adventures in the kitchen

so tonight I wanted to make something special.

well, I'd planned to make them.

but still.

I found this amazing recipe for stuffed cheese buns, loosely based on the ones Peeta makes in the Hunger Games trilogy.

and they looked deliriously scrumptious.

so I decided to make them.

and then I took pictures.

because, you know, I always forget to document the things I actually do around my house.

mostly because they're boring.

but making stuffed cheese buns, especially stuffed cheese buns that turned out so wonderful, seemed like a good occasion to actually show you all that I do, in fact, have skills around the house.

yes.

mm, flour.

I love making pictures in flour.

and taking pictures of flour.

I suppose flour is kind of like my own personal brand of fire.

you know how people stare into fire.

I stare into flour.

no, that is not weird.

and you can't convince me that it is.

kneading for ten minutes makes your arms sore.

I know.

because I did it.

I used mozzarella cubes for the middle.

I think I might use bigger cubes next time, stretch the dough a bit more thinly over them.

and then I might mix up the cheeses, too.

use some swiss in the middle.

maybe a couple with cheddar.

that way my family will be completely surprised at what kind of cheese they get.

we might also have a guessing game.

"which cheese is in this bun?

let's find out!"

I sprinkled a mixture of cheddar and mozzarella over the top.

again, I think I might change that up next time.

perhaps use mozzarella and swiss, as the writer of the original recipe suggested.

add some parmesan, since I forgot this time around.

mm, fresh out of the oven.

oozy gooey cheesy stuff

so yes.

see.

I have skills.

also, you should totally make these cheese buns.

because they're delish.

especially with marinara sauce and meatballs, which was our main course.

except maybe you should also have with salad--

something that occurred to me (predictably) as soon as we were halfway through our meal.

yes.

good luck.

- Kyla Denae

a weekend trip, part 2

The Carlsbad Caverns are amazing. They show that God cares just as much about the underside of the earth as he does about the surface, that everything was thought of and formed, that he wanted every bit of his creation to be beautiful and wonderful so he could look down at it and unequivocally say, with a smile on his face and well-earned pride in his heart, "It is good."

Unfortunately, I had no camera with me on this trip, and I've not yet managed to snag my dad's phone so I can filch his, so this shall be sadly picture-free. Someday I'll go back to the caverns with a really awesome camera and shall upload many pictures to make up for it. Instead of taking pictures, I contented myself with thinking up ways I could incorporate what I saw into my stories. Needless to say, by the time I'd walked ten paces down into the opening of the cave, I'd already figured out how my protagonist in Dark Dawn (my fantasy novel) would be getting to the home of the Dwarves. There's going to be a massive cave mouth and a very steep ramp.

Story inspiration aside, I discovered that fairyland exists (it forms a very large portion of the "Big Room", and is situated conveniently by the Temple to the Sun God, which must be the place said fairies worship), and also marveled at the clearness of the water. It's all filtered through tons of rock; it's so clear it looks as if it's not there.

Once we left the caves (after a two-hour wait for the elevators; only two of them were working and there was a huge line. It moved quickly though, with my sister and I playing rock-paper-scissors-with-a-twist all the way), we drove toward Roswell. Where we stayed the night. And counted aliens. In Roswell, New Mexico, there is a McDonald's that has a UFO parked in it. No joke. Their play area is shaped like a UFO. It's pretty awesome.

The next morning, dad had the bright idea to drive toward the mountains, so we could do something that hadn't been specified. Basically, we drove through a bunch of very craggy, very yellow, very windy mountains and stopped in a small town that looked more like a tourist trap than a town. On the edge of this town there was a small visitors center; we stopped and found that it was a tribute to Billy the Kid, a notorious outlaw or something who roamed New Mexico. My brain wasn't quite working by that point; it was very fuzzy from having to process being sick, sore, and tired, not to mention seven younger children who weren't at all happy about their lack of clean clothes.

Anyway. This small visitor's center was staffed by two dogs and an older lady, plus an older man who might have been her husband or just a lazy park ranger who couldn't be bothered to button his shirt. He was lazing back in a chair behind a table that was, in its turn, behind the desk, when we arrived, gray shirt unbuttoned over a white t-shirt. I think he was drinking a cup of tea. The woman and the dogs were quite pleasant, though the man disappeared halfway through our visit. We wandered through the center, admired some scale models of old pueblos, plus a cross-section of a pueblo great-house, picked up a few brochures, and got back on the (very windy) road.

