Train Cake Photos!

Trains, trains, and more trains!

My sister-in-law's baby shower was this last weekend (Nov. 7). We had a pretty good turnout for the occasion, approximately 35 people. I hosted and made the cake for Ling, I hope I did a good job and she liked everything!

We were expecting closer to 70 people for the event, so we had double the amount of food that we needed... including the cake. Because we were expecting so many guests I had decided to make two cakes, and because Hien had never tasted fondant I made one with that and the other with buttercream. I think they came out pretty good, and people seemed to enjoy them, so I don't feel so bad that not all of it got eaten. Also, I don't feel like all my time and energy that I spent making them was wasted. This is a good thing because I spent way to much time (~16 hrs!) and energy on them for them to not have turned out.

I feel that I am out of practice and should really make cakes more often if I don't want to lose my skills. There is no other good excuse that can explain why it took me so long to make two cakes. Because of my rustiness I had to go to the store three times, just to get more ingredients to make more frosting! (silly me thinking that one double recipe would be enough, try three double recipes) I ended up going to Sweet Mercantile twice, once for cake boards and another for adjustable dowels. I should have just bought them the first time, but I wasn't positive that I needed them. Another thing that slowed the process down was that I didn't get to prebake the cakes like I had planned and had to spend the entire morning mixing and baking six batches of cake batter. This would be a time when a woman wishes she had more than one oven and multiple baking pans and cooling racks!

By the end of the process, around 2 am, I was reminded why I love to make cakes for people. They are fun to decorate! I had lots of fun making the cakes look cute and adding little details and finishing touches. The first cake was a sheet cake that I cut out and frosted to look like a little train and the second cake was a two tiered fondant cake that I made train tracks for and a three piece train. I covered the board with green fondant to make it look like grass, and to cover up the pink! lol. I love my carrier, but pink wasn't going to fly for a boy baby shower! Pictures to come soon!

E-mealz update

So... e-mealz... as a program I think it was great. Unfortunately, it wasn't saving Hien and me any money so we had to nix it. We ended up spending about the same. I do however think that it was nice having my grocery list already made for me, along with recipes picked out. If we were a larger family I think that it would have been a much more useful tool, and I would still encourage people to use it if you are having a hard time staying on a budget with your grocery needs.

Some things that were a bit of a bummer:

• They only give you 5 dinners and leave you on your own for lunch and weekends. This wasn't a problem for us because we always had left overs that we ended up eating. Actually, were able to stretch the 5 meals out to feed us for about a week and a half.
• I didn't notice that the items on the list were on sale or "in season"
• They use broccoli often
• Menus are very "American" I would have preferred it if they had more ethnic variety, or at least offered a plan that had ethnic variety.
• Grocery list was hard to read sometimes because of the 'staples' category. This was at the bottom of the page in separate colums. I had a difficult time getting them at the store because everything else is listed by what store section you would find them in. This made my trips to the store longer and a little frustrating.

Some things that I really liked:

• Recipes were easy to follow.
• The food tasted great.
• Most menus were fast fixes and didn't require a lot of prep time.
• I was introduced to some new recipes

E-Mealz

So... Hien got notice that he is no longer be employed at ATK on Monday... and that it was going to be effective today, Tuesday. To help minimize our costs we went over our budget to see what we could cut. One of those things turned out to be our grocery fund. Now, rather than just eat beans and rice, rice and beans, we opted for another alternative. It is this really cool program called e-mealz, which we have heard of from Dave Ramsey on his internet/radio show. It is pretty cool and easy to use so check it out! People save up to half of thier costs. We'll see how it works out for us and I'll try to remember to keep you guys posted.

In The Beginning

Blogging...

I have avoided it for a long time now because I didn't think that I had much of a story to tell, or anything to say that others would be interested in. But now I am blogging. I am blogging because I want a place to talk about my food and nutrition experiences, and I want to be able to share new things that I find. Hopefully your time here will not be wasted, you will learn new things, and your attention will be held.