This is another account of my misfortune. Y'all usually love these.

I remember Spring Break of 2006 like it was yesterday.  I had just found a puppy sitting next to my car at college that I was absolutely keeping, but when I headed to Houston to fly out for vacation with my family, my dreams were shot and I had to give the puppy away.  This is typically where my mom comments anonymously.

Anyway, we left for an 8 day cruise in the Caribbean where I met 4 lovely ladies from the north east.  Lafayette College to be exact.  Any leopards out there??

But who knew that we would be friends for years, and that I would be on my way to Kristan's wedding this weekend in New Jersey. 

The only hitch in getting there, thankfully, was that our car service reservation was messed up.  We got a cab for cheaper and were good to go.

It. was. the. best wedding I have ever been too, besides my own.  THE BEST BAND ever.  I told Devin I want them at our 30 year anniversary party.  He picked up their card.  They were incredible.  The bride was stunning.  A girl jumped on my foot with spike heels and I didn't even care that much!  I should note that I do in fact care now...my foot feels like this guy crushed it in his fist.  And the band asked me to play with them.  And gave me a set of drumsticks.  Again, the best wedding ever.

Sunday morning our car service picked us up right on time and we headed to the airport with hours to spare, just to be safe.  We had an hour layover in Atlanta which was much better than the 14 minutes we had on our way up to the Garden state.

When we got to the gate, the attendant was begging for volunteers to give up their seats and take some free flight and food vouchers.  I was first at the counter, but she advised me not to do so because it was very unlikely that we would get on a later connection from Atlanta to Houston.  If. she. only. knew. For whatever reason, our seat assignments did not make it on our boarding pass for this flight, even though it did for every other flight over the weekend, so Devin and I ended up on the very back row (row 38 to be exact).  The rain in Newark delayed our flight 40 minutes leaving us with a small pillow of time between our flights, but we knew we could make it if the attendant helped us get off of the plane quickly.  She had no interest in doing so, but honestly it didn't matter because when we landed in Atlanta. there were mechanical issues and they didnt unlock the door for 15 minutes.  If you're keeping track, that leaves us about 90 seconds to get from the back of this mother of a plan to the gate 2 doors down.  You don't have to be brilliant to assume that didn't happen.

I was laughing.  Of course.  There wasn't an employee in sight.  The plane had obviously left early, even if it was just a few minutes.  Devin's first missed flight.  We won't talk about my record here.

So we went and stood in line at the, and I do not exaggerate here, "Did you miss your flight?" counter.  I have never in my life seen this in an airport.  The line was from here to kingdom come.  Huge red flag.  I got on the phone at one of the booths while Devin waited for a real live person where the lady told me she could only get me on the next day's flight.  Ask me if she cared that Devin and I had to be at work when the ever lovin plane took off!  No.  She did not.  And maybe I can empathize 1/20th after working as an advocate in a hospital for 4 years, but when I asked her if there were ANY flights in the entire NATION that would eventually get us to Houston that night, she giggled and said no.  Not one.  We walked away with food vouchers and a ticket for the 8pm flight...on stand by.  Never a good sign except 2 different employees told us it was pretty much a guarantee as there were plenty of seats on the plane.

We walked the entire concourse looking for decent food, and by decent I mean anything that is not dipped and fried or greased or lathered in butter.  We found the most amazing airport restaurant I have ever laid eyes on.  That would be Buckhead Books.  It is most definitely a cafe smack in the middle of a book shop.  I think I dreamed about this once when I was reading a lot of Harry Potter.

A delicious meal
this picture

and 3.5 hours later, we were ready to board the 8pm flight.

Jokes on us.  Remember that guarantee I told you about from the 2 employees?  Shmarantee.  Because the flight before this flight before this flight before this flight was delayed due to crappy airplanes, our seats were given to the people who needed them.

WHAT AM I?!  CHOPPED LIVER???

