just another evening in the wan house

i've been like freaking betty crocker this week. the hub has been coming home to new recipes for dinner every day, and he loves it. for one, it's way cheaper than eating out, and it's also fun for me to try out new stuff. so some of it's in the crock pot (courtesy of this blog), and the rest of it comes from various food blogs i found on the cooking board at the nest.

while last night's pork chops were baking in the oven, i got a wild hair up my butt to make some bread pudding. i'd found a yummy looking recipe for the crock pot and had been craving it ever since. while i didn't have time to make that particular one, i did have time to throw together a regular recipe for it. it's totally easy:

cut some bread up into 1-inch cubes and arrange in a baking dish. most recipes call for raisins, but you already know where i stand on those. i put in pecans instead. (quick note: a lot of my pictures suck ass because i turned off the flash. but they looked even worse WITH the flash. i've really gotta watch those DVDs that came with my camera)

as i worked, i had a captive audience.

she got bored watching me cut and mix and stir, and quickly moved on to the microwave. ours has a pop-out knob that you use to set the time, and she loves to push it in and out. in fact, she loves it SO much, she made out with it.

back to the bread pudding: whip together some eggs, milk, cream, sugar, and cinnamon. pour over the bread, make sure every piece is soaked, and put it in the oven. since my big oven was already occupado, i used my mini - the convection oven.

with some time to kill, the bean showed off all her fun tricks. she performs on command, you know. like, if i say "bean gone wild!" she does this:

like every girl on the planet, she sucks in her belly when it's exposed. and this is a combo - "where's your tongue?"

"how old are you?"

"where's your nose?"

"where's your belly button?"

by this point, she's over it and toddling over to the cottage to hide from her crazy mom.

anyway, dinner was a smashing success, and after i cleared away all the dishes, the hub and the bean went to play while i made the whiskey sauce for the bread pudding.

i served it up:

and it was a huge hit! the hub shared his with the bean, and she couldn't get enough.

this cooking thing sure is satisfying. for tonight's dinner, i'm tacking a recipe for pho. oh, yes. i'm already cracking lame ass jokes - pho shizzle.