EEEE new kitchen almost done!!!

We still have to finish painting the cupboards, the hinges to the cupboards, the doors to the cupboards, and all of the trim, and we still need to hang one more piece of pegboard over the sink to hang the dish drainer and pasta strainer on, but most of the kitchen is done and since I am super, duper excited about it, I can't wait to show what we've been doing!

In case you forgot, this is what the kitchen looked like before:
http://adayania.blogspot.com/2012/03/before-pictures.html

And this was the plan for the colors:
http://adayania.blogspot.com/2012/03/plan.html


And this was the plan for the space:
http://adayania.blogspot.com/2012/03/plan-for-our-kitchen-storage.html

Now, things look like this:

You can see we replaced the dog kennels with a dog bed, brought in a green house to keep fresh herbs in the kitchen, and replaced the two black metal shelves with red pegboard for storing our pans.

Our breakfast nook has a cushion on the seat, a basket for hanging fresh fruits and veggies above it, and a coffee mug rack you can juuuuust barely see next to the fridge.

I forgot to get a new picture of this, so this is from a few months ago and its not as crowded over here now.  Between the breakfast nook and the counter is a little coffee bar with a toaster, electric kettle, and coffee maker.  Above the breakfast bar is a pegboard that holds our teacups, hot chocolate mixes, hot cider mixes, coffee, and teas.

We are still removing the old microwave and cart from the middle of the kitchen, so you can see it in a lot of these pictures.  We kept the pantry, and got a wine bar, and for the moment the blender is on top unless I find a better home for it.

This drop leaf table matches the wine bar, and provides extra seating.  When we don't need the seating the table holds our appliances, making space on the counters for food prep.  We installed pegboard behind the door for hanging brooms, mops, swiffer vacs, etc.

Jason installed this amazing backsplash in a shockingly short amount of time (with a lot of swearing).  It looks great and it protects our wall.  

Jason mounted this microwave over the range so we could replace the nasty 50 year old hood vent and save space with getting the microwave up.  You can also see more of the backsplash here.  With the appliances moved into the spaces freed up, we now have space to cook, cut, and prep!

You Never Know.

Mr. Rogers was an ordained minister, and that is something that inspired his career a lot.  I've read most of his books and most of the books written about him because he is a great hero of mine.

In one of his books he talks about his training learning to be a minister.  He and a friend had drove several hours to see a very renowned and famous minister give a sermon.  When he arrived, he was bitterly disappointed to learn that the minister was out of town and they had what-you-call-a-substitute minister.

He and his friend sat through the dry, boring minister.  He thought the sermon was terrible, and towards the end of the sermon he turned to the lady next to him to make a snarky comment about the quality of the sermon.  When he turned and looked at her, he saw she was so moved by the sermon that she was sitting in her pew bawling.

The Kitchen is Actually Happening!

After tons and tons of planning and talking and goal setting, the kitchen is actually becoming a reality.

It got a major jump start one night at Menards.  We were looking at hardware, backsplash, and paint ideas whe we saw the mistint section.  They had a green mistint, two gallons of it, for $5 each.

We had already decided that green was the color we wanted our walls, and I figured one green was as good as another, and that price was certainly right, so we bought both gallons and came home.

Before I even had a chance to steel myself for the excitement of painting, Jason was off and running with the painting:

And I thought, boy, that is not at all what I thought that was going to look like!  But, because I am scared of my own shadow, I didn't dare say anything to him.  He kept painting:

And asked me what I thought:

And I said, "I like it!  It looks good!  You're doing a great job!"

He finished this section of wall and stood back:

And he said, "You like it?"

And I said, "Yeah!"

Then I took a deep breath, gathered my nerve and said, "But do you think maybe its a little too green?"  "Or maybe it might look Christmas-y?"

And he said, "Hmm...I don't know.  What do you think?"

And I said, "What if... I hated it?"

And he said, "You don't like it?"

And I shook me head.  No.  I don't like it."

And he said, "Good.  I hate it."

And I said, "I hate it too."

So the next day we went back to the paint store.  Several paint stores: Mendards, Wal-Mart, Lowes, and Home Depot.  And I looked online.  And I grabbed what seemed like thousands of paint samples.  And they are looked SO different next to each other. 

