Joyful Abode

That’s what my husband says when he’s excited about a manly dinner. “Meat… Po-Tay-Toes…Yah” in this crazy-low hyper-masculine voice.

I should post pictures of our house here soon! I just need to take some and make sure they’re good ones. haha.

We had leftover sauce and olive cheese bread from spaghetti night about a week and a half ago. So last night, we made lasagna and olive bread a la “Pioneer Woman.” The lasagna recipe was slightly different, of course, because we used our own sauce. And this time, I sliced the bread and arranged the olive cheese stuff on top so that I wouldn’t have to slice it after it baked. It worked MUCH BETTER.

The lasagna was messy but delicious, and perfectly steamed broccoli is always good (and I added butter and a sprinkle of garlic salt).

I just had to peek in the oven when everything was baking.

And I set up the side dishes all prettily on the candle-lit table.

It was so delicious.

litchicky asked for the spaghetti sauce recipe, so here it is!

The Husband’s Spaghetti Sauce

1 pound ground beef
1 onion
mushrooms
1 green pepper
1 chopped garlic clove
1 large can/jar tomato sauce
1 large can crushed tomato
6oz can tomato paste
pepper, chili powder, Italian seasoning
extra virgin olive oil

Chop onion, pepper, garlic, mushrooms.
Sautee all of that stuff in the EVOO in a pot or saucepan.
Add all of your tomato stuff
Add pepper, chili powder, and Italian seasoning to taste.

Meanwhile, brown the ground beef in a separate pan.
Drain and add to the sauce.
Simmer for a WHILE (45 minutes to an hour, if you’ve got it).

Man food, too… which means the meals usually have meat in them. I’m not used to that, but it’s pretty tasty.

Pork ribs (a Paula Deen recipe) and baked potatoes.

Italian sausage and potato salad.

Homemade tortilla chips again, and margaritas. So yummy. (Not photographed: Cheese quesadillas)

Grilled Caribbean jerk chicken (It’s really delicious on the inside. Don’t judge a book by its cover, y’all.) along with rice+veggies and a baked potato.

Burgers with ranch dressing and cucumbers along with grilled corn on the cob (yum!)

EmmaH asked for the details about my guy’s birthday cake , so here they are!

First, the recipes. This is the recipe I use to make chocolate cake. It is so fast, simple, and delicious that I’m not sure you’ll ever look to boxed cake mixes again for chocolate cake.

This is the recipe for the frosting. Mine tasted fabulous and fluffy in the bowl, but I think I had to play with it too much for the cake, and it got pretty dense again. Reading the reviews, I think it may work out better with a higher fat milk (we use 1%).

So, first I made the cakes and cooled them.

Then, I stuck them together with a bit of the frosting. It looked like a giant oreo. And I think that if you figured out a way to make a marshmallow-y frosting, you could just put all of it between two chocolate cakes and have an “oreo cake.” Mmm…

Now, I stink at frosting cakes. A LOT. Every time I see someone frosting a cake on TV I stop and watch, trying to get the secret that I just don’t know.
Alton Brown and Emeril (and probably everyone else in the world, really) do a “crumb coat” which is a thin coating of icing designed to be the ugly inner coat that has all the cake crumbs in it, so your outer coat of icing can be pristine and white. I tried it. And stuck it in the fridge to “set.”

(Note the sexy girl beer bottle behind the cake in the fridge. That’s “Coco Conception” beer brewed by my brother in law. It’s really tasty, with smooth chocolate undertones!)

Then, once the cake was totally cool and the frosting was somewhat not-sticky, I took it back out to hopefully do a pretty layer. I piled the rest of the frosting on the cake, and tried to spread it around. I think I had to mess with it too much though, and the air got pushed out, because it ended up pretty dense with a strong butter flavor… which isn’t ALL bad, but it’s not ideal.

Once I had it all spread out, I decorated the top with some sprinkles and decorating frosting I had on hand.

Can you give me some tips for cake-frosting? Or amazing no-fail frosting recipes? I think I may be hopeless when it comes to frosting cakes… maybe I should stick with piping icing onto cupcakes or something.

