Muffin Tin Flan

I decided it was about time to introduce Zoe to one of Pat's and my true loves--Mexican food. Is that even 'politically correct'? There was a girl in one of my classes last semester that would always grumble under her breath and shake her head whenever our instructor said, "mexican food"... but, you get the picture.

Since we were having tacos and horchata for dinner, flan for dessert just made sense. ;) There is something so fun about making flan. And it's oh so easy! And delicious, of course. 

Mmmmm! :)

Thanks to a wonderful suggestion from Pat, I ended up making mini flans in a muffin tin, instead of the usual 9 inch round pan. While I'm no flan pro, the 2 or 3 other times I've made it I have always had people comment on how difficult it must be to make, etc. And it definitely isn't.

This is the recipe I like to use, with a few small changes. 

Fist, begin melting the sugar over low-medium heat. I add a few drops of lemon juice to the sugar. I could be crazy, but I think I remember hearing it helps with the melting...

As you keep melting and stirring, the sugar will turn a little rocky. This is a good thing.

Stay patient. The sugar will turn liquid after a few more minutes, and you just keep stirring as it darkens. The color you want is a dark, amber color. 

I should have probably gone a little darker, but I had a cute little 3 year old helping me that was getting a little impatient.

So next, I spooned the melted sugar into the muffin tin, which had been sitting in the warm oven. If you pour the sugar right into a cold or room temp pan, it will harden too quickly to spread. But I guess I didn't have to worry about that with the muffin tin, due to the tiny space I had to fill...

While I was melting the sugar, I had some help mixing up the rest of the ingredients and whipping up the eggs. I also like to add in 4 oz. of cream cheese to make the flan a little more firm. Keeps us from having to leave in it in the refrigerator overnight. :) 

Then it all gets poured on top of the melted sugar and baked @ 350. Our oven is a little whacky, so I didn't trust to just leave it for a certain amount of time. I just kept checking the oven every few minutes after the 10 minute mark to see when the middles had set, and then I removed them and let the pan sit for a little over an hour, while we munched on our tacos and horchata.

The final few steps are the trickiest. I boiled some water and dumped a few inches of the water into the sink and let the pan sit in the boiled water to melt the sugar down again.

Then I used a knife around the edges to separate the custard from the pan. There has to be an easier/prettier way to do this part.

Finally, I flipped the whole thing over onto a cookie sheet and WAH-LAH!

They weren't the most beautiful little flan, but they sure were tasty and fun to make! 

Pat has officially started his new job and is loving it (so he says):

Ain't he cute!?

We were lucky enough to have my mom and 2 younger brothers come and visit us this past weekend. We didn't do anything too exciting or out of the ordinary but we loved having them.

I wish I had more to write about. But we don't have many blog-worthy things going on these days.

Good ol' summer time

I'm sitting out on the balcony right now, watching my little gal play outside with neighbor friends while my little guy is inside taking a nap. The weather is beautiful, I have my feet in our little wading pool and I am just remembering why I love summer time so much. Maybe in a few weeks when it reaches 100, I'll have a harder time reminding myself. But, today is great.

These past few days I've taken my 'stay at home mom' role back while Pat has been off at his new job. I haven't really fully experienced life as a mom of 2 until now. Don't get me wrong, I have had evenings of putting them both to bed, mornings of feeding them both breakfast and experienced the chaos of grocery shopping with 2 little helpers, but I've had a LOT of help from Pat in between all of that. So, these past few days have been a little different, but I'm loving it and trying to enjoy it as much as I can, since I know it's not going to last long.

We've been filling our dad-less days with swimming:

Going for walks:

And making this awesome kool aid play-doh:

I have tried making a few different playdohs with Zoe, but this one was by far the best. It smells ssoooo delicious, made some really bright colors (without having to use food coloring=no colored hands), and I didn't have to make it over the stove, so Zoe was able to help with the whole process. And it's the only one I've ever made that's not grainy from the salt and super sticky.

This is the original recipe:

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
2 (4g) packages Kool-Aid powder
2 cups boiling water
3 tablespoons cooking oil

But because I didn't want a lot of one color, I cut the recipe down into fourths and just used 4 different colors of kool aid powder, but only about half of each packet. I probably could have used 4 whole packets, but didn't.

So we started out by mixing the flour, salt and kool aid powder in 4 different bowls, then I had some water boiling in the kettle. Next I measured out 2 cups of water and the oil, then divided that between the 4 bowls and we mixed:

After this, Landon woke up so we took a short break while I fed him. This might be why it turned out so well, since the dough had a few minutes to dry up a little before we started handling it. I did have to add a little extra flour to each one as we kneaded to make it not the least bit sticky.

It all smelled sooo good, that Zoe just couldn't resist taking a little taste:

And that would be her spitting it out in disgust. Haha. It was pretty comical. And then... we played! This picture is for Reid--playdoh ninja bread men!