I spent hours and hours holding paint samples up to the "inspiration kitchen colors."  After all of this, I determined that the colors on our laptop must be off. 

Finally I picked Glidden's "Spanish Olive" for the color, but we went to Home Depot and had them color match that with Behr Premium Paint, because Jason said it was the best and I believe him. 

Cats and Neighbors

As many of you know, my neighbors have nicely asked me to keep our cats inside.  This is a really big challenge because before we got our cats they were indoor/outdoor cats, and based on their behaviors since we've adopted them I am guessing they were mostly outdoor cats.  They are very motivated to go outside, much more motivated than I am to bother to keep them in.  And they are excellent escape artists.

Its a perfect storm.  I don't care about them enough to keep them inside, they are determined to go outside, and our neighbors hate them going outside.  I don't blame them for hating the cats either.  They are a retired couple who has invested a lot of time, money, and energy into a beautiful garden so they can sit on their patio and watch the birds come to the sanctuary they have created for them.  They don't want my cats scaring off the birds.  And I can appreciate that.  But not enough to do battle with the cats all day every day.

Today Jason opened the door to take something outside and both cats bolted through the door.  My hands were full of screaming, hungry baby and Jason was busy and stressed out.  Not in any shape to deal with the screaming, hungry baby that had a deathgrip on her milk source.  So neither of us were inclined to go hunting down the two cats and gave up on getting them back inside.

I nurse my screaming cherub until she is calm enough to go outside.  Then we head out armed with gardening gloves and a kneeling pad to clean the leaves out of the flower bed.  We are out there ten minutes of so, wading through the goopy guck and worms, and I look over at my neighbor's gorgeous yard. 

While looking over, I noticed my neighbor lady is sitting on her porch.  Or she was.  When I look over, she has a book and she is violently throwing it over and over again at the glass window of her porch.

As I've said before, they are an older couple and very sweet.  I am always afraid they will get sick and die and drug dealers will buy their house, corrupt my children, and drive down the property value of our house.  So I consider myself very invested in making sure they haven't devopled dementia, alzheimers, or have gone crazy. 

So I stood up, watching her repeatedly, violently throwing this book at her window.  I said to the baby, "What on Earth is she doing?" 

Once I stood up, I could see that she was looking at the ground.  I also looked at the ground and saw the fatter, dumber of my cats, Yoshimi, was on the ground hissing at my neighbor's cat on the other side of the window. 

I groaned, knowing this was going to be embarassing. 

Carrying the baby on one hip, I came over into my neighbor's yard and tried calling the cat.  Which looked at  me and laid down.  I talked to her very softly, moving slowly so I wouldn't scare her.  Once I got close enough, I grabbed her and threw her on my other hip.  Of course she started hissing and clawing me trying to get away.  I had to hold her a little further from me so she wouldn't claw the baby at the same time. 

I think the neighbor lady was a little embarassed I'd seen her throwing a book at the window, so she yelled to me, "They were having a confrontation!"  (Through the glass, where no one could have been hurt).  I said, I know, I'm really sorry.  We are really trying to keep them inside."

Then I carried the yowling, clawing mass of black fur into the house, acting as a barrier between the baby and the cat.  I got to the door and I yelled to Jason to come open the door.  He arrived, terribly put out that he had been interrupted to open a door.  I told him we need to fix the screens on the porch to keep the cats in.  I will let you know what happens.

 

Betty on Mad Men

OMG BETTY LOOKS HUGE!  I don't believe in judging women for their looks, but thats all she's got going for her!

Teething

Poor Ceci is teething.  This means she is in pain, cries a lot, and wants to be held constantly.  You can imagine what my house looks like.

Confession

Since Jason works from home, all day long her chases me around bugging me to rub his head and scratch his back.  Which I refuse to do because I don't like to encourage begging.  But once he falls asleep I rub his head and scratch his back for awhile.

The Plan for our Kitchen--Use of Space

The Storage

Our kitchen is a busy place and some days I am in it from the time we get up until the time we got to bed, leaving only to change diapers and use the bathroom. So, getting this room organized well was a top priority when we moved in since it affects my life more than any other part of the house.

