operation domestic goddess

My Christmas Crafts

2012-01-02T11:23:00.008-06:00

Last year, I had the rule that everyone who received a gift from me would get at least one homemade thing. I didn't do quite that well this year, but I did make several gifts that I was really proud of and which were big hits! I'll do pictures and instructions for three crafty gifts in this post. (In advance, I apologize that I don't do photos or descriptions as well as professional bloggers do, but I'd be glad to explain more if I need to. I also got all these ideas from the internet, so it's easy to find more information.)

1. Knit scarves

I do know a basic knitting stitch, but I literally can just do straight lines. I cheated this year and let someone else do the knitting for me, and I just did decoration. I bought a set of jersey knit sheets at Target. (A queen-sized set was $24.99; I probably could get a much cheaper set on clearance somewhere, but I really liked the bright red one I found. Anyway, since it was lots and lots of fabric, I figured it was worth it.) Then I picked out the seams; I only ended up using the fitted sheet, so I left the other parts alone. (I will be making pillowcase dresses out of the two pillowcases, and I am currently using the sack the whole thing came in as a portable DVD player case. The flat sheet will get used for another project in the future.) Next, the hardest part: cut the entire length of the sheet into 16-inch sections. I found that the entire length was a bit too long for a scarf, so I ended up cutting off about ten inches. Basically, just hold it up and wrap it as you'd wear a scarf to test the length. No need to hem anything; it will coil up naturally and just look cute. If you want, you can stop right here and have a solid-colored scarf, but I decided to do some decoration with a bleach pen. DON'T use the color safe one; use the one for whites (about $4 at Target). Stretch the part of the scarf you want to decorate -- I suggest the ends -- over some plastic or cardboard; cereal boxes work well. Secure it with alligator clips. Then "write" or "draw" with the bleach pen. It's a sort of gel, and it WILL splatter, so wear old clothes! Allow the design to sit until you see it start to change color; mine took about 20 minutes. Then rinse off the excess bleach and wash the scarf in cold water. I had enough fabric in the fitted sheet to make five scarves, so even without utilizing the other parts of the set, the scarves were about $5 each. I found lots of instructions and tips for painting with bleach and bleach pens by Google-ing "bleach pen art". You can do this on t-shirts and tablecloths too!

2. Kitchenaid Mixer Cover

I'm especially proud of this one, because I didn't have a pattern! I borrowed a store-bought Kitchenaid cover from a friend and laid it on fabric to trace. You'll need to use heavier fabric than just cotton; I used a home decor weight. It takes two pieces that are essentially semi-circles. (For a 4-quart mixer they were about 13 inches wide and tall, but with the top two edges rounded. You'd make it bigger for the 6- or 8-quart mixer, and make sure to leave 1/2 inch on all sides for a seam allowance.) Then cut a piece to put them together. For my mixer, it was 4 inches by 38 inches. Pin the center piece and one semi-circle piece with right sides together, then sew; do the same with the others. Then make a narrow hem all around (I did 1/4 inch double-folded), and you're done! I searched "Kitchenaid mixer cover" online and found basically these instructions; I modified them a bit because I didn't feel like doing any quilting or using seam binding.

3. Bow Holder

I got the idea for this one from the blog Make It and Love It (www.makeit-loveit.com). It started with a really ugly $4 picture frame from the Salvation Army. I threw away the picture in the middle and the glass, but the glass could be useful for something else if you're industrious. I cut a piece of fabric that was big enough to cover the frame. I laid the empty frame over the fabric, then cut about one inch larger than the frame all around. Then I cut out the center of the fabric, leaving about one inch around the inside of the frame as well. I use Mod Podge to paint the frame and stick the fabric to it. To do this, you need to cut the inner and outer corners in a slit to fold them over nicely. Once the fabric is all glued down, Mod Podge the outside to make it stiff and shiny. After that, find a contrasting fabric and lay the cardboard interior over it; you just need to cut enough to cover the inset, then hot glue it down. Finally, cut enough ribbon to put at intervals along the inset -- I used five. You'll hot glue only the top and bottom of the ribbon, leaving the lengths of the ribbon loose to put bows on.

I had a really good time doing these, and so far the recipients have been pleased!

Christmas projects in action

2011-12-17T23:30:00.002-06:00

Well, I didn't get 12 Christmas projects done this year but I am happy with what I did finish. Here they are in action!

project ONE!

the garland over the patio door

Making a wreath wasn't on my original list of things to do, but I saw it online here and really liked it. It's kind of small on my door when looking at the whole thing but I still like it. Adam actually wound all the yarn, and I made the roses out of felt like this.

Baby girl TA in her jumper that matches the playdresses that her sisters have. RG and JE modeling their dresses here.

This is the only picture I have of SM in her dress, with Mary Lane Haskill, an up and coming Broadway singer who performed in a show locally that I sang in a backup choir for.

The Christmas cards made with my tree skirt scraps are all tucked into envelopes and I was just waiting on my photo order from Walmart (which was LATE. Dumb store.) They can finally go in the mail on Monday.

I've been going a little crazy with the present-making, and yeah, I'm getting a little impatient to post pictures of them so I can show off and say, "LOOK WHAT I DID!!!!"

Christmas Picture and Crafts

2011-12-06T10:43:00.003-06:00

I'm terrible at taking photos AS I do a project, but this one is the culmination of several. I had a friend embroider the second stocking from the left (Maddie's) ast year, and I think I'm going to do green, gold, and red and get one embroidered for each of us now that I think the family is "complete". My goal is to get a quasi-unified look on all the stockings. Also, there are two homemade ornaments from this year on the tree (which, unfortunately, you can't see really well). Directions for them are below. You're also looking at the entire extent of the Christmas decor in the house...we didn't want to go overboard with small kids!

Ornament project #1:

You'll need a lid from a baby food jar, an ink pad, some colored construction paper, glue, and ribbon. Get a thumbprint of your child (baby's first Christmas is fun, but any age will work) on the paper. Around the thumbprint, write the child's name and the year. Cut a circle from the paper the same size as the inside of the baby food jar around the thumbprint and writing, then glue it inside the lid. Wrap ribbon around the edge of the jar, secure with a little glue, and hang on the tree. I have one of these from when I was a baby, and I thought it was really fun to make them with my kids too.

Ornament project #2:

You'll need pasta with holes (penne, macaroni, wagon wheels, etc.), food coloring, yarn, tape, and an oven. Put DRY pasta into a bowl with a few drops of food coloring; for about 1/5 of a box, I used about 8-10 drops. Stir until the pasta is coated. Repeat for all the colors you want to do. Then put the pasta on a baking sheet in the oven at 350 until the food coloring is set, about 10 minutes. After it cools, wrap tape around one end of a piece of yarn and let your kids string the pasta onto it for garland and/or necklaces (we ended up with both!). Unfortunately, like a popcorn string, trying to make a big enough garland to wrap all the way around the tree wasn't a reality with short attention spans. We made four small garlands and just put them in the FRONT of the tree!As far as the Shutterfly link, this is my favorite photo ordering site, because they ALWAYS have coupons (part of being a domestic goddess is saving $$$!) and ALWAYS give cash back into your Upromise account. I definitely recommend checking it out if you haven't done Christmas cards yet.

Spinach Artichoke dip that will change your life!

2011-12-04T21:10:00.003-06:00

OK - so I am willing to admit that ... maybe... just maybe the "change your life" part of this post may be influenced by this pregnancy. I am not ashamed to admit that I have been making this weekly for almost two months now. But my hormonal food issues aside this is REALLY GOOD, and super easy! I actually haven't ever baked it - I usually just make it cold and then heat up a small portion at at time - or for large gatherings I have put it in a crock pot to stay warm for the entire party. And yes, I am eating some right now as I type this :)

http://www.food.com/recipe/copycat-applebees-hot-artichoke-and-spinach-dip-111797

as backwards as it gets

2011-12-01T13:54:00.001-06:00

Adam asked me to make him a sleeping bag liner for one of his presents, so I ordered some fabric for it. I haven't told him what I got - just that he won't be embarrassed to have it when he camps with the Scouts. Yesterday, my fabric shipment arrived (with fabric for a couple of other projects as well). Well. The fabric I need for Adam's project was not in the box. The sticker that said "(print) blue fleece" was on a piece of fabric that was NOT fleece. And it was NOT blue. It was regular cotton in a nice shade of purpley-pink. 2 yards of it.

Adam is so anti-pink right now that ... well, I still don't even know how to describe this except to just say what it was. I was on the phone to fabric.com within 5 minutes of opening the box to get the BLUE FLEECE sent. Fortunately, Adam's project can move to last in line because it can be done the quickest.

(And I get to keep the 2 yards of pink cotton - it will be cute for spring skirts or dresses for the girls. But we'll talk about that later. I have all the Christmas presents to finish before I start on something new.)

it's working!

2011-11-25T23:08:00.000-06:00

A Washington Post article you might be interested in:

The new domesticity: fun, empowering, or a step back for American women?

I found it interesting since I did exactly what this article talks about - gave up a career in government and politics to stay home with my kids. Now I'm homeschooling, I'm learning to sew and knit, Adam and I started canning this past summer, we grew our first container garden this past spring and it's still producing tomatoes and various herbs, we bake all of our own bread, we have the stuff to make our own laundry detergent (just need to actually do it - haven't had time) ... wow. I hadn't put all that in a list in this context before. Operation Domestic Goddess - while not finished by any means - is well underway and so far pretty successful. Yay!

Actually, I'm kind of stunned.

still nesting?

2011-11-11T12:49:00.000-06:00

The baby is a month old today so I'm not sure if this is some sort of postpartum nesting thing (does that even happen?) or the weather changing or what. But I want to clean clean clean. I want to sew. And I really want to bake something warm and sweet and yummy. Adam is on his way to the grocery store in a few minutes and I'm cleaning the fridge while he's gone. Then we'll see what happens with the rest of the weekend.

trick or treat bags

2011-11-10T13:46:00.000-06:00

Sorry I'm late getting these up as an idea. Maybe for next year? Anyway ...

I've been stockpiling felt and a friend was commenting in early October about wanting a particular shade of green to make Frankenstein face trick-or-treat bags for her little boys. I had the right shade so I gave her what I had and some black ... and she gave me the idea. So I sat down with my girls and let them choose what color they wanted for the background of their bags, and gave them options for the shapes on the bags. I did all of this free-hand.

1. I had 2 9x12 sheets of felt (I think that's the size - whatever you get in the little sheets at craft stores) to be the bag. I cut about 1 1/2 inches off one end of each to be the handles.

2. Before I put the bag together, I cut out and sewed on the character shape things. Not sure what to call them. I sewed all the way around the face cut-outs on the jack-o-lanterns. At first I didn't but it looked funny so I went back and fixed it. The stitching looks awful. Do not examine these bags too closely.

3. I sewed the handle on each side of the bag.

4. I put the bag wrong-side out to sew all way around the edge, leaving the top open of course, and then flipped it right-side out.

They're fairly small bags but I have small children (the oldest is 5) and really - how much candy does one kid need anyway. They filled the bags twice - once at a church party, and once going around our neighborhood complex.

I'm really getting into this sewing thing. I like the idea of creating stuff, and I like the little rush I get when I finish something because I can say, "I made that!" Wait until I can get some of my Christmas gift projects up here. I'm making most things this year and that makes me a little giddy. (And a little stressed because hello - Christmas is in less than 2 months.) I just came up with some ideas so they're not started yet, and other things are mid-stream.

in the groove

2011-09-24T14:51:00.000-05:00

I don't know if I'm starting to worry Adam a little bit or what ... but I just came home from a quick run to Walmart with t-shirts and fabric to make 2 more t-shirt/skirt playdresses. This is new for me. Really new.

