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March 23, 2008

Happy Easter!

I had a rather hectic weekend with a lot of things to do ahead of time for Easter. Add in the fact that my two little devils very thoroughly went through all of our belongings, making sure that every last thing was out of place or ripped to shreds. I did a lot of really bad grazing on the Costco bag of almonds I bought and fortunately, all the walking and bending over to pick up things probably helped negate it. That's still no excuse for bad habits though...

We currently have five little kids in the family that adore anything Jell-O, which is a really good thing for me because I'm always looking for backup excuses to make Jell-O eggs, something I've never been completely sure any adults other than me care for. My Aunty is the one who passed on this odd craving for egg shaped Knox Blox. Before advanced technologies were discovered (plastic eggs & molds), she used to poke holes into the tops of her eggs and siphon the egg out whenever she made scrambled eggs. She'd then save the rinsed out eggshells all year until finally Easter came around and she could use them to fill with Jell-O. I still remember helping crack the eggs under warm water. This freaking insane yet endearing technique must have done something to my head over the years because as it is now, I cannot have an Easter without Jell-O eggs. And I don't just make a dozen, I go crazy and make at least 50. My co-workers will find this out tomorrow. He he.

This year I made Cherry, Orange, Lemon, Lime, and Berry Blue. I made one box of Grape, but I ended up eating all of them with the kids on Saturday... hee. I still have tons of boxes of Strawberry, Raspberry, and Grape to make. Since Buddy had hidden a bunch of boxes around the house (I found one in the toy chest), I was missing some boxes and had to go to Foodland to round things out. I almost broke down crying when I saw that they didn't stock Peach flavored Jell-O anymore. Peach Jell-O was something I was addicted to while I was pregnant and I only have two boxes left. Hopefully they just don't stock it and it's not discontinued. My mom had a favorite Jell-O flavor: Blackberry. That got discontinued! D:


I had talked about my co-worker's cupcakes and how I was going to steal her idea. Well, there they are! They didn't come out quite as good as I had hoped. I should have gone for Jelly Bellys instead I think. I thought about using the little box of Bertie Botts I had here, but then thought that would be mean and that maybe eating a Booger flavored bean would make the cupcake experience a bit less than pleasant. They're topped with green dyed coconut and Smoothie flavor Skittles. Sadly the bag had very few purple Skittles and I found those made the cupcakes look the best.


I made a really huge ass Kim Chee Crab and Avocado Salad for the family and everyone liked it, so that was a good success again! I added sliced baby carrot this time for a bit more color since I forgot to buy grape tomatoes. Easter was really fun overall. My almost brother-in-law made scallop with mustard sauce appetizers and and a really, really good beef dish. We dyed eggs. Buddy dyed his legs yellow. I had a lot of fun with this Tye Dye set I bought. Yes, I dyed eggs. I'm still a kid at heart, so sue me. Sadly, no egg fights. I'd seen an oddly pointed egg while boiling them too. I had plans for that egg! Perhaps when the kids are older. It's just as well, they'd probably cry too much from Aunty Crystal owning them.

After that we played Rock Band and I finally gave it a try. It was fun and even Grandma J tried it out. Yay!


On Thursday, my boss mentioned I should grow some wheat grass as Easter grass for the kids. I had heard of wheatberries before but had no idea what they were or how completely dirt cheap they are. I headed to Down to Earth after work and bought 2 pounds of wheatberries for around $2. I soaked way too much and laid them out in one of my roasting pans on top of wet paper towels. The next day they had started to sprout already:


They're really fun to grow!! The only bad part is that like I said, I soaked way too much and so now they're all piled up on top of each other trying to grow. I transferred some of them to the bottoms of my flowerpots but there are literally thousands of them still needing transplanting. The really retarded part is that I'm doing it by hand, one at a time. LOL


These are the transplanted wheatberries on Day 3. They grow really fast!! Luckily I had a spray bottle and the kids have been having a ton of fun watering them by misting them. The grass is actually even taller now. Updates tomorrow!

We took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who! again. It was Buddy's second time and Baby Girl's first. She chickened out the first time and this time was sobbing, asking if we could go home. I had to trick her back into the theater and eventually she started peeking and as soon as the credits rolled, she yelled, "NOW I LIKE IT!" When I was younger I used to watch movies like Aladdin and Lion King and wondered why the hell these little kiddie movies were so riddled with adult humor. Now that I am older, wiser, and nearly braindead from whining children I understand that the humor is there to make the movies bearable for parents. It really just wouldn't do to have a bunch of stupefied parents driving their children home. They no doubt already have that dead look in their eyes from one too many Barney's or Dora's. That being said, I really enjoyed seeing Horton twice. My son adores him. Now if I could just survive the 50 daily requests for the longest Horton video I could find on YouTube (7m 5s), things should be okay.

Two Jell-O eggs were consumed while writing this post.

4 comments:

Yvo Sin said...

lol, jello is pretty low cal right? are you using sugar free? y'know i've heard of jello eggs but didn't really know what they were... hehehe. now i can picture them... but i wonder how you made them using real eggs as molds when you were younger???
i'm trying to sprout some basil... it's taking forever!

Anonymous said...

How did you make your egg jellos? I assume you used the plastic eggs from Longs or something right? Did you fill half of each side then wait for it to soft set before you combined the halves?

Pikko said...

I use special molds. They fold into place, lock, and then you pour the Jello into the little holes at the top. If you use plastic eggs, you just have to submerge the eggs under the Jello liquid to fill the whole thing. Of course, this will leave you with a bit of Jello that you have to just chill as normal, when you don't have enough left to submerge any more eggs. That or you could drill holes into the top of the plastic eggs.

Anonymous said...

http://www.kraftfoods.com/jello/products/flavor-finder/peach/

Looks like peach is safe for the time being. :)