Even though our kitchen is a pretty good size, the space was not being used very well:

  The kitchen felt like it was overflowing with kitchen gadgets:

There was no space to do any prep work:

The kitchen was used for several purposes that all were not being accommodated for:

All of this made it impractical to eat in the kitchen nook because I often found myself resorting to using the space in the nook to stash kitchen stuff and prepare food there:

So, by the time food was actually prepared we tended to eat in the living room just so we had somewhere to sit down to eat:

*Picture not available because the living room isn't much cleaner than the kitchen*

First we took stock of what we wanted to use the kitchen for:

*Baking and cooking

*Making coffee, teas and toast

*Storing dishes, pots, pans, lids, cutlery, Tupperware, coffee cups, dry goods, etc.

*Eating 

*Storing fresh herbs in our greenhouse that had been stored on the porch all winter due to lack of space

*Kenneling our dogs

*Providing water for the two cats and two dogs

*Providing a safe place for the baby to play while we cook

*Looking good/showing off our cool kitchen stuff

Although we identified what we needed our kitchen to do, I am not a spatial person so I really struggled with how to store all of this. 

Making coffee, teas and toast.  Eating.  Baking and cooking.

I knew I needed to clear off the counters so I had somewhere to prep for cooking and baking and so I could have the nook free to eat at.  I also knew in the nook area I wanted easy access to the coffee maker, toaster, kettle and tea cups.  We talked about installing a shelf above the nook to keep the baby away from the dangerous hot temperatures of these items, but couldn't figure out how to make that work without disrupting the seating area.  Finally one night when I couldn't sleep I grabbed the table the toaster oven was on, and slid it over to the wall next to the nook.  I moved the appliances onto the table and put the toaster oven where the appliances had been.  This worked well because it helped hide the recycle and compost bins that were on that wall, the appliances on the table were tall and fit on the table better, and the toaster oven took a lot less counter space. 

Storing dishes, pots, pans, lids, cutlery, Tupperware, coffee cups, dry goods, etc.  Storing fresh herbs in our greenhouse that had been stored on the porch all winter due to lack of space.

I knew if I could move the extra shelf out of the kitchen, that would give me a space to bring in our greenhouse so I could grow the fresh herb I'd wanted to have in the kitchen for years.  I wanted to move one of the two storage shelves downstairs to the guest room to store the baby stuff until I get knocked up again, but needed a better way to store the pans that were on that shelf and I knew I wanted some kind of pan rack. 

We looked online at pan racks and saw they were hella expensive.  Also, most of them didn't hold enough pans.  The racks that hung from the ceiling were impractical with our low ceilings, and we couldn't find anywhere to hang them from the ceiling that they wouldn't be in the way.  A friend of ours hung his pans on his wall, which we really liked that but weren't sure how to do that in our kitchen. 

We went to Menards and tried looking for a towel rack to use S-hooks to hang the pans on.   We couldn't find a towel rack that looked like it could look "right" as a pan rack, so I thought maybe we could hang pans off of those wirey shelves you normally use in a closet.  Jason was not super on board with this, but he humored me.  We looked at the wire shelves, then went to the hooks. 

We could not find a hook that would hook onto the wire shelf and hold our pans.  My obvious choice was a "S" hook, but the "S"s that were wide enough were too fat.  The "S"s that were thin enough were too narrow.  Then we saw the pegboard hooks.

Now, to be fair, Jason had suggested using pegboard in the kitchen months ago, but I had envisioned pegboard that looked like the brown, crumbley, unpainted stuff hanging in our garage.  I had adamantly vetoed this and insisted it would look stupid.  However, the pegboard hooks were the exact size I wanted to hang the pans and I was feel desperate that we would never find anything.  Then I saw the coolest pegboard I'd ever seen:

It was diamond!  And I was desperate.  So I thought, "What the hell, Jason might be right."  So we got the biggest piece of diamond pegboard they sold and brought it home.  We didn't know how it would look, but we figured if we hated it we could either take it back or use it for storage in the garage.    

We hadn't put the final coat of paint on the walls yet, but we hung it up when we first got home just to see how it would look.  And it looked SO good.  And I trial-hung some pans on it, and it was amazing how well it worked.  I was totally stoked! 

