Throughout my 6 years of French lessons, in between insulting our jaded American attitudes and telling us that no one in France would ever actually be able to understand our terrible accents, my bitter instructor would pause daily to impart on us some examples of how Europeans exceed us in all areas of life.
If it wasn’t terrible enough that the French somehow manage to maintain the smallest waist-lines in the developed world on a steady diet of butter, cheese, and pastries, one tidbit that burrowed its way into my small American mind and made itself a bitter home was the knowledge that all French workers get 7 weeks paid summer vacation that they can take all at one time.
Yes, while most of us full-time workers here in the U.S. are sitting in our window-less cubicles, counting down the days to that 1-week vacay we begged our bosses for this year, most of France is gayly sunbathing their perfect, topless bodies on the beaches of the French Riviera while stuffing their faces full of soft cheese and macarons… and will be doing so for the next 5-11 weeks. What the eff? The world is a cruel, cruel place, mes amis.
Clearly my 1/4 french heritage has been having an affect on me, because summer hiatuses seem to have become a theme of this little blog. Last year I flat out took the summer off, this year I seem to have taken an early spring leave of just under 3 months…
And lot has happened in 3 months. Since I last posted, the weather has shot from a consistent 40 degrees straight up to 90, flowers have bloomed, pollen has infuriated my sinuses, the “S*** ______ Say” meme has died, and giffs have somehow become popular again through #whatshouldwecallme-type blogs. Yes, we’ve come a long way in 3 months.
When someone asks me what I’m making for my next blog post.
Expectation:
Reality:
But just as the French still manage to vacation and eat their hearts out at the same time, just because I haven’t been bloggin’ doesn’t mean I’ve been skipping out on making yummy meals (without the help of an iron, I might add)…
…And since I’m so back-logged, what better way to play catch-up than to join in the fun that is Peas and Crayon’s “What I Ate Wednesday”!
So without further ado, here’s what I cooked (and ate) while “en vacances” (as the French would say)…
Peas and Crayon’s own Quinoa Fried Rice
Skillet Penne With Cherry Tomatoes, Basil, Cannelloni Beans, and Mozzarella
Toasted Coconut Cake Pops (my own creation!)
Real Deviled Eggs
Vegetarian Paella (From a bargain aisle cookbook) 
Spinach, Tempeh, and Rice Pilaf (my own concoction!)
…and travel to Orlando to meet a famous big mouse.
There was butterbeer to be drunk and playgrounds on which to climb…
…and two very bestest friends having a wonderfully magical time.
Then it was back to Boston, my home sweet home,
Then a yankee swap at work, where we drank lots of wine with lunch…
But the real reason I’m typing out this silly, long ballad,
The recipe also calls for butter flavoring, which I imagined to be kind of like butter extract. Where does one find these things? Well, not at the craft store, that’s for sure. Shaws? Nope. Stop & Shop? Nope. Trader Joe’s? Nope. I settled for butter flavored flakes…you know, the stuff people who watch their cholesterol use on their baked potatoes.
Ooooo doesn’t that just look like snow? Powdered sugar is my favorite!
The principle of cake pops is easy peasy! Baked cake + batch of frosting + candy coating = cake on a pop. However, as I came to learn, there’s a pretty exact art to many of the finer points of the process. No foolin’ around here!
One such example is the science maintaining the delicate ratio of cake to frosting when rolling the balls. As Amy describes, the balls should be moist enough from the frosting to stay together, but not so much that the balls become heavy and slip down on their sticks. Ruh roh… disaster waiting to happen.
Amy said she used her entire batch of frosting for the cake pops, so naturally I assumed my outcome would be similar. But strangely, after just a few dollops of frosting, it seemed like my cake balls had become potentially too saturated. Bwahhhh!
But huzzah, for awhile, it appeared that everything worked out okay anyway! As you can see above, I was able to make a nice, solid, candy-coated pop.
But as the pops were left to dry, and later as I added wings, many of the cake balls fell down on the sticks, pushing the lollipop stick through the top and ruining the balls. With the wings, my pops just became too heavy. Sadtimes. 
I got about 5 good looking snitches out of the bunch, which I promptly froze and took precautions to protect. The rest of the pops I packed away safely so that I could assemble the wings just before serving them. This allowed me to save many from an unfortunate goring.
Step 2: Don’t be fooled when your foods appear to be breaded adequately (like above). They are not. They may even still look semi-normal when you put them in a frying pan:
But, friends, beware. When the cheese melts, you’re gonna have one big sloppy mess on your hands:
I attribute this to failures on Steps 1 and 2. The whole milk fresh mozzarella just doesn’t want to stay in one cohesive unit… it’s like a viscous liquid, it will seep out every uncrusted nook and cranny. I tried to cover as much of the cheese as I could… I even triple rolled each stick in the batter…but alas, fresh mozzarella found a way.
Cutting parallel? Uhhhh not so much. Trust me, I learned the hard way (I didn’t take photos because I wasn’t expecting this to be a fail…)
Yep, hasta la vista cornmeal coating, nice seein’ ya…
So these were my results. The batter completely fell off, the onions were still too raw to even attempt to comfortably bite into, and I was left with a pile of chopped raw onions and a rumble in my tummy.
I poured myself a large glass of w(h)ine, caramelized the onions, heated up some frozen pierogis, gobbled ‘em up, and called it a night…
