The past month of goings-on

I have certainly been neglectful (is that a word?) of the blog lately.  Moving is no longer my excuse since I've been at my new place for 5 weeks now and have been settled for about 4.5 of those weeks.  The main thing I'll talk about today is the red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting that I made for my mom's birthday party yesterday, but here are some other things I've been up to lately ...

M&M cookies are my new favorite thing to make.

I've made them at least 3 times in the past month.

Delicious M&M peanut butter sandwich cookies!!  I could eat these all day.

This was the fourth time I made meatloaf.  The first 2 times I put it in a loaf pan and there was waaay too much liquid in it to slice it.  Then I tried putting it in a 9x5 inch pan, which was probably the best turnout as far as the liquid issue goes.  However, I saw the Barefoot Contessa make meatloaf this way, so I wanted to try it.  I either used to lean of mean (93/7), or too much fat and liquid escaped onto the foil.  I'm guessing it was the fat ratio.  Also, I am never putting garlic in this recipe (Kim's Ultimate, see former post) because it just doesn't go well with the sweet and sour thing going on.

 I make darn good scrambled eggs, if I do say so myself!  This was the second time I'd used Yukon Gold potatoes, the first being mashed potatoes I made a couple of weeks ago for Eric and me.  I diced them up and fried them in butter, olive oil, salt and pepper for about 5 minutes, turning them frequently until all sides were browned.  Then I put a lid on it for about 3 minutes, and they were perfect!  Crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.

Now for the main event ...

Creamed the butter and sugar, eggs waiting patiently on hand ...

My kitchen.  Yep, all of it.  As in about 3 square feet of counter space.  

Note the small folding table that saved the night.

After taking 10 minutes longer than the recipe said, they're finished!!

I didn't take a picture of the batter beforehand because it looked disgusting.  Just sayin.

And now the grand finale!

I used this recipe after reading some surprisingly negative comments about Paula Deen's.  I think the reason other cooks said hers was bland (which was the main complaint) was because she uses vegetable oil instead of butter, buttermilk, or sour cream.  I actually modified the McCormick recipe a bit because I didn't have sour cream.  Instead, I used 1 cup buttermilk and 1/4 cup vegetable oil instead of the 1 cup sour cream and 1/2 cup milk.  However, I DID use Paula's recipe for cream cheese frosting but used real butter instead of margarine (what was she thinking?!?!?).  Next time I will take her advice and use 1.5 recipes of the frosting.  Even though my mom's favorite frosting with red velvet cake is the cooked flour icing with sugar, she was pretty happy with what I made (although she really doesn't look it!)

 This is all the reassurance that I need!