The two shirts are pink (one dark, one light) and the two skirts are a really soft corduroy in two different shades of blue with flowers all over them. I'm totally in love with this fabric, not to mention that I'm stunned our Walmart is actually carrying fabric again (it was just brought back after about 3 years of nothing) and it's even really cute! Yay!

I have SM's Christmas dress done except for running it through my friend's Serger and hemming it. I've been itchy to do something else but needed more bobbin spools for my sewing machine. After going to both little fabric shops in town and Walmart 2 or 3 times, I finally found the ones I need today so I can get going on switching between projects because I don't have to rethread my one bobbin spool with a new color every time. I have the squares cut and pinned for the Christmas present doll blankets - I can finally start sewing them all together, and now I also have the two extra dresses to make. Those aren't waiting for Christmas - they're short sleeves so the girls can wear them right away. They need new playdresses anyway - they're outgrowing what they already have. RG gets SM's hand-me-downs but SM needs new dresses because she has now outgrown all the hand-me-downs we got from friends.

Height Chart & Chalk Board Menu

2011-09-20T15:19:00.001-05:00

Pinterest (love that site!) reminded me of a couple of craft projects that I needed to do, so we got the supplies on Saturday at Home Depot

First up: Oliver's Height Chart

We made these for the other kids years ago

It is one of my favorite things we made for the kids

I wanted a physical way to record their height

but didn't want to use a door frame, because when we moved, we would not be able to take that with us

So we made these charts out of fence board, spray paint, a measuring tape hot glued down the middle

I like the way I did the names on the other kid's better

I can always change it later (nothing a little paint won't fix!)

Then you record their heights on one side and pictures of them at that age on the other

We measure the older kids every 6 months

It is fun to see how much they've grown!

Project #2 Chalkboard Menu

Ever since the kids started school, as soon as they get home they ask

"what's for dinner"

and then they ask that again every two minutes or so

either because

they never listen to my answers

or they forget just 2 minutes later :P

So I made a menu board for the week

That way they can quit asking

It also helps me with planning!

Fence board, primer, sanding, spray chalk board paint

let dry and done

I was so happy when they got home from school yesterday

"What's for dinner?"

I pointed to the board and they didn't ask again

YAY for things doing what they are supposed to do

Now, what question are they constantly going to ask now that I have solved that one??

Christmas project 5

2011-09-18T12:17:00.000-05:00

This project is half done ... or it's 2 projects with 2 more to go. I'm making winter/Christmas playdresses for my 4 girls. I got the idea last year from someone I went to church with - she bought a cheapo t-shirt from Walmart for her daughter and attached fabric to the bottom for a skirt - voila! A playdress!

I got the turtlenecks on clearance from the boys' section for 2 bucks apiece last January, and made sure I got them in the sizes I'd need now. They actually might last until next year as well, which would be awesome. The two big girls have red tops and the two baby girls have white, because that's what they had in the correct sizes. The new baby will have a different style - I'm not going to attach her skirt to a onesie because new babies go through onesies so fast. She may get a jumper - I'll wait and see after she's born.

I ordered the green fabric from fabric.com, and had to order some more because I didn't know if it would go with the red or not. Obviously, it worked. I'm waiting for round 2 of my fabric order. Basically, I cut the fabric into a rectangle measured to fit onto the shirt, and then sewed it with one seam which I attached at the side. A friend showed me how to do a gathering stitch, which I didn't know the first thing about but I do now! She also let me use her serger, which I very much appreciated. I hemmed the dresses at mid-calf and did a wide hem so they're pretty long, and the length can be altered next fall so they could still fit next year. White tights, black shoes, and we're in business.

The idea of making the top of a dress (armholes and sleeves) is still rather intimidating and there are a couple of other things about skirts that I need to figure out (how to put in an elastic waistband). But the t-shirt/skirt dress - I'm good! When the rest of my fabric gets here, we'll see if I manage to do the other two by myself!

The photographic evidence that I actually made clothing that my children can wear:

Christmas project 4

2011-09-18T12:00:00.000-05:00

Or maybe this is project 1 for round 2. I'll just keep going with the current count for now. Here are two sections of my felt garland - it's about 60 inches long, I think. I used Christmas cookie cutters as my stencils onto the felt, sewed everything straight onto the red ribbon, and decorated with glitter glue. It could go around the Christmas tree, across the mantel, or over a door. I haven't decided where I'm going to put it yet when we decorate for the holidays.

Pumpkin Mousse and Gingerbread Pie

2011-09-12T12:33:00.002-05:00

What started as a delicious cookies and dip combination turned into an amazing pie. Lots of compliments and requests, so here it is.

GINGERBREAD (two pie crusts and then some)
-Cream together 3/4 cup butter and 7/8 cup brown sugar.
-Stir in 1 tsp lemon zest, 1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice, and 1/2 cup molasses.
-Gradually beat in 2 eggs.
-Sift together 3 cups flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp ginger, 2 tsp allspice, and stir into everything else.
-Refrigerate for about 30 minutes to firm it up before rolling it out. For cookies: cut out shapes, bake at 375 for 10 minutes on a greased cookie sheet. For pie: roll out and place in a greased pie plate, and bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.

PUMPKIN MOUSSE (enough for two pies)
-In a saucepan, stir together: 1 15 oz can of pumpkin (1/2 of one of those large cans), 1 cup heavy cream, 3/4 cup sugar, 3/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg. (I accidentally put it 2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice, plus some ginger, and it worked great.)
-Bring to a gentle simmer, stirring frequently for five minutes.
-Remove from heat and stir in 1 1/2 tsp vanilla.
-Chill for at least one hour.
-Whip 2 cups chilled heavy cream into stiff peaks. Gently stir in half the pumpkin mixture until fully incorporated before folding in the remaining mixture. Chill.
-For pie: pour into the baked pie shell and refrigerate overnight (to stiffen up the mousse). If in a hurry, put it in the freezer for 45 minutes.

Minny's Chocolate Pie

2011-09-06T15:05:00.003-05:00

After seeing the movie The Help a few weeks ago, I was craving a chocolate pie. I know, I know...the chocolate pie is supposed to gross you out, but maybe it's the pregnancy thing. Anything chocolate -- especially fudgy-chocolate -- sounds divine. I went in search of a chocolate pie recipe, and after some searching, I found the gem below. It's the actual recipe used by the food stylist from the movie. I've made it twice now, and it's quick, easy, and tasty. I have yet to go at the whole thing with a fork, but I do have eight more weeks of pregnancy left, and I'm not saying no to anything!

1 1/2 C sugar
3 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa
1/2 C butter, melted
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/4 tsp salt
1 5 oz. can evaporated milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 refrigerated pie crust (or...I got REALLY bold and made my own!)

1. Place pie crust in a 9-inch pie plate and prick the bottom and sides with a fork.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
3. Mix sugar, cocoa, and butter in amixing bowl.
4. Add eggs and beat for three minutes.
5. Add salt, milk, and vanilla.
6. Pour filling into pie shell and bake for 35-45 minutes, or until crust is golden brown and middle is partly set.
7. Cool completely, then refrigerate. Serve with whipped cream.

A few notes:

I had the best success making the entire thing with the whisk attachment on my Kitchenaid. It seemed to hit the perfect consistency. If I did it by hand, I got a lot of bubbles that kept the pie from being as pretty as it could be.

Also, let the pie cool COMPLETELY before trying to put Saran wrap over the top; otherwise, the top layer will stick to the wrap. If the pie is cool first, it will peel off easily -- no sticking!

back to work

2011-09-02T15:13:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so, um ... my 12 Months of Christmas have not exactly gone according to plan. I'm chalking it up to the fact that I've spent a majority of this calendar year pregnant, along with starting to homeschool our older 2 girls.

Today, I finally just had enough and sat down and sewed my April project - a felt garland. I've had all the little shapes cut out for months, and bought the ribbon and thread earlier this summer. Last night I started pinning it and today I finished it. No pictures quite yet because now comes the embellishment with fabric paint and glitter, but that can't be done until after the kiddos go to bed. My girls MUST TOUCH EVERYTHING. Drives me nuts. But really, this puts me in a crafting mood. I actually want to work on more stuff. Part of nesting, since the baby is due in about 3 more weeks? Probably. But still. I'll take advantage of the motivation while I've got it - lightning strikes so rarely around here.

Anyway, so I missed 5 months of Christmas projects - April to August. I'm happy with the 3 projects I did at the beginning of the year, but I'm going to start over on the 12 Months thing. It's one of my bucket list things to do so it needs to be done right.

my first order!

2011-07-01T13:30:00.000-05:00

I just got my first order from fabric.com delivered - so excited! Yes. Yes, it's true. I was happy to buy fabric. Go figure. I got flannel to make my traditional swaddling blanket for the new baby ... no pink! The print is flowers so it's definitely girly, but the colors are yellow, orange and multiple shades of blue and green on a white background. Adam and I are so over pink - there's tons of it in our house. Clothes, toys, bedding, the bed itself ... Time to introduce some complementary but different colors into the scheme.

I also ordered fleece to make a blanket for a new niece coming in November - when I made the order, we didn't know if it was a girl or boy yet, so I got fleece for both. We found out yesterday it's a girl. I'm stocked up for when another nephew joins the family! I make fleece blankets with the knotted edges for all of our nieces and nephews - I did a full run of them for everyone the year after we were married (we had 6 total from both sides of the family then), and since then, I make them as the babies are born. Anyway, I'll take pictures of the blankets when they're done.

And I got some Christmas fabric for one of my projects - making playdresses for the girls. I got the fabric for just one dress which will have a white top. I didn't get fabric for the red or green tops yet - that's harder to order online because the red/green has to match. But this fabric does have some red in it that may match with the red tops - I haven't checked it yet. If it goes well, I'll order more if needed. The dress idea is to attach fabric for a skirt to a regular shirt. Last January, I went to Carters and got turtlenecks on clearance (from the boys section, since the girls section had nothing I could use) for just 2 bucks apiece in red, green, and white. Based on the shirts I got, SM and RG will each get a red and a green top, and JE will get only a white but she'll have plenty of things to grow into. I just need to figure out something to do for the new baby - maybe a jumper to match JE's skirt with a white onesie underneath.

advance planning

2011-05-22T16:37:00.000-05:00

It's apparently a whole year of Christmas stuff ... this morning, I randomly told Adam that I already have an idea for Christmas presents for our girls. I want to make little blankets for their dolls with fleece left from making blankets for some of my nieces and nephews (I make a fleece blanket every time there's a new baby in our extended family). And if the dolls have blankets ... maybe they'll need a crib. Or two. Or a miniature bunkbed ... that we could also paint pink! Heh. I think Adam would kill me if I even suggested that, even though we do have more pink paint. We're about pinked out here and need some other colors in the mix, not just this solid wall of PINK every time you walk into their bedroom.

Anyway, so that's something new on Adam's furniture-craftsman list, when he finishes fixing the dining room chairs and building me another bookcase - doll furniture. I know it's early to be thinking about Christmas presents, but when you're planning to make them and you're as inexperienced as we are, you need to start sooner rather than later.

As for my monthly Christmas projects - I'm behind because I gave Kera's sewing machine back to her. I was given a sewing machine to keep by another friend but she hasn't come over yet to show me how to use it (it did not come with a user's manual). I have my April project cut out - just waiting on the sewing and then I'll need to take some time to add the details. Fun with glitter glue! I think the May project can be done all by hand - no machine sewing involved so maybe that one will get finished first. And I have June's project mapped out. It's my first Advent calendar. I want to do two and they are totally different, but I don't know how the 2nd one will work out. It took quite a bit of thinking to figure out the first one but I think it will be cool. Hopefully by the end of next month, I'll be caught up and able to start fresh for July.