I was laughing.  Again.  We went back to the "Did you miss your flight?" counter where the line was even longer and we stood behind an elderly man and his child who reminded me of the children Jamie Oliver targets in Food Revolution.  He was throwing a fit on the ground screaming CACA CACA CACA and punching himself.  When we got to the front and the attendant asked if anyone spoke Spanish, I did not volunteer, but I did take the opportunity to mess with the kid in Spanish while his grandpa was busy.  I HAD HAD A LONG DAY TOO.

The same lady at the counter helped us, you know, the one who gave us the guarantee, and tried to convince us to take the 10:20pm stand by flight.  At this point in time, I thought it would be best to point out the irony that if we had taken the free flight vouchers, we would be in the exact same spot, but we would have free flights!  We laughed at the stand by and asked for the hotel vouchers.

Best Western deluxe.  Rude staff.  Full Shuttle.  Cab with 2 strangers.

We checked in for our 7:30am flight, and they were begging for volunteers to take $600 vouchers and wait for the 4:00 flight.  I would be a big fat liar if I told you we didn't think about it 5 times.

We made it back to the great state of Texas this morning and kissed the ground when we got here.

Delta.  Doesn't Ever Leave The Airport.  But if they do, they don't let you on the plane.

Red Velvet Whoopie Pie FAIL

My man requested these for his birthday, but then 94 people baked us something that week, so I waited. 

 Uh, I am SO glad I didn't present these to him for his birthday.

It's less like a red velvet and more like a cow pie.  With delicious icing.  That you can't get to because you don't want to taste the cow pie.

So I emailed the author of Baked, Matt Lewis, asking why they taste like chalk.  When he wrote back saying he couldn't figure it out and this was one of the favorite recipes, I threw them all against the wall.

Not really.

Mr. Postman Look and See

The nice people at simplecard dot com emailed me a few weeks ago asking if they could send me some personalized post cards.  Uh…yes?!

They are the cutest things.  They are so me and perfect for fall and, naturally, they have my name on them.

Side note- when I was ready to upload my pictures of the cards, all of the sudden our internet was down, so I had to opt for an iPhone picture. 

They have about ten zillion kinds to choose from and tons of other things to make.  A perfect Christmas gift, if I do say so myself.

Go check them out here

Happy Monday!

Pioneer Woman’s Meatloaf: Semi-fail.

Good start to a new post…I can’t even find the recipe on PW’s website for this. Maybe I’ll post it later or maybe you’ll have to buy her cookbook…if you still want to after reading this hot mess.

I made PW’s meatloaf. I was stoked. Devin was still recovering from being sick and was not so sure about eating a “real meal”. But I convinced him it would be great. Then what did I go and do? I cooked a dadgum meatloaf, like, medium rare.

Before you topple over laughing…or after because you probably already are, I can explain…ish.

I actually followed the recipe EXACTLY (except I used turkey bacon instead of real bacon because I just cannot do it…but this shouldn’t have mattered) including the oven temperature and cook time. Her cook time was WAY too short (I think I’d blame this on the cheap apartment oven before I’d blame it on Ree), so I left it in even longer. But, there came a point where I was about to either faint from hunger or start eating whatever I saw, and I just decided it was ok to just get the freakin’ thing out of the oven and try to eat it.

I am gagging as I write this.

The first bite sent me dry heaving (but the salad was so good!). DC liked it but said he liked my recipe better (HA!!) and he tried to convince me it was just like eating a burger cooked medium,

but deep inside, he was so skeptical.

Random: I’d like to think I would make it on Amazing Race, but in reality, if they made me eat anything like this during a food challenge, I would lose the game and DC would be livid. Perhaps I need to work on my eating-it-anyway game face. What am I saying?

We ended up eating the nastygrossloaf. I KNOW!!! HURL!!! And for “some unknown reason” DC got to feeling a little worse that night.

Wife fail. Cooking fail. Meatloaf fail. Healing the sick fail. I could go all day.

But wait! The next night DC made open face meatloaf sandwiches (we still kept the leftovers…) and cooked the slices in the toaster oven before he put them on the sandwich. Much better.

I can always count on him to make fun of/save my cooking failures.

Go buy PW’s book. Especially if you want to learn to cook some really good southern dishes, which I promise I know how to do (ish). Remember? He liked my recipe better.

Enough. Get the book.

