Disney Ornament Upgrade

While I was working at Disney last year, I came into possession of a cute little Minnie and Mickey ornament.  I love Christmas ornaments and I love Disney stuff, so it was pretty perfect.

The only problem was that the back of it said "2009 Passholder."  Since I clearly was not an annual passholder in 2009, it seemed kind of silly to hang it on the tree like that.  However, all was not lost, because with my trusty bottle of Mod Podge and a compass, I was able to personalize the back of the ornament in such a way that the passholder part was covered up.

Don't let that orange compass fool you.  It's actually completely horrible and borderline useless.  Still, I persevered and got it to draw a circle.  It took me a few tries to get it right because the compass kept moving, but eventually I got a usable round template for the picture.

Then I dug through my file of hundreds of pictures of my family's visit to Disney World last Christmas in search of the perfect Christmas Castle picture.  I didn't find one.  It seems that all of our Castle pictures were taken at night in poor lighting conditions.  After all these years, we really should know better than that.  Anyway, after narrowing it down to a few options, my mom and I selected this one because it seemed the most likely to fit my purposes.  Then all I had to do was figure out how to make the printer do what I wanted, which required a couple of tries.  I figured it out eventually, and used the template I'd cut out to trace a circle around the good part of the picture.

Then I cut it out and glued it to the center of the ornament with Mod Podge.  I set a thermos lid on it and stacked a travel mug on top in order to make it as flat as possible and left it to dry for a couple of hours.  When it had completely dried, I painted the back of the ornament with another coat of Mod Podge to seal the picture in.  I did one more coat and decided that it was secure enough to go on the tree.  This is what the back looks like now.  It's currently our only ornament because we put the lights on the tree and decided to wait for Jeff to come home from MSU before finishing decorating.  So now we have a mostly naked Christmas tree sitting in the family room.  At least it has this one ornament.

Disney Cooking...

One of my great loves in life has always been Disney.  The movies, the songs, the parks, you name it and I probably love it.  Except for Sleeping Beauty.  I don't like her.  Don't get me started on that.  Between three different Disney internships, I lived right next to Disney World for almost two years.  One of my favorite perks of living at the greatest collection of theme parks and resorts in the entire world?  The food.  Oh, yes, the delicious, decadent food.  Food so good that I would visit the parks or hotels alone just to eat it if I couldn't find anyone to accompany me.

Ooh la la!

My favorite restaurant by far is Pioneer Hall.  It's the home to the Hoop Dee Doo Revue.  I've been pretty much obsessed with this dinner show since I was a child.  My family used to vacation there almost every year and we'd always have dinner at the Hoop once.  The show's not for everyone--you have to have an appreciation of cheesy humor, slapstick comedy, and bear jokes to really love it (or just indulge in the bottomless sangria that comes with your meal).  As luck would have it, I happen to particularly enjoy that type of humor.  The show has recently undergone some changes and it's not quite what it used to be, but it's still worth checking out.  At the end of every show (this part remains unchanged), they select a few audience volunteers.  One of them is always a young woman.  For as long as I can remember, I've been dying to be that volunteer.  She gets to dress up as a can can dancer and tell a bear joke.  What else could a girl want?  I finally after years of silent hoping got a chance to do just that last fall, thus making one of my great life dreams come true.  Don't I look great?  Side note: it was really awkward because I was wearing a short dress and I'm pretty sure that the people in the front row could see straight up it.  But I digress.  This was about food.

One of my favorite items on the Hoop's menu is the cornbread that is served when you're seated.  I love cornbread.  It's delicious.  Theirs is no exception.  A few weeks ago, I was trolling Pinterest and I found a link to a site that lists tons and tons of Disney World recipes.  One of them was for Hoop Dee Doo Cornbread.  I jumped out of my chair and almost forgot to repin it in my excitement.  Luckily, I got a hold of myself.  I just needed to buy corn meal.  Is corn meal used for anything else?  I ask because I have a large container of it now and the only thing I've ever used corn meal for in my life was making this batch of cornbread.  Not that making several more pans of it would be an issue or anything...  I'm just curious.

Anyway, despite my love of cornbread, I've never made it before.  I bake a lot of desserts and am developing quite a talent for casseroles, but cornbread has never crossed my mind as something to bake.  I have no idea why.  After reading the recipe over, I determined that cornbread is basically cake with some corn meal in it.  I guess that explains why I like it so much.  My sister and I quickly whipped up a batch and tossed it in the oven.  It's super easy; if you can measure and stir, it'd be pretty hard to mess this up.  This was our result:

It tastes like Disney World!

The cornbread was delicious, as expected.  It's been almost a year since I ate at the Hoop, so I honestly can't vouch for the fact that it tastes just like it's supposed to, but if I closed my eyes and imagined myself in a big, rustic dining hall with some banjo music, I could picture it being right at home.  Despite my earlier musings, I fully expect to use the rest of my corn meal making repeated batches of this.  Eat it right out of the oven.  It's heavenly.  The recipe can be found here.  I definitely recommend checking out the other recipes listed on that site.  This is the only one I've tried so far, but I've got a whole list of things I want to cook off of it.