But every now and then an occasion arises which NECESSITATES my baking. Like Easter. It was a must. I had to make sugar cookies for Easter. I found I had the appropriate cookie cutter designs and that being the case, felt completely justified in whipping up a batch of sugar cookies.

Next came the icing of said cookies. It is no coincidence that the Williams-Sonoma catalog arrived the same day filled with pictures of gorgeously, perfectly iced and decorated sugar cookies in the shapes of flowers, bunnies, baskets... it just fueled my fire!

So I whipped up a batch of royal icing. Except that instead of just using 4 egg whites and 1 pound of powdered sugar, I got the crazy idea to throw in some leftover butter. Huh. Well, after the required 7 minutes of hard whipping, the icing hadn't "whipped" like I remembered it doing. I believe it was the butter's fault.

So, since I'd already added a tiny bit of butter and ruined my chances of generating the icing I had in mind, I threw in more butter and some almond flavoring and said to heck with it. Let's just ice these babies as is!

Then, my beloved husband being out of town on business, I got totally crazy and let the kids do most of the decorating. Even my 21 month August. Me being the mess-a-phobe that I am, this was big stuff. They were covered with sticky icing in the various colors we had created.

I believe August licked more than he put on the actual cookies.

And Brooklyn never quite grasped the concept of covering all of the cookie with icing (she gets this from her Dad who can never manage to fully coat the Pillsbury cinnamon rolls with their icing, either. Huge peeve of mine. Icing is the best part!) August did inherit my thoroughness...and apparent love for sugar!

And when it was all said and done, they looked absolutely nothing like the cookies I'd envisioned that would be so perfect Williams-Sonoma would beg to take pictures of them for their next catalog! What we got instead was more along the lines of tie-die, blurred colors, psychedelic, groovy Easter cookies. But you know what? They sure tasted great!

August gets upset because Brooklyn has something he wants.

Brooklyn gets womped in the eye or some other body part.

Brooklyn then runs off with his desired toy and August proceeds to wail in protest.

He pursues.

Captures desired object to dismay of sibling. Notice his expression. Mixed parts "well, you just got what you deserved" and "that just goes to show you- don't mess with me!"

Brooklyn wails in protest.

This sequence then repeats itself in reverse form ad infinitum.

I left a very well paid job to handle crises like this.

I have to remind myself occasionally that this is a job only I can do.

And then I laugh because, well, it really is kind of funny.

If you've seen the movie Julie & Julia, the above words might sound familiar. I feel compelled to insert here that I was a fan of Julia Child's long before Meryl Streep played her or Julie Powell took it upon herself to cook her way through the infamous Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

And so for a while now, I've had a desire to make Beef Bourguignon. I wasn't sure what all the mystery was about. It really kind of just sounded like beef stew. And...having made it and gone about it in the proper French way, dragging the process out over 3 days...it still sort of just tasted like really really good beef stew. Why is that, you ask? Because that is exactly what it is. Consider the mystery solved.

However, if you've ever opened a can of Dinty Moore and thought, well, this is close enough, let me hastily correct you. Oh no. Dinty Moore can't hold a candle to the real deal. The melt in your mouth savoriness of beef that has been marinated in good red wine for at least 12 hours and then simmered slowly for several more hours, then left to merge and mingle with the side by side flavors of carrots, onions, mushrooms and that red wine...well...it's heavenly.

So, in typical Pioneer Woman fashion, I decided to document my cooking venture for posterity's sake.

The first part was to buy some beef at Kroger and make sure I didn't ridiculously embarrass myself by horribly mispronouncing "Bourguignon." Which I'm sure I did given the completely blank look the meat guy gave me. I cringed and decided to fend for myself, purchasing almost 3 pounds of stew meat (boneless beef chuck cut into 2 inch cubes).

I should back up here and say that I combined cookbooks on this one. I used Julia's version from Mastering the Art of French Cooking and I also used my Chocolate & Zucchini cookbook (also a French author). I figured together, they could not lead me astray.

The first step (unpictured) is where I took the meat, carrots, onion, and 2 cloves of garlic along with some spices and poured over them a whole bottle of Cellar No. 8 (a California pinot noir). That then sat in my fridge from Friday night to Saturday mid-morning.

I jumped back into the process Saturday afternoon. I separated out the veggies and meat from the wine (saving the wine in a separate bowl).