Cookies and Cakes

My friend Rachael bakes the best cookies.  She sent some to us one day and they are simply the most gorgeous and scrumptious decorated sugar cookies that have ever existed.

Just look at all those cute, yummy bunnies! When I tasted these cookies I immediately thought of my mom, who loves sugar cookies. This year for Christmas, Rachael was kind enough to send a beautiful batch of sugar cookies to my mom.

The cookies were such a hit that I wanted to send her a special thank you. Rachael loves baking and decorating cakes, so I thought this cake pattern from Bee in My Bonnet would be perfect. I cut the pieces awhile ago when my sewing machine was in the shop.

I started by decorating the cake.

Then there's the cake stand with a little bow.

Cake quilt!

I thought this one could use some extra special binding.

With ric-rac! Just look how cute!

Here it is all finished!

Almost good enough to eat! Thanks again to Rachael for the amazing cookies!

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Hometown Food Weekend

Being a transplant is an amazing life. You leave your hometown and you can go literally wherever life takes you.  There are things you miss though like family, friends, and favorite haunts.

What I also really miss from Springfield, MO is the food--the trashy, faux ethnic food that I grew up eating.  That's why I decided that one weekend in September, I would recreate my three most favorite dishes, the ones I miss the most, here in CA.

1.  The Mexican Villa Burrito Enchilada Style (including the complimentary MV chips and dip):

Mexican Villa is a Springfield chain, not authentic by any stretch of the imagination (which I completely came to terms with when I looked over the copy cat recipes I found online) but hearty and yummy all the same.



Now, the burrito enchilada style is a mammoth burrito stuffed with refried beans, seasoned ground beef, and cheese served drowning in MV signature enchilada sauce and topped with shredded iceberg lettuce, diced tomatoes, and (you guessed it) more cheese.  Here's the recipe I started from (though I never use low-fat cheese and I adjusted the seasoning until I felt I had it just right.)  Here's what we served on the first evening of SGF Food Weekend!

It's much more appealing than it might look in this picture, though the original would be served with approximately 8 zillion more cups of sauce.

For the chips, we used the sauces that you can buy online (eep!) and basically turned a blind eye to the alarming amounts of sugar and preservatives in them.

You basically create your own mix from Sweet, Mild, and Hot.  Sweet and Mild are both Sweet and even Eddy agrees that Hot is freaking hot.  Then insert chips.

2.  Springfield Style Cashew Chicken:

Night two was Springfield style cashew chicken, which was invented at Leong's Asian Diner, and which is beginning to have a national reputation (odd as that may seem.)  It's arguably the most Americanized Chinese food available and it's a total phenomenon.  This is the recipe we worked from, though there really isn't much variation among the recipes you can find online.  Eddy helped this time.

And here it is all plated up.

As you can see, one of the advantages of making your own cashew chicken at home is that you can have as many green onions and cashews as you please (we prefer LOTS!)

3.  Andy's Frozen Custard Pretzel Caramel Crunch:

We saved one of my favorites for the finale of our weekend of Springfield eats--the pretzel caramel crunch from Andy's Frozen Custard.

Now, I'm going to be real about frozen custard that is not from Andy's.  I've never found one that is quite as thick or flavorful.  Even though I will always have a soft spot for my beloved Ted Drewe's in St. Louis, there's just nothing like Andy's.

The pretzel caramel crunch is simple, but ingenious.  It's just vanilla custard, caramel, and pretzels.  That's it.  But it's salty and sweet and cold and crunchy and it's basically heaven.

The good news is that we do have a favorite custard place here in CA called Campbell's Creamery.  Now, of course they have caramel, but no custard joint I've ever experienced has pretzels, so we just brought our own.

Rumor has it that a just a couple of days after this photo was taken we returned to the scene of the crime to polish off the second half of the bag of pretzels we bought along with some more caramel and vanilla custard.  Allegedly.

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Giraffes Heart Crackers

Recently I had a chance to visit the Dickerson Park Zoo with my mom.  It had been years since I had visited that zoo and it was amazing to see how much had changed (and how much hadn't!)  We saw some muggle animals

and some magical animals.

We tried on masks at the gift store (of course!)

But the best part ever was feeding the giraffes. Giraffes heart crackers.

Apparently very much.

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The Schlitterbahn of My Childhood

When I was a kid, I loved White Water. I even worked there one summer. While we were home we introduced Eddy to this Branson "treasure."

I say "treasure" because it really wasn't all I remembered and more. You can never go home, people!

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Backyard Safari

We decided to take a bit of a nature walk while we were with my parents.

We all donned embarrassing outfits

and after only about 15 minutes of picking through stickers we were all woefully covered with burs.

Everyone except Norman, that is.

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Dr. Scott, Baboon and a Tandem

Dr. Scott took a road trip this summer to visit my parents.

Also we took the baboon. Oh, and the tandem bike. Oh and, like, a whole lot of other stuff. On the way, we stopped at the Natural Bridge in AR.

Norman thought it was awesome, probably because he could (finally) get out of the car.

Also, there was this.

Also this.

You're welcome.

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Home for Xmas in February

Eddy recently had to travel to KU for work and that's just a hop, skip and a jump from Ozark, MO, where the Cobbs live.  We headed on over to have some post-Xmas fun.

We did the usual playing with the dogs (Georgia and Stewie).

And we watched the Super Bowl at Metro with my parents.

We also visited our beloved Mud House.  Double punch Sundays, baby!

And we ate some other stuffs.  You know, like Andy's Frozen Custard.

Mmm...  Ozark...

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New Year's Eve!

We spent New Year's Eve at Flo then Metropolitan Bar and Grill with my parents.

The new year was rung in by 80s tribute band Members Only.

I went to high school with a couple of these guys. Awesome. Eddy did a fair amount of dancing.

And I did some impersonations of rabbits during the evening.

Needless to say, we were in desperate need of grilled cheeses when we made our way home.

The End
(of our Xmas in the Ozarks: A Four-Part Mini-Series)

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