I just frosted it on flat at the bottom.

BIKINI FINISHED

So, if you're an experienced food blog reader, you're going between the above picture and the one above it going, "WTH, she's missing pics!!!"

LOL

Yes, I was so thrown off with my fondant package not including green and recovering from it that when I laid out the yellow and red fondant I forgot to take pics!

It was kind of good that I had two packages of the yellow because I would have had to roll it really thin to get enough for both sides. I made the circles using the opposite end of a cake tip. So I cut the yellow circles out with the cake tip then replaced it with a red circle.

CLOSE UPS

Also added some "cumulus clouds" and some sun...

Hopefully we get some nice hot days this upcoming summer. This was just my way of taking a little break from winter!

GETTING OUR MIND RIGHT

A FEW WORDS ON PLANNING

Do things accidentally happen to people? Or, do they set out to do things?

Accidents? They happen, of course. But surely not everything in life is an accident.

We have "planning abilities" and surely no one would plan to fail unless they had a meaningful reason for doing so. Why am I asking these questions?

I was sitting in my school's cafeteria the other day when an advisor-type looking guy asked a student (whom he seemed to know) how she did last semester. She replied, "I only failed one class." ??? Was that her version of "success"? Has she normally failed MORE than one class where ONLY ONE was great?

To me, and maybe I'm just a bit too picky, if I get a "B" I am not a happy person. I am most likely feeling defeated and resentful wondering what I could have done better or different. An "F"???? That would be nervous breakdown worthy. "D"? same "C"? LOL probably the same.

"C's and D's get degrees?" Not in my world.

Welcome to it :-)

In my world (and I'm not saying that I'm right and all knowing!), nothing is worth doing unless you plan to do it to the best of your ability.

That is why I am PLANNING my path to make SURE I have everything I need in place before proceeding.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for people diving into doing things. Notice I said "people", not "me". I will DIVE in when I'm good and ready. I am giving myself until May to finish school before embarking on my next project.

If I can't give it my full attention and the best of my ability, I don't think I should undertake it at all. In the meantime, I will be developing this blog, taking pictures, practicing posting the pictures, developing my website, having business cards made up, etc. I am practicing "perfection". I do NOT mind criticism.

My hubby (Bless his big heart!) knows this and WILL criticize what I do. He is also good at art (way better than me, in fact), he knows I am a perfectionist, and will be my perfect partner at this.

I will perfect my techniques THEN charge people for my work. And it will be the BEST :-)