Ice Cream in the middle of the night!

2011-04-28T14:17:00.002-05:00

I don't know about you - but I HATE going grocery shopping! I stall it as long as I possibly can - which usually means that after two weeks there is not much left to snack on at 10:30 at night! Until we discovered this! [Truth be told I have gained an undisclosed amount of weight in the last few months... this recipe is probably why :) it feels like, "this isn't bad for me, it's just sugar" apparently I am unable to admit that sugar calories are still calories... but anyway - here is the recipe (I am using the term recipe very loosely here, there are no actual measurements, I ususally make it using cereal spoon)

1 scoop powdered milk
2 scoops hot cocoa powder
1/2 scoop sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 a ice cube tray

Run it through the blender until all the ice is gone.

It ends up tasting like a frosty from Wendy's - kind of like cheap soft serve ice cream. When you are home, late at night, and don't want to go to the store - cheap ice cream is a good deal better then no ice cream at all :)

drop scones

2011-04-20T07:35:00.002-05:00

I found a treasure a couple of weeks ago! Drop scones. I found them in The Joy Of Cooking. I love that book!

Dried Fruit and Buttermilk Drop Scones

Moist, light scones with a golden crusty exterior. Buttermilk produces a pleasantly tangy flavor that complements any dried fruit.

Position a rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly grease a large baking sheet. Whisk together thoroughly in a large bowl:

2 cups all-purpose flour, or 2 1/2 cups if using oil instead of butter
1/4 cup sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Whisk together then add all at once:

1 large egg
1 cup low-fat buttermilk* 3 1/2 tablespoons warm melted unsalted butter or 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup raisins, or dried currants, blueberries, cherries, or cranberries, or chopped dried apricots or pears

Mix with a rubber spatula, wooden spoon, or fork just until the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter will be quite sticky. Use a soup spoon or ice cream scoop to drop the batter in mounds 2 1.2 inches in diameter at least 1 inch apart on the baking sheet. Sprinkle the tops with:

Cinnamon and sugar

Bake until the tops are golden brown, 12 o 15 minutes. Let cool on a rack or serve warm.

I don't usually have buttermilk on hand either, so what I do is put 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar in the bottom of a liquid measuring cup, and then put enough milk in to make a complete cup. Let it sit for 1 minute. And then you have a substitute for buttermilk.

I made this recipe three times the week I found this recipe(without the dried fruit). The kids love them, and so do I! Granted, they are a bit lighter than your classic scone. More like a nice sweet drop biscuit. But hey, I was wanting to find a recipe like that anyway! :)

is it just me?

2011-04-16T00:16:00.000-05:00

I need to rant for a second here ... and since I'm the boss of this blog, I will do it if I feel like it.

Is it just me, or do a number of the home design blogs out there come across as being totally fake? The "inspiration" collections of such and such designer or whatever. These rooms cannot possibly be lived in, or even had a human being set foot in them. The whites are way too pristine, the fabric is much too straight, there's not a speck of dust or clutter anywhere in the picture, and what idiot thought of open shelving in a kitchen? Doesn't everything on them get coated with ... whatever that crud is that's all over my cupboard doors and ceiling near the stove that I can't get off? If people actually do live in these rooms (as opposed to them being mock-ups for a catalog or magazine), there certainly aren't any children.

Also - kitchens or bedrooms that look like they're the size of my entire house - right.

Where does one find the amazing fabrics featured, for furniture upholstery or drapes or just a throw pillow? Maybe I'm just in a non-cool-fabric part of the country (which would not surprise me), but I can't find anything except really boring shades of brick red or brown or navy, whether I'm walking through a furniture store, a craft/fabric store, or just the housewares section of Target. Memo to the local stores: it's SUMMER. Or at least spring. Lose the navy and brown. I love the seaglass color combination - light blues and greens - but have never actually seen it anywhere except these unrealistic house blogs. I would redo my bedroom in about 2 seconds if I could find those colors of bedding, and not with flowers all over it. It's my husband's room too. No flowers except real ones in a vase.

And "tablescapes" ... 20 dishes/flatware per place setting, fancy linens, and so many centerpieces there's nowhere to put the food on the table. Really? Again - no children. There can't be. There's no way my kids would let anything like that sit for more than 5 seconds without having to touch, rearrange, and destroy (or at least damage) in some way.

So what gives? Is it realistic to have a nice house, even with destructo-children? I'd like to think so. Am I just that incompetent when it comes to actually decorating a home? (I'll go with a Yes on that.) I need to do something with my house because it's driving me nuts, but I don't even know where to start. All this "internet inspiration" does is make me think that a nice house is completely out of reach because it's not even real. Argh.

Christmas project 3

2011-04-13T12:38:00.000-05:00

We were out of town for the first 2 weeks of March, then I had really bad allergies when we got back, then my sister was here for a week ... so my March Christmas project had to be a quick and easy one.

A couple of years ago, a friend gave our family the gift of a Christmas ABC book - it was blank pages in a 3-ring binder and plastic sleeves, with a Christmas poem at the bottom and we were supposed to add old Christmas cards to "illustrate" it. I'd just slid old cards into the sleeves but had not trimmed or glued them down yet. So that was my March project - to get the ABC book caught up.

We received blank pages like this. Some pages are still blank because I don't have cards with those pictures on them. I'll give it another year or two, and then maybe we'll fill these in with drawings from the kids.

I added our old Christmas cards like this. We have a couple of pages with personal Christmas photos on them (rather than cards), like my brother's family on U is for Uncles and Aunts.

Sometimes we had enough for a 2-page spread. One of my sisters has her Christmas "trademark" of sending cards with penguins.

If you would like to make your own book, here's the whole poem (author unknown).

A CHRISTMAS ALPHABET
A is for angels with white robes so bright. Their carols were heard on that first Christmas night.
B is for baby, the Christ child so dear. We celebrate Christmas, his birthday, each year.
C is for candles that flicker and shine, and send a warm welcome to your friends and mine.
D is for doorways whose garlands of green make Christmas merry as far as they're seen.
E is for elves who cheerfully make fun Christmas toys for Santa to take.
F is for fun the whole season through. With family and friends, there's so much to do!
G is for greetings, a merry hello, with a heart full of love for the people we know.
H is for holly with berries so red to make into wreaths that hang overhead.
I is for ice on the snow-covered hills, where sledding is fun, along with the spills!
J is for jingle bells merrily ringing, telling the world of the joy they are bringing.
K is for Kris Kringle, old Santa himself. Have you ever seen a jollier elf?
L is for lantern. I'm sure that its light helped Joseph and Mary that first Christmas night.
M is for Mary, her heart full of love for her baby son Jesus who came from above.
N is for Noel - the angels did sing to herald the birth of Jesus, our King.
O is for ornaments, shiny and bright. With lights on the tree, they sparkle at night.
P is for packages under the tree. They're filled with surprises for you and for me!
Q is for Christmas quilts, bright green and red. Will Grandmother make one to go on your bed?
R is for reindeer who stomp overhead. But you do not hear them, asleep in your bed.
S is for shepherds who first saw the star over Bethlehem's manger, and followed it far.
T is for trees trimmed with lights and with toys, surrounded by presents for good girls and boys.
U is for Uncles and Aunts that we greet at Christmas time parties, a holiday treat!
V is for voices that rang through the air announcing the birth of the Christ-child so fair.
W is for Wisemen who brought gifts so rare and fell down to worship the Christ child there.
X is for Xmas, a short spelling for Christmas. But I like to spell it this way: Merry Christmas!
Y is for yule log, whose bright sparks fly high and give a warm welcome to friends passing by.
Zzzzzz is for snores of dear Santa asleep. For on Christmas morning, his work is complete!

Christmas project 2

2011-04-13T12:15:00.000-05:00

I may not have been posting anywhere for the past few weeks, but I have been working!

February's project was my Christmas cards - I got the idea to sew fabric onto the cardstock on MADE here. I used the scraps from the tree skirt, took some time to slice and dice the little squares from the red for some of them, and just laid the fabric criss-crossed on some of the others. Sewed, then trimmed all the edges.

If you look closely enough (or just look at them at all), you can tell that these are NOT professionally made, or made by anyone with any sewing experience. The fabric got bunched up or folded over wrong somehow on every single one, and my lines are most certainly not straight and even. But actually, that makes me like them even more. These are Christmas cards with personality!

I will admit, though, that I will most likely never do this project again. It was fun and I can say, "I made that!" But for the hours it took and I got only 25 cards ... I'll stick with scrapbook paper and stickers if/when I make cards again in the future. Much faster, they look a lot better, and my kids can participate and have fun with me.

all 25 cards. Where there is white space on the card, that is also fabric.

March

2011-03-29T17:09:00.002-05:00

Deadlines

2011-02-28T21:35:00.004-06:00

So, apparently, all I need is a looming deadline to get things done. I started* this Sunday afternoon and finished it today. Granted, I did have quite a bit of down time today. When my baby girl is sick, she naps (as in NAPS!). Thankfully, she seems to be doing much better this evening. She went to bed happily and fell asleep readily, which means that I finished my project with a few hours of February to spare.

Right so about my February project. Technically, I had sort of a head start. The pattern, batting, and quilt-lining were all cut (I did this sometime back in January) and the true lining was already sewn. I hung our stocking linings this past December because I sort of ran out of time... December is a busy, busy month. All I needed to do was piece, quilt, and assemble. Originally I had decided on a traditional patchwork pattern...but those are finicky...and I kept changing my mind about which one I liked for my daughter. I then saw this amazing show on Public Television about "strata quilts" and I thought something like that might be fun. It was just going to be the snowflake print and the cream, but that bored me and I worried that my daughter wouldn't like her stocking because it was blue and "boring." I found the shiny fabric in my stash and liked that it added another "pretty" texture. I also liked it because it is suspiciously similar to a Christmas party dress my mom made for me when I was little. It came from my mom's stash so maybe it was a scrap from long ago? Anyhow it'll make for a good story if my daughter protests the "blue-ness" of her stocking. I spent all of November last year looking for letter charms. I finally found key chains at one of our local gift shops. So glad I splurged on them.

Christmas project 1

2011-02-11T17:16:00.001-06:00

I've had fabric to make a Christmas tree skirt for literally years. I don't even remember how long anymore. I used to have a pattern for it - I think I gave it to someone thinking I'd never actually get around to making the tree skirt.

But here I am with my 12 months of Christmas and project 1 is - oh yes - the tree skirt! My friend Kera helped me figure out how to cut the pieces without a pattern, let me use her serger, loaned me her regular sewing machine, and showed me how to use bias tape for edging. I obviously didn't finish it in January but here it is! Done!And I did it myself! I had coaching, but no one did any of the work for me.

I did all the cutting at Kera's house and started sewing. Then I brought her machine home to keep working on it here. Adam was rather suspicious that the project would just sit there taking up space until I just returned the machine, but I proved him wrong! HA! One day, he came home from work and I said now that he was there to keep the baby out from under the table (she's crawling now), I could finish the initial sewing. I sat down and got to work. Adam went and got the camera. Punk. I went back to Kera's to use the serger.

For the edging, I got bias tape. I found a teeny little fabric shop here in town (there is one at all! Hooray!) with two cute little grandmas who held the baby and talked to my other 2 girls, or rather listened to SM talk nonstop. I had the tree skirt with me and we measured it and they showed me how to put on the bias tape with sewing on the back, and then flipping it over and sewing it again on the front. Yesterday afternoon, I was kind of restless so I decided I'd do the straight sides that are short. It went pretty quick, so I did the inside circle. By then I was on a roll, so I just kept going until ... with 2 panels left on the final run, I ran out of bobbin thread. AAAAHHHH! So I loaded up the bobbin and got the whole machine rethreaded, and finished.

