Turning 30

I turned 30 a week or so ago...old I know!  Both sides of my family had GREAT dinners and desserts to celebrate.  I took pictures of the desserts...both cakes were Delicious!  This is for sure where Isaac gets his love of cake from.
Mimi (seth's mom) made a chocolate mint cake with a cream cheese mint frosting, my mom made a lemon blueberry pound cake AND mint chocolate brownies.  Did you guess yet that two of my favorite things are mint and chocolate.  To die for!!!

Along with these dinners and desserts I received many presents.  One being a VERY nice bread machine.  Well...let me tell you, it is a bit annoying currently.  I have posted many many success stories of my cooking and baking and decided to also share a failure times two.  How hard can it be, you add the ingredients in the order listed, hit a few buttons and wait approximately 3 hours while the machine does the work.  Easy right?
WRONG!!!!

Friday I attempted to make my first loaf of bread and it was a disaster.  Then I attempted another one...turned out slightly better but still considered a failure.  Seth decided to try one today (saturday) and it turned out fine.  I don't get it...I have no idea what I did wrong twice...there goes the easy factor of the bread machine.  My peasant bread you make in a bowl turns out WAY better than me and this new bread machine.  Tomorrow Seth is trying one of the recipes I made and we will see what happens.  So far all attempts have been different recipes on different settings.  I am convinced my setting is broken...it can not be operator error when it just seems so simple.
Enjoy and laugh at the pictures!

pepperoni swiss cheese "bread": disaster number one

huge holes on the bottom (bread was as hard as a rock)

rosemary olive oil "bread" doughy on the inside...very dense and heavy and as you can see lop sided.