What a Beautiful Day

You have to say it like Dora the Explorer, though: What a beauuuuuuutiful day!

So yesterday the weather ended up being not-so-awful for Christianne's field trip to RMNP. She seemed to have a great time, and got to see chipmunks, deer, bighorn sheep, and elk. How wonderful is that?! I love it here.

Yes, I still love it here, tornado and all. I'm smiling because of various comments I've heard lately about reconsidering the area because of the tornado. From everything I've heard, the weird twisters last week were complete flukes. An 86yo man from Windsor stated he'd never seen anything like it. The weather everywhere has just been so odd recently. And besides, natural disasters can occur anywhere - we had earthquakes where we're from. So yeah. I still love it here.

I was thinking about it this morning, driving around town. The trees line the streets and and there is so much green everywhere. We have the Rockies in the background just to the west of us. Today's overcast morning was erased by clear blue skies by lunchtime. Beautiful.

(I was surprised to find out in the newspaper yesterday that one of the tornadoes last Thursday did, in fact, touch down about half a mile from me ~ about halfway between our home and Christianne's school. I've driven down there a few times since, though, and there's no indication of any damage to anything; neither buildings or trees show any evidence of a severe storm, and some of the trees along there are pretty young. It must've been pretty mild by the time it touched down I guess. But anyway...)

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So recently I wrote a blog on shortcut cooking. My friend Wanda e-mailed me the following:

The only shortcut recipe I can think of that I use is making cookies with a cake mix. You can use any flavor, add whatever you want like chocolate chips, m & m's and they are moist and yummy! One of my favorites is the funfetti cake mix and you can put funfetti icing on top or eat them plain. You just use a cake mix, 1/2 cup of oil, 2 eggs and beat with a mixer on med.speed until batter is smooth. Stir in chocolate chips, nuts or whatever you want. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes and ENJOY!

I tried the Funfetti recipe today for J's reading party at school. I have to tell you that it's an absolute HIT. It was so simple, having only two ingredients besides the cake mix, all things that I usually have on hand. I was a little concerned that the cookies would brown to an unattractive shade, but they stayed nice and white and had little flecks of color throughout. They were soft and tasted much better than I could have imagined. I would never have known they were from a cake mix. It's a winner, and we're looking forward to experimenting with different flavors over the summer. My only comments were that I had to spray my baking stone lightly (it's a well-seasoned stone that I never spray, but they stuck a little bit), and I had to cook them for about 12 to 14 minutes (but that could be because of the altitude). She also sent me a recipe for monkey bread that I'll post for you soon. Thanks, Wanda for sharing!