I'm still a little stunned that I did it.

I'm totally stoked for my next two projects - ideas and instructions here and here. The links are not specifically for Christmas projects, but they will be when I do them! Kera is not getting her sewing machine back any time soon.

Eggplant burgers

2011-02-10T11:42:00.000-06:00

These might sound weird, but they are so YUMMY and EASY! I actually get cravings for them :) There is no real recipe for them, just add and adjust to your liking :)

this makes about 6 burgers:

1 eggplant (large)
Cheese
Green onion
Garlic (if you like)
Breadcrumbs

Peel and cube up the eggplant. Saute the Eggplant with a little olive oil until soft. Then place the eggplant, green onion, garlic (you could saute the eggplant with the garlic too), cheese, and breadcrumbs into the food processor. Add breadcrumbs until you get the right consistency to make them into burgers - depends on the size of your eggplant :) I really don't measure anything, just until it is not too sticky and can easily be made into burgers - just add until it looks/feels right.

Place the burgers in a pan with a bit of olive oil and cook until you get a nice crust on the burger. You could coat the burgers in some cornmeal if you would like a little more crunch/breading/crust on the outside of the burger.

Top with your favorite burger toppings!

mini coat racks

2011-02-09T17:04:00.001-06:00

Adam was getting really tired of the girls' coats always being on the floor by the front door - we had just 4 hooks on our coat rack and were trying to pile more than 10 coats and sweaters up there (2 or more for each of us), plus scarves and a couple of bags. Not working. So we got some scrap wood from the bunkbed - a 1x6 about 12 inches long, one for each of the girls.

I had paint samples from Home Depot for the bunkbed - the Glidden brand paint has little bottles of already-mixed colors and when you take the lid off, there's a little brush attached to the bottom of the lid. PERFECT for small projects like this! I didn't use primer so I put 3 coats on instead of 2. SM and RG were both very excited to paint their own coat racks - it took just a few minutes one afternoon, sitting on the front porch. I sanded them, and the girls painted the first coat. SM decided they should all be decorated with hearts, so I mixed things up a little with the patterns. I used a tiny crafting brush for the hearts. I got the hooks at Walmart, and voila! Coat racks for the girls!

I helped RG get all the strokes in the same direction.

But SM had to do it BY HERSELF!!

Signature colors: SM - pink, JE - yellow, RG - purple. The paint colors: sexy pink, freshcut honeydew, violet shimmer, and the hearts in pink lemonade.

the coat cubby under the stairs

Goals

2011-02-06T09:08:00.004-06:00

I want to be a domestic goddess. I do. So there. It's a lofty goal of course, and it seems all the more loftier since my house at the moment smells vaguely of poopy diapers, dirty dishes, and dead flowers. The downward spiral is a quick one my friends.

But let's talk about goals. I have ones that are more achievable than becoming a domestic goddess. Like the 12 months of Christmas projects. That's doable...ish. January's project was to sew up 8 place-mats. Let me just say that this was an ill conceived idea. Place-mats are cheap. Much cheaper than the cost of materials here. And although place-mats are easy enough to sew, I seemed to get every single one of them crooked. Holy cabooses, it was boring too. All of those straight (or not quite straight in my case) lines, and doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over. It was a battle of wills and for the greater part of January the place-mats were winning. In a come back that can only be described as epic I finished them on Jan. 31. Booyah! Who's winning now place-mats? Who's winning now.

So February's project? I have set the goal of making one of these. I made these stockings last year for family who were visiting. Ran out of December before I could make any for my immediate family.

big plans

2011-01-25T22:57:00.000-06:00

Someone has been holding out on me. Why did I not know about this site before?

Ana-White that diy furniture blog

Oh. My. Heavens. I spent the whole afternoon today going through this website. I went through every page of her "beginner level" tags and bookmarked 10 different projects, like this and this and this for my kiddos. I'm turning into a babbling idiot with just saying over and over, "Look! How CUTE is that! A-a-a-and LOOK! AHHH!" And holy crap, I have multiple variations on a theme with THIS. I want. And because Adam wants to turn woodcrafter as his hobby because being a government lawyer is boring, I can HAVE! YEEEEAH!

I haven't even started looking at the headboards for queen-size beds, which is one of the things Adam and I want for ourselves, or a bench for the dining room table, or a number of other pieces of furniture that would be nice to acquire. We're making a list. Boy howdy, are we EVER making a list!

FHE - scripture power version 2

2011-01-11T12:36:00.002-06:00

This second version of a scripture discussion is what we did for our FHE yesterday. The discussions that I had assigned to my parents and my sister seemed a bit out of reach for our family right now.

We started by singing Scripture Power.
We laid out the 4 Scripture Readers and talked about what is in each book of scripture - the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine & Covenants.

We each said what our favorite scripture story is. Adam's is the Helaman's stripling warriors and mine is Jesus Christ blessing the children, both in the Book of Mormon. SM likes David and Goliath, and RG likes Baby Jesus.

My parents had sent their watercolor paintings of their favorite scripture stories and a letter talking about what they're doing for their personal and family scripture study - we read the letter and discussed their pictures. My mom's favorite story is the same as mine, and Dad's is the vision of the Tree of Life in the Book of Mormon.

For our pictures of the favorite scripture stories, I printed a couple of things off the Friend LDS Coloring Pages Index and we colored.
We closed by singing Search, Ponder, and Pray.

FHE - scripture power version 1

2011-01-11T12:04:00.001-06:00

For the Family Home Evening in a Box gift exchange, this is what I sent to one of my sisters and her husband, and I also sent it to my parents.

MUSIC
Sing the song Scripture Power - this link has an mp3 with the music and a pdf with the sheet music and words. This song is not in the regular Primary music book - it was an extra that came with the Sharing Time outline a couple of years ago.

LESSON
Each person share your favorite scripture story or prophet – why this means something to you and how you try to apply those specific lessons in your life.

Read and discuss the following scriptures:
2 Nephi 32:3
D&C 84:85
Mosiah 1:7
1 Nephi 15:24

Discuss the following:
How can you each improve your personal scripture study?
How can you improve your scripture study as a couple?
Set at least one goal for each of these to work on over the next month. Write it in your journal, and assess in one month.

MORE MUSIC
Sing the songs Search, Ponder, and Pray in the Primary songbook and The Iron Rod in the hymnal.

ACTIVITY
Use watercolors to paint a picture of your favorite scripture story.

the saga of the bunkbed

2011-01-09T23:21:00.000-06:00

The PINK bunkbed.

Adam and I talked at length about what to do about the sleeping arrangements for our girls - ages 4 and 3, both in toddler beds (one of which was actually the crib converted to a toddler bed), and the baby who had outgrown the bassinet but had nowhere else to go because her sister still had the crib so she slept with us all the time. We decided to have him build a bunkbed with a trundle beneath, with the future intention of it being the bed for all 3 girls. We estimated the cost to be approximately what it would cost to buy a regular bunkbed at Sam's Club but that wouldn't have the trundle. And we figured building one would be much more sturdy than buying a cheap one. A good solid bunkbed costs over $1000.

We ended up paying about $500 for the wood and aaaaaall the screws, bolts, sandpaper, paint, and tools we didn't already have. That was about twice our estimate, but we realize that we estimated correctly for just the wood. Not all the other stuff. We'll do better next time. We bought 2 brand new mattresses that were $100 each, but we had that estimate correct.

The steps:

1. Adam bought raw lumber and sanded. And sanded and sanded and sanded. The already-finished furniture grade wood cost twice as much as the raw lumber, but next time, we'll pay it because the sanding took FOREVER. And we had to buy a truckload of sandpaper. But thank heaven for electric sanders!

2. Adam and our friend Aaron - sainted Aaron! - went over and over Adam's original design and measurements. Aaron is an engineer so he was a good one to have on the team. They measured and cut and checked and measured again, and cut all the pieces to their specifications. This also took a lot more hours than we had anticipated. Once they started this step, Adam told me many times, "Just a couple more hours." It took a long time to do this because of tweaking the design midstream to get everything balanced right. They did a dry-fit of putting the two bunks together while they were drilling the bolt holes to make sure it all worked.

3. Once the dry fit was done, they brought all the boards to our house from Aaron's house (they did everything at his house up to that point because Aaron has all the needed shop tools in his garage) and stacked them on our patio. Time to treat the wood!

ready to ... stain? paint?

4. SM asked repeatedly for a princess bunkbed - a PINK one. Dad didn't want pink, he wanted a "nice stain." I'm tired of dingy cream-colored walls and carpet (dumb rental rules) and brown furniture, so I was more inclined to go with the pink, or at least some color. But I went to the store and came home with a stain, as requested, that I "disliked the least." None of them appealed to me. Adam sent me back to the store and said that he didn't care how much it cost, just get whatever I was willing to live with for the next 10 years. I came home with testers for 3 different shades of pink, a couple of purples, and a yellow. Guess which one the kiddos liked the best. They were with me when I went to Home Depot to buy the paint and oh my - you would have thought it was Christmas. (Well, it was. But that's beside the point.) They told everyone they saw, including other customers, that we were there to get pink paint for their princess bunkbed.

5. Painting. I let the girls help me paint a little bit, but mostly I did it myself. I suppose it would have been a good experience for them to help more, but at that point, we'd already been working on the thing for over a month and I just wanted it done. The weather turned rather cold while I was working on it which meant the paint wouldn't dry well outside, and when it warmed up, it started raining. So the wood just stayed under tarps outside for a week or two while we waited for the weather to cooperate. I finally just put a drop cloth down on the living room floor at night after the girls were in bed and painted inside. It took about a week of this to get both coats of paint onto the boards. Once I finished painting, we put a clear coat of polyurethane on everything as a protection for the paint. It adds a little bit of gloss but mostly it's so marks on the wood wipe right off and the paint doesn't get gouged.

one of the days I was able to paint outside

6. Time to put this baby together! Two days before Christmas, we rearranged our entire upstairs by switching Adam and me into the small bedroom and all 3 girls into the larger one. JE finally got moved into the crib at 8 months old (and she's still freaking out about it). Adam put the bed frame all together and went to buy the mattresses. Merry Christmas!

framing the bed late at night

ta da! the pink bunkbed!

7. And then ... the mattresses didn't fit. The bedframe was too big by at least 6 inches all the way around. Plus, it was REALLY tall - note in the picture that the frame for the lower bunk hits Adam just below his hip - normally a bed height is around your knees so you can sit on it. We crammed pillows and cushions around SM's bottom bunk mattress and called Aaron to come over and look at it to see how to fix it.

8. Yesterday, Aaron came over in the morning with his saw, and they took the whole thing apart and cut every. single. board. Fortunately they had to cut only one end of each of them, so no repainting was required. And they got it all done and put back together before 9 pm, when it was time for little girls to go to bed.

The final shot: storage on top for now, SM on the bottom bunk, RG on the floor. Princess blankets for the princess bed ... SM has all the pink, and RG has a purple Tinkerbell blanket. The green sheets match Tinkerbell's dress. P.S. The basket at the foot of the bed is for their dress-ups, not dirty clothes.

We're still not quite done. The trundle platform will be built in February or March - my target is to have it done before my sister comes to visit on March 26. But the bed itself is done. Doesn't it look great!

And yes, if we have more children to need it, Adam would build another bunkbed. He's hoping for blue rather than pink.

