Mmmm.

We are too busy enjoying Orangina to blog these days. Will be back this weekend, my pets.

XOXO

Miss Tinnie, Nemmie, and Mahni

Hi hi

Hi there!

We're currently experiencing a few... ah... "technical difficulties" on the blog, but rest assured - new posts to be up no later than the weekend time.

Until then: happy week to you! Miss Sous Chef Mahni also sends her love, and a quick pictorial to tide you over.



Mahni Presents: Things I Love To Do With My Second-Favorite Auntie (Miss Tinnie):

We love to paint our toes while we trade celebrity gossip!

We love to go to Crayola Land and play!

We also love to dance in front of the mirror!

And we love to read magazines in bed (while eating snacks)!

We love to do The Bump dance!

And order food over the phone at Fritz's Restaurant!

But most of all, we love to dance with our bikini tops on over our clothing while in hotel rooms!

The End!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope all you readers are much too busy stuffing yourself with turkey et al. to be checking blogs today :) I just wanted to wish a Happy and Wonderful Thanksgiving to each and every one of you! Will be back first thing Saturday morning.




And now: Sous Chef Mahni would like to show the many ways she would make a lovely new (Peep) mascot for the blog:



1. Well, she's cuter in the get up. Obviously. And great for photo ops. People just gravitate to that little charmer, Peep Mahni.



2. She can run. Really really fast. While still in character.



3. That said, she's got a killer profile. And when necessary, she can hold just as still as any marshmallow Peep.




4. She's great with kids, absolutely a requirement for my child-friendly blog.

5. Her bravey and love of adventure knows no bounds. And also she's really bendy (not evidenced in the photo).

6. Last but not least, she is much more soft and cuddly than those dried-up sugar Peeps that Aunt Nemmie carries around with her.

Mahni's Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Hi hi! I've been gone for awhile. Sorry for all the delays. I had my sister Beah, nephew Dylan, and the infamous sous chef Mahni visiting me for awhile; they just left Chez Nemmie to head back home. We took trips to the KC Zoo, downtown Lawrence, hit The Merc to get Mahni some baking essentials, did some shopping in KC, the kids braved the T-Rex restaurant for an evening...

We even got the sweet babies' pictures taken by the extremely talented Josh Solar while they were here :)

Photos courtesy of Josh Solar Photo, 2008

You can take a peek at the rest of the pictures if you click right here! Josh and Jenny are fantastic, so a quick plug: if you are in the KC area, you should absolutely give them a call when you need some family (or wedding, or graduation, or baby...) photos.

Anyhoo: while in town, Mahni made sure to teach me her famous Pineapple Upside Down Cake recipe. We accidentally doubled the butter, which seeped lovingly into the cake (and would have made Paula Deen proud), but trust me: in its original form you have a sweet, pineapple-y cake with a crunchy sugary crust, and caramelized pineapples to boot on top. Mmmm.

Mahni's Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Ingredients:
1/2 c. butter or margarine
1 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1 can (20 oz.) pineapple slices, juice drained and reserved
1 pkg. Duncan Hines® Moist Deluxe® Pineapple Supreme Cake Mix
3 eggs
Juice from canned pineapple + water, to equal 1 c.
1/3 c. oil

Preheat oven to 350F.

For topping, melt butter in the preheated oven in a 9X13 pan. Once butter is melted, remove from the oven. Sprinkle brown sugar in the pan over the butter.

Arrange pineapple slices in the pan, over the brown sugar. Set aside.

For cake, combine cake mix, eggs, pineapple juice/water, and oil in large mixing bowl. Beat at medium speed with electric mixer for 2 minutes. Pour batter evenly over fruit in pan.

Bake at 350 F for 45-55 min. or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Invert onto serving plate.

The End.

We love going to the Zoo.

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

I have a busy weekend ahead, so Mahni has graciously offered to once again write a post for the blog. Have a safe and wonderful Labor Day weekend!

What I Did On My Summer Vacation
A pictorial by Mahni, Sous Chef

Enjoyed the fruits of the season (namely, ice cream).

Played on the swings with Grandpa Peedoh.

Saw the countryside from my bike.

Took long walks with Aunt Jeannie.

Went swinging some more.

Learned the art of properly handling fireworks.

Participated in squirt gun stand-offs.

More swinging. With my brother Dyl.

Took in the sights from my dad's sweet ride (while my dad walked the bike, of course).

Swinging. Again.

Worked on my Paris Hilton impression.

Researched different ways to do this swinging thing.

And my most favorite summer activity of them all: eating cold fried chicken for breakfast.



See you Sunday :)

A Very Happy 4th!

Mahni wants to wish everyone a happy and safe 4th of July holiday!