And I was convinced my husband was the smartest man in the world.  I searched Pinterest to see if anyone else was as smart as my husband, and there were a few results of people who had used pegboard in their kitchens.  In fact, some of them had taken the gross, ugly brown pegboard we had in our garage and painted it in fun, cool colors that really made their kitchen look cool!  And as I looked through all of the ways people used pegboard on Pinterst, I realized I needed a lot more pegboard.

As it turns out, Julia Child used pegboard in her kitchen and recommended it.  Well, I am not Julia Child, but if she can do it without feeling like a weirdo, I was all about it.  I just needed someone to say it was not weird. 

So I drug poor Jason back to the store and bought about a million more sheets of the (much less expensive!) brown pegboard.  We bought two giant sheets of it to hang on the walls, and I regulated the diamond pegboard to behind the door to hold the brooms and cleaning supplies. 

I also bought some smaller sheets of perboard to use as a backsplash to hold all of the gadgets we use when we cook so I wouldn't have to dig through all of the drawers to find a spatula.  Although not as pretty as the tile backsplash we'd bought, it was much, much more practical.  And in the end, thats the most important thing when it comes to a kitchen, and it was easy to return the tile.

Kenneling our dogs.  Providing water for the two cats and two dogs.

I knew I needed a quiet, out of the way space to kennel the dogs.  I wanted the dogs to feel safe and I didn't want them to add to the chaos our kitchen sometimes falls into.  I knew the pet water bowl needed to be easily available to all of the animals and near an outlet for the water pump.  I learned not to put the water bowl next to the kennel because it makes the cats scared to use it.  I provided water for the cats near their food bowl, water for the dogs in their kennel, and a community water bowl away from any of the animals' "territories."  I moved the dogs away from the door and I am hoping we will eventually install a counter over the kennels.  We have wire kennel which make travel easy, but the wire kennels don't give as good of a "den" feeling and I know the dogs like to be under things because they hang out under the nook and the coffee table when they aren't in their kennels.  So some day we will get rid of the microwave cart, put a counter in over the kennels, put the microwave on the counter and the dogs will feel safe and snug.

Looking good/showing off our cool kitchen stuff

I knew I wanted to find a way to show off my Fiestaware.  When we were looking for kitchen colors, I came across a neat kitchen.  While I was looking at this kitchen, I really fell in love with the open shelving they got from taking the doors off of the cupboards, so I thought I might try that on the cabinet that has my dishes in it.  I really love my Fiestaware and I thought open shelving would help me to show it off.

Open shelving

Providing a safe place for the baby to play while we cook

With all of this, I had to keep in mind that I couldn't store anything even remotely dangerous in our bottom cupboards or anywhere within reach of my daughter, which was very limiting.  I am a big fan on the Montessori principal of having kids do as much as they can as early as they can, so one of our lower cupboards is devoted to the baby's stuff so she can open the door and help herself to food she wants, her cups, her dishes, and her silverware.  In the other cupboards I have mixing bowls and other things she can safely play with to make drums out of or sort things in.

Read my "Making it Happen" blogs to see how we fixed our storage problems.

The Plan for our kitchen--the colors

Jason and I needed to decide on a color scheme for our kitchen.  It had to match our black appliances, black countertop, and red stand mixer and blender.

I

Picture of a kitchen we saw while house hunting and loved.  This was our inspiration.

What this picture doesn't show is the super cute formica table they used to stage the house.  

So, using this as a jumping off point, we knew we wanted a "red kitchen."  However, since red can be such an overwhelming color, we didn't want our kitchen to look tacky.  (Or at least tacky in a way that was pleasing to us)

We also have hardwood floors, which I absolutely love and were a huge selling point of the house, so we are keeping those.

Our "before" kitchen

I googled "red kitchen" and started pouring through tons of search results.  It was tricky because just black and red was a little too 80s-sounding to me (I'm sure it could look great with the right combination) and it was a little too dark.  Since there is already some white in the kitchen, I narrowed my search to kitchens with black, white, and red as the main colors. 

The problem with those colors was I thought red walls would overwhelm the kitchen, I'm too old-and-not-goth for black walls, and white walls in a kitchen sound boring and would show all of the dirt.  So I was going to need one more color in my kitchen.  I wanted this color to seem neutral though and help the red to stand out, rather than compete with the red. 