FHE - helping the missionaries

2011-01-04T14:17:00.021-06:00

For Family Home Evening this week, we decided to support the missionaries. We took our lesson from the manual for SM's Primary class (CTR 4) titled "I can be a missionary." We sang "I hope they call me on a mission" and talked about the ways to be a missionary in the lesson outline. SM especially liked the stand up/sit down designation. Adam also printed off a coloring page (which I can't find to link to) of a picture of a child giving a gift to an elderly person.

For the activity, we baked cookies - white chocolate chip and macadamia nut - to send to our friends Elder Mark and Elder Loebs, who were serving here in Vicksburg last spring/summer. The girls drew pictures and I wrote letters to each of them. This did carry over to Tuesday because the recipe I used didn't make very many cookies, so I made more this morning.

FHE - I am a child of God

2010-12-28T15:06:00.000-06:00

For our Christmas exchange this year in my family (my brothers and sisters), we decided to do the theme of "Family Home Evening in a box." We got our FHE plan from my brother Eric, and it was from the "I am a child of God" lesson in the Nursery manual.

We sang the entire song of I am a child of God, (it's one of the favorite bedtime songs around here).
We read, and the girls repeated, Psalms 82:6.
We talked about Moses learning from Heavenly Father that he is a child of God - Moses 1:4. I used the picture of Moses and the burning bush in the Gospel Art book.
We went around the room saying that each person is a child of God.
We did the activity verse in the manual.

For the activity, there were coffee filters included in our package that we folded up and cut into paper snowflakes, because everyone is different and Heavenly Father loves us that way. Adam and I had to do all the cutting because even with it being thin paper, it was still too hard for the girls to cut through all the layers. But that was okay. Once we unfolded the first couple of snowflakes for the girls to see what we were doing, they got all excited and were perpetually hovering, saying, "Cut another one!" Then we taped them up on our back door windows.

a series for this blog - Family Home Evening

2010-12-28T15:03:00.001-06:00

In my mind, part of making a house into a home - a place you want to be - is more than aesthetic. It's not just how the place looks. It's how it feels. Part of being a Domestic Goddess to create the atmosphere that you want. One of the best ways that I've found to create peace in a home is to spend time together as a family, and have Family Home Evening consistently (FHE).

One of our family goals for 2011 is to do better with FHE - we've just been singing a couple of songs, reading a story from the Friend magazine, and calling it good. Five minutes does not constitute Family Home Evening. I'm planning to put together lessons/activities from the Sharing Time outline for the year which is online here, and the Faith in God materials which are also online but not pulling up for me right now. I'll post our lessons and activities on Tuesdays after we do them, and of course everyone else is welcome to share their ideas as well. Please do! I need all the help I can get! My stuff will be pretty simple - my kids are 4, 3, and 8 months.

If you are not Mormon: Family Home Evening is an official program of the LDS Church started in the 1960s. Monday is designated as family night - no church activities at any level are allowed to be scheduled that day and even the temples are closed. I realize that some of the doctrines are not the same, but as fellow Christians, I hope that you can get something out of the descriptions of lessons and activities that you can use in your own home to create spiritual peace and harmony among your family.

the 12 months of Christmas

2010-12-27T16:42:00.000-06:00

Yes, you read that right. My friend Amy (who has been added to the contributors on this blog - hello, Amy!) and I are going to make something for Christmas every month in 2011! It's going to be fun!

Our first draft list, in no particular order, includes:

felt hand puppets of the Nativity
a tree skirt
Christmas/winter playdresses for our girls
Advent calendars
handmade Christmas cards
dining room table stuff - runner, napkin rings, placemats, etc.
Nativity blocks
a felt garland of some sort of Christmas motif - lights, holly leaves, whatever
plan and compile materials for a whole month of crafting with kids (I was unsuccessful at doing this impromptu)

Okay, that's 9. Any more ideas? I suppose we should stop the list at 11 - January through November - and spend next December NOT working on the projects so we can enjoy the fun of doing crafts with our kiddos and baking! Mmmm ... baking ... I did not do nearly enough to appease myself this year. (Durned teething in my poor baby's mouth.)

No, we haven't decided what we're doing for January yet - I'll post it when we do. Anyone care to join us?

Christmas crafts

2010-12-26T17:11:00.000-06:00

We've been having a holly jolly Christmas with making some cute holiday crafts between watching Disney Christmas cartoons over and over and over, and eating Clementine oranges nonstop. We've made:

- a Nativity from coloring pages found HERE and cardboard rolls. We used the middle of wrapping paper rolls. You could also use the cardboard from paper towels or toilet paper.

- wrapping paper for presents going to cousins. We used packing paper that we still have stashed from our move almost 2 years ago (yes, we had THAT MUCH paper). I used cookie cutters as stencils and drew the shapes with markers, and the girls colored them and used foam Christmas stickers that I got at the dollar store.

- jingle bell bracelets described HERE with little bells and pipe cleaners. When the girls were done playing with them, I hung them on the tree. They make cute little ornaments.

- paper cone Christmas trees made from construction paper and decorated with markers and the foam Christmas stickers. I got the idea from a book, but HERE is a template and directions to make pretty much the same thing. The difference from the book is that our half-circles were folded into pie-shaped fourths and folded into a three-sided tree (with the fourth side being a full overlap for gluing together) rather than being round. My girls decided they were party hats rather than trees.

our Christmas dinner

2010-12-26T16:48:00.000-06:00

Friends, this dinner was noteworthy. Nirvana on a plate. Adam's a good cook but seriously. When it comes to Mediterranean food, something just really comes together for us.

We skipped the typical turkey and mashed potatoes for Christmas dinner, and went with a Lebanese theme.

We had roast using this meat rub that we used on lamb at Easter. We were told by a friend that we could use roast if lamb is too expensive - and it was this time - and it worked spectacularly. Adam cooked it in the crockpot and it was very juicy and fell apart when cut into. The smell in our kitchen was amazing.

Adam made pita bread using this recipe - it didn't work out so well as the first time. The rolls were not hollow. So we tore out the middle and used the bread chunks in our dips, and voila! The shell is a regular pita pocket! For our pita appetizers, we had tomato, cucumber, green olives, black olives, strips of bell pepper, goat cheese, hummus, and an eggplant dip called baba gannouj. If you are a fan of hummus, may I suggest a replacement. Baba gannouj is absolutely delicious, not to mention hilarious to say. 8000 times. Baba gah-NOOSH! It was, by far, one of the most casual and relaxed and FUN meals we have had in a long time.

We also had, but hardly worth mentioning after all that, asparagus with lemon and rice.

And then dessert. Please join me in singing the Hallelujah Chorus. We have a new Christmas dessert at our house: Buche de Noel. It's a French cake shaped to be like a yule log - it's a flat, flourless cake with mousse rolled in the middle and covering it over the top, and it's all chocolate.

the most amazing dessert EVER!

Paint

2010-12-09T14:38:00.011-06:00

As long as Trina is painting I'll tell you about my latest painting adventures:

Although we have three kids I have never set up a "nursery" we lived in such dives or were so broke that it was just never an option.

Finally - now that my oldest is 6 I have walls that I can paint (turns out paint is pretty cheap - I never knew that!):

Turns out Dr. Seuss is amazing easy to paint! He used very simple shapes and designs, no shading, vivid colors... perfect for those of us with no artistic skill!

All you have to do is beg or borrow a projector, put the image you want on the computer - hook up the projector - trace it on with a pencil, then color in the lines.

Even I can color in the lines :)

I am particularly proud of it because it isn't gender or age specific. Right now we have a 6 year old girl and a 3 year old boy in the room. In a few months we will put the two boys in there (3 and 1).

Who knows how long we will live here but Seuss would work until they boys are 8 or 9ish - at which point I (or whoever lives here next) could just paint out the fish and put surf boards over the water :)

I realize that painting walls is not an option for everyone - but my next project is to put a few characters from the same book on their dresser, same process - project, trace, color in the lines!

I actually just used craft store paint for the fish - you know those tiny little bottles you get for buck twenty? so cheap - and pretty cute if I say so myself :)

sneak peak

2010-12-09T14:09:00.001-06:00

Nobody has posted here for quite awhile, so I thought I'd give a little preview of what we've been working on for almost 2 months now - Adam is building a bunkbed for our kiddos. Our friend Aaron helped a lot. They started with raw lumber that was sanded and sanded and sanded. They went over Adam's design about 10 times and altered it here and there to make sure everything would work right. They cut the boards to the measurements and fit it all together and drilled the holes for the bolts.

It's now sitting on our patio in pieces while I take my turn with it - we went back and forth about staining it, and the final decision is that I'm painting it. Pink. Because my girls are 4 and 3, and they want a pink princess bed. Adam isn't very happy about it, but it's not his bed. He can get over it. I'm planning to get stencils to put a design on the sides, and I have little containers of paint in pastel shades of yellow, purple, blue, etc. I'm thinking flowers and hearts, and maybe little crowns. If I can't find a stencil like that to buy, I may try to make one because I definitely need a stencil. I'm not good at freehand art and I'm not going to use this as my first attempt at it.

It's taking awhile to do the paint because it's pretty cold out this week. Next week is supposed to warm up into the 60s, which is PERFECT painting weather. And we don't have anything scheduled during the day (unlike this week) so I should be able to get the pink done and do the stenciling.

cupcake crafts

2010-11-10T21:50:00.005-06:00

At Trina's request I am sharing my secret.

I love cupcakes. They're cute and delicious and individual-sized fun. As I surfed the net for some Christmas craft ideas I came across a few cupcake ornaments. Some I liked, some I didn't, but I ended up coming up with my very own. Behold: cuteness in a cup(cake wrapper).

The best part is they are SUPER EASY to make! All you need is: mini cupcake wrappers (Michael's), styrofoam balls (dollar store), and I had everything else on hand - scissors, seed beads, hot glue, tiny metal rings (left over from jewelry making), and ribbon.

- Use the scissors to hack up half of the ball so it isn't smooth anymore. Experiment with it a bit until you get a texture you like.
- Hot glue into a mini cupcake wrapper. A bit on the bottom and then all the way around. I was worried that my balls were too small, but once I started gluing they were exactly perfect.
- Use more hot glue to add beads, ribbons, and any other decorations. Glue on the metal ring to loop some ribbon through to hang, or just glue the ribbon right on top. Tada!

I'll probably be doing some more experimenting with these during the week - I'm curious what paint will do on the styrofoam, and I want to wander the dollar store and find other things to put on top - little berries or bells or bows. Super cute to put on the tree, attach to presents, and give away to friends while caroling! A sweet Christmas treat that won't go to your waistline.

(The Polly Pockets on the far right were our wedding (cup)cake toppers. Since we got married right after Christmas this was the perfect way to display them!)

Homemade gifts - robes, skirts, dresses, & belts

2010-10-11T19:47:00.003-05:00

I posted this on my blog, but figured it would fit into this blog too :) FYI - if you don't know how to make a pillowcase dress, there are TONS of directions and videos on youtube!

I was at Target early this week and saw some pillowcases and towels on clearance. That got the wheels turning in my head and I thought of all these different projects I could do with them for Christmas. If you know me, I cannot sew AT ALL - a straight line is about all I can accomplish. So these were all easy projects - none taking over an hour (which with a 2.5 month old, is important!!). I took me about 4 days to complete all of them....