Lastly, congrats to my little brother, Cory! I wish we could be there to celebrate with him as he graduates from high school tonight.

Passing time

With school over and the extreme job hunting we've been doing, I've been going a little crazy. If my kids don't keep me up enough at night, the stress from trying to figure things out is doing a great job at it too.


Pat got his first job offer today, working at the hospital as a food service... person. I don't really know what the official job title is. It's only a part time position, so he wouldn't be making enough for me to do my clinicals yet. But I'm grateful for it. I went to a job interview today for this company and was offered the job on the spot. I haven't fully accepted yet, and am kind of hoping I don't have to. It's VERY low pay and VERY hard, dirty work. And when I say dirty... well, it will be dirty.

Despite all the application filling out, interview preparing, interview going craziness that has been going on over here, we have found time to get a little fun in for all 3 of my cute kids. Yes, I said 3:

I don't have anything very fun to write about, so I'll just post a few pictures for all the poor people that don't get to see these darling faces every day.

Zoe and Landon

The other day, as I was feeding Landon I took a picture and noticed that he is in the same highchair and wearing the same bib as Zoe was in a picture I have of her, which I took during one of her first cereal feedings. I thought it would be fun to put them both up:

See, Zoe used to be that pale too! :P

Company, blood and the lake

What a wild week! I feel like I have just been going non-stop and am so excited for my last two finals to be done tomorrow evening. I really should be studying for those two finals, but I NEED a little break. And I've been thinking about how badly I need to write a quick update!

Pat and I both had one final last week, and the rest are this week. Pat's final was in his Phlebotomy class. This whole semester I have been telling myself that I need to get to one of his classes to let him practice drawing my blood. He came about every other week last semester when I was taking the same class to let me poke him. Last semester, however, we only had 1 child and that child was taking naps still... so taking her to a 7:30pm class was no big deal.

I finally mustered up the courage to drag Zoe and Landon along with me to his last class and he got busy sucking my veins dry. I let him prick me 4 times, and he did great. I love how interested Zoe gets as she watches Pat and I draw eachother's blood. I can't imagine what is going through her little head. Haha.

Last week we also entertained 2 different groups of friends/family. On wednesday night we had the Biggs over. Pat had met Willy last semester in his EMT class and we have enjoyed getting together with his family. They have 3 cute little boys that are so sweet to Zoe.

Then, my brother and his family came and stayed with us for a night this past weekend. We had been so excited for them to come visit. Zoe had been counting down the days for weeks. She just loves those cousins of hers.

The "twins", Zoe and Brynley

And now, Zoe has been asking if she can have her cousins over again. I'm sure it's confusing for her. Eight months ago, we lived just down the road from them and now we are a few hours away. She doesn't understand why we can't just call them up and have them over. It makes me sad. :( But we're so happy they came to visit us!

Another exciting thing that happened this weekend... Landon got to enjoy something other than a bottle! I can't believe how fast he's growing up. Pat and I had been counting down to the 4 month mark so that we could start giving him something a little more filling before he went to bed, hoping that he might sleep more than 2 hours before waking up for a bottle. But--we were wrong. He's still alwaaaaays hungry! Oh well. He sure is cute.

I think the last thing worth writing about is our fun trip to the lake. We had been wanting to go for awhile, and finally got around to it. And I'm so glad we took a (another) break from studying to go for a little family outing. I have bright pink shoulders that I am hoping will turn into a nice tan to match the rest of my family. But... probably not.

We started off with a little hike to get nice and toasty, since the water in the lake was a little chilly. I didn't plan ahead and bring a hat for Landon, so luckily he was a good sport and didn't mind wearing Zoe's pink one. ;)

It's hard to tell in that picture. But we're up on a mini mountain (I can't call it a hill. I got too worn out climbing up to admit that it's just... a big hill) overlooking the lake. Pat and Zoe are standing on the edge, looking out. Pretty view.

Then it was time for the lake!

Landon was not very happy about having his feet dipped in, so we went and sat on the "beach" together. This is the part where the hot pink shoulders showed up. Good thing he was tucked away in the stroller.

Zoe and Pat played in the water for hours, which made me a little sad that I only brought the bottom half of my swimsuit. But it was still fun to watch.

And now, I will force myself to end it here and get back to cramming my little brain.

The semester is coming to an end, hooray! As excited as I am for classes to be over, I'm dreading it too. The semester ending means Pat's job coming to an end, my internship closer to starting, Pat and I frantically continuing our job search, me being away from my two kiddies for looong stretches of time. I think I will be more excited for the summer to end than I am for this semester to end.

I have been working on this for awhile now (mostly in my mind) and I finally finished them this weekend.

Grr, I wish I were better at picture taking!

But I'm pretty pleased with how these came out. They are just painted onto canvases and a little more simple/plain than I had originally planned, but they were really fun for me to do and they satisfied my craving for a nice, messy painting project.

Oh, and I love Landon's puffs of hair that just keep getting poofier and puffier.