June 6th, the last day of School

Today’s Report: June 6 2013

Today is a painful, yet spectacular day for me. Summer will start for the rest of the United States students at exactly 3:30 pm today. Alas my friends held in the captives of stingy-smelling, or new and improved school units will be released to the freedom of summer like yours truly. Although their days will not be filled with boring school work and then studying and homework atop of that, they will then realize something I dreaded when school stopped. Change of the social environment. My dear friends from the Class of 2012-2013 have scattered into the somewhat boring 12 weeks that is called summer. I now lack the excitement of friends and terror of getting hit by basketballs, footballs (outdoors only), and getting tackled by Zachary Carpenter. Since the last day of our co-op, I have noticed my stress-induced hair loss is non-existent now and my heart is beating as a reasonable speed, but I lack the comfort of my girlfriends and a couple of the guys too.

Though this makes me sad, I have something to perk up to, and that is the thrilling water park, Hawaiian Falls. I finally got someone to go with me that wasn’t busy at all. Isabel Bacio, long-haired and god-loving.   So maybe summer will be different than what I presumed in the previous paragraph. Hopefully I am wrong.

Yours Truly,

Olivia P.S. I do have other perks and that’s summer camp and the promise of straight teeth from these dreadful braces.

Shakin' it Up

Sorry I haven’t been posting. Life happens ya know. Anyways ,this sizzling summer I plan to do something inspired by the Sonic shake commercial. I'm going to try all the shakes at Sonic! Exciting, daring, that's how I roll ( unless it involves the high dive, no sirree,) and having them half price after eight is a joy! Here are the flavors I have tasted so far:

Hot Fudge- perfect chocolate flavor and a dream for all you chocolate lovers, but sadly it came in a small. 5 stars

Oreo Cheesecake- not enough Oreo to taste. It has a great cheesecake flavor though. 2 stars

Strawberry Crème Pie- Delish! The strawberry and crème were well balanced flavors with bit of graham cracker hidden inside. 5 stars

CC Strawberries- This wasn’t the rockstar I had hoped it be. But it was a good cool off. 3stars

That’s all for now! Up next is Caramel.

Finally Healed with A Dog Treat Recipe

This is for all you dog-lovers and owners!

Cali Girl and The Garden

On my late dog’s birthday I decided to treat her well with yummy treats! Her name was Cali, which is short for California since we go her instead of going to California, but little did we know we were in for a TREAT. The place where we bought Cali from was a dog training/kennel place down where we live. My mother once again set us up with this dog, and it was a sure mistake. AT first glance you would see her as a lovely, young, sable-coated German Shepherd Dog but if you were me you would see a beast. A few incidents such as: chewing 3 holes in the wall, destroying her airplane-safe crate, eating the stairs, and have her fair share of digging and going psycho over the family cat sums it up. Then two days after her birthday she drowned. Unfortunately she was a big girl at that age. She had been chasing a small animal, got stuck in a culvert, and drowned from the passing water. SO today I have finally healed and decided to share a recipe with you that I gave my dog before she died.

Honey Yummies

1 ¼ c whole wheat flour

1 ½ c Quaker oats

2 ts baking powder

2 T butter

2 eggs

 1/3 c milk

An flour for dusting

Mix the flour oats and baking powder together thoroughly. Add the butter in small flakes, plus the honey, eggs and milk. Knead with hands.

Preheat the oven to 400 Fahrenheit (200 Celsius) and cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Cook for 17 minutes and if still wet, cook for about 2 more minutes. (Shaping optional)

From Cooking For Your Dog by Ingeborg Pils

Glen and the Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

In the country we have neighbors that are hard not to be heard. Especially the ones behind us. I heard words from them that even my mother would’ve liked me NOT to have heard. But there is this one man and his wife you have been very kind to us. My father learned that our neighbor Glen’s cancer has returned. The man had helped us a lot in our recent struggle with our garden and the burial of our late dog, Cali Mae. So we decided to thank him with a nice chocolate sweet. SO I made him  Chocolate Chip cupcakes. It’s a slight revision from my cupcake recipe’s book except without the cream cheese and more tastiness.

Enjoy you days with your family and cherish the time you have together. Every second is priceless.

Lunch Box Focaccia

My dad  & me! 

My favorite way to get into deep thought is either to:

1.                     Mow

2.                     Read

3.                     Write

4.                     or Bake

So when I once lived in a civilized apartment, we did a Daniel’s Fast. My father, Scott, also a writer as mentioned in my other post, decided to get creative with the limited ingredients and made Focaccia bread; a bread supposedly with no yeast. Delish! So one day I was craving to get messy in my Nanny’s kitchen and looked up a recipe for Focaccia bread. I collected a recipe from there and I was thinking I didn’t want plain, dry Focaccia reminiscent of the Daniel Fast, but something with a little oomph should I say. And here is my recipe for my Lunchbox Focaccia:

• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 jumbo bag of mixed cheese (Colby Jack is what I used)
• A package of bacon and/or turkey/chicken breast lunchmeat

Directions

1.      Combine 1 cup flour, sugar, salt, and yeast. Mix well. Warm water and vegetable oil until room temp, and add to yeast mixture along with the egg. Blend with an electric processer at low speed until moistened. Beat for 2 additional minutes. Stir in 1 3/4 cup flour while beating, until dough pulls away from side of bowl.

2.      Knead in additional 3/4 cup flour on floured surface. Put dough in a bowl and place a clean towel over the top and let rise for an hour.

3.      After timer place in heavily greased rectangular or circular pan and brush with olive oil. Sprinkle your quantity of cheese and meat and follow step four.

4.      Bake at 400 degrees F (205 degrees C) for 22 minutes, until just golden. Remove from baking sheet, and cool on rack (I left it in the pan).

 P.S. Once by mistake I forgot the egg and if you're allergic to eggs it tastes just as good.

ENJOY!!

Pretzel Pizza Snacks

This past weekend I went down to visit my 2nd second cousin in Arkansas.  Sweet baby Briley was born with complications and severe SMA, but God will help her out. I just know He will.

While there I met a girl at the hospital and my father and her mom grew up together. So I had the honor of going over to her house and messing around in the kitchen. So at first we started making something in her Easy Bake oven, but that didn't work out too well. Here's our failed, but yummy, recipe

1-2 Chocolate chip granola bars

Chocolate syrup

And two caramel candies

1. Make a crunchy crust along the sides of the small metal pan and then add chocolate syrup and caramel candies
2. Set the pan inside the toasty Easy Bake Oven and then five seconds later, pull it out. A caramel candy got stuck in ours so make sure it's melted. What we ended up doing is putting it in a real oven for about five minutes or until caramel melted.

We also made Pretzel Pizzas. They aren't very hard to make, although I wouldn't normally use dough from a bag. Who knows what's in there!

You will need:

One bag of instant piza crust

A bag of mozzerella cheese

Ragu pizza sauce (when my dad has more time he makes his own sauce)

and a large pan

1. Follow the directions on the pizza crust bag and heat the oven to 475 degrees
2. Once dough has risen and has been kneaded, add a handful of cheese to the dough and make sure you flour up your hands real good.
3. Mix cheese in thouroughly. After that separate your dough into palm-sized balls and then roll out until skinny. Oil up your strings of dough and cross the two ends to make a breast cancer sign.
4. Apply sauce and cheese and then bake until cheese and dough has browned.

 Enjoy!