C.U.P.S. or "How to revive sanity with a scone..."

For those who are new to the Chronicles, C.U.P.S. is an informal playgroup that a couple of us threw together when we were taking kids to preschool and had a couple hours to kill in Jordan.  The acronym stands for Coffee Under Pretense of School, and it has saved our lives more than once. 

This is the first official meeting of 2010, and let me tell you....we couldn't load the cars fast enough to get there! Tires squealing, dust flying, kids' hair blown back....and that was just getting out of the yard. 

Traci generously hosted, and for a couple days now has been hinting at some double chocolate scones.  (Yes, you can have the recipe! In a minute...)

We have a new member...Marisa....and I'm not sure the woman will ever be the same after this morning....

Here's why:

Death By Chocolate Scones, hot from the oven.

These are the richest, most chocolate scones you'll ever encounter.

Traci apologized for not having the chocolate ganache to melt over them....

Yeah.  They were missing something, alright...

Cinnamon whipped cream, to balance out the richness of all that cocoa!

There was a goodly amount of cinnamon whipped cream, thank goodness.

As previously mentioned, this was Marisa's first C.U.P.S. meeting, so when I handed her a cup of strong, hot coffee and a spoon after we'd eaten the scones (round 1), she looked mystified.  What was she supposed to do with a spoon?

I laughed and demonstrated that it's customary (in fact, required) for C.U.P.S. members to take a honking big dollop of the whipped cream and stir it into their coffee.

Her face lit up and she put a little whipped cream in her cup.

More.

Well, okay....if you INSIST...

We do.

And if you drink the coffee down, making more room in the cup, you really should add more whipped cream.  It would be rude not to.

(You really should've seen the look on her face.  It was priceless!)

Anne brought Peet's Coffee for us!

Don't tell her husband.

It's from his special stash, I think.  A small price to pay for his wife's sanity, wouldn't you say?

This is Everett and he's my boy, now.

The reason he's my boy now is because I was able to intercept a dry old saltine cracker that was handed to him, cover it with the previously exalted whipped cream, and present it to his pudgy little hand.

At first, he was unsure.  It felt sorta funny.

Then he put it carefully to his lips and got the very same look of rapture that his mom had shown us over the whipped cream in her coffee! The EXACT same look!

We couldn't stop laughing! Especially because he kept looking at his mom, waiting for her to take it away.

He couldn't stop with just one.

Moments later, after Gwennie had been dragged from the chocolate scone and Everett from the whipped cream, they joined Ari for......goldfish. A bit of a letdown, but they still made a party of it.

Ari started pulverizing the goldfish moments after this picture was taken, much to her mother's dismay...

Looking for the whipped cream to dip the goldfish in....

There's a lot of ambition in this picture....

(The only one without one of them in motion and blurry.)

Aren't they dolls?

Kissing cheeks; that's what these girls sport.

The "big kids" busily coloring.

It's so funny to have Angus and Allie be considered the big kids!

They were very serious about it, though.

Discussions about jewelry,

guns,

and the mysteries of those creatures we call husbands.

We didn't come up with a lot of profound ideas, but sanity was restored to our little group. 

Group pictures are SO hard to get!

Say, "Cream!"

Death By Chocolate Scones

(makes 12, serves 4)

9 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/4 cup cocoa

1/2 cup sugar

2 2/3 cups flour

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

6 T cold butter (NOT margarine)

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Using a food processor, chop half the chocolate chips up into small pieces.

In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients, then add to the chopped chocolate.

Using a pastry cutter or two knives, cut in the cold butter.  When the mixture resembles cornmeal, add in the rest of the unchopped chocolate chips. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg and the milk.

Slowly add the milk mix to the dry ingredients and stir to combine until evenly moist.

Turn out onto an ungreased baking sheet and pat into a circle about 1/2 inch thick, and score dough evenly into 12 sections.

Bake 12-15 minutes.

Cinnamon Whipped Cream

(For coffee and, if there's any left over, the scones...)

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1/4 cup (adjust if you wish...this is not set in stone) powdered sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Toss together in large mixing bowl and beat with mixer until good peaks form. Do not overbeat or you'll have cinnamon butter, which is still glorious for the scones but less so for the coffee.