I made them for Christmas - mostly for Sabrina (my 7 year old daughter)... She has been wanting dresses/skirts - so these came out cute and cheap! She is always wanting me to make her stuff, but unfortunately she was blessed with a mom severely lacking in sewing skills :P These should make her pretty happy and now I have a bunch of stuff ready for Christmas already :)

My FAVORITE thing I made is at the bottom, so make sure to check them out. I was REALLY impressed with myself for making them and coming up with it. I had no pattern, and couldn't find anything on the Internet that matched what I was wanting to make - so I winged it... and they turned out better than I hoped!! I also made 4 hair ties and a headband out of the leftover fabrics :) (didn't take pictures of them)

So these are the pillowcase dresses I made. The pillowcases at Target were REALLY nice (400+ tread count - really soft and silky). For 2 King size purple ones, it was $4.50, and 2 Queen size pink ones were $3.50. I went and bought some pretty sheer/pearl fabric to put over the pillowcases, to try and make it a bit fancier. I thought the fabric I chose was on sale for $2.99, but apparently I picked one that was $8.99! Yikes - I didn't notice until checking out... Luckily, the ladies at JoAnn's gave me a 50% off coupon making it $4.50 - so I decided not to return it...

So total cost for each one: $7.25
Purple one - $2.25 for pillowcase, $4.50 for the outer fabric, and $.50 for elastic at the top. Since this was a King size pillowcase and longer than I needed, I used the extra fabric for the ties and belt.. If I had gotten the right, on sale fabric, the total would have only been $5.75 :P
Pink one - $1.75 for pillowcase, $4.50 for outer fabric, $.50 for elastic, and $.50 for fabric for straps/belt.
There was also enough of the outer fabric for an extra belt (in pink one picture) for either dress

Now I just need to buy her a new pink and a white shirt to wear under them

This is what I did with the other pillowcases (there were 2 in each set). I cut them in half and made skirts. Sabrina has been eying these skirts at Target that have a bunch of tulle on them - they are about $12 :P So these are what I came up with. One pink and one purple have 1 layer of tulle each and the other pink and purple each have 3 layers of tulle.

The purple ones came out to less than $6 for 2 ($3 each!) - $2.25 for the pillowcase, $2.38 for 2yds of tulle, $.50 for elastic, and $.79 for the belting to tie the waist

The pink ones were about $5.50 for the 2 - the same break down as the purple, only the pillowcases were only $1.75..

I think I am going to buy her some black leggings to wear under the pink ones...

Belts - Sabrina has been asking for belts.. Why? I have no idea, but they are like $8-10 in the store, so I have yet to get her any. So when I was buying the stuff for the dresses/skirts, I found belting - I didn't even know they sold this (I told you NO sewing skills - I have no idea what they sell :P). So I bought some - apparently enough to make 6. and they were super EASY to make and way cheap! I ended up making 2 more, because Jonathan saw I was making them and said he wanted one too - so I went and bought some black belting and made him 2 :)

Cost: $2.05 a piece - belting was $1.99 a yard, I used .75 of a yard for each belt, plus had a 40% off coupon for the belting. The hardware was $2.29 and was enough for 2 belts (so $1.15 each belt).

These are my favorite things I made. The kids have been asking for robes - mainly because Oliver got one as a gift and they think it is pretty cool. At the store they are at least $20, so I refused to get them their own. Well, when I saw the SUPER SOFT and FLUFFY towels on clearance at Target, I thought I could make them some. I could not find a pattern or anything online that matched what I wanted. So I figured it out myself and I am quite excited I was able to do it and they turned out so well!

So each towel was on clearance for $3.50. I bought 3 to complete the project (if you only wanted to make one, use one towel and one hand towel). S0 each robe used 1.5 towels coming to a total of $5.25 per robe (and they are REALLY soft, fluffy, and nice towels!).

Here is how I made them - in case anyone is interested - Super easy, cheap, and a cute gift:

Fold the towel in half and then half again; cut at an angle, thus making a circle in the middle of the towel (for the head)
Unfold the towel and fold it in half lengthwise and cut one side the towel to the hole (making the front opening of the robe)
Fold about a half an inch around the edges you just cut and sew around it (to make a nice edge and help with the fraying)
Take a hand towel (or if like me, cut a hand towel size piece from a bigger towel) and sew it to the head hole you made.
Then sew along the top of the hand towel (on the inside), making it into a hood
On the open sides, mine were about 30 inches long (each side). Make sure you turn inside out. I cut in about 4-5 inches with 10 inches at the top for the sleeves and 20 at the bottom. I sewed the bottom 20 inches together (4-5 inches from the edge), creating the side. I then just sewed the the bottom of the sleeves together to make them into sleeves (make sure to do this on the inside).

And you're done! Turn right side out and you've got a robe. I sewed on pockets because I had extra towel leftover and made belts out of the extra towel.
They are really cute and as you can see really easy! I know my kids are going to be so excited about them!

another cookbook referral

2010-10-02T18:39:00.001-05:00

We received this cookbook - Jacques Pepin's Kitchen: Encore With Claudine - for Christmas from Beth, who apparently found it at a used booksale or something like that. It's set up by menu - a main dish, a couple of sides, and a dessert. We had never heard of this chef but Adam was getting tired of menu planning for the grocery shopping so he decided to work his way through the book.

Success!

There have been a couple of things that we didn't really like - the cold cucumber and mint soup being the one that immediately comes to mind. But other than that, it's been great! We've been introduced to some interesting food combinations - tonight's dinner was zucchini mashed into a mashed potato gratin dish topped with poached cod and a basil sauce. The side was steamed leeks with bread crumbs over them, with garlic and Swiss cheese in the breading. It was really good!

And there's something else - until this week, neither of us had ever had leeks. Or turnips or parsnips. And now we have. Our kids won't go near most of this stuff but we're not pushing them hard on what they eat - they eat tons of fruit, vegetables, and sandwiches and very few treats so they're fine. They don't need to develop an adult palate overnight - some of these dishes have a pretty complex taste.

We're not even halfway through the book yet but like I said, everything (with just a couple of exceptions) has been surprisingly good - even combinations that sound a little weird. So I thought I'd pass on the book referral.

binge and PURGE

2010-09-23T16:10:00.001-05:00

13 years from when I graduated from high school to when I met Adam - the entire decade of my 20s plus a little extra. I cannot believe how many pictures I shot, and printed, and put in albums in those 13 years. I have 14 albums (I think), not including the hundreds of pictures in binder photo sleeves from my mission. I apparently saved Every. Single. Picture. that I took in those 13 years, including ones that are very dark, very distant and you can barely see the faces in them, out of focus ... you name it, it's in there. I'm dumbfounded at the amount of money all of this represents - 6 bucks for a roll of film, $8-12 for developing (depending on if I used 1-hour printing) ... and that was just for 24 shots. I have thousands of pictures.

And now I'm going to throw an awful lot of them in the recycle bin.

I recently found the Small Notebook blog, which I love. And it had these two posts this past week about dealing with a plethora of pictures, both digital and print.

Essential Tool to Organize Your Digital Photos
What to do with Boxes of Photos

And those posts got me brave enough to crack open the boxes that have been sitting under the stairs since my parents were here in May. One album from 1999-2000 was dated for a 9-month span and had over 500 pictures in it. Just that ONE album!!! Having the band Colors come to Oregon was really fun and a key moment in my life because it affected how I thought about myself ... but I don't need 50 pictures of that weekend. Really, I don't. A dozen will be just fine.

Sooooo ... I'm tackling the photo albums. I should take a picture of the pile of albums before I get too far into this project (I've gone through 2 of them), and then another of how many albums I have left when I get done rearranging everything. And a shot (which I will not print and stick in an album) of the pile of pictures that is getting dumped. So far, I'm just stacking them off to the side for the fun of seeing (and counting - about 250 so far) how many I'm getting rid of. Then I let SM attack them with her little scissors to cut me out of some of the shots to practice her cutting.

I'm doing pretty well at keeping the digital photos under control and I rarely print anything anymore (much to Adam's annoyance - the picture he has in his office of RG is when she was 18 months old and she's 3 now). But whoa. These boxes of albums. Crazy.

To be honest, this purging stems in part from this past spring, when I helped clean the house of an elderly couple when the husband died. The children all live out West in Idaho and Utah, and took the wife to live with one of them. Someone came out here and got their personal paperwork like geneology and journals and things like that, and the rest of the house was just left as is. The family asked someone in the ward to clean it out, dispose of everything, and get it ready to sell. I don't know what all happened with it because Jenna was born a couple of weeks later ... but I cleaned out ONE bathroom with FIVE full-size garbage bags. It was ... indescribable. And not in a good way.

So with my albums, I'm thinking - "What are my kids going to want to see when I'm dead? And what do I really truly want to haul all around the country as we move over the next 20-30 years?" And the answer is - Not nearly this much.

And now I will go through another album.

the dangers of blog-hopping

2010-09-20T13:25:00.005-05:00

What started with one little link off a friend's blog ended with hours of blog-hopping and dozens of tabs open with craft ideas. I'm a stay at home wife and not even pregnant yet, but I feel like I'm slacking. Yes, I paint and do artwork, but what about the millions of crafts that moms are supposed to do these days (and then faithfully put them on their picture perfect blog)? There are clothes to be refashioned, furniture to be refinished, and so many ribbons and ruffles to add to everything around the house. I don't own a sewing machine and I've never used (or even seen) Modge Podge. What sort of mother will I be?!

Of course, I did find small manageable projects that I would like to try out like cute little baby hats out of old t-shirts, no sew baby carrier slings, and tutus for my future ballerinas. But then I found the thing that made me think of Trina - I know how you hate boring walls, and the frustration of living in a rental that prevents you from painting. So instead, you can put up fabric wallpaper! (It's even found on one of your home improvement blogs, Trina - Apartment Therapy!) You just use starch and fabric and put it up like wallpaper and it comes right off when you're ready to move (or change your mind) without any damage to the walls!! OR, instead of an entire wall, you can do animals or shapes (or a castle for your princesses?) - since wall clings are all the rage these days. But instead of shelling out for some overpriced, not-exactly-what-you-want piece just make it yourself! Simply use the same method as the wallpaper, only on a much smaller scale, and it won't be nearly as daunting a task. This is something I'd like to try myself at some point, and thought I'd share the love. If any of YOU try it, let us know, and you can give tips and tricks to help us out.

painting tutorial

2010-08-24T15:23:00.002-05:00

Do you get to paint your house? If you own it - duh, of course you can do whatever you want to it. Renting, on the other hand ... I went through my entire lease today to find what the rules are about painting walls and there was nothing. So I called the management office and was told, "Probably not." The girl is checking with the head manager but was doubtful.

SAD! Especially after finding a fantastic advice post on the MADE blog earlier today about painting the inside of your house. (It's not just sewing!) So I'll just refer it to you instead:

Home improvement: everything you need to know about painting walls, vertical stripes, paint tools, and a little crown molding

Isn't her daughter's room FANTASTIC? Not the color scheme I would use - I'm required to have pink in my girls' room. But it looks amazing. Can't wait to see Dana's posts on painting furniture and do-it-yourself artwork ... I'm still staring at my computer armoire trying to figure out what I want to do with it, and the kids' dressers haven't been touched yet either. (Cooler weather, I'm waiting on you to haul this stuff outside!)

One thing about not being allowed to paint means that whatever I do in this house, it has to move with me to the next one. That's not so bad. I have one idea for some artwork on our walls. We figure we're going to move around quite a bit, and I think it would be a good collection to start of nature photos from each state (and DC) we live in. What do you think of these to start?

Washington DC: the White House Rose Garden

Maryland: the botanical garden at Wheaton Regional Park

Mississippi: magnolia at the Vicksburg National Military Park

My dad shot the pictures in DC and MS, and I took the one in MD. I'd like to have them fairly large - an 11x14 at the smallest. You can't get that size printed at Walmart, so I need to find an alternate location. And printing on canvas is EXPENSIVE - 40 to 60 bucks at Walmart, and that's just for a normal-sized print. I saw this post a while back on How Does She that tells how to mount pictures on foam-core board, which you can do of any size photo because you cut it yourself.

family room picture displaying

Yep, I think that will do it.