After a lot of searching, I found the perfect kitchen on the Better Homes and Gardens Website:

First kitchen color scheme I wanted. 

http://www.bhg.com/kitchen/color-schemes/inspiration/red-kitchen-design-ideas/?rb=Y#page=2

I showed it to Jason and he said he liked it.  Then he scrolled through the other pictures on the same website and found one he ACTUALLY liked:

Kitchen color scheme Jason and I both liked.

http://www.bhg.com/kitchen/color-schemes/inspiration/red-kitchen-design-ideas/?rb=Y#page=4

He confessed that the one I liked he was just faking enthusiasm for, but THIS one was perfect.  I liked this one too.  I liked how the green didn't overwhelm the kitchen, and the red still really popped, but there wasn't so much red that it looked like a blood bath.  So we agreed on this color scheme, but these tiles were not the right fit for our backsplash. 

We went to Menards and looked at backsplash options for a really long time.  I found an awesome backsplash I loved.  We bought it and I came home and googled for "red kitchen with black and white backsplash."  I found this, which was pretty much the same colors and exactly the same backsplash we had planned:

A kitchen with a similar color scheme and the same tile backsplash we bought.

Extreme close-up of the tile.

http://www.hgtvremodels.com/kitchens/a-kitchen-crafted-for-the-eco-friendly/index.html

So this was our common vision of the colors we wanted to see in our kitchen.

Please excuse the brevity of this post, it was PERFECT and somehow the perfect draft got erased and I had to rewrite it...twice...

Mom, mom, mom!

When I am busy and can't hold the baby, but she wants to be held she crawls across the floor muttering, "Mom, mom, mom," but I know she is plotting to put me in the worst nursing home she can find.

Bullying, Mean Girls, and Parenting

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/03/how_do_i_stop_myself_from_meddling_in_my_daughter_s_schoolyard_problems_.html

I read this article and I really liked it.  I love a lot of Slate's articles, but this one drew several, opposite, reactions from me and I like how it made me think and question how I feel about this topic.

I am a socially awkward person.  I am much better than I used to be, but in school I was painfully awkward.  I was bullied a lot in school, but I almost think I deserved to be.  Bullying is a horrible, painful experience.  But it is also society's way of telling you that your behavior is not appropriate for social settings.  I had many crushes in school, particularly middle school.  Because of my inexperience and lack of understanding of social rules I did not express my interest in those people appropriately.  In fact, if I were to have been in school today, in a more enlightened time, I may have faced disciplinary action for sexual harassment since I didn't understand that when someone says they are not interested, you need to leave them alone.  Base on what I read in Seventeen magazine and saw in romantic comedies, I believed if I just kept expressing my interest, eventually those people I was interested would magically become interested.  Unfortunately, I made my own middle school experience and the middle school experience of several boys I went to school with horrible.

I was bullied by boys who wanted me to leave them alone and didn't know how else to send that message.  I was ostracized by most everyone except for my most forgiving friends.  It was horrible and I wanted to kill myself often.  But because it was horrible, I was highly motivated not to repeat my mistakes as an adult, and I learned how to conduct myself (more) appropriately.

As a society, we've finally become aware of the epidemic bullying in schools has become.  However, we haven't figured out how to deal with it.

I am a former middle school teacher from a school where bullying was terrible.  The school knew that the bullying was interfering with their standardized test scores learning and was eager to fix the problem quickly. The implemented an anti-bullying program called Oelweus.  The teachers got one or two 45 minute training sessions on the program, and were given a script of how to lead class discussions on bullying.  The program consisted on helping students to identify what bullying was and wasn't, and what to do if they were being bullied or they saw someone being bullied.

This was great in theory, but in practice it was a disaster for me to teach.  The solutions were always to get an adult to intervene.  Which is great, but it seemed as though an adult in that situation could only treat the symptom of the bullying, not the cause.  The main reason bullying happens is because students don't like a kid.  Mostly its because a kid is not following the other kid's social norms.  Bullying is a form of social sanctions that are meant to get the kid to conform to the social norms.

Now we like to think student's shouldn't have to follow social norms, but really, most of the time they should.  For example, if a kid is getting bullied because he picks his nose and eats the boogers, well, he needs to learn not to do that.  So you can punish kids all day long for bullying the kid, or you can teach the kids the social skills he needs not to pick his nose.