Vacationing in Anaconda

I didn't take many pictures on vacation, which is odd, considering I take pictures at home of things like little hands mounding crumbs on the counter or the dog in repose. But I was too busy participating, I guess.  That and it was impossible to haul a Canon of that size to the pool!

So you get a few snapshots.
Here you go:

The Sweet Palace in Phillipsburg, Motana....28 different varieties of fudge shown here, 21 varieties of hand made caramels that you DON'T see here, because they are in my take-home bag.  Oh, I left a couple...caramels, not varieties.

If you are little and blonde, with sweet blue eyes, you get samples of the fudge. Generous samples. If you are tall and blondish-brown, with baggy hazel eyes that show the miles, you have to pay for the "generous sample."

Walls lined with every type of candy you can imagine! This is the sugar-free wall....if you can imagine.

Look at the face on the boy! He's got a generous free sample of fudge and he cannot believe his good fortune!

Phillipsburg has the most amazing school playground I've ever seen in my life.  Ever. It's constructed like a little mining town! The Farmer and I stood there with our mouths open, but the kids wasted no time in tearing in...

Look at this!  And the white bulk you see behind the storefronts is a mountain climbing wall, painted beautifully. 

Checking on the design and construction, gears rolling....

This is the kind of detail I'm talking about.  Isn't that amazing?

Even a mine shaft to slide down.

The next few pictures are for Rosie O. 

After about 7 minutes on the playground, Maggie had to go to the bathroom.  Instead of loading up and driving BACK into town, I told her we'd look in the school, which happens to be a magnificent building that I wanted to snoop around anyway. 

I couldn't get a good picture of the whole building, so here's a picture of a picture.

I haven't done the research as to when it was built, but oh my! what a gorgeous place to go to school.  Maggie wanted to stay and go to school there, and I made friends with the new secretary, just in case they needed someone to help in the office.  We'd have lived in that school.

It's hard to get the architectural detail, but look at the curved entry from the stairwell.  And all the wainscot.  And the hardwood floors a-gleaming.  *sigh*

Actual little wood stove, in the corner of the foyer.  Can you believe that?!

Love it. 

Scrollwork on the outside.

If you go back and look at the first picture, you'll see it's the same.

And funky little grates, hung randomly. 

Had to leave Phillipsburg, finally, and drove back to Anaconda via the Pintler Scenic Route.

(Every path is a scenic route in western Montana.)

The Farmer is hanging on to the barnacles, tightly. 

I took my shoes off, so I had grip with my toes, if you can believe that!

I'm always amazed at how trees will grow in the most inhospitable places on their own, and die in nice cultivated soil.....

The car on the road gives perspective to the rocks all around us.

I got a dizzy sort of feeling with the angles of the rocks.

We stopped at Georgetown Lake, to stretch our legs and puddle around in the water.

The fish were rising like everything, to my despair.  I had 6 new flies in the car, but no pole. *SOB*

It was still beautiful.

This was so intriguing to me....tiny minnow shadows! That's what the black things are...you can barely make out the little greyish brown fish.

Looking for flotsam and jetsam and creepycrawlies to take home in a water bottle.

I think they found something....

A leach! We didn't bring him home.

A "she-shell"! We DID tote that back across the beautiful state of Montana.

When we got back to the condo, we inspected the loot.

$75 worth of candy!

That's horrific, really, but as the Farmer kept pointing out, some of it we bought to share.

(Yeah...the sugar-free stuff....)

Slurp...

and Crunch.

Eating pizza with our friends, the Bray family. Shannon and the kids came to swim with us on the last night, and we had a GREAT time.  But by the time we got to pizza, everyone was so frazzled!

No pictures of Museum of the Rockies or the Lewis and Clark caverns, but I'll tell you more in another post. 

Did you make it?

Poor brave soul!

That was a LONG photo essay....

Before and After

Maggie got a haircut on our way to vacation in Anaconda! She's been longing for one and I've stubbornly been holding out, because I love her wild, blonde hair that seems to suit her personality.  However, I do NOT love fighting with her every day about combing it.  And an all-pool vacation would've probably done our tenuous relationship in....so she got it cut.  And she chose the style and length. 

Before:

After!