Homemade Granola Bars - very yummy!

2010-08-10T17:36:00.003-05:00

Have you noticed that recipezaar.com changed it's name!! I miss the old site - but I guess I will get used to the new one eventually. The new site is food.com and once you figure out the new sifter tool it is almost as good as recipezaar was :)

My gripping aside I did find this the other day and they are amazing!

http://www.food.com/recipe/no-bake-rice-krispies-peanut-butter-granola-bars-lower-fat-73754

I rarely have corn syrup around so I used honey instead - they were a little too sweet - but of course my kids love them!

I can't wait to try them with corn syrup - honestly they are just as yummy as kudos bars, super versatile, and sooo cheap to make!

homemade pita

2010-07-16T13:47:00.000-05:00

I know I said I was expanding this blog beyond just recipes, but we've been having so much fun in the kitchen lately! It hasn't been the greatest for my weight loss efforts, but my taste buds have been quite pleased with the results. This one was good for weight loss and it was tasty - Adam made pita bread and we stuffed it full of small beef strips with cucumber slices, black olives, tomato strips, and feta cheese, and drizzled olive oil over the whole thing.

Doesn't that pita look professionally made? It wasn't. The original recipe is here.

1 1/8 cups warm water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Place all ingredients in mixing bowl and combine. (We use our food processor.)

Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface. Gently roll and stretch dough into a 12 inch rope. With a sharp knife, divide dough into 8 pieces. Roll each into a smooth ball. With a rolling pin, roll each ball into a 6 to 7 inch circle. Set aside on a lightly floured countertop. cover with a towel. Let pitas rise about 30 minutes until slightly puffy.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F (260 degrees C). Place 2 or 3 pitas on a wire cake rack. Place cake rack directly on oven rack. Bake pitas 4 to 5 minutes until puffed and tops begin to brown. Remove from oven and immediately place pitas in a sealed brown paper bag or cover them with a damp kitchen towel until soft. Once pitas a softened, either cut in half or split top edge for half or whole pitas. They can be stored in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for several days or in the freezer for 1 or 2 months.

lemon summer pasta

2010-07-14T13:06:00.000-05:00

My sister remembered us making this recipe a couple of years ago and last night asked me for it again. We both did some digging and it was originally found here.

8 oz cooked pasta
2 c. asparagus
2 c. summer squash and/or zucchini
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tbs butter
1/2 c. whipping cream
zest of lemon
salt to taste

Sautee veggies and garlic in butter til they reach your preferred tenderness. Remove veggies with slotted spoon, leaving any juices and garlic. Pour in cream and lemon zest. Cook down cream til 1/3 c. (just when it looks thicker). Then combine all ingredients including pasta and enjoy.

When I made this before, I didn't get the proportions of vegetables to cream sauce correct - I wanted more sauce. So pay attention to that when putting it together. Thanks for bringing this up again, Mindy! I really liked it so maybe we'll have it this week too!

a must-read

2010-07-05T23:02:00.000-05:00

I've decided that I'm going to take a little jaunt into the realm of "food lit" - books and memoirs about cooking. I was not impressed at all with the book "Julie and Julia," which I read last summer. There was quite a bit about cooking, but mostly, the writer is just really crass and profane ... even when talking about the cooking, actually. I'm hoping that's an anomaly and I've built up a list of other food lit I want to read.

Our local library (amazingly enough) had "Confections of a Closet Master Baker" by Gesine Bullock-Prado, and I read it this past week in about 3 days. (With 3 small children around, that's moving fast for me.) LOVED it. From the first sentence, I was hooked. "I saw the devil at the age of 3 and he gave me chocolate. It changed my life forever." Awesome.

Long story short - she's Sandra Bullock's sister and worked with her in Hollywood. Got sick of LA and when their mom died of cancer, decided to do what she really loved - bake. So she moved to Vermont and opened a bakery. How cool is that? To just up and leave, and try something new. Anyway, so this book is her memoir about doing that, and it includes a number of fantastic-sounding recipes (minus her obsession with coffee - bleh - but we can get around that.) Some of them are traditional desserts from Germany that sound oh so tasty! And I really like that she talks about desserts as things to be shared, and something to be special rather than inhaled in mass quantities as we gluttonous Americans tend to do.

I posted about the book on Facebook and talked about it with Adam and a couple of friends. Adam picked it up tonight and started reading it. He wasn't even halfway done when he said that he is not going to scan a couple of the recipes for me to keep - he wants to buy it. Done.

Ms. Bullock-Prado also has a blog, which I've added to the "food lovers unite" links in the sidebar. I'm all over trying to make my own English muffins - recipe on the blog, not in the book. I love them just out of the toaster, a little bit of a butter, and very thin slice of cheese that you just let sit until the heat of the muffin softens it. Then eat. Yum. And homemade English muffins? That has all the makings of a breakfast nirvana.

dessert pizza

2010-06-21T14:19:00.004-05:00

Sugar cookie crust - you can use your own sugar cookie recipe, but here's mine:
3/4 cup of butter
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 cups flour

The usual recipe says ungreased cookie sheet, but if you are making one giant cookie, it's best to lightly grease it if you want to take it off the pan before serving. Bake for about 10 minutes at 375 degrees.

Frosting - mix 8 ounces of cream cheese with 1/2 cup of powdered sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. We only had regular sugar, and it worked just fine. Spread across the cookie when it has completely cooled.

Top with various kinds of fruit. We used strawberries, kiwi, mango and dragonfruit. Cut like serve like a pizza, and enjoy!

inventory

2010-06-18T19:14:00.000-05:00

First of all, April - where's a picture of the headboard? The nightstand looks great!

Mindy - yes, rearranging and organizing your spice rack is a worthy post. Very creative of you to use a cereal box and scrapbook paper! Even more creative than using scrap wood and a power saw, if you ask me.

And speaking of organization, I've been having some related entertainment at this end of the pipeline. When my parents came to Mississippi for Jenna's baby blessing, they brought all of my stuff that had been sitting in their storage room for the past 7 years. (For the first time in 6 years of marriage, all of our stuff is in our own house instead of scattered about the country in various storage rooms.) I thought it was mostly books, and it was ... if you count 4 large boxes of just scrapbooks and photo albums. There were a bunch of knick-knacks like my travel souvenirs (my boomerang from Australia, for example) and a number of things that I'd forgotten about, as well as my collection of picture frames and carousel horses. I need more shelves before I can even unpack a lot of it, so I'm back to boxes stashed in corners. *sigh* I hate having our bedroom as a landfill, but most things have to get stashed there so Summer and Marnie stay out of it.

I also had:

~ a 2-inch binder full of just wedding announcements. That's it. I don't even remember a lot of these people. I'll pull out a few of them, like if I introduced the couple and/or was in the wedding. But the rest are getting dumped.
~3 or 4 t-shirts with signatures all over them. Again, don't remember anyone specific. Those will be painting shirts for Summer and Marnie now, until they're completely thrashed and then they'll get tossed.
~ beat-up ribbons and silk flowers from corsages from ... somebody's weddings. And maybe senior prom? I think? Gone. I have pictures.
~ the little black velvet boxes that Adam's and my wedding rings came in. Really?

What on earth was I thinking with saving some of this stuff? At least I didn't still have a 6-inch stack of newspaper clippings of the 1991-92 Portland Trail Blazers. I did find that in my stash when I got home from my mission. I went through it, remembered games that Eric and I spent screaming at the TV, laughed, and threw it all away.

Moral of the story - I'm still a packrat but I'm definitely learning to purge.

spice shelves

2010-06-18T15:11:00.011-05:00

I'd been wanting to do this for a while, and an enrichment activity at church was the final push in the right direction. We have a small cupboard above the stove the holds all our spices. And we have a fair amount of spices. It's always difficult to find what we're looking for up there, so I figured some little shelves were needed. If this were any other crafty blog, I'd be expected to whip out some scrap wood, my power saw, and a few coats of paint. But what I did was fast, easy, free, and only used a pair of scissors, packing tape, and a cereal box. That's worthy of this blog, right?

BEFORE

AFTER

I was planning on doing it slightly different than it appears, but Aaron had to add his two cents and reinforce and all that manly stuff. It's mainly his spices, so I guess that's alright. I also rearranged my living room and reorganized my linen closet/bathroom storage.

"new" bedroom set

2010-06-17T16:02:00.005-05:00

Like the new theme of this blog! Here's a project I did recently and I copied the post I did about it to here.

Most of our tax refund this year was used to get our "new" car and to help us move this summer. It's dang expensive to move to the San Fran Bay area!

Anyway, I've been wanting a bedroom set for a loooonng time and decided to use a little bit of our refund to get one. We've never had a headboard and our nightstands were literally falling apart. So, I started my research and hunt. New furniture was out of the question (I saw a set that I liked for around $900 and that was at the cheap end).

I wanted real wood and not some plywood thing from Target. So, I researched how to refinish furniture and started hunting at Salvation Army, Goodwill and on Craigslist. And I did it!

I found two of these nightstands in great structural shape, but with the finish beat-up and chipping. I sanded off the old varnish, smoothed out the scratches and stained and resealed them.

I also found a headboard that was in pretty good shape and shined it up with some Old English oil. The headboard and nightstands are both this dark cherry stain.

After

Not the best lighting for the after picture, but it's good enough. I was in a hurry to get it set up in our room :) I love dark cherry finish, though I know it's not for everyone :) I feel pretty proud of myself for getting it done while living in an apartment and only having a patio (with no wind protection) to work on.

Cost of project: Nightstands (2) = $30, Headboard =$25, stain=$14, sealer=$12, spray paint for knobs =$4, Other (sandpaper, gloves, brushes, rags, etc) = $25

Total Cost = approx $110 for a "new" bedroom set! We're happy with it and hope it makes it through the move without getting too damaged :)

CHANGES!

2010-06-17T14:35:00.000-05:00

Yes, this is the same blog. Just changed. And let's expand it.

Adam and I have been calling my venture into homemaking "Operation Domestic Goddess" since I quit my office job when Summer was born. I was that un-domestic, as a number of you know. I've got the cooking down fairly well now, for the most part. I've been looking into branching out into other things (but haven't yet, to be honest) ... and played around with starting another blog. And then - duh - I'll just expand this one to be more than recipes. I don't need another blog. Posts on this one are sporadic enough as it is, and we've been doing this for 18 months now. Time for a shake-up.

The inspiration to learn to sew - I can't believe I just said that - comes from this blog: Made by Dana. I'll list it with some other links in the sidebar. I don't remember how I came across it, but as soon as I started looking through her posts, I thought, "If I decide to learn to sew, it will be because of this blog." And here I am. I'm just floored by all the stuff on it. I want. Isn't that how it is with everything? I didn't learn to cook until I wanted to eat good food and cared enough to learn to make it myself. And now here I am with sewing - I want these things because I think they look awesome, so I will learn to make them. Beth, aren't you SO PROUD of me?

This morning, a couple of friends were talking about making hairbows for their new baby girls (Jenna was one of three born in April), and I want to learn how to do them. So we decided to do a group gathering for everyone to work on their own projects, help each other, and just keep everyone motivated.

So keep posting recipes, and now let's post about other things you're doing around your house too.

Potato Salad

2010-06-09T19:24:00.001-05:00

So, I was blog surfing, and came across this contest at RoudyStroudy. Basically, she is calling for all potato salad recipes so that she can make them and try them.

So, here is my recipe!