And we stayed on the road.

And stayed.

And stayed.

And stayed a bit more.

It got pretty windy as we reached the plains again; a huge dust-storm had been kicked up, which understandably wasn't quite comfortable. This was compounded by the fact that everyone was a bit cranky from having been in the care.

And the fact that if we hadn't made a detour into the mountains, we would have been home three hours earlier. Not that any of us were bitter. But still.

The dust was having entirely too much fun, swirling 'round us. When we stopped at a little Allsup's in Nowhere-Land, New Mexico, we were told that it was only supposed to get worse. Also, the power blinked out twice. And there was only one stoplight. It was swinging from a wire that had been suspended from two opposite light poles. For a moment, I had a vision of Cars, and sitting next to the light, peering up at it and insisting every third blink was shorter.

I blame my wild imagination.

Eventually, we got a tailwind and rode it all the way home, only stopping once, in Santa Rosa. I now detest McDonalds, and will until the next time we go on a trip--by which time I will have forgotten how much I hate it and will gladly scarf down whatever I can get my hands on. To be honest, I really don't pay much attention to what I shove into my mouth. I should probably work on that.

So, after a whirlwind trip that began at 11 am on Friday and ended at 8 pm on Sunday, we arrived back home, thankful to sleep in our own beds. The end.

- Kyla Denae

a weekend trip

Last Thursday, my dad announced that we were all going to accompany him south, to Midland, Texas, for some business he had to do. We planned to travel thirty minutes on to the sand dunes in the Permian basin. We've been there once before, when I was about eight, so I was excited to be going back. We also were going to go into New Mexico and go to the Carlsbad Caverns.

Well.
We did both those things.

We got into Midland and reached our hotel--which was, incidentally, a Hilton, an experience I'd never had before. It was pretty much like any hotel anywhere else, except that they didn't have a complimentary breakfast. It was too fancy shmancy for that. But first we had to think of dinner. We tried walking to some Italian place that Google Maps couldn't locate. It was full, and we had to turn back after smelling the deliciousness of breadsticks and spaghetti. After walking back through downtown Midland (which, to tell the truth, wasn't all that fun; it was windy. There were also two fellows we passed three times on this walk, who were sitting in front of a coffee shop. They were still there when we returned to our hotel at about 9 that night. Apparently, whoever they were, they have no lives), we got in our car and drove to the nearest Olive Garden.

There was an hour wait for a table, so my mom and my sisters and I did the obvious thing. We walked across the parking lot to the Barnes N Noble, leaving my dad with my brothers. Bookstores are dangerous places when you're bored and like to read. After remarking on the size of the Teen Paranormal Romance section (four and a half shelves, in case you were wondering), I strayed into the world history section and promptly found three new books that I wanted to read. Now, some of you know me very well. I dislike leaving unread books just sitting there, calling my name. Because that's what they do. I picked up a couple of them, read a paragraph, and was instantly hit by the overwhelming desire to finish them. But alas, I could not.

Instead, I had to return to the Olive Garden, where we had to sit for twenty more minutes until our buzzer went off. I remember now why my family doesn't go out to eat often. Imagine a herd of elephants all attempting to hold a democratic meeting about what to do for new feeding grounds. That's about what my siblings look like. I hold no bad feelings toward them. I speak only the truth. Once dinner was done, we headed back to the hotel, where (very sick) Kyla tried to go to bed before discovering that her Nook had somehow bought Catching Fire all on its lonesome.

Kyla was not very happy. But it was eleven o' clock at night, so Kyla couldn't really do anything about it. Kyla also starts talking about herself in third person when she gets tired. It's currently eleven o' clock as I write this. I apologize.

The next morning we got up a bit more rested than we'd been before, and headed off for the sand dunes.

The dunes were tiring. I don't know if you've ever tried to slog up steep hills with cold, mushy, fine sand that just grabs at your feet and tries to suck you down like it's some sort of world-crushing demon, as illustrated by this handy-dandy little graphic I drew to show you.

Anyway. Sand-zombies aside, as soon as we left the dunes we headed west, into New Mexico and toward one of the seven wonders of the world. Or is it nine? I always forget. Anyway. It was Carlsbad Caverns we were headed for, which shall be covered in part two of this blog post.

Why will there be a part two, you ask? Well, mostly because I'm tired, but also because this is getting long and I don't want to bore you. Stay tuned.

- Kyla Denae