Tormented Kitchen

Hello, dear readers!  Welcome back for a lovely recipe. In honor of my dear hubby's birthday, I baked up something special.  At first, he wasn't sure what to ask for, so he mumbled something about coconut cake, then a pie, then he settled on something rhubarb.  Our rhubarb patch was doing well enough for me to get some for his birthday dessert. He got a crisp instead of pie or cake. Strawberry rhubarb crisp with a hint of cinnamon and vanilla. It was heavenly! The middle daughter (the picky eater) was unsure about the stuff that went into the fruit layer.  I told her it's pretty much just sweet and sour strawberry, like sour patch kids. It worked!  I wouldn't say she loved it, but she ate some without flipping out.  I think we're making progress on reducing the pickiness. So for your dining enjoyment, give this a try.  It's sweet and tangy, sticky and oozy, buttery and crispy in all the right places. Ingredients For the fruit base 3 cups...

Hello readers! I'm back with something delicious! And Happy Mother's Day to all the mom's out there! My son recently turned 9.  Trying to get any birthday ideas out of him was difficult. I had to offer a ton of ideas for what to do party-wise, cake-wise, and even prod at him about what he might want for presents. The good thing about him, is once he found an idea he liked, he nailed down exactly what he wanted. I asked about the cake. At first he just said cake like I always make. Then he said to add bananas to the filling. About 5 seconds later, he changed it to banana cake with strawberry filling. I could definitely work with that. As for the party, we went from maybe having it  at the trampoline party place across town to the petting zoo to go-karts to backyard campout.  Camping won. We had pizza delivered, made s'mores, then had cake. And the boys played with the Nerf guns before sleeping in the tent out back. It was a total winner. Anyhow, I dec...

Back in the middle of winter, we decided to attempt something new, something healthy. Green smoothies. First, we tried the Dr. Oz 3 day smoothie cleanse. Wow, were those nasty tasting! One important thing to note though, we felt good! Three days of no junk, no artificial anything, and both of us felt good.  We just wanted something that tasted better. I borrowed a book from the library, Green Smoothie Revolution by Victoria Boutenko and got out the Blendtec high speed blender. The whole point of this book is that the author states people need the nutrients from greens, but you have to make it taste good to get them down the hatch. I have to admit that at first, we thought the smoothies were going to be horrible like the Dr. Oz ones. We started with some of her very basic recipes, and they were surprisingly tasty! With her idea in mind, I've experimented with some different combinations. They generally look like green or brown sludge, but there are some really tasty combination...

Last week, my son turned 5. I have been a wee bit slow to get this post going. Just the craziness and excitement from Eric's birthday party and family visiting has been one thing.  Then I got him registered for Kindergarden. While at the doctor for his regular well-child check up, she discovered he had something stuck in his ear. She couldn't get it out. Two days later, we got in to see the ENT specialist, who quickly flushed out two small chunks of rubber playground mulch. I'm happy to say, Eric is totally back to normal. So with that weight off of my mind, I was able to get back to the birthday cake recap. Now, since this is where I do recipes and sometimes toss in a little family stuff for good measure, let me just say, this cake was the best tasting one I have ever made.  I've made this recipe quite a few times, but the strawberry mousse filling really set it apart. I love that this cake is technically a yellow cake, but it's not a deep yellow like store-bo...