Sad day

Well as you all are probably aware, J and I are in the process of buying our first house. We are super excited/anxious/ready to move out of our rental. I've been pressuring the bank to see if we could close early on Sept. 25th instead of the 30th, to give us extra time to paint and get the carpet installed before moving into the new place. Well yesterday I found out that an early close would not be possible. Which was fine, obviously not ideal, but I got over it.

Today I find out that we actually can't close on the 30th either. My loan lady says they are behind by "a couple weeks."

Fortunately, our landlords have not found anyone to replace us yet, so we aren't homeless. We had planned on staying only until Oct. 4th, with prorated rent, but it looks like we'll have to pay all of October's rent at this time.

It is soooo frustrating.

What makes this worse is there is a stipulation in our contract with GMAC (the bank that owns our house), that says if we need an extension, it will cost $100/day. Now J and I think that we should not have to pay since it isn't our fault, but I don't know that the bank we are getting our loan through can help us very much. My loan lady said she would do everything she could to help if GMAC won't waive the fee. (That of course is our first hope.) My realtor contacted GMAC's realtor and asked what we could do to get the fee waived, and they stated a letter saying why there is a delay would do it. So we hope that that is the case.

This $8000 tax credit thing is the reason we are delayed. The bank had a 1000% increase in the amount of loans processing at once. People are rushing to get in a house before November 30th.

J and I wanted to have a Halloween (costumes required) Housewarming party. I hope we can still have that!

My little Bells

Just a video of my Bella girl, playing with her food. Unless she is really hungry, she will do this every meal time...Sometimes she does the "nosing" part of it for much longer. She used to have a bowl that would tip over, and so she would nose it enough that it would tip. We got tired of stepping on bits of food. We still step on random pieces that she spits out...wish I could get into that head of hers and find out what the heck she's doing!!

Lemon-Blueberry scones with a Lemon-White Chocolate Drizzle

Today at my local grocery store, I noticed that the big pack of blueberries were on sale for like $4.50 or close to $5 I forget. But it was a screamin' deal. It's like a pound of blueberries, or something. I decided I really wanted blueberry pancakes later this week. But also wanted to make some sort of dessert with them. I consulted the Spousal unit..."what would you prefer, cake or scones?" he didn't care. "But which would you most likely eat the most of?" probably the scones, he replied. Scones it is then! I wanted to make something that he would eat, otherwise I would eat them all myself! ;) I thought the packaging of the berries was quite funny:

First it claims that these blueberries are "sweeter than love." Which, while they are pretty sweet berries, I'd argue that my love is sweeter. ;) Also, they claim that Canada is "No. 1." And, I'm sorry if you're Canadian, but that is just plain wrong! ;) haha. I, at least, think it's funny. I asked Jamaal to put away the blueberries for me, and the first thing he said was "They're from Canada??!!" Like that was a huge issue....

So as I was saying, I (we) decided to make scones, Lemon Blueberry Scones with Lemon-White Chocolate Drizzle, to be precise...and they are quite good. :D I used the recipe found here. But I altered it slightly. My drizzle is different, and, I was a little more patient than she was, and forced the dough to become soft enough to form it into a rectangle. (I also added way more blueberries...:D)Enjoy!

Lemon Blueberry Scones with Lemon-White Chocolate Drizzle

Scones
-2 cups all-purpose flour
-1 tablespoon baking powder
-1/4 teaspoon salt
-2 heaping tablespoons sugar
-5 tablespoons butter, cold, cut in chunks
-1 cup heavy cream, plus more for brushing the scones
-Just shy of 2 cups of fresh blueberries, rinsed
-1 to 2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon
-Lemon zest from an entire lemon


Lemon-White Chocolate Drizzle
-2-4 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon
-1-2 squares of Baker's white chocolate
1. Preheat the oven to 350*.
2. Mix together the dry ingredients: the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. If you are anal, which I am not, you can sift these ingredients together. I don't own a sifter, and I hope I never do. It just seems silly to me. (I accidentally put 2 tablespoons of baking powder in, and ended up scooping what I thought was 1 tablespoon of powder...and all turned out just fine. I need to pay attention to what I'm doing I guess!! :D )
3. Using 2 forks, a pastry blender, or your hands, cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs. (I used my hands, because I have yet to find a pastry blender that I approve of. ;) When Jamaal and I registered I looked for one, but it was not to my liking...I have yet to look again.)
4. Make a well in the center, and pour in the heavy cream. (I happened to have heaving whipping cream because I was planning on making ice cream, and used it instead, they turned out fine, I don't know the difference though. Probably way more fattening...ha!)
5. Mix together gently just until moistened. Do not overwork the dough.
6. Fold in the blueberries, 1-2 tablespoons lemon juice, and lemon zest. You have to be careful to not bruise or smoosh the blueberries. But there will be a few casualties. At this point, if the dough looks too dry, add 1 tablespoon of cream or water until it is moist enough to press into a rectangle, or square, or shape of your choice! I had to add 2 tablespoons of cream to reach the right consistency.
7. On a lightly floured surface (I used waxed paper, but a pastry mat will do) dump the dough out and press lightly into your desired shape. I used a rectangle.
8. Cut squares out of the dough, and cut the squares on the diagonal to make triangles.
9. Place on ungreased non-stick baking sheets (or lightly greased baking sheets) and bake for 15-20minutes at 350*.
10. Allow the scones to cool a bit, then make the drizzle: I made half with simply white chocolate drizzle on it, since I wasn't sure how it would turn out with the lemon juice. For that I simply melted the white chocolate square, placed it in a ziplock bag and cut a little off of one corner and squeezed it on. For the half with the lemony drizzle I simply added a little lemon juice to the chocolate before melting. Jamaal and I both preferred the lemony drizzle. It added more flavor. If you don't have white chocolate, you can find more drizzles at the original recipe here.

Measuring out the blueberries.

Rinsing the berries. Most recipes tell you to dry them with a paper towel, but like sifting, that seems like a waste of time to me! ;)

Making a well in the coarse crumb mixture.

It looks like a bear opened this carton. I was ready to cut the entire top off. Stupid carton. I'm getting frustrated just looking at it! haha

Blueberries and dough, next careful kneading!

Cutting out the scones!

Glazed goodness! :D

Great news!

So I know that many of you with blogs have been having problems with uploading photos...and I was having such a huge problem with it that I actually went to complain, and found this:

http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?answer=156829

To set your blog to the "updated post editor," go to your settings page under the basics tab and choose the updated post editor. Read all about it at the link above! :D

Now to try it...