Schools used to spend more time helping to develop kids socially, but in this day of high stake standardized tests, anything that isn't measured on a standardized test is thrown out the window.  This is causing kids who struggle socially to struggle even more, which leads to increased bullying, which, ironically causes kids to be so emotionally distraught they are not able to learn, which lowers test scores.

If we as a society really want to decrease bullying, rather than punishing kids that bully, wen need to spend more time showing and helping students learn how to live within society's written and unwritten rules.  One of those rules is forgiveness and second chances.

One problem is: in school you don't get a redo.  Once you've established yourself as socially maladroit, you are labelled that way forever.  School was painful because of that label, but I've been lucky enough to move several times, getting a do-over each time.  If we took the time to talk to kids, and model forgiveness, empathy, and understanding for them, students could learn social skills in a safe environment and we might start making some progress with getting bullying under control   The bully will learn appropriate, non-bullying behaviors, and the victim will learn appropriate actions that will not make them ostracized.

WTF HAPPENED TO MY MOUSSE?!

As many of you know, my AWESOME husband got me a Kitchenaid Stand Mixer for my birthday.  Unfortunately, we tore our kitchen apart to paint and then the baby got the flu in the middle of that, so I have not had as many chances to break in that bad boy as I had hoped.

However, today everyone was healthy and the windows were open, so I grabbed my chance and decided to make the Double Chocolate Mousse recipe in the Kitchenaid recipe book that came with the mixer.

A word about my mixer:

It is so much more mixer than I am cook.  We got the professional 600, which as far as I know (which is not much), is the Ferrari of stand mixers.  I hear it can handle 14 cups of flour, or eight lbs of mashed potatoes.  Yes, eight POUNDS.  That is enough mash potatoes to satiate my DAD.  It comes with a "direct drive, all-steel gear transmission."  That is right.  My mixer has a transmission.  Are you impressed yet?

All of that being said, I will never use this thing to his full potential unless I gain super powers.  However, after our last handmixer started fire when I tried to use it to make bread, I wanted a mixer I could trust to get the job done.

My hope is that some day my great-grandson or daughter will have inherited this stand mixer and will proudly write in their blog how neat it is to have something that is a link to their past.  I hope it is amazing that the crazy woman sitting in the corner washing her hands and muttered about "kids these days" and "dragons" at all of their family functions growing up is the same lady who used the same hand mixer they inherited.

I hope they never know what a bad cook I was with it.

Admittdely, all I've made with it so far is butter, so I was ready for a challenge.  I read through the Kitchenaid recipe booklet that came with the stand mixer and read the mousse recipe.  I like mousse, so I thought, "Maybe." 

I did some extensive research on mousse.  I typed "mousse" into Google and a foodie site said mousse was "Surprisingly easy."  This was what I wanted.  Something that impressed my husband but was "Surprisingly easy."  So I went to Hy-Vee, got my ingredients, and decided to make mousse.

First, I asked Jason to watch the baby while I made the mousse.  He pointed out that it was late and he had to work in the morning.  I told him that I had read the directions and it would only take "About 15 minutes."  Jason said, "You've never made this before.  Its going to take longer than that.  I'm going to bed."  I hate when he is right.

So I got out my recipe, and followed along:

To Make  Mousse: Place bittersweet chocolate in one 3- to 4-cup microwave-safe bowl.

The ingredient list specifically said 6 oz. of bittersweet chocolate broken into 3/4in bits.  So, I got a knife and broke them into as small of pieces as I could:

Then I placed them in a microwave safe bowl:

Place white chocolate in a second microwave-safe bowl.

I didn't see the same kind of size of white chocolate as the bittersweet chocolate (Which was REALLY hard to find) at the store, so I bought this:

But the ingredient list said it was supposed to be 6 oz. of white chocolate broken into 3/4 in. pieces.  The package says this is 12 oz, so I needed exactly half of this package.  I don't have a scale, so I came up with an ingenious plan.  I poured the entire bag into this cup:

Which came out to exactly two cups of white chocolate.  Then I put 1 cup back in the bag and tada! half of the bag, or 6 oz. of white chocolate:

I poured the white chocolate in a microwave safe bowl:

 Cover each withwaxed paper.
I forgot to do this.

