The Search for Miss Direction: Vampires Beware

I don't think there's a chance of a vampire attack at the Gatchel household anytime soon given how much we celebrated garlic today. And you know me, never one to do anything halfway, I even managed to work garlic into dessert :)

My day didn't start off so swell, though. I came back from dropping Noah off at school to find this:

Apparently Bella really liked Noah's farm and zoo pictures from last night, too. So much so that she felt it necessary to eat all of the animals off of them and then rip them to shreds all over my house. (This was only the bulk of the mess, not the entire thing) The thing is, I could have probably written it off as my own darn fault for leaving it someplace she could get into, but they were on top of top of the printer on my desk, which means she had to climb up on my chair and then onto my desk to even get them proving I really DIDN'T leave them in a place she could get them. Grrrr, silly dog. As I said on facebook earlier, it was almost as upsetting as when Tipper (my brother's dog) ate Baby Jesus out of my childhood manager scene. Noah though, after a few tears when I told him mostly took it in stride.

After cleaning up the animal cracker fiasco and then cleaning the rest of the house (with the help of my favorite three year old who insisted on scrubbing the toilet, mopping the floors and dusting everywhere. Hey, who am I to complain?) Kayla and I set out to make some garlic chocolate chip cookies and meatloaf for dinner. The cookies were kind of crazy - you boiled the garlic cloves (cloves not bulbs. Name of the person that I know who made this mistake is being withheld because I love them :) ) still in the skin until they were soft. Then you skinned them, chopped them, (Kayla and I decided to use the food processor instead. It was bad enough the whole house reeked of garlic, we didn't need to as well) and then for lack of a better explanation, marinated it in maple syrup for 30 minutes. You then drained the syrup and added the garlic to a mostly basic chocolate chip cookie dough.

I promise you're not going to believe me when I tell you this but everyone who has eaten them agrees that you can't even taste the garlic! In fact, Noah had a playdate today and when he came back I offered cookies to him, his friend and his Mom, Jen. Jen said if I hadn't told her there was garlic in it she would have never known! Grant agreed. And everyone loves the actual cookie - Noah's had four already. So if you know anyone looking to work in the health benefits of garlic to a cookie, send them my way ;-)

I also whipped up some garlic mashed potatoes to go with the meatloaf Mikayla so wonderfully prepared. ("I'm making meatloaf, Mama! It's squishy!") Shell, I'm blessing your name today because my very overworked scentsy is the only thing that is keeping me sane and overpowering the pungent garlic. (I've got caramel de leche going, it's wonderful!)

Besides being National Garlic Day it's also National Amaretto Day. I actually made up my own batch of amaretto last night. (If I can make kahlua, I can handle amaretto!) I used some of it to make amaretto glazed carrots for with dinner (both of the kiddos loved these) and the rest went to some more grown-up uses by Grant and I this evening. We've made a "Dirty Bedtime Story" (milk, amaretto, kahlua and chocolate syrup) and a "Brown Snapper" (Amaretto, Canadian Whiskey (Dad, we finally cracked open the Crown from Christmas!) and Root Beer - you can make it a red snapper by substituting cranberry juice for the root beer) It was fun to try two brand new drinks - what's your favorite amaretto drink?

Tigers are playing late again tonight (game just started and I'm writing this at just after 10pm) but I'm really hoping it doesn't go as late as Wednesday's game did, when I was up 'til nearly 3am watching the boys finally win in the 14th inning - crazy! A loss yesterday, but I suppose you can't win them all.

One last low-key weekend before craziness sets in over the next month or so. Taking on pineapple upside cake and lima beans tomorrow. Until then...