The Unadventures of Tracie

I love popcorn. It is one of the best treats ever invented. I am perfectly capable of devouring enormous quantities of popcorn single-handedly. I blame my mom. She is also a popcorn fiend. But this isn't about her. This is about fluffy, buttery popcorn and all of its marvelous wonderousness. My life has been forever changed. So I'm not a complete idiot. I was perfectly aware that not all popcorn comes from little paper bags cooked via "the popcorn button" in the microwave. I mean, I had heard of air poppers. What I didn't know is that it was entirely possible to cook popcorn YOURSELF...ON THE STOVE. Thanks goes to Charity who shared this little piece of wisdom with me. A few weeks ago Austin and I went over to Charity and James' to watch a French postapocalyptic film about cannibals called Delicatessen . (Verdict: Weird, but interesting. And the French are weird.) Anyway, being the good host that she is, Charity had made some homemade popcorn th...

Don’t these look yummy? They were. They absolutely were. A few weeks ago Tyler informed me that he had learned from the infallible Alton Brown that you could substitute avocado for butter and shortening when baking. Since I’m always on the lookout to make unhealthy treats a little bit healthier, I decided to try this idea out. So with Austin as my partner-in-cooking I set out to reinvent Mom’s chocolate chip cookies. I replaced all of the shortening and two-thirds of the butter with pureed avocado (I didn’t have enough avocado, otherwise I would’ve done all avocado.) It was quite the interesting concoction: green, wet, sticky, and a bit stretchy. I had to experiment with the cooking times quite a bit to get them so they were cooked on the inside and outside without burning but the final result was delicious. The cookies looked different but besides the slightly different texture, they tasted almost exactly the same. I will try this again. Project Status: Success!

Austin and others have been complaining that I haven’t been updating frequently enough. So, here I am updating on the last week or so. On March 4, I, along with AJ, threw Heidi a baby shower. We had a “spring” theme and it was a “friends” shower. (Shera had thrown Heidi a ward/family shower in December.) AJ graciously did the invites and mailed them out while I was still in Texas for Austin and me’s trip. Since I don’t get home until 6:30 usually and the shower was set to start at 7, I planned to get everything done the night before. I left work an hour early and stopped at Walmart for groceries and Heidi’s gift. I then returned home and started cleaning the house. I cleaned furiously and prepared the spinach artichoke dip that was to be cooked the following night. I also made sugar cookie dough and placed it in the fridge to chill while I finished cleaning the house. Austin and I were still technically housesitting for my parents and so we went over there to bake and frost the sugar ...