Frocks, French and food

Well- as an answer to the title question, my sister. Red sat me down a year ago and was like, LOOK AT THIS!! FRENCH PEOPLE SINGING, DANCING AND DOING PARKOUR! And I was like, silly Marin- parkour is for suicidal boys, not performers. And kind of brushed it off. Several friends through out the year have been like, "Sarah, have you heard of Notre Dame De Paris? You would love it!" But I thought, silly people, I am way too busy loving last five years, in the heights and next to normal. Oh me of little faith- it had been quite some time since I'd had a new musical obsession. Guess it was about time. Man this one is so good. I have a new goal to learn french- or at least to memorize most of the lyrics and be able to pronounce/sing them enough to not make a total fool of myself.
So this is turning out to be quite the week of cooking, despite lack of funds. Saturday night, the predicted snow FINALLY showed up. A note on the differences of east coast snow driving and Utah snow driving- mainly, east coast, particularly Maryland snow driving, doesn't exist. The second they predict an inch, people buy milk and bread, and hunker down for this tiny bit of powder like it was the apocalypse. And if they do get caught out in the snow, its common to see people slide of the road, etc. Not so much in Utah- while the snow was coming down, I saw a recipe and decided that then, right exactly then, I needed to make pretzels. So I bundle up and go out to buy a few ingredients. The parking lot of the local grocery store is packed. I thought to myself- maybe people are preparing for the Utah apocalypse! No. People were buying ridiculous things like frosting, ice cream and flowers. Utah people are just nonplussed by the snow. But pretzels turned out well! The next item on my baking wish list is a drying rack. (Along with a donut pan- did you guys know they make those?!? Check it out.) The pretzels turned out a bit soggy on bottom, and thus stuck to parchment paper- if any of you ever have that problem, give up now. All you can do is peel it off. But even though they were missing a bit of bread on the bottom- they tasted great, with their beautiful, and beautifully easy jalapeno cheese dip. (Recipe here) And this is what they looked like!

(a bit blurry- too bad I don't live with Red and her 

beautiful beautiful camera)

The next night two more friends invite me to a dinner party- I volunteered to bring a dessert. I tore my house apart looking for dessert ( I am missing chocolate! I need candy coating, and baking chocolate and chocolate chips. Don't judge me.) But I found a great recipe for improving upon a store bought cake mix, which I had, and several store bought frostings. So I made this very good recipe for white cupcakes, and we made 6 different kinds of frosting with different syrups and extracts. 

From left to right- raspberry- bananna-lemon-chocolate almond and chocolate banana.

Cupcakes before

Cupcakes after. And frosting after.

Good times.

Things that make me happy this week-1. I finally finally got my EFY application done!

 2. I have beautiful wonderful supportive friends, who help me when I have sucky days.

3. The tailor lady says she might be able to fix my skirt. So- I zipped this skirt to the top of my waist, and then the metal piece broke off and the rest of the zipper came apart- so I couldn't zip it back down, and thus couldn't take it off. It was a disaster. But the tailor lady got it off me. And says she might be able to fix it.

4. Firefly. 'nuff said.

5. Some stores are bringing out their spring stuff. Hooray online window shopping!!