Chocolate soufflé!

The other night I made these again, they used to be a weekly thing but fell out of the rotation when I wasn’t around my supply of eggs anymore. So since I had eggs for a while, here they are again!!

They almost won a chocolate throw-down three years ago. So close.
But I’m not bitter or anything.

The Recipe: from Julia Childs Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

• 7oz semisweet chocolate
• 1/3 cup strong coffee
• 1/2 Tb. butter.
• 1/3 cup flour
• 2 cups milk
• 3Tb butter
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 Tb vanilla
• 6 egg whites
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup sugar

Use the 1/2 tb butter to grease the dish/dishes for the soufflé

Melt the chocolate with the coffee, you can use a double boiler or I just did it in the microwave.

Put the flour in a pan, slowly  whisk in the milk, then add 3 Tb butter and bring to boil for 2 minutes.

Meanwhile, Beat the egg whites and salt until soft peaks are formed, then beat in the sugar until the peaks are stiff and shiny.

Beat the egg yolks into the hot flour/milk mixture one at a time, then add the vanilla and the melted chocolate:

Then fold the chocolate mixture into the egg  whites. Then pour into the mold/molds:

Drop the temperature of the oven down to 375 and back for 30-45 minutes depending on size.

Serve immediately or they will start to collapse and not look as impressive. This will happen in a matter of seconds, see?

Additions:

• Add a few Tb’s or so of booze into the folding mixture. Some good options: cocoa, raspberry, cherry, orange, etc.

Hitching Day: Part 3

This will be the last post of the wedding, except for maybe a list and posts on the things that we DIY’d and what I found that worked or didn’t work.

So we are off to the receiving line and the reception:

And food and drink:

Dancing, family, and fun!

And all the other wedding stuff :]

And finally, we leave:

So long… and I hope you enjoy our wedding story :]

Hitching Day: Part 2

This will be the ceremony!! Starting at the beginning :] I didn’t get to see any of it until we got pictures, it was fun to see what all my planning looked like all put together.

Signing the Guest Slabs :]

Then comes the real shebang, starting with the seating of the grandparents and parents

:]

Then the Bridal Processional:

Duh, Duh Duh Duh….

The awesome vows we (I) wrote, the rings, and yea… he sang a song to me :]

And a kiss to seal it forever:

Introducing for the first time Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Fogarty :}

And exit stage front.

Here’re the Vows:

I, Hannah, take you Matthew to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, to cry on and laugh with, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, during harvest and planting, during famine, drought, and flooding, during calving and weaning, though dirt and mud. I promise to love you, be honest with you, be faithful to you, and cherish you till death do us part.

I, Matthew, take you Hannah to my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, to laugh with and to hold you while you cry, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, through cold meals and dirty dishes, when you bring animals into the house, when you bring me lunch to the field. I promise to love you, be honest with you, be faithful to you, and cherish you till death do us part.

My Brother, Henry, did this reading and choked up, making my sister and I both cry.

1 Corinthians 13:4–8a

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not
proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it
keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the
truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love
never fails … (NIV)

And my Father-in-law did this reading;

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. (NIV)

It was my perfect wedding!! Short, sweet, and heartfelt.

A Day in the Life of this Nursing Student

Yesterday was a pretty typical day for me during school.

I rolled out of bed at 700, got dressed and coffee and was out the door by 0730.
Got to school and went to the lab for an hour-ish.
0900-1310 classes.
First we learned about dysrhythmias, then we had a math review, and then we watched videos on neuro assessments and chest drains. Super confusing and pretty crazy.

1330: Home at last. Except it’s not relaxing… because this is what is waiting at home for me:

In the front yard.

Wrong side of the fence

Still the wrong side of the fence

1430: Got him in, finally. Fed them some grain to hopefully keep him in.

1500: start homework and watching Rules of Engagement on Netflix, only Netflix is having a hard time loading so it’s a watch 5 minutes and 15 minutes of loading time.
1600: pull out chicken to thaw for dinner, continue homework.
1624: Mom calls.
1700: Text Matt and ask him to bring home wine to go with dinner.
1745: throw chicken, potatoes, onions, and garlic in oven.
1830: Matt home. Open wine, start drinking.
1845: Eat dinner and start watching LotR (we were halfway through two towers, it takes us two evenings to get through one movie).
1930: LotR is over. Make next drink (Mt. Dew and vodka) and head to bed.
1945: attempt to watch Numbers on Netflix.
2000: Give up and try to start the next LotR, but the computer needs updated… so we give up on that also.
2010: Go to sleep. What old farts we are.

Hitching Day: Part 1

This will be the pre-wedding pictures :] There are just so many pictures and things to get through, I think this will be a three part post! Stay tuned for the ceremony and the reception!
The day started with us all dragging and looking like this:

What a lovely bunch.

We started getting ready at 830? 9? somewhere in there :] We scheduled pictures to start at 10, to give us three hours of pictures to end up being done at 1-ish to make sure I could go hide while all the guests arrived.

