This Week OFF From School

School has officially started back up where I live but this substitute teacher still had this week off!

We went to the lake for the long weekend (a different lake from all the other times we've gone to one this summer though).

Although I wasn't feeling the greatest all weekend I did manage to still go out for ice cream (black forest - YUM), play games, a long hike, and catch the "live action" Lion King in the theater in the park!

Here are a couple of shots taken from our hike

Last week I mentioned I found a cake recipe that required lots of apples that I had made and I went ahead and made it again this week for the lake.

Apple Cake

You can find the recipe here but I made a few changes (after reading some of the comments)

1) I used a half cup less sugar

2)  Then I used 3/4 cup white sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar instead of just using white sugar

3)  I used an extra cup of chopped apples (so 4 cups)

4) I added a generous 2 tsp of vanilla

5)  Before I poured the batter into the bundt pan I greased the edges with butter and then made a cinnamon sugar mix to sprinkle on the edges (it will stick to the edges because of the butter)

6) I baked it in a bundt pan at 350 for about 55 minutes

When it comes out of the oven it will smell like doughnuts and you'll understand why I made it twice in 2 weeks!

I FINALLY went to the doctor after getting back from the long weekend because my ears were making it feel like I was stuck on an airplane in the sky for the last week.  After telling me I have a sinus infection she wrote me 3 prescriptions and told me to come back in a few days if I'm not feeling much better.  

Unfortunately, I'm STILL not feeling much better (or at least my ears aren't) so it'll be back to the doctor next week probably.

I made salsa!

Homemade Salsa

This is the result of about 2-3 hours of chopping!.. well half the result our pots weren't big enough until it cooked down a bit so I started it in 2 pots.

At this point everything but some of the tomatoes (we ended up buying 50lbs of roma tomatoes from Superstore because they were on for an amazing price - $16 for 50lbs) and the onions were from our garden.

So, peppers, tomatoes, chilies, and jalapenos all came from our garden.

In the end it only made 3.5 quarts which I'm pretty surprised by... it originally seemed like so much more!  But it should last us for the year.

I went to a friends birthday party.

I'm hoping that by next week I manage to work at least a half day to report on but if that fails I did manage to book what could potentially be my first day back in a couple of weeks from now!