Cupcake's Birthday Week

This past week it was Cupcake's birthday. We call it "Birthday Week" because the Big Man worked with a guy who started off with a birthday, then celebrated a birthday weekend, then a birthday week, which eventually lead to a birthday month. We settled on a birthday week for the title of the update but really it was just a special meal or two, some cheese, and we got back to the grind.
Cupcake found a recipe for a paprika chicken that looked good. Big Man printed out the recipe and went to work in the kitchen.

We start with soaking chicken thighs in egg batter

Fried, then baked

End results, paprika chicken

Peach cobbler, for our peach

We also went to Cupcake's favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner one night to celebrate, it's kind of our birthday jam.
After the birthday meal we did have one big night of pot roast.

Then we had kitchen drama. Saturday morning, Pop's had breakfast with all the cousins which left a hole in our regular Saturday routine. Cupcake said she would fix French toast for The Big Man instead of our regular pancake meal, giving BM a day off.

The French toast rocked, but Fraidy Mutt came unstuck. She always gets a handful of pancakes for Saturday breakfast, and even knows what day it is when you ask her. This Saturday she knew something was up, there was no mixer being worked, no smell of pancakes. We did fix her two pieces of French toast, and Big Man cut it into squares and played the toss game with her like it was pancakes, but she wasn't having any of it. Girlfriend was out of sorts the entire day. The dog thinks she's people.
Because of the amount of baking we do around The Acre, we decided to start buying all our flour in bulk. We have been buying bread flour 100lbs at a time from Sams Club, now we've started buying regular flour 50lbs at a time. It holds us for a few weeks.

We promised an update on the seed progress. The rhubarb has sprouted. The package said the ground cherries would take longer to germinate, so we're not worried about them yet.

We have had a hawk circling The Acre for a week now, and it's thrown the girls out of their cycle of egg laying. Towards the end of the week they got back on track, but the result of getting thrown off is double yolk eggs. We guess they try to hold them in rather than risk making the run to the coop for a nest box?

That had to hurt

One last item this week is a baking request. We got an order for two buttermilk pies, and had pie plates delivered to put them in. These were deep dish pie plates, so they are really three pies in two plates. We had to alter the cook time a little, but they turned OK we think.

Big Man mixing up the crust dough

Three pies, two pie plates

We ended the week with football finger foods (that included chicken wings). We don't watch the sporting contest, or even know who was playing this year. But we like to be a part of any celebration that includes food.
K&K