Once a Month Blogging

After I hit the 500 blog post milestone, it certainly appears that I’m become a once-a-month blogger. Never my intention but…

Life happens.

I can’t really blog about the trivial stuff of our summer and ignore one of the worst tragedies we all woke up to on Friday last week. Sad, sad stuff and my heart goes out to all those families in Colorado.

We are all fine, fine, fine here.

It seems a little funny to think our summer is busier this year with one 13 year-old at home and the 3 college kids mostly managing their own lives than when we had all 4 kids at home. Feels weird to me anyway.

More to come because I really don’t want to abandon my neglected little blog. Until then, here are some snippets of the Humpfreeze summer memories.

Reminder/Disclaimer: Food pictures follow even though this is not a food blog which is obvious when you look at the pictures.

Even though we’re working hard to stay away from boxed foods and make homemade things as much as we can, I will confess that many convenience foods were used to make the darling twins birthday dessert requests.

I used The Best Chocolate Cake Ever recipe and cheated with a box of Jello chocolate mousse I didn’t even remember buying that I had in the pantry. Homemade no-bake cheesecake filling and homemade whipped cream. We all thought it was one of the best cakes ever!

Rachel’s dessert request took on a life of its own. Recipe inspiration came from this crazy Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie Oreas ‘n Brownie Bars recipe. It was surprisingly edible. Even at 21, who doesn’t appreciate monkey party hats and plates I brought to as well as the princess napkins? It’s a twin thing to pick a few special things for each twin and I picked things that match their personality.

We delivered their cakes after making them cut them so we could bring 2 pieces home for Scary Baby and took them to dinner.

Forgot to take a picture of Rachel’s monstrosity after we cut it.

I bravely cooked again at 4th of July. The summer heat has us avoiding turning on the oven so I opted for crockpot shredded pork BBQ.

I used two recipes from Monica’s blog, The Yummy Life and we all loved the BBQ. I really liked it because even though “they say” the fat from pork roast adds flavor, I don’t like it and don’t like to strain it all off. Picture of the pork is before I added the Sweet Baby Ray’s Barbeque sauce. Here are links to both recipes:

14 spice dry rub mix
Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

We also enjoyed the super sweet variation of strawberry shortcake that my friend Leigh Anne had posted. It’s hard for me to say anything is too sweet but the frosting layers on this cake were very sweet! I loved the butter almond cake but would use a lightly sweetened whipped cream with the lemon curd next time. We shared half the cake with neighbors who raved about it.

Berry Almond Butter Cake with Strawberries

It’s rare that all six of us are all in one place at one time with the 3 college kids’ summer work schedules but whenever we can capture any of them it seems to usually involve bribing them with food.

How are you surviving this summer heat?