Place one bowl at a time into microwave oven and heat on HIGH for 1 1⁄2minutes. Stop and stir. If chocolate is notmelted, repeat process for 30 seconds at a time,or until melted. Stop and stir.
I did this. 

As you can see, a little bit of the bittersweet chocolate burnt, so I took it out of the bowl and threw the burnt part away:

While the chocolates were melting one at a time, I did this stage:

Heat cream:

...in a heavy saucepan:

...over medium heat until very hot, but do not boil. Remove from heat.:

/
There were some bubbles, but it didn't exactly boil.

Pour one cup of cream:

...into each of the chocolate bowls:

Stir each until completely mixed:

And:

Cover bowls and refrigerate about 2 hours:

Two hours?!?

Pour white chocolate mixture into mixer bowl.
This is when I started realizing something was wrong.  I took the bowl and easily poured the liquid-y mixture into the stand mixer:

Attach bowl and wire whip to mixer. Gradually turn to Speed 6 and beat 4 to 4 1⁄2minutes, or until soft peaks form.




Spoon about 1⁄3 cup mixture into each of 6 stemmed dessert dishes.Set aside.
Forgot to take picture.

Pour bittersweet chocolate mixture into mixerbowl.
This is where huge warning bells were going off in my head.  While the white chocolate poured into the mixer, this one looked like fudge:

And I had to scraped the bittersweet mixture into the mixer.  Still, I thought maybe it would be okay since the recipe said to:

Gradually turn to Speed 6, and beat about3 minutes, or until soft peaks form.
I thought maybe since the recipe said to beat it for less time it was normal for the two mixtures to be different.  So, since I don't really know what a soft peak might look like, I whipped it for 3 minutes:



Spoon about 1⁄3cup mixture over white chocolate layer.

Extreme close-up:

THIS is when I was sure something had gone wrong.  A double mousse could not possibly be expected to look so different. 

So I googled images of mousse.  It was not very helpful because some images looked like the white mousse:

And some images looked like the bittersweet mousse:

Cover dishes with plastic wrap or foil. Refrigerate 8 hours, or overnight.

Overnight?!?  I lost the picture of these covered and in the fridge, so you will just have to trust me.

The next morning, I made the raspberry sauce:

To Make Raspberry Sauce:Place raspberries in blender container. Cover andblend until smooth.

Now, when you thaw frozen raspberries they make a sticky mess, which no one told me about.  So the trip from the fridge to the blender ended with one of the dogs covered in raspberry juice, and both dogs helping me clean up:

Then I threw them in our Kitchenaid blender and blended into oblivion:

If you ever make this, be sure to listen to the "cover" directions:

 Pour mixture into a wire mesh strainer over a small saucepan; press withback of spoon to squeeze out liquid. Discardseeds and pulp in strainer.

Disaster here.  I don't have a "wire mesh strainer" so I used our white plastic strainer.  Well, at first I tried to use the small holes in the center of the strainer:

But none of the juic was coming through.  So then I tried to use the bigger holes on the outside:

But that didn't seem to be doing anything to keep the seeds and skins out.  And it was going through slowly for not even straining.  So, I gave up and threw it all in the saucepan:

...with the tablespoon of corn starch, 1/3 cup of water, and 1/3 cup of sugar the recipe called for.

Place remaining ingredients in saucepan. Cookover medium heat, stirring constantly, untilthickened and bubbly.

This part reminded me of the cranberry sauce recipe our Aunt Karla gave us for Thanksgiving.

Remove from heat and cool. Store sauce in covered container in refrigerator. Stir before using.  Spoon Raspberry Sauce over chocolate in dessert dishes before serving.

Despite something obviously going wrong, we still ate it.  I thought it was okay, Jason thought it was "Good. Really, really good."

So I don't know what I did wrong.  If you know anything about cooking, what do you think?  What happened?

Fun things to know about this recipe: Yield: 6 servings (2⁄3cup mousse and 1⁄4cupraspberry sauce per serving).Per serving: About 664 cal, 6 g protein, 53 gcarb, 48 g fat, 115 mg chol, 57 mg sodium.