Mid-week Crisis: Cool story, Skandar.

1. Remember Skandar Keynes? I used to talk about him…ummm…all the time. Luckily I switched over to talking about Joseph Gordon-Levitt and have succeeded in making you all insane because of it. Sorry? Anyway, he turned 21 today. Happy birthday, my dear slightly-unattractive-but-totally-amazing-future-husband. I’m so glad that you’re an awful actor and no one knows about you. That means I can have you all to myself. MUAHHAHAHAHAHAHA. I think I have issues.

2. Last week I went out to lunch with my friend Katie. She makes me laugh and we share a mutual love of food. Win. Also, I didn’t eat any of my pizza crusts, and I’m sure the waitress thought I was crazy when she took away my plate with 6 of them.

3. This post made me a little sniffily…

4. Fringe season 2, disk 2. Coming to a mailbox near you. Also known as my mailbox today. I love Netflix.

5. This pin sums up my general you’re-really-annoying-me attitude as of late. I think I need an attitude adjustment. Also, I own this pin, so don’t bother me or it may end up pinned to your face. Fair warning.

6. I’m not sure about you, but the song Call Me Maybe gets stuck in my head all the time. I think that song is actually brainwashing us. That being said, I found a Batman parody of it that is, um, amazing.

7. Whatever you do, do NOT look at How Sweet It Is’ food board on Pinterest. It makes me sad every time I look at it because none of the food is in my belly. I think someone needs to invent a machine that can convert pictures of food into actual food. Yeah, best idea ever. You’re welcome.

Napoleon, gimmie some of your tots

It’s official. Tater tots are the solution to all of life’s problems.

Overwhelmed with school/work? Eat some tater tots. Annoyed with people who really aren’t even worth your annoyance? Tater tots. Depressed because you know things will never work out between you and Christian Bale? Tots. Although, even if he wasn’t married and a dad, he’s too angsty for me. And I don’t do well with angsty people, in case you wanted to know.

Tater tots also help when you realize that you haven’t finished a book in over 6 months. In my defense, I’ve started many, many books. I just haven’t finished them. Crime & Punishment? Too depressing. Pride & Prejudice? I’m still working on that one… Dracula? *psh* Why bother? I only like books that have an ampersand in their name. Did you know that the “&” thingie is called an ampersand? I didn’t until the other day. Probably because I’m an illiterate loser. But do you know how to fix illiterateness and loserness? Join Goodreads.

I joined it the other day. It’s the 3rd social networking site I’ve joined! Woohoo! Pinterest, Twitter, and now Goodreads. Sadly, after joining them I didn’t attain the “coolness” I had anticipated I would. And really, the only reason I joined twitter is because Pinterest required a twitter account to register. Aaannnddd that’s why I’m not “popular”. That and I also have a bit of an obsession with quotation marks and ampersands as of late. I enjoy punctuation, ok?! Jeez.

But now that I’ve joined Goodreads (is that one word or two? Good Reads? Goodreads? I’m confused), I’ve realized that most of the books that I’ve read and enjoyed are children’s books. With the exception of The Giver and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, the rest of the books that I rated “5 stars” (see? Who doesn’t love quotation marks?) were classics like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, The Giving Tree, and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I worry about myself sometimes.

I should probably tell you what all these pictures are of. Or maybe I won’t! BUAHHAHAHAHA. No, I’m joking. They’re all pictures of the Tater Tot Casserole I made yesterday. Meat? Yum. Cheese? Yum. Tater tots? YUM. Broccoli? *awkward silence* Ummm, I’m still learning how to appreciate certain foods. Like broccoli. And onions. And pretty much everything that isn’t deep fried and/or covered in chocolate and/or made with bacon. Ooooh, bacon. Off topic, but I really love bacon.

Oh, and when you realize that Christian Bale isn’t even on Twitter? Eat some tots to numb the pain. Christian “The Love of My Life” Bale isn’t on Twitter, but the dumb Kardashians are? *sigh* It’s a messed up world we live in, people.

Tater Tot Casserole

1 pound ground beef
1/2 of a medium onion, chopped
1 (10.75 ounce) can Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
3 cups frozen Tater Tots

1. Cook beef and onion in a skillet over medium-high heat until beef is no longer pink, stirring to break up meat. Spoon out grease.

2. Stir soup and Worcestershire sauce into skillet. Spoon beef mixture into 12×8-inch shallow baking dish. Cover with tater tots

3. Bake at 425 degrees F for 25 minutes or until potatoes are done.

Forget about Stalker Sunday? I know I did. But luckily Tia didn’t :)

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

Thanks to Google for letting me steal this picture, because the picture Tia sent me wasn't uploading. True story.

1 1/2 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 1/4 c. canned pumpkin
1/4 c. oil
1 t. vanilla
2 1/4 c. all purpose flour
2 t. ground cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt

Filling:
8 oz. light cream cheese – softened
1 egg
1 T. sugar

Topping:
3/4 c. flaked coconut
1/4 c. chopped pecans – toasted if desired
1/4 c. packed brown sugar
1/4 t. ground cinnamon
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, beat sugar, eggs, pumpkin, oil, and vanilla.

Combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt; add to egg mixture and mix well.

Pour into a greased 9×13 pan.