I was going to post our Christmas tree today…

Which is actually pretty funny to me (I guess you’ll never know why), but I got some tough love feedback from one of my male readers yesterday.  We’ll call him A Money.

I tried to do a subtle picture of him, but, I mean, he’s like 8 feet tall.  Other things to note: Rhonda, he’s married; back off.  Kstan, you look simply delighted.  DHatch…I’m not sure what that move is (ps Happy Birthday!!)

Sorry for the massive caption.

So anyway Adam is all “I am so sick of arts and crafts and cooking and marriage talk”.   You would think he would want some marriage talk since he is engaged.  Some wisdom from my extremely experienced (ahem 8 months experienced) brain. 

Instead, he wants me to talk about Tiger Woods.

I think Tiger is disgusting.  So there’s that.

But, I guess this has turned into a little bit of a mom blog, and since a mom I am not, I guess I’m going to need to go a different direction because I do adore my readers of the other gender.

Any ideas?

P.S. A Money hasn’t missed a post yet.  So it must not be that bad.

fatty fatty fail.

I’ve been doing a lot of baking lately. Husband hates it while he is training for his RACE AGAINST LANCE IN 3 DAYS!!!! but I love to do it. I just can’t stop and as a result, Devin feels like a fatty fatty no friends. Just don’t eat it, you might say? He would say erroneous.

One of the reasons I love to bake is this.

When I posted this picture, I made a high-pitched VROOOOOOOOOOOM sound. Out loud. Reminds me of this guy. This was our wedding gift from OV06. Tell me that thing is not your dream appliance and I’ll call you a liar. Best gift ever.

Do you see my cute apron in that picture?

Ok back to whatever I was posting about.

I made some sweet potato bread and it was delish dot com

The ingreeds. Or most of them. That’s one honkin’ sweet potato! Yum.

And behold.

How’s that for a step by step instruction?

Fine.

Here’s the recipe from Cooking Light

1/3 cup ground flaxseed

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 c fat free cream cheese, softened

3 tablespoons butter, softened

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup honey (I added a bit more)

1 large egg

1 large egg white

1 cup mashed sweet potato

cooking spray

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. Combine flax, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the center of the mixture. Beat cream cheese and next 5 ingredients, stir in sweet potato. Add to flour mixture, stirring just until moist.

3. Spoon batter into a loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan, and cool completely on wire rack.

It should look perfect like mine. Ha!! I drizzled some honey on top. Devin liked his warm with cinnamon and sugar on it. I liked mine with coffee because I like everything with coffee.

So, what sort of transition can I use for the next item on this post?

How about this: sometimes I am the worst baker in the history of the United States of America.

I was looking through one of the cookbooks I got as a wedding gift. My good friend, Janice, (you may remember her from the hot sauce post) gave me her family favorites cookbook and I found a recipe for pumpkin cookies. Pumpkin cookies! How different! How fun! HOW I LOATHE THEM!!!

Ingreeds. Looks fun, right?! WRONG.

Just minding my business, following the recipe, being super excited for pumpkin cookies.

Then I go to roll it out…and…

Yeah. Sick me out. No amount of flour could have made this dough stop sticking to everything it touched. Martha wouldn’t even know what to do, I guarantee it.

Have I mentioned that the pictures here are of the THIRD TIME I TRIED TO MAKE THESE DADGUM COOKIES?!?! So, I wasn’t about to waste this third (and final) batch. I threw that slop in a pan and cooked it like a cake.

And then I informed Devin that he had to taste it.

So he smells it first?

The “make a funny face so she doesn’t think I hate it”

and then I didn’t get the the picture of the projectile vomiting.

Janice, if I were you, I would kick whoever submitted this recipe into your family secrets cookbook OUT OF THE FAMILY.

I’m just bitter that I can’t bake. Actually, people, I can bake. It’s just that pumpkin cookies with delicious orange glaze icing don’t actually exist. Oh, Lord love a duck…I do not lie to you…as I was writing this, Real Simple Magazine emailed me a recipe for pumpkin cookies.

They’re liars.

Me- 0, Pumpkin cookies- 3.