Getting my hair done!

Group hair and makeup!

Then we did formals with Matt and I for a half hour to an hour:

The First Look:

And Pictures Together:

Yea, I cried a lot.

Sillyness!

And then we went into Bridal Party Pictures:

And straight into family pictures:

After family pictures we rapped it up fairly fast. Doing a few that we had forgot about as we went back over the list we made with the photographer! We were done by 1 pm and I was able to go into an air conditioned room and guzzle some water before the guests arrived!
Three hours may sound like a long time, but it flew by! We had an amazing photographer and we had a great time taking the pictures!
You only get married once, get good pictures.

New Years :]

I love New Years Eve!! Growing up we would have big family parties with all our mom’s cousin’s and tons of food!! Us kids would run around the house like crazy people, the adults played lots of charades, for 2000 my uncle and a cousin flipped the breaker to the whole house during the countdown. It was a great time!

For the last few years we haven’t done much, but last year we came to Idaho and had the best party in a long time!! We got to stay up playing games with my mom, step-dad, siblings, and some of their friends that came to celebrate. This year we are doing about the same thing!

Matt and Scott fixed a table:

The dogs played together:

We watched embarrassing home videos (Love you Henry!):

Made New Drinks and showed Mom a favorite of mine:

Tried to get Tate to wake up Matt:

He just went to sleep with him! Little traitor!

and we played tons of games, such as this game of diving darts! There was a mattress on the ground that was used to dive on to!

And here’s a video of diving darts:

And some pictures from my mom on her blog:

http://appleannie4969.com/2014/01/05/scenes-from-our-idaho-celebration/#comment-100

Peter bakes.

My cousin came over for a while on his last day in Walla Walla and he wanted to bake something, so he looked in a few cook books and picked a recipe from a Jamie Oliver cookbook.

It was supposed to be pudding, but it turned out like a cobbler. A very yummy cobbler, but not the pudding we were expecting. It was gone in one sitting for three of us!

We used peaches that I had frozen this summer and eggs that we got from house sitting for friends with chickens!

Yum yum!!

2014 Resolutions!

There are many things on my to-do list this year! So I’m going to put them here to hold myself a little more accountable, and just to be able to look back next year and see what I did accomplish :]

1. Get Healthy. For me this means completing the Jillian Michaels 30 days video I got at Costco. Making more healthy meals. And just being more active in general. Matt really wants to start doing volleyball with a church group he used to be involved with.

2. Graduate Nursing School. June 2014!!!! Graduation is on the 14th or 15th… and I will be there and be pinned as a nurse!

3. Pass my Nursing Boards, the first time preferably.

4. Get a Job. I’m not aiming high on this one, a nursing home will do.

5. Start my BSN program through WSU in the fall.

6. Make progress with the house, keep it semi-clean, organize it, decorate it… etc. as I have time and money to do the things that need done to it.

7. Finish the Bible in a Year that I started with https://www.facebook.com/groups/556920494397222/ this Facebook group, run by a friend of mine.

And a few resolutions that aren’t a new year thing:
1. Work on my relationship with my husband, make sure that while I do all these things on my list he still feels like he is number one.

2. Be happy with what I have.

3. Be a happier person in general, less rule and list oriented and keep calm when things deviate from my daily task list.

I will check back on this list periodically and re-orient myself to the goals and plans I have for this year. Hopefully next year I can make new goals as I should have completed this list :]

Christmas Traditions

Matt and I both have families that live close to us and this first Christmas together has been a bit of a struggle to figure out how to divide up our Christmas time. We are hoping that it will get easier as time goes on and we get into a groove and get it all figured out. :] Realistically we understand that we will not be able to spend every Christmas with both families, but we can dream.

Anyway, here’s some traditions that we still are doing that started when both of us were kids and we are so happy we get to continue them.

Bowling and Ice Skating, have been a present to all of us kids from my Aunt and Uncle for years now and we love being able to go out and do it as a family!! Mostly we spent a lot of time with my family this year!! It was so much fun!

Happy again!

Look everyone, Uncle Sam is holding me!! (watch me spit up on him!)

Teaching her phones early

Not amused.

Bowling and so happy!!

Uncle Sam’s ugly sweater!

Cousin Pile!

Kitchen Sink Time!

Making funny faces!

always happy!

Siblings!!

Water stops the screaming!

Little Candy Cane

Helen Bowling!

Teaching her the ukulele!

Matt’s family tradition that is his favorite is opening presents with his whole family Christmas Eve. We were lucky enough to be able to do it this year again!

We are trying to figure out how we can keep the whole family involved with Christmas and make new traditions of our own, especially when start having our own kids. There are things that I really miss doing with my family (waffles and sausage and church on Christmas eve, mainly) and he misses doing Christmas dinner with his family.

If you have had any luck or problems with Christmas and family time, do you have any words of wisdom, advice, or don’t do what we did stories?