Nemmie is busy so - once again, it is time for sous chef Mahni to take over. Here is her recipe of the day, a true gem.

Take a Dorito (Nacho flavor works best), dip it in sour cream, then your bowl of breakfast cereal. Eat. The End.

Aunt Nemmie will be back on the 6th.

Mememememememe!

I was tagged for a meme by the fabulous Gretchen at Canela & Comino. And I must admit, I'm terribly excited about it. I've never been tagged for a meme before! I always saw it as some sort of blogger right-of-passage, and I gotta say – it's refreshing to write a post without using the words "sweet", "rich", or "crumb". Here's some incentive for my dear readers, too: if you stick around and read to the end, you get a treat. Woooo! Yay! Treats!

So, without further ado: Ten Somewhat Interesting Facts About Nemmie:

1) I have an unhealthy and irrational fear of tornadoes. And I live in Kansas. So essentially the springtime is a 3- to 4-month-long anxiety attack for me.

2) When I was 21, I broke my collarbone in a freak spelunking accident (okay okay – I was actually goofing around doing acrobatics in my friend Nikki's yard). Anyhoo, my collarbone broke clean in half, the doctors couldn't get the two pieces back together, so it healed with one chunk of bone in front of the other. So when you look at my shoulders, one collarbone sticks out abnormally and then just ends abruptly. I have to have all my spaghetti-strapped tops and tanks and bras altered about an inch so that the strap doesn't fall down on my left side. It's nice.

3) I am No. 6 out of 11 kids in my family. I am the Definitive Middle Child. All of us from the same 47-year union, too. Yes, indeed, we are Catholic. I should also point out that it gets mighty chilly up in Wisconsin.

4) During the first 2 years of dating my husband, I pretended I didn't know how to cook. That way, if he came over during a mealtime and we didn't want to go out, he had to do the cooking. Hee. It's really easy to fake a lack of cooking skills – burn a few things in the oven, over-salt something on the stovetop. So dear Hubs did everything in the kitchen while I blissfully lounged on the couch, reading fashion magazines and sipping a cool cocktail. That is - until I got tired of not cooking and wanted to show off my mad baking skillz. So I miraculously learned to cook/bake overnight. If he was on to me, he never let on. Quite the gentleman, that husband of mine.

5) I'm super-duper clumsy (see number 2 above, a perfect example of this fact). I can't get through a morning without spilling coffee on myself. I trip over nothing more than my own two feet. I drop things. I knock things over. Essentially: don't ever put something important to you in my presence, because I'll find a way to fall on top of it. Sometimes I marvel at the fact that I'm still in one piece.

And for a bonus (since I definitely couldn't hit Ten Things):

6) I never leave the house without a lavender marshmallow Peep in my purse. Because you never know when you're going to need one.

That's it, ladies and gents – Ten... er, Six Interesting Facts About Me. Thanks for tagging me Gretchen! And now, I tag my glamourous KC foodies to post this meme:

Amanda
Danielle
Julia
Julie
Leslie
Sarah
Stacey

"5 Things" Meme Rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their Blogs.

Okay guys, you made it. Here's your treat: Mahni made you some chocolate-covered pretzels! Marvel in the wonder of it all...

First, eat some pretzels while someone else carefully lays the rest on a sheet of parchment, and drizzles them with chocolate (what a diva, that Mahni expects everybody to do the dirty work for her).


Next, apply sprinkles liberally.



And voila! They are ready for eating!

Hope you enjoyed the stories and pretzels! Another fun post coming up on Friday :)

Back in a few, promise.

Things are quite hectic, and I haven't a square to spare right now. Not to mention: between holidays with my fam and then the in-laws, we are totally loaded down with food and treats and other such sundries to get us through the next couple of days to week (at the very least).

So, anyhoo, will be back no later than Wednesday, promise. I have grand plans for recipes - crab cakes, creamy pasta dishes, and lavender cupcakes amongst other goodies. Until my return: trusty sous chef Mahni would like to demonstrate the proper way to stylishly air-bubble-preschooly jump.

Merry Christmas!

Sous Chef Mahni: A Pictoral Food-log of the Holiday

Gratiutious cookie decorating shots.

Testing the cookie frosting.



Enjoying Nemmie's Christmas Eve soup (okay, okay, to be honest: Nemmie brought the recipe, Hubs made the soup).

Decorating a gingerbread house.

Showing off the finished product.




First Chore of Christmas morning: makin' cheese balls with Nemmie, for the afternoon cheese trays.



Enjoying the fruits of our labor later (who knew the kid had a thing for feta).




Is that Santa I hear?? Gotta go!

A very Merry Christmas to everyone! I hope it was as fun and food-filled as ours!