She loves it! Maggie kept reaching back to her hair and commenting, "STILL no tangles, Mom."

And we had a very nice vacation, with no fighting about hair.

Family Vacation: Day Two

That's right.

You missed Day 1. 

It was nothing special, really.  We packed, pouring Tylenol to the boy to keep his fever down (the flu), stuffed bags, groceries and assorted sundry articles that SEEM necessary at home.

Then we drove 8 hours (the actual distance is being debated right now...and the road map is being consulted....), stopping several times to eat and unkink. 

In Billings, we went to the mall and got Maggie's hair cut.  We are incredible hicks from the sticks and the mall nearly did us in.  It was the last day of Montana Fair, e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y was in town, and it would seem, in the mall.

So, catching up to Day Two:

Here we are, in a condo that my in-laws very generously gifted us for the week, and we are trying to relax.  We're not very good at it. 
But I'll tell you what we ARE good at, and that's spending hours in the pool that's heated by natural hot springs.  So far, we've been down there twice, for a couple hours each time, and we're planning on making one more trip this evening.  Angus still has a sorta fever, but he's crazy for the waterslide.  So we give him Tylenol, strap on his little life vest and away he goes! Maggie is thrilled with her new bobbed hair, because it doesn't tangle. 

It's cool, cloudy and breezy....not good for working on my tan. But it's great for keeping the condo cool and we're enjoying the change from 97 degrees in Cohagen. 

Tomorrow, we're headed for Bozeman and Museum of the Rockies! Maggie is taking them some bones.  She's quite sure they're dinosaur bones and won't be dissuaded. 
I'm pretty sure they're Beefasaurus, but we'll see...

There won't be pictures until the end of vacation, because I forgot the cord to download them. 
Drats. 

Bulletins will ensue as events warrant.... 

It's my new passion...

I know.
It's hard to keep up.

Work with me.

My friend (and board certified small animal internist) Shannon came to visit this spring....brought her kids and parents to the ranch....and a bag of Bequet caramels. http://bequetconfections.com/products.html

Oh. My. Goodness.

I always thought I was a chocolate girl...dark, dark chocolate. But now I know that I'm really a caramel girl at heart. Not the hard old Brachs cellophane wrapped square caramels that you have to unwrap for caramel apples. 

REAL caramel.
Soft, creamy, melty golden caramel. 
With sea salt.
Or chipotle pepper.
Or butterscotch flavored.

And I love caramel stroopwafels....the Dutch caramel cookie waffles made in Billings, Montana. http://www.caramelcookiewaffles.com/  Set one of those babies on top of your coffee mug to melt the caramel between the cookies and be ready to swoon.  I'm entirely serious. 

Now, I'm still quite fond of dark chocolate, mind you.  But I'd walk right past it if there was a Bequet caramel a mile in the distance....

 

You be the judge....

...if you dare!

There's a verse in the Bible that says, "Judge not, lest ye be judged."

I think it was referring to 4-H judges at county fairs.

(And I'm pretty sure the judge gets judged, just so you know. I felt like I was walking around the fairgrounds all weekend with a bullseye on my back...)

This year, I had the dubious privilege of being the 4-H Foods and Photography judge at our little county fair.  Since I love both food AND photography, I jumped at the opportunity when asked! I really should've talked to the last judge before committing, but now I know he's probably undergoing diabetes testing as a result of judging the foods last year.  Either that, or in the 4-H Witness Protection Program, hiding from disgruntled parents.

Doesn't it sound like the perfect gig? Tasting the best foods the kids can prepare and talking with them; looking at photos and discussing aperature value and composition.  And you all know how I like to visit.  Perfect.

When I showed up, there really weren't a lot of entries in, yet.  I looked at the list of exhibitors and counted about 14 kids, looked at the modest row of foods and thought, "YES! This is going to be FUN."

There was only one photography project in, at that point. Looking good; looking real good.

Now, I want to tell you a little something about 4-H foods.  Every third plate will have banana bread or brownies on it. I'm not joking.  About every fifth plate will have chocolate chip cookies. And the reason for these entries is that they are almost bulletproof.  Just about anyone can turn out a pan of brownies that are worthy of fair entry...even if you burn the edges, you can cut some out of the center and have a decent showing. 

