I haven’t been in the blogging mood lately, which is why my Four Foods on Friday is late, but maybe it will bring me out of my funk.

1. When you need to serve desserts, do you buy them or make them?

Cupcakes seem to be our family’s every occasion desert, and we usually make them from scratch, although Costco does have fabulous monster cupcakes with butter cream frosting for less than it costs to run your oven when you bake at home.

2. When baking do you use butter, margarine or something else?

Butter when baking, otherwise everything comes out too soft.

3. What meats or veggies do you cook in the oven?

We don’t eat a lot of red meat, so it’s chicken and fish in the oven. Mike hates veggies, but I like roasted cauliflower and smashed potatoes.

4. Share a recipe for anything that is cooked in an oven.

Creme brulee French Toast

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 1 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 6 slices Italian bread
• 5 eggs
• 1 1/2 cup whipping cream
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 teaspoon Grand Marnier

Combine butter, corn syrup, and 1 cup brown sugar in medium saucepan. Heat over medium heat until butter is melted. Pour into bottom of 1-qt baking dish coated with cooking spray. Arrange bread slices over mixture so that bread fits snugly in dish.

Whisk eggs, cream, salt, vanilla, and Grand Marnier. Pour evenly over bread. Cover baking dish and chill for 8 hours or overnight.

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Sprinkle 1/2 cup brown sugar over top of dish. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until golden brown.

Everyone loves to toot their own horn from time to time, especially if you’re a blogger and your site is one of the Top Websites in the blogosphere.

Web Site Reviews like the ones found at Talk Review provide all the information you need to brag about your site. Your Alexa rating, page rank, link stats, and site description are all in one easy-to-read chart, as well as reader reviews.

Of course, you can always use the site to scope out the competition…I mean, other bloggers from all over the world.

I think most will agree that the story of the Dying 8 year old that ‘marries’ his school sweetheart is sad and touching, but I’m also disturbed that the 8 year old girl’s parents would put her in that situation.

The children dressed up, rode in a limo, cut a cake, and had a ‘marriage certificate’. No 8 year old has a realistic concept of marriage, so to Reece and Elleanor, they were married, no matter how much their parents explained to them otherwise, and now Ellie is essentially an elementary school widow.

I don’t want to sound heartless, and I’m not qualified to psychoanalyse what happened, but I think the situation is really messed up. Whatever happened to Disneyland, meeting sports heroes, and ice cream for breakfast to make a sick child happy and fulfill their dreams?

I love Halloween. I go all out with decorating and baking, but my costumes have been somewhat uninspired. A witch, a pixie, and a pumpkin are my most recent costume attempts, and while all have been cute, they have failed miserably on the creative front.

This year, I plan on getting Mike in on the Halloween fun and proposing Couples Costumes. I think the Adam and Eve costumes are hysterical and could make for a good time, especially if we get invited to a party where some Halloween cocktails are involved. I’m not sure what parents would think when we open the door to hand out candy, but I think we might gets some laughs from the older kids.

According to a judge, Talula Doesn’t do the Hula in New Zealand. The judge made 9-year-old Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii a ward of the court so that her name could be legally changed to something more traditional. What that name is, the article didn’t state.

The judge says that names such as Talula’s “makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap”, which I agree with, but I don’t understand why the girl doesn’t just go by Talula. No one has to know what her full name is.

I had friends in high school that had no idea my name was Corrin, because they had called me Corrie for as long as they had known me. I didn’t find out my friend Jason’s name was Cass until they called his name at commencement!

While I’m not into giving my kids names that won’t fit neatly inside the ISTEP boxes, I like quirky names as long as they are spelled logically (no Ashleigh, Micaiah, Nevaeh, or Erikah), so I can’t wait to slip a doozie in as a middle name!