Family Dill Bread

And now to return to our regularly scheduled programming. One of the other treats I made for my mom and dad was our family-favorite dill bread. This is actually the first bread I ever learned to make; my mom taught me when I was still quite young. I loved cooking with her. She always let me lick the bowls -- and oh, I still have yet to meet a dough or batter that I don't love. It is also the most addictively delicious bread I've ever had.

Cake Pancakes

So, we're taking a brief break from our family bakefest to explore one of my obsessions: cake batter. I love cake batter almost as much as I love icing. The other day, I had a severe craving for cake batter but did not want to commit to a full cake. Too many leftovers. So, I whipped up a quick and easy crave-fixing recipe for cake pancakes using store-bought cake mix.

Spiced Pumpkin Bread

While the pumpkin waffles were largely for hubs and I (to give us enough energy to continue cooking and baking all day), the next carb I prepared was for mom and dad: Spiced Pumpkin Bread.

Pumpkin waffles

Our summer is busy, busy, busy as we are getting prepared for hub's law school and our subsequent transition into being expert hermits. So, we crammed a celebration for mother's day, father's day, dad's birthday, and my parents' anniversary into one weekend. First, we picked up their dog and house/dog/cat sat over Saturday and Sunday. Second, we arranged for tons of food on Sunday evening for a celebratory dinner. Hubacious got crabs to eat with dad, and I made breakfast plus lunch/snacks times roughly four. I took advantage of being at my parents' house by using an appliance they have but we do not: a waffle iron. And thus, pumpkin waffles came into delicious being.

Ice Cream Chocolate Chip Cookies

In addition to making those beautiful oreo cupcakes, my friend and I decided to finish off the day of baking by making some cookies. Now, I am usually not a fan of chocolate chip cookies. As my husband knows, I rarely make them, not even at Christmas. However, I could not resist these cookies and neither should you: chocolate chip cookies made with ice cream (yes, as part of the batter!) courtesy of Picky Palate.

Oreos in Cupcakes

Recently, I had a fun mini baking day with a dear friend of mine, who is also not-that-kind-of-a-doctor. We put her beautiful stand mixture to great use making, to begin with, cookies and cream cupcakes as featured on Annie's Eats.

Easy Baked Eggs

This fall, hubs goes to law school. I am so, so excited for him, and so, so sad for our collective pocketbook. We'll have to cut our food budget dramatically. So what will that mean for our food future? Well, cheese will be mostly out -- it just costs too much to support my cheese habit. We'll probably have to eat less meat as well. Soups, rice, and pasta will definitely be over-represented. Still, I hope some new adventures will come from our budget cuts. Maybe we'll get to the farmers markets for fruit and vegetable seconds. Maybe I'll bake all of our bread instead of buying it. Maybe I'll start canning and making jams and/or peanut butter. Only time will tell, so stay tuned and feel free to offer any super-cheap suggestions. Otherwise, the next four years may yield only posts detailing different flavors of ramen and the many frozen vegetables that can be added to them to spruce them up!

Speaking of super inexpensive, delicious, easy food, another great breakfast we have pretty frequently is oeufs en cocotte.

Scale Maille Cloak

The hubacious doesn't just make things for me, of course -- he also makes plenty of pretty, shiny, awesome things for himself. One of the very heavy, very awesome things he made for himself is a scale maille cloak. It's only aluminum and still way too heavy for me to ever wear or carry around. Shiny!