Introducing Nadia and Ophelia!

Nadia is in fantastic shape and her design is just too cute for words.

Ophelia is a sweetheart who has been loved a lot. She’s a bargain at only $6!

Hop over to Joyful Abode @ Etsy to get one for yourself!

Karen and Marianne are flying away today! Karen’s shipping was a little slower because I had to wait for an e-check to clear (Sorry, Jen!), but Marianne was purchased yesterday and will ship today.

Enjoy, ladies!

Yesterday was the guy’s birthday. After dinner, he started bustling around in the kitchen.

Me: Don’t clean up! I’ll do it.
Him: No, I have to. I can’t get out of practice, because then tomorrow will be weird.

Hehe!!! I’m so lucky.
(I still did clean up most of it, though I stopped when my fingers got prune-y because I can’t stand to touch anything when my fingers are wrinkled like that… it feels too gross.)

Check out: How to get your man to wash dishes.

My dear sweet guy is 24 now. I got to make him a chocolate birthday cake today!

His cake has a big “T” on it, because it’s the first letter of his name. I put it in front of him to let him do the birthday-boy pose thing, and gave him a fork for emphasis… he dug in like a 1 year old at his first birthday party. It was pretty great.

Yesterday, I made two delicious applesauce spice cakes. One was for me and my husband, and the other was to take to work.

Last year, I was one of 40+ new faculty members at my school. It was like a huge boot camp bonding experience for all of us. This year, I am the only new member in the central staff of a child development center. Total central staff is less than 15. Most of them have been there 5+ years, and one of the teachers has been there since I was 3. It’s a very different situation than the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year for me.

Well, they all LOVED my spice cake. I said, “I may be the baby here, but I’ve been making this cake for six years.” It got some giggles and a couple eyebrow-raises. I almost raised my eyebrows to myself. Six years?? That’s a smidge more than a quarter of my life!

The recipe was given to me by my husband’s mother, near when we started dating. I made a couple under her tutelage, though the recipe is so easy you don’t really need to “practice” anything. Then, when I went to college, I bought a sifter and some cake pans so I could make them for myself, friends, and co-workers.

Now you can make it too. All you need to do is:

Preheat your oven to 350*F
Butter and flour two cake pans (or use Pam with flour, which is amazing).

Mix:
2 cups applesauce
1 3/4 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup oil

Sift:
3 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp cinnamon

Add the applesauce mixture to the sifted mix.

Stir in:
1 cup nuts (I use walnuts)
1 cup raisins

Pour the batter into the cake pans.
Bake 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
While it is baking, lick the spoons and give your husband the bowl. Mmmm.
After the cakes are cool enough to remove, cool them on cooling racks, otherwise they’ll get soggy, which is gross.

This morning, I went to take a picture of the cake (the one that wasn’t wrapped up to go to work), but about 1/5 of it was already gone! I guess we know what the husband had for breakfast this morning. Yum!

I love Marianne’s pocket… it’s why I fell in love with her. It’s more like an attached pouch, because it was made separately and then sewn into the waistband. Her fabric is really punchy too, with a great color scheme, flowers, AND stripes. Rick rack is always good too.

She’s one of a kind, so if you are smitten with her too, hurry to Joyful Abode @ Etsy to claim her for yourself.

It seems like there is some confusion about my vintage items. Some people thought I made the vintage aprons! I am not a vintage person, so I cannot have made vintage aprons! I find them here and there (sometimes they find me), sometimes in thrift stores, sometimes online, sometimes in yard sales or whatnot. (I made the aprons that say “Joyful Abode” in place of “Vintage.”)

I love each one, but if I kept them all, my personal apron collection would be gigantic. It’s like my students, as a teacher… they pass through my class, and hopefully come out better than before on the other side. I love them all, but I have to hand them over to the next teacher. If I kept them all, I’d have an overflowing classroom!

So with these vintage beauties? They come to me, sometimes a bit rough or worse-for-wear, then I clean them up and pass them on to you!