French apple tart

This weekend's baking adventure comes to you via "Baking with Julia" by Julia Child.

This was my first time making a french apple tart and I thought...

who better to teach me than julia herself!

I must admit I was a bit shocked to find her recipe called for vegetable shortening...

( REALLY JULIA????) I thought the french were all about the butter??!!.

But I am NOT one to argue with a MASTER, so off I went to bake.

My findings?

The filling was delicious!!!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that her use of breadcrumbs inside the apple mixture was wonderful and flavorful.

As for the tart shell...

I was not impressed. It was a bit salty and slightly "lardy" tasting . Honeypie did not like it. I think I am going to try it again using a "pate brisse" which makes a more sweeter only butter dough.

No on the shortening for me. :)

Pretty presentation though!

With left over dough I made pie pockets (use a cookie cutter and seal seams with egg wash)

And a delicious brie and caramelized onion galette... thought the photo is not too good!

For julia child's apple tart recipe (click here)

Hello, fall

Fall is pretty much here!

Here are some yummy cupcakes we made to celebrate!

We are off to do some apple picking and to try making an apple tart thanks to julia child!

^_^

Ponyo snowglobe

Honeypie's idea today was to make a snowglobe.

A "ponyo" snowglobe!

We came up with the idea of maybe using an old jam jar, some clay you can bake in the oven, a hot glue gun and a bit of creativity!

Honeypie begins sculpting PONYO

Here is the house on the cliff by the sea with one of PONYO'S sisters...

Honeypie adds the bucket and some ham!

(we bake the whole thing in the oven at 275 F for 15 minutes)

and mama hot glue gun's it to the jam jar's lid

We add some water

We close it shut.

We hot glue gun the edges of the lid to keep it sealed

and then glue a ribbon around the edge too.

We did not put any glitter in it which you can do ....

and we did not fill it all the way with water since honeypie insisted

the house could not be submerged !

^_^

Got cold?

Ok...

Day 3 of indoor with a cold...

what to do???

Oatmeal brulee

Face painting...

Keep wishing and hounding for a puppy...

more "uniqua" loving... this time cookies

More cookies...

Some marshmallow play inspired by "ordinary life magic"

(Goopy marshmallows made for not too many in the mouth! YES!!!)

and bug making with rocks

And we are officially done!!!

^_^ healthy and happy birdycake

An Orange a day...

Ok... cold season has officially begun!

Honeypie had the sniffles today and we spent the day boosting our vitamin C and A intake.

We begin our fall routine of treating the body extra good.

We start with a carrot smoothie for breakfast. And for those picky eaters out there I must say that the earthy carrot taste gets hidden by the frozen bananas, blueberries, raspberries and bit of orange juice. I add a bit of honey too. Delicious!

We place the extra smoothie into ice pop trays for later...

For lunch we make a sweet potato savory pie with brie, caramelized onions, thyme and rosemary.

And we end the day with a little night time tea party.

I love Traditional Medicinals teas especially their throat coat (it has marshmallow root, licorice and wild cherry bark all great for soothing the throat) and cold care for kids (it has elder flower, linden flower, chamomile and peppermint)

These (vitamin C ... ok ... just a tiny bit) orange glazed cardamon madeleines are

from Martha Stewart's latest yummy book "COOKIES".

(Here's the recipe)

Here's what they look like in day light! (only 7 left!!)

My copy of this book has way too many post-its!!!

Sooo many goodies!

One of my favorite books for health information is

Smart medicine for a healthier child by Janet Zand

It details conventional, dietary, nutritional , herbal, homeopathy, as well as acupressure

for any childhood illness.

A complete must.

Keep healthy!

You've got mail!

"You've got mail!!!" says Honeypie.

And I am not talking about email... I'm talking about the glorious old-fashioned way to receive letters... those written with paper and pencil.

I love receiving traditional mail and so does honeypie. I still have old letters saved in shoeboxes, birthday cards I received as a kid, old postcards and notes written between friends during study hall. I love pulling them out to reminisce.

We love going to the mailbox and though it does tend to get bombarded mostly with junk mail... we love receiving the occassional goodie. Now when we go on vacation, we will send friends postcards and when other friends go on vacation they send us some too! and it is so much fun to receive a postcard from the grand canyon or even Japan!

I have tried to encourage writing to honeypie without any pressure. We love writing thank you notes and thank you drawings when someone has given us a present. We love sitting down and making cards for friends, just because we miss them and they are far away. And of course the love letters daddy and I receive from honeypie get treasured away by me almost immediately. So it seemed a great idea to create and open welcoming area that she could gather her thoughts, pick up paper and pencils on her own and write when ever she wanted to.

These are some good writing tools.

Colored pencils, erasers, sharpener, scissors and some markers all in one place for easy picking.

This is probably not the tidiest writing area...

but honeypie's need list included:

a mailbox, a sticker box, stampers, stencils, envelopes and stationary, construction paper (in case she wanted to make her own envelopes), and all other sorts of things....

This weekend I made her a mailbox using some packaging material we received in the mail, old cardboard, a glue gun, brads, scissors and some pretty scrap book paper.

I added some velcro to the opening to make the closing of the mailbox easier....

The maibox flag goes up and down according to ..."you've got mail!!!"

We also worked on creating our own stationary. All you need for this is some paper. (I used printer paper 8 1/2 by 11), some fancy decorating scissors or some plain ones (for creating decorative paper edges), colored pencils and stampers.

Here honeypie is creating an owl inspired stationary page.

We decorated some envelopes too.

( Junk mail comes in handy when you can collect the envelopes in those letters.

I give those to honeypie)

and here's an old old book we found at a flea market... (1940's)

happy writing!

~birdycake