The Pantry Challenge: Great Cake Edition

Last weekend, our family celebrated my son's 25th. As in, the Christmastime baby's finally getting his due, a month after the fact...

And that can only mean one thing: Cake.

As my oldest is very much into the birthday thing, she'd prod her brother daily as to what kind of cake he'd want. "Do you want a Thomas cake? Do you want a dinosaur cake?"

And, being two, he'd say yes.

Which led me to a minor panic. I've never been one to shell out for a store-bought cake, but I struggled to find any kind of cake decoration that would work. Apparently the sugared decorations you'd buy in the store when I was a child no longer existed. I gave up after several stores. I half-heartedly looked for a train or dinosaur pan at resale shops. I flirted with how I could make a train that wrapped around a round cake.

But Friday came, and I had to do something.

And I stared at the cake aisle at Target, eyes glazed over as I glanced over the different types of decorating options (yes, even a can that comes with its own decorating tops you can toss), and I realized, I can do this myself. I'm a big girl. I can mix eggs and oil and a box mix. At that point, why not bake it myself?

So I grabbed some eggs, some powdered sugar, butter, ice cream and a small tube of icing and decorator tops (no sense buying them more than once). It cost less than the mix, frosting and assorted items to add in the baking process. And Saturday morning, I went to work.

And strangely enough, my homemade (hand-drawn, even) dinosaur cake turned out ok.

Lest you think it's a fluke, it's amazingly simple to bake your own cake and mix your own frosting. Most of the ingredients are likely in your pantry.

In fact, I think the frosting is better and easier to spread than anything bought off the shelf!

Here's our success story, adapted from an old Better Homes & Gardens cookbook:

Giradelli Chocolate Chip Cake

2 cups flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup milk

5 egg whites

12-oz. package Giradelli chocolate chips (how these survived a stay in my pantry past the holidays, one only knows...)

Grease and flour two 9" cake pans.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt.

In mixer, beat butter, sugar and vanilla until fluffly.

Add dry ingredients and milk alternatly to beaten mixture, keeping on low speed.

Wash beaters.

In small bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold into flour mixture with the chocolate chips. Pour into pans.

Bake at 375 for 20 minutes or until cake tests done. Cool at least 10 minutes before removing from pans.

White frosting

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 teaspoons venilla

4 1/2 (ish) cups powdered sugar

3 to 4 tablespoons milk.

Beat butter and vanilla on medium spead for 30 seconds. Gradually add half of the powdered sugar, beating well, then half of the milk. Blend in rest of the powdered sugar then enough milk to make it spreading consistency.

Awesome mushroom pasta

Cleaning out the fridge today was a quicker process than I thought. Only a handful of leftovers were left (a sign of better planning around here!)

So I was stumped for lunch. I had one portobello mushroom cap, bought on a whim - I have a difficulty telling my children no if they're interested in fresh produce at the store. I also had a package of fresh button mushrooms. Here's the result....

Two-mushroom pasta
8 cloves fresh garlic, chopped
2 T. olive oil
1 large portobello mushroom, cut into 1" chunks
1 8-oz. package sliced button mushrooms
1/2 package (approx. 8 oz.) egg noodles
1 T. sherry (optional)
Cracked pepper
Salt

Prepare noodles according to package directions.

In large frying pan, heat olive oil, and sautee' garlic until light brown. Add all mushrooms and cook until browned. Add 1 T. sherry to deglaze pan (could add water as alternate); cook until liquid is gone.

Toss pasta with mushrooms, add cracked black pepper and salt to taste.

Lest you think it's a mom-only recipe, my 4 year old declared it "the best pasta ever." Here's hoping I can recreate the magic!

At the GPB: Green as a matter of faith?

Today I'm preaching what I'm practicing over at the Green Phone Booth. Join the discussion: What does being green have to do with faith?

Step up! Clean your closets and make a difference

Step up and help your neighbor: Your older, unloved shoes could find a new home with someone who needs help most.

I've always struggled with what to do with well-worn shoes or those my children outgrow in a matter of weeks, it seems. If they're in good shape, there's the option of donating them or selling to a resale shop, but those with scuffs or scrapes just don't make the cut for willing buyers and all too often end up in the trash.

While you can participate in shoe recycling programs such as the one through Nike, which turns old tennis shoes into new track, I'd like to argue that helping our neighbors, near and far, is more important than ever. Whether it's helping our local communities facing double-digit unemployment (and fewer resources for the basics) or giving a step-up to those in the most impoverished countries, a donation of your child's outgrown tennies or your outdated styles could make a difference for those in need. And all it costs you is the time of cleaning out your closet and dropping them off to a collection site or at the post office.

Here's just a sampling of the organizations that regularly accept donations of used but still usable shoes. Details on these groups came from their Web sites; please confirm drop-off locations with the organization before shipping or dropping off shoes.

Heart and Sole
A project run through the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine, Heart and Sole provides new and gently used shoes to the poorest of the world’s people. More than 7,000 pairs of shoes have been shipped around the world.

One World Running
Since 1986, a group of runners in Boulder, Colorado, has collected, washed and sent to Third World countries new and "near-new" athletic shoes, T-shirts and shorts, along with medicine and school and art supplies. Drop-off locations include locations in Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, and Ottawa.

Soles4Souls
Soles4Souls is a Nashville-based charity that collects shoes from the warehouses of footwear companies and the closets of people like you. The charity distributes these shoes free of charge to people in need, regardless of race, religion, class, or any other criteria. Since 2005, Soles4Souls has given away over 5.5 million pairs of new and gently worn shoes (currently donating one pair every 9 seconds.) The shoes have been distributed to people in over 125 countries, including Kenya, Thailand, Nepal and the United States. I became aware of this as they are partnering with many stores in Indiana for drop-off sites, as they are working, like many groups, to assist those in Haiti. Find drop-off locations and a mailing address (if no drop-off spots are nearby).

Shoebank
The Shoe Bank had just one goal when it was founded in 1989 – to put comfortable shoes on a few hundred homeless men living on the streets in downtown Dallas. The program today provides shoes for 20,000 people every year – primarily children, both here and abroad.
Find drop-off locations in Texas here.

Whether you're wanting to help others on a limited budget or simply want to start on your spring cleaning, take those few extra minutes to make sure your castoffs go to a good cause. It's more important than ever!

A (non-) sticky mess

Non-stick skillets and pans have graced my cabinets for as long as I can remember. While we've been phasing our admittedly cheaper pans from our college days out as they wear, we still have one pan that still gets use in our home on a regular basis.

So imagine my surprise when I read this weekend that the ease of that non-stick coating could carry a hefty price. The Globe and Mail reports that:

People with higher residues in their blood of a chemical used to make non-stick
coatings for frying pans and water-repellent clothing have a far greater
likelihood of reporting thyroid diseases, according to a new study released
Thursday.

...The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that in a group of nearly 4,000 people in the United States, those with elevated PFOA levels were more than twice as likely to report being on medication to treat thyroid conditions as those with lower concentrations of the chemical.

What's worse is what was buried in the story:

Once people ingest a quantity of PFOA, it takes about four years for half of the
chemical to be cleared from the body by the kidneys.

While this isn't the first time I've read about chemicals from everyday products taking harbor in your body, the research study certainly gives me pause. While I'll be the first to admit I'm annoyed when my husband leaves the cast-iron skillet on the stove uncleaned overnight, it may be a small price to pay to help ensure my child has a smaller chance of getting a disease that will require medical management for the rest of his or her life.

The greater question, of course, is where do all the tossed non-stick pans go...and what happens with the chemicals as they decompose. But that is a worry for another day.