The other thing is that I'm a firm believer that you can't judge a food without tasting it and feeling the texture in your mouth.  Perhaps some people can, but I fail to see how you can gauge quality by appearance and smell, and the density when you cut into it.  You could have a really great looking pie, but if you forgot the sugar, the only way to know that is by tasting it. Right?

I was a thorough judge.

I was a sick judge.

It turns out that most kids don't bring in their food entries until the very last minute, so it can be uber-fresh. In fact, some of the entries were still warm. The longer I judged, the longer the row of brownies and banana bread got! I wasn't making a dent. Quite to the contrary; I was creating a void on the counter for them to fill with twice the entries! By noon, the counter was groaning with food and so was I.  I was relieved to wander to the cookshack for my complimentary sandwich and chips....I was dying for protein!

I thought the afternoon was going to be a bit easier, having only about 5 kids to judge.

No. It was not.

They save the best for last.

Three little over-achievers each entered something like 12 food items, EACH!

I tried to recruit Mike G. as a taster for me, but apparently he's been suckered into that gig before and declined, not so politely.  (Later that afternoon, I caught him visiting with the judge for industrial arts and smirking in my direction...)(That's just mean.)

I want to tell you all something, though: there are a lot of good cooks in the younger generation, and I'm happy about that.  These kids can really knock out the baked goods and when questioned, most of them know a great deal about the process.  I had a superlative taste of apple pie, a bite of coffee cake that made me roll my eyes with joy and (this is my personal purple ribbon choice) homemade chocolate covered cherries that were the perfection of confection. 

The photography was really my favorite part.

There were only three projects entered, each with about 10-12 photos.  I worry that I was too hard on them, asking technical questions and what they would change to get different effects or exposures. These three girls really had some great photos, but the one that blew me away was the girl who played with special effects and had a little old point and shoot camera that she couldn't adjust any of the values with.  She had to work with her eyes and the time of day, the shadows and the angles, without the ability to adjust settings on her camera.  We talked a long while, and I walked away hoping she'd continue with the hobby. Her mom caught me in the grocery store yesterday afternoon and said the girl was all excited about her photography, again, and is thinking she may need a better camera! That's cool.

My clerk, Debbie was invaluable and when we got done with the whole blessed event, she told the extension secretary that we'd do it again next year. Bless her efficient little heart.  (I will take any tasting volunteers who offer.....Mike.) (No, not YOU, Mike G.....the other Mike...Mike W.  The one who won't stand in the corner and snicker at me in my time of need.)(Well, he might, but not during a 4-H foods crisis.)

A Good Cry

This is peculiar to women, I think; needing to have a good cry to clean out their hearts and minds.  When I've mentioned having a good cry to a man...ANY man....they are completely baffled as to how "crying" and "good" go together at all.  Crying is bad! Beer is good! Crying over your beer is NOT good, but it makes for a pretty decent country song.

My Gramps used to tell me about his sisters loving terribly tragic songs. He said they'd beg for a heart wrenching song, then weep as it was being sung! It amused him, but he didn't seem to understand WHY they'd ever want to cry like that. Must be a woman thing.... 

This morning, I had a good cry. 

Have you seen the movie, "Becoming Jane"?

It's a story of impossible love. Two spirited, intelligent, passionate people who are devoted to their families fall in love and struggle with doing the right thing.  I KNOW at the beginning that they will absolutely not be allowed to be together, happily ever after. I KNOW this! Everyone knows this.  And I want them to do the right thing, which is to remain loyal to the many people who depend on and love them.  But there's a part of me that really sort of wishes they could have followed through on the plan to run away and be together. I ache for them, for the price they'd pay on either side of that decision. What really put me over the edge was that Mr. LaFroy never stopped loving Jane. Ever. At the end of the story, they have a chance meeting and he introduces his oldest daughter to her....the daughter he named Jane.

It's just the ticket for producing a good cry.

 Now that I have my heart and head sufficiently purged of all the junk that has been cluttering them up for a couple months, I can start on school board business. If I cry over that, however, it won't be good. And I won't have a beer.

*For the men who read this blog (whether you admit it or not), I'll try not to make it a habit of writing about mushy feelings.  It's football season, you know, and there will be some grid-iron posts forthcoming...