In a small mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, egg, and sugar until smooth.  Drop tablespoonfuls over batter; cut through batter with a knife to swirl.

Combine topping ingredients; sprinkle over top.

Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Cool on a wire rack.

16 servings.

Friday the 28th. Kind of like Friday the 13th, but…not.

First off, congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals for winning the World Series. I totally want to be friends with Yadier Molina, Albert Pujols and David Freese because they seem like the nicest guys alive. And now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about stuff that’s actually interesting. I had a Halloween party last night! You’re totally impressed, I can tell. Since I’m not a big party person, it was kind of my trial party and I kept it small. But since it went so swimmingly the next one I have will be huge. And by huge I mean maybe I’ll invite 8 people as opposed to last night’s 5 :)

In my humble-ish opinion, the best part of the party was the food. Probably because I made all of it and I felt so proud of myself. There’s nothing better than being happy with yourself and then eating food. Fact.

Owl cupcakes=adorable. I totally thought of Mara when I made these. That girl makes me want to love owls, instead of be totally weirded out by them like I am now. Owls, creepy dolls, and water are the top three things on Picco’s I-don’t-like list.

Oh, and I also don’t like Leonardo DiCaprio, but every time I say that people are like *GASP* what?! And then they ask why and I can never pinpoint a specific reason why I don’t like him. I think it’s his creepy eyes. And the moral of that story is don’t hate on Leo unless you want to be shunned by society. I’ve found that out the hard way.

And yes, that owl is winking.

I also made eyeball cake balls. Red velvet cake, an entire can of cream cheese frosting, vanilla almond bark, life savers, and chocolate chips? Um hello, yum.

Oh and Tia, I thought of you when I was putting the green life savers on. I was just thinking of all sorts of random people when I was making food, huh?

Do you know what’s scarier than these pizza mummies? Watching the Psych episode Tuesday the 17th at midnight. Creepiest Psych episode ever. Oh and right at the scariest part of the episode, my mom was outside hitting the windows with a mop. Yeah, that totally didn’t traumatize me at all…

What’s more awesome than a pumpkin puking guacamole? Nothing. And that pumpkin was the first one I’ve ever carved by myself :) I impress myself sometimes.

I can’t think of anything to say about this other than uhhh, here’s an ice hand.

The best part is that I totally didn’t steal all of the food ideas from Pinterest. Nope, they were all totally my own. Because I’m just so creative like that.

And now it’s time for Nightmares with Picco.

Rawr.

If you like it then you should put a pin on it

Have you heard of Pinterest? If you haven’t, stop reading this right now and run while you can. It’s so addicting and you’ll waste hours of your life on it. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing… Pinterest.com is a photo sharing website, but not like flickr. No siree. The pictures on Pinterest are the most creative, wonderful photos of food, food, people, more food, places, Christian Bale, food, clothes and everything. And food. I especially like the food part. When you come across pictures you like, you can “pin” them to your board or, in my case, boards. I have 15 boards and I’ve pinned almost 300 pictures. Actually, if you’re on Pinterest and you want to follow me, click on the “follow me on Pinterest” button on the right side of this page, right below the picture of The Silver Spoon cookbook. But don’t blame me if you spend your entire life on that website. Just sayin’.

In case you couldn’t tell, one of my favorite parts about Pinterest is the food. I want to make every single piece of food I see pictures of on there. A few days ago I found a picture of cake balls and yesterday I made some.

I’ve got to admit, I sort of live under a rock. I didn’t even know what cake balls were until a few weeks ago. And to take it one lamer step further, I didn’t really know what red velvet cake was either. I had no idea it was so…red.

Seriously, it looks like blood. Blech. But it tastes amazing, so it’s all good.

The first time I had cake balls I was a little confused about why they were a so squishy (for lack of a better word…) in the center. I was thinking it was because they weren’t cooked all the way. Oh was I wrong. They’re squishy because the cake ball part of it is made up of a crumbled up 9X13 cake and an ENTIRE can of frosting. That’s why.

And just when they couldn’t get anymore delicious, you dunk them in chocolate. So basically cake balls are pieces of cake-icing and all-with a shell of chocolate covering them. Where have these been my whole life?

Speaking of food (when am I not talking about food? Wait. Don’t answer that), do you want know what else I made yesterday? A whole plate full of cucumber and dill toasties.

You know what *else* I made yesterday? Part of my Halloween costume. I’m being Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and I’m making the black dress Audrey Hepburn wears.

Yeah, I impress myself sometimes.

Red Velvet Cake Balls

Thanks to Bakerella for the recipe :)

Ingredients

1 box red velvet cake mix (cook as directed on box for 9X13 cake)
1 can cream cheese frosting (16 oz.)
1 package chocolate bark (regular or white chocolate)
wax paper

1. After cake is cooked and cooled completely, crumble into large bowl.
2. Mix thoroughly with 1 can cream cheese frosting.
3. Roll mixture into quarter size balls and lay on cookie sheet.
4. Chill for several hours in fridge or freezer.
5. Melt chocolate in microwave per directions on package. Melt only a few pieces at a time, because the chocolate cools and thickens quickly and it’s hard to work with.
6. Use a spoon to roll balls in chocolate and lay on wax paper until firm.