Iron Chef version of Chocolate Cake

Yesterday Morgan and I made a delicious chocolate cake with a secret ingredient, or Iron Chef ingredient as the kids call it. It turned out so moist and scrumpscious. We had my mom and brother over for dinner last night and we told them there was a secret ingredient in the cake and they spent a good while trying to guess what it was. Some examples of their guesses are: sour cream, mayonnaise, tomato juice, ketchup, prunes, baby food, and applesauce. And applesauce was in there but it wasn't a secret so that didn't count. LOL! After dinner, I told them that we couldn't tell them the secret ingredient until after everyone had taken at least one bite. This is when they did most of their guessing.
Alex finally was allowed to reveal the secret ingredient...beets!! They were shocked. I know, I know, some of you are too.
We had received beets from the farm in our CSA share and I didn't know what to do with them. None of us were keen on eating them which was based on only trying them once and only as pickled beets. But I knew we didn't want them to go to waste. I remember reading somewhere that you could put pureed beets into chocolate cake. I did some online searching and found a recipe that sounded really good and had great reviews. So...printed it and started working on it. We used all the beets and it made a huge cake. I'm going to link directly to the cake recipe as it is NOT my recipe and I want to make sure the lady gets her credit. Chocolate Cake with Pureed Beets and Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
Honestly, you can NOT tell that the beets are in there. The result, IMO, is a cake that is a cross between a red velvet cake and a chocolate cake. It is a mild chocolate flavor and despite the amount of sugar is not overly sweet at all. Try it...it is delicious! Enjoy.

Sick Bunny

Parker Bunny aka PB is one sick bunny. He has been having eating, well more like non-eating, issues for about 1-2 weeks. He won't eat for a couple days and then just as we start to get worried he will start eating again and keep repeating this cycle. Well a few days ago he stopped eating again, snubbed his nose at his yogurt drop treat (which he has been known to draw blood while snatching it from you). Then he seemed wobbly or off-balance when moving around his pen. He has a 4'x4' pen down in Corey's office. Yesterday morning Corey called me down there because he couldn't hop out of his litter box but rolled himself over and then couldn't really upright himself without a lot of work. And we noticed his head was leaning/tilting/turning to the right. I called the vet and got him in an hour later. By this time his left eye was dilated, not focusing and was rapidly moving back & forth in a pattern that is referred to as nystagmus. The vet checked him out and diagnosed him with torticollis and it is caused by a bacterial infection in the brain. This is causing inflammation & thus all the problems. He is on an antibiotic but the bacteria causing this is a big yucky one and the antibiotics might not work at all, might not work soon enough, or might work just right. If they work he might have lingering problems depending on if & how much damage is done by the inflammation. So far he is accepting his medication...not easy giving a small bunny medication via syringe.

Busy?

It feels like we've been very busy lately. We are all bowling and Corey & I have bowled on different days so we could bowl with our friends. They've had to change up their schedule due to some previous plans with their boys. Last Tues we bowled and I did better than I usually do. Woo!

My mom is doing pretty good. The kids and I see her on Tuesdays when we go to the library together. She qualified for unemployment and is trying to make the best of it right now and actually enjoy her extra time with the kids.

This past weekend we helped with a local homeschooling expo. Even the kids helped by drawing tickets for me to announce door prize winners. We sold some curriculum and books that we were done with as well as some we would never use. We made a little money so that was nice. Now to finish up our current stuff and order the next levels.

Corey and Morgan are taking guitar lessons from a friend. They've had 2 lessons so far and are enjoying it. Morgan figured out how to play one of the chords all on her own and she's very proud.

We've been doing a lot of activities through our library. They are offering some really fun programs this summer for the older kids. They are doing the summer reading, attending the school-age book time, and the pre-teen/teen program as well. Morgan is taking a 3 day digital photography workshop through the library and our local arts guild. She has one more day to go and she's loving it. She even showed me how to do some stuff with *my* camera! :-)

Our garden is growing....we have some little green tomatoes growing as well as flowers on the cantaloupe plants and the beans. I'm hoping for some peas too but I'm not seeing anything yet. We are enjoying the heck out of our CSA shares. We just bought the ingredients so I can make some bread & butter pickles. My first canning experiment.

We are getting closer to vacation time, July 16th. I think we are all looking forward to seeing family and (hopefully) friends. My dad and stepmom wrote us with an interesting proposal. They will be leaving after the family gathering and heading out to CA for some visiting and then heading back through CO and back home. They want to take their 2 youngest granddaughters....Morgan & her cousin, Josie. Both sets of parents have said okay. Morgan is ecstatic! She's ready to start packing. LOL! They will be gone from July 23rd to August 9th. I warned Morgan tonight that since she will be gone when we restart school that I will be requiring some work from her. Right now it is a detailed journal and pictures. :-)

Exactly!!

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