meringue and some chocolate sauce for the ice cream

sunday i attempted to make some of my mom's chocolate sauce. it turned out ok. i think that it could use a little work but it was still good. in a failed attempt i tried to make some meringue. i did 2 batches and the first one i left in the oven too long, thinking that is what would make it hard. instead i over cooked it, plus there was not enough sugar in there. the second batch was better, not cooked as long, but should have come out a little earlier. was sweet enough but there was something missing, not an ingredient but i did something wrong because it did not turn out the way i would have liked it to.

pinkberry

so when the house is foreclosed, cars have been impounded, and went we take up residence behind a local strip mall we will probably find a way to make it to pinkberry. we love this place, frozen yogurt. the idea is simple, fresh fruit and plain frozen yogurt. imagine that, the kids even like it. sweet and a little bit of tartness from the yogurt. so far they are only in CA and NY but if you get the chance to visit one then we highly recommend it.
there is a redberry down in san diego that we stopped by, same concept. they give you the yogurt and you can choose your own toppings from the toppings buffet, as much as you want. this was intended to be a one time trip to the toppings but when makenzie realized that they had maraschino cherries she wanted to reload after each spoonful.

a little zest on it

it is no small secret that we like food in our house. in both of our families there is never a shortage of food at any family gathering. there is food out there that you can throw in the nuker, pre-made, fast food, and so on, or there is stuff that you can make. downside is it takes some time, usually some preparing, purchasing the right ingredients, and in the end the clean up. then after you make it you still have to work out the kinks. in the end hopefully you have a creation of your own (or from a recipe) that you can enjoy. it reminds me of ratatouille to some extent. of the both of us i would say i am a little more adventurous when it comes to food, "if you try it once it can't kill you, can it." cherisse is good about eating healthy and not eating stuff that is going to upset tessa. makenzie and ethan are a little more on the picky side of food. makenzie is a little more apt to eat something foreign when she is not with us. tessa only likes one type of comida at the moment. you would think from the size of her that she was eating bon bons when we are all asleep. i was not a big vegetable person until my mission.
last night, cherisse went out with some friends and took tessa, so i decided to make something that i saw on the food network. i made these eggs in a basket things that makenzie and ethan helped me with. they cracked some eggs, mixed up the filling and were the first to taste them. the night before i made some biscotti, my second time making it and i still need to figure out how to get the centers harder. ethan was more interested in the biscotti with chocolate than the savory egg breakfast cups. in fact the cookie remained after he licked the chocolate to death.e, only lately makenzie has been a little more open to trying things, better stated taste things. ethan follows the example of his older sister so all rests on makenzie's shoulders.
my favorite kitchen tool has to be the microplane. a little lime zest in the crepes, some orange zest in the biscotti and then some in the chocolate too.

happy

this should have been posted at the beginning of the month and got lost.
so over this weekend (first weekend in sept.) i did a few things that i have never done before.

i went out early Saturday morning with ethan and picked up the baseboard for the downstairs. that was a small feat loading it onto the expedition and then driving it home with all of those inland empire wind gusts. 16 foot long pieces hanging off of the back and over the hood makes it quite the experience. it was only like 100+ degrees and i did have to stop once to adjust and make sure that the load would make it home. it made it and ethan took a nap on the way home. mistake that i made was to start painting it, during the broiler type heat outside. that did not last very long as the paint was setting before i could get to the end. that put a quick stop to that.
since that was put on hold i decided to tackle the coolant leak that has been happening on the Passat for the last couple of weeks. it has been slow and with the help of a friend i found out that it was coming from the back of the engine. on Friday, i ran it over to pep boys and they told me where it was and that for $350 i could get it fixed. cheapskate kicked in and i picked up the and drove right over to the dealership. there i picked up the parts. Saturday after baking on some paint with the baseboards i took on the German car. it took me a while to figure out how to get to the old part to take it off. i got all of the fluid drained and then got the part finally attached. only one problem was that the one little $2.87 washer needed to be replaced. i tried to use the old one and it ended up leaking. that meant that i would not be able to replace it until Tuesday, thanks to Labor day. so early Wednesday morning the rubber washer was installed and the system tested and all is well. knock on wood.
Sunday night i decided that i wanted to make something, cook something, bake something. so i cracked open the cookbook . i wanted to make a quiche but ended up making a soufflé. i did not have all of the ingredients but improvised. makenzie would have liked it but she was turned off by "the green stuff." note to self not to add parsley next time.

breaking bread

so i have been thinking that we might need to start a little site for all of the food. it can be a place to share recipes. not all of us a master chefs from the Gordon Ramsey school of fine cooking. so what i am going to do is create a link in the next little while where we can put on there treats that we like or stuff we just wanna share with each other. so anything doing with food please get your email fingers ready to send it my way so that we can put it on this new break off from heathfield lane. also it is going to be a place for requests of foods and creations that we had when we were younger or stuff from the last get together.