That’s right, it’s my birthday today. I’m only two years away from the big 30. It’s not really a special day, I doing things on different days with Eric and family members, so today’s just a work day basically. Don’t worry, I’m not missing out. We’ve celebrated early several times. In December Eric took me to see Seven Brides for Seven Brothers as an early b-day gift. It was wonderful!

On Saturday he took me to Gameworks. It was so much fun! We played two hours of video games non-stop. I like shooting games the best, my arms are still sore because that’s pretty much what we played. Sorry the photos are so dark but I was afraid to use flash because I wasn’t sure if pictures were allowed. Here I am playing Rambo. It had the coolest gun.

It was so cute when we walked by it later and two boys about 5 or 6 years old were playing it and yelling, “We’re superheroes!” Our favorite game was definitely House of the Dead 4. I prefer to kill dinosaurs or zombies in videogames because I don’t feel that twinge of guilt about shooting people. We killed every last zombie and beat the game. It was awesome! That night we watched Eagle Eye at the $2 theater. If you plan on seeing it skip to the next paragraph, SPOILERS! We liked the movie until we realized it was all the computer. Then it just got too ridiculous. It really made us think about Portal (a video game where the computer is trying to kill you and bribe you to surrender with cake) and we were singing Still Alive on the way home.

Sunday night we joined my family for dinner at Applebees and cake at their house. It was my brother’s 21st birthday so we ate in the bar. He’s autistic and has epilepsy so he can’t drink alcohol, he was just excited to be allowed to eat in the bar! Yesterday we went to Eric’s parents to celebrate with his family. His mom cooked me lobster becaues I’ve never had it before. What a treat! I’ll post more on that soon. All in all, 28 is starting out great!

Well, my computer is currently out of commission. It’s about 5 years old and very basic, and I’ve used it pretty much everyday since I’ve had it. The screen is officially dead and to fix/replace it would be $300, which is what I paid for the whole laptop (Black Friday sale). We can’t afford to fix it or get a new one right now. I still have internet access with Eric’s computer, but all my photos and things are currently on mine, so my blogging plans are a little our of whack. Fortunately, I had this post (and a couple others) on the back burner so have something to tide you over until we figure out my computer.

Muffins are so much fun. They can work for breakfast or dessert or a snack. Eric LOVES muffins. If I want to surprise him, muffins are a great way to do it. These are really good with a bright citrus flavor and juicy bursting cranberries. My cranberries were starting to go bad, so I didn’t have as many as I’d like. I got this recipe off of the Ocean Spray site, but like OJ better than grapefruit juice so subbed that out. I also didn’t chop my cranberries because I love it when they burst in my mouth. I made one pan of large muffins and one of mini muffins

Citrus Harvest Muffins

Ingredients

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup butter

2 eggs

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup Orange Juice with lots of pulp

2 cups Fresh Cranberries

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease muffin tins.

Using an electric mixer, beat sugar and butter together in a medium mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. Add this alternately with the juice to the butter mixture. Stir in cranberries. Spoon into muffin cups, filling 3/4 full with batter.

Bake 20 minutes or until golden brown. Makes 12 muffins.

I LOVE pumpkin. It’s such a fun color, has this great earthy sweet taste, and is great for baking. I had some leftover pumpkin from my bundt cake and so decided to make some pumpkin crunch bars.

In Hawaii, Starbucks has a bakery that makes food exclusively for them. One of my favorite items was the pumpkin crunch cake. I remember a crunchy crumbly bottom, a smooth creamy and cheesy pumpkin layer, and a whip cream/cream cheese layer. I decided since I’m not the most experienced baker, first I’d try following a recipe that sounds similar.

I went with a Kraft recipe, and it was very yummy. Next time I’d make half the crust amount and do a whipped cream/cream cheese layer on top. I improvised the recipe a little, and only made half, making it in a loaf pan. Because it was a little thicker in the loaf pan I had to bake it 30 minutes instead of 25.

All in all, I was really happy with the bars (so was Eric). It’s great with whipped cream and a sprinkling of cinnamon (not a dumping like in my picture below!) Can you tell I’m loving my new camera?

Pumpkin Crunch Bars

serves 10

Ingredients

3/4 cups flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar, divided
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 stick cold butter
1/2 cup old-fashioned or quick-cooking oats, uncooked
1/4 cup chopped Pecans (I crushed mine instead of chopping)
1/2 cup Cream Cheese, softened
1 egg plus 1 egg white

1 cup canned pumpkin

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp allspice

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/8 tsp ginger

Instructions

HEAT oven to 350°F. Line loaf pan with foil, with ends of foil extending over sides; grease foil. Mix flour, half the granulated sugar and all the brown sugar in medium bowl; cut in butter with a fork until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in oats and nuts.

RESERVE half of oat mixture; press remaining onto bottom of prepared pan. Bake 15 min. Beat cream cheese, remaining sugar, eggs, pumpkin and spice with mixer until well blended. Pour over crust; sprinkle with reserved crumb mixture.

BAKE 30 min.; cool 10 min. Use foil to transfer dessert from pan to wire rack; cool completely.

I have great news everybody, no we’re not expecting, although people have been asking us a lot lately. I’ll tell you what we told our family, don’t ask until I’m 30 (two years away). If it happens before then we’ll let you know but we’re not planning it!

Anyway, my great news is that we got a new camera. Although we got it around Christmas time, it wasn’t a Christmas gift. We’ve been saving for it forever and could finally afford it. As you can see in the photos, the camera I’ve been using for all the previous food pictures was in sad shape. It was missing several screws, the motor was dying, the flash was pretty cracked, and sometimes the lens wouldn’t open. Often our pictures would show up with crazy lines through them.

In my defense for seemingly destroying my camera, it has traveled all over the world doing disaster relief. I’ve taken it to Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Louisiana, Hawaii of course, Senegal and more. Because it’s so tiny I would just keep it in the pocket of my cargo pants.

I also wasn’t to worried about handing it off to the local children to let them see them pictures they took of themselves, or getting mud on it as we built shelters for tsunami victims. Oh, and I was getting sand in the lens all the time in Sri Lanka!

Aren’t you amazed by the pictures I was able to get with such a beat up camera? But our new camera is a dream come true. It’s got an amazing macro setting, even though it’s a point and shoot there are manual options, and it’s 9 megapixels with a 10x optical zoom! So from now on, expect better quality pictures (although my set up is still the same, our apartment is too tiny for much in the way of set up options, but Eric is talking about building me lights!)

photo from Amazon.com