Oh Brother!

Look what we brought back from the family reunion!

Here's a hint: it wasn't the cake. Tom's younger brother Patrick flew back to Louisville with us and stayed for a week! Originally, he was going to come stay with us so he could help us move, but as it turns out, we're not moving quite yet, but Patrick came anyway just to hang out. :) And we had a GREAT time with him!

#1: 100 new recipes.
I can't believe it's been over a month since I tried a new recipe, but I think I made up for lost time this week because I tried three new ones!

Patrick turned 25 the day after we got back from San Antonio. I thought it might be nice to make him a cake instead of buying one, to maybe somehow make him feel better about being away from home on his birthday. He requested chocolate, and Allrecipes had a highly-ranked recipe for something called Black Magic Cake. Sounded good, so I gave it a go. I flipped through the pictures of some of the finished products, and one of them had Oreo frosting! That sounded like the only thing that could make this cake even better, so I looked up a recipe for that too! I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've made frosting from scratch. It was delicious, not that you could really go wrong with something like that...! And the birthday boy was very happy, as you might have guessed from that very first photo up there.

The last recipe is one that my mother-in-law sent me awhile ago: overnight baked apple french toast. I made it in a bundt pan instead of a 9x13-inch baking dish...mostly because you have to invert it onto a serving dish when it's done baking, and we didn't have one long enough. Anyway, who cares about its shape?! It tasted great! And isn't it pretty?

***By the way, I've finally done something else I've been meaning to do for quite awhile: every recipe I've found online so far now has a link on the Tracking page! Thought I'd share the wealth. :)

#28: Watch every Best Picture Oscar winner from 1961-2013.
Patrick had Gladiator on DVD, and he was nice enough to bring it with him. We watched it Thursday night. Fantastic...such a manly-man movie. Saturday afternoon, we watched Unforgiven. Good movie, also pretty manly. But I was outnumbered 2-to-1 in that area this week, so I guess it's to be expected.

#85: Volunteer at Jeff Street once a month.
We took Patrick along for this month's visit, and he really enjoyed it, even though we had to get up really early on a Saturday morning. The three of us were in the kitchen, handing out toiletries; during the slow period, Tom and Patrick provided the entertainment...or at least came up with interesting things to talk about. Those two together are really something to see.

#58: Order fish at a restaurant 5 times.
On Patrick's last night in town, we went to Cracker Barrel for dinner, and I ordered lemon pepper grilled rainbow trout. It was really nice! I think I'm starting to appreciate how fish can make you feel full without feeling heavy, because I felt pretty good afterward...though I could've done with a few more biscuits...! But isn't that always true at Cracker Barrel?