Cake-in-a-jar

Rummed Cherries (recipe to come on Wes' blog!)

My work schedule has changed on Fridays and although it has me waking at 6 a.m. it has me getting off at 3! (hip-hip--Hooray!) Wes wakes up at 3 on Fridays after working the graveyard shift the night before. What does this mean? This means a couple more hours of good-ol'-fashioned, us time. So on Friday, I arrived home to Wes in his jammies, pitting cherries.

Wait, what? Come again?

Yes, pitting cherries. Not with a machine but by hand, with a paperclip method he learned somewhere. "Why?" you ask. Well my friends, Wes has become a gen-u-ine baker in the name of blogging. Wes has always been involved in our kitchen projects, and we usually cook dinner together. However, rarely (if ever) has Wes sought out a cake recipe, initiated its production, found the ingredients, poured the batter, and retrieved the final product from the oven. And this is exactly what happened on Friday when Wes decided we should bake a cake recipe for his blog. The recipe? A Bourbon-Cake-in-a-Jar recipe. Click here to view the recipe on his blog. We had a blast cooking up these lovelies, side-by-side with that new camera I told you about.

Clean jars for baking

Pouring the batter

Yum Yum

All Done!

Bourbon Butter Sauce

Poking holes in the cakes for the sauce to seep into

Topped them with homemade whipped- cream

Which I made, thankyouverymuch.

And we enjoyed every bite

Then shared some with our neighbors.

Our New Camera

Uh oh... such a mischievous look!

And there is the camera
(plus some other cute things that Wes drew in dry-erase-marker).

How could I not document such cute things?

And when we got home from seeing Harry Potter, a family of five was playing nearby:

Wes and I had been talking about getting a DSLR camera for quite a while. Then, when we went camping and we got to play with my Dad's we just couldn't resist any longer. After doing some research we decided on one and couldn't be happier. We've been having fun!!

Camping at Crater Lake

I thought our pictures would do the best job at summing up our camping trip. However, to sum it up in words I would say this:

Beautiful Blue Lake. Lots of yummy food. Lots of fun games. Lots of Mosquitoes. Great campfires. Great company. A little chilly. And snow.

To elaborate: My dad called the Crater Lake campground and warned us that the snow was very slow to melt this year. Because of this slow snow melt, the campsites were left wet, and therefore the Mosquitoe population was thriving. We were optimistic and packed extra bug-spray. Because of the snow they allowed guests to choose whichever site they wanted, so basically it was first come first serve. Some of the sites were so covered in snow that the table and fire-pit weren't even visible. Fortunately since Wes and I only had a 5 hour drive (as opposed to the 7 hour drive my family had) we got there just in time to nab a good spot. We found a nice big dry site with table and fire-pit! Yay! The bugs were a bit annoying, but we managed and it was totally worth it. All of Crater Lake was completely breathtaking. The walks and hikes we went on were gorgeous. The pictures I have are nothing compared to the great pictures we got on my Dad's nice camera. I will post those pictures to Facebook or the blog once I get my hands on them. We had such a great time.

Thank you to my family for driving all that way to camp with us in Oregon. Thank you for the great laughs, we loved it!

Quinoa Cakes

You must try this recipe. You have all heard me rave about quinoa before, so I won't bore you with all of it's nutritional benefits. However I will say that, nutritional benefits aside, quinoa is also amazing because it is a blank canvas. You can do anything to it, sort of like rice (though I feel it might be even more versatile). This is a great way to use up leftover quinoa. You can find the full recipe here at Seven Spoons blog. I followed the basic directions and then through in whatever we had on hand. At the time, the only leafy green I had on hand was cilantro so I sliced up some avocado and cilantro. I hope you do try this one out, you won't regret it!!

What have we been up to?

Homemade tequitos (sp?)

Modest Mouse Concert

Hosting bluebirds and fending off the neighbor's cats

Sondre Lerche Concert

Picking berries and attending my art class on a local farm

We celebrated my birthday by going out to eat at a nice french restaurant and then seeing the movie Bridesmaids. Had to get my redvines for the movie!

Le Pigeon house made chocolate truffles

Lamb & risotto

bread with butter

bowling with family

Starting my internship: this was the back of my car on my way to a wedding.
Read more details on My Paper Airplane.

and most recently, made jam.

Our next adventure: camping at Crater Lake with my family. I hope you all have a great week! We'll be gone Monday through Friday.