Potato Salad

8 medium potatoes, boiled peeled and cubed
8 boiled eggs, diced
1 meduim onion, diced
2 regular sized dill pickles, diced
1 c. miracle whip
1/4 c. mustard
salt and pepper to taste

Basically just mix all of these ingredients and you get this:

You can eat is as soon as you are done, or you can wait a day. We always think it is better the next day when we have the leftovers! :)

Braised Soy-Ginger Chicken and Bok Choy

2010-06-08T13:15:00.000-05:00

This recipe is primarily for grilling, but making some variation on the sauce and then marinading the chicken in it, then cooking it in a wok, taking the chicken out, reducing the sauce and so forth, would work well.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups water
1 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice wine or dry sherry
2 Tbs firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp. Chinese five-spice powder
2 Tbs. minced fresh ginger
3 green onions, thinly sliced
2 lb. bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs or breast halves
1/2 lb. bok choy, quartered lengthwise
2 Tbs honey
1 Tbs Asian sesame oil
Steamed rice for serving
Recipe:

Other leafy greens, such as Swiss chard, kale or spinach, maybe used in place of the bok choy. Chop the leaves coarsely and cook just until tender. The spinach will need to cook for only a few seconds.

Preheat a grill to high heat (I would just modify this to cook on the stove top or broiler)

Set a Dutch oven or deep fry pan on the grill. Combine the water, soy sauce, wine, brown sugar, five-spice powder, ginger and green onions in the pot. bring to a boil, then reduce the grill temperature to medium heat. Submerge the chicken pieces, skin side up, in the liquid and simmer gentle for 8 minutes. Turn the pieces over and continue to simmer until the chicken is opaque throughout when tested with the tip of a knife, about 8 minutes more.

Using tongs or a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken to a platter and cover with aluminum foil. bring the braising liquid to a boil, add the bok choy and cook until tender, about 3 minutes. using tongs or a slotted spoon, transfer the bok choy to the platter.

Return the braising liquid to a boil and boil until reduced by half, about 5 minutes. Stir in the honey and sesame oil. Move the pot to the side of the grill. Place the chicken on the grill, brush with braising liquid and grill for about 2 minutes per side. Arrange the chicken on top of the bok choy on the platter. Pour any remaining braising liquid over the chicken and bok choy and serve with steamed rice.

Serves 4

Caesar Salad Dressing

2010-06-06T20:58:00.002-05:00

My husband ate his very first salad EVER this year with this dressing. It's yummy!

1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbsp lemon juice
3 Tbsp Balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 C grated Parmesan cheese
1 C olive oil

Put everything except Parmesan cheese in a food processor and blend until homogenous. Add olive oil a little at a time, continuing to blend. Add the cheese, then blend just enough to mix it in. If the dressing is too thick, blend in a little warm water to achieve the desired consistency. Serve over Romaine lettuce, croutons, and fresh grated Parmesan [the best part of the whole deal!].

This dressing will keep for a week sealed in the refrigerator. Makes about 6 servings.

taco salad

2010-05-24T08:20:00.001-05:00

I don't know how other people do it, but I'd never had taco salad like this. It was easy, make a LOT, and is good for leftovers. If you've got a crowd to feed, this is a great thing. Too bad Aaron decided to make all that for just two of us. Lots of lunches already made now though!

Head of lettuce
Pound of ground beef
Taco seasoning
6 tomatoes
Catalina dressing
Chips
Cheese
Tortillas

Brown the meat and add any sort of spices you want. We did most of a packet of taco seasoning and some chipotle peppers. Chop up the entire head of lettuce and tomatoes and put in a large bowl. Crush handfuls of chips for some crunch, and add the ground beef. Add plenty of catalina dressing to moisten everything without drenching it. Either mix in the cheese or let people add it themselves. Best served in homemade taco bowls with a few extra crushed chips on top.

Taco bowls are the easiest thing to make! Just push a tortilla gently into an oven proof bowl and bake for 10-15 minutes at 350-400 degrees. Be sure to watch it so it doesn't burn, but that's all there is to it. We had whole wheat tortillas, and they turned out delicious!

green bean salad

2010-05-22T15:11:00.000-05:00

Not a Utah green bean salad with French onions or corn flakes, or however it's made out there! This is from a Lebanese cookbook that we got at the library called "The Lebanese Kitchen" by Monique Bassila Zaarour.

Steam green beans until tender, and then toss with this dressing:

2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp salt
4 tbl lemon juice
5 tbl olive oil

For some reason, I'm thinking Adam used lime instead of lemon one time when he made this last week. (We've had it twice.) So there's a possible variation for you.

Also, we think they taste much better the second day - they taste fine when they're freshly made, but the taste mellows quite a bit when they've sat for 24 hours and you have the leftovers for a second dinner the next day.

Greek green salad

2010-05-22T15:07:00.002-05:00

This is called maroulosalata, which means ... I have no idea. It's from the island of Cos, and we found this in a book called "Real Greek Food." Apparently, there's a restaurant somewhere called Real Greek, and this book has their recipes.

salad:
lettuce shredded very fine - we used Romaine
scallions finely chopped, including the green parts
dillweed

dressing:
150 ml extra virgin olive oil (I have no idea what that measures to - Adam made the dressing and I'm just typing it out of the book)
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
pepper and sea salt

Seems really basic and maybe even a little weird. But I liked it!

homemade chocolate pudding

2010-05-16T19:43:00.002-05:00

This was the trigger for me wanting pudding:

Adam found it online somewhere and posted it on his Facebook page. Now he keeps saying, "Pudding, you say?" So I told him I wanted some. So he made some. From scratch. It seriously has the same consistency as from a box, and tastes better. Yay!

Homemade chocolate pudding

1/2 cup white sugar
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups milk
2 tablespoons margarine or butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a saucepan, stir together sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and salt. Place over medium heat, and stir in milk. Bring to a boil, and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a metal spoon. Remove from heat, and stir in margarine and vanilla. Let cool briefly, and serve warm, or chill in refrigerator until serving.

focaccia bread

2010-05-16T19:14:00.003-05:00

We normally buy this bread but won't anymore ... we decided on Italian for dinner tonight after Adam had already been to the grocery store and he wasn't going to go back. So he found the recipe to bake the bread - totally easy, really good, and why pay 4 bucks for a small loaf of this when it's cheaper to make it?

focaccia bread

* 1 teaspoon white sugar
* 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
* 1/3 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
* 2 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a small bowl, dissolve sugar and yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
2. In a large bowl, combine the yeast mixture with flour; stir well to combine. Stir in additional water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until all of the flour is absorbed. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead briefly for about 1 minute.
3. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 30 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 475 degrees F (245 degrees C).
5. Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface; knead briefly. Pat or roll the dough into a sheet and place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Brush the dough with oil and sprinkle with salt.
6. Bake focaccia in preheated oven for 10 to 20 minutes, depending on desired crispness. If you like it moist and fluffy, then you'll have to wait just about 10 minutes. If you like it crunchier and darker in the outside, you may have to wait 20 minutes.

Adam changed the recipe by tripling the amount of yeast. It would be good to add some Italian dried herbs - we'll do that next time. And then have it with motz cheese and balsamic vinegar - yummmm!

Be aware that baking it at such a high temperature means it cooks REALLY fast - we pulled it at 9 minutes, and the bottom was just about to start turning black.

Chicken Pasta Salad

2010-05-07T14:42:00.000-05:00

Ingredients

1 lb. cooked, shredded chicken (I usually use can of Costco chicken)
1 lb. cooked rotini noodles (or bow tie)
2 heads broccoli, finely chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1/3 onion, chopped
1 can sliced olives
1 cup shredded cheese (optional)
1/3 - 1/2 cup ranch dressing (don't skip this--it's what holds it all together)

Dressing:
2 envelopes dry Italian dressing mix
6 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
4-1/2 Tbs. water
3/4 cup oil (you can reduce this some)

Combine cooled chicken, chopped vegetables, and olives. Whisk together dressing ingredients and pour over vegetables and chicken. Mix together. Add ranch dressing and cheese. Refrigerate 1 hour before serving (I usually am not organized enough to do this and it still gets devoured). Serves 8 - 10.

spinach and apple salad

2010-05-04T21:49:00.001-05:00

Well, check me out! I told Adam recently that I was bored with the typical garden salad we were eating - leaf lettuce with chunks of tomato, bell pepper, onion, etc. with Italian vinaigrette. I even asked for fresh spinach to make salads with - how weird is that?!? (My sisters will tell you that it's very weird!) Anyway, this is the dressing Adam found to go on fresh spinach leaves and ... here's more weirdness - I don't normally like fruit in my salads but I liked this! My eating patterns just expanded a bit more. Crazy.

apple vinaigrette for spinach salad

Of note on the recipe:

1. This makes quite a bit of dressing, so you'll probably want to cut the recipe if you're feeding only a couple of people.

2. Adam cut the amount of apple cider vinegar in half (1/2 cup to 1/4 cup) and left the other amounts the same. I think if you put in the full amount of vinegar, that would be ... well, a lot!

3. He mixed it in the food processor so the apple and onion were pretty much mushed but there was still texture to it.

4. The salad is just the spinach leaves and the crumbled bacon. We did not use bacon because we didn't have any. Adam put in chunks of apple (mmm, Pink Lady apples). Next time, I will plan to use bacon because I'm curious about the mix of spinach, apples, and bacon.

French Peasant Bread

2010-04-28T01:51:00.002-05:00

Here's a great bread recipe to go with your favorite Italian meal. It has a nice texture and is so easy to make! It's another from Recipe Shoebox.

The ingredients:
1 Tbs. dry, quick rising yeast
2 cups warm water (110-115 degrees)
1 Tbs. sugar
1 tsp. salt
4 cups all-purpose flour ( I used half whole wheat and half white flour)

olive oil (for greasing the pan)
corn meal (for pan)
1/4 cup butter, melted

Place yeast, water, sugar, and salt in warm bowl and stir until dissolved. Add flour and stir until blended, but do NOT knead. Cover and let rise one hour or until double in size. Flour hands, remove dough from the bowl and place in 2 roughly equal rounds on an oiled cookie sheet sprinkled with corn meal. Let rise an additional hour. Brush the tops and sides of the rounds with melted butter and bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees and cook an additional 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from oven and brush tops and sides of rounds again with melted butter. Serve warm. Enjoy!

Garlic Chicken Pasta with Spinach

2010-04-28T01:44:00.004-05:00

Recipe Shoebox is a great site for easy and tasty meals already tried out by a picky family. Love it! This site has really helped get me motivated to reach my recipe goal. I got kinda burned out after a batch of failures- recipes that sounded better on paper than in reality.

This one is delicious-we love pasta w/garlic anything!

The ingredients:
6 Tbs. olive oil
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 box (1-lb) penne pasta
5-oz. fresh spinach, chopped
1 Tbs. dried basil (or 1/2 cup fresh)
6 Tbs. lemon juice
1 cup Parmesan cheese

Directions:
Heat olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes in a small glass bowl in the microwave for about 1 minute to blend flavors. Pour about 1 tablespoon of the flavored oil in a skillet. Salt and pepper chicken and cook in the oil over medium high heat until chicken is browned and juices run clear. Add the chopped and spinach and saute with the cooked chicken for 1 minute (or until just barely wilted) and remove from heat. Meanwhile, cook pasta as directed on package; drain well. Add cooked chicken/spinach to pasta, along with basil, lemon juice, and Parmesan cheese. Then stir in the remainder of the flavored olive oil. Toss lightly until all ingredients are well-combined. Serve immediately. Makes about 6 servings. Enjoy!

traditional Greek Easter dinner

2010-04-04T18:29:00.003-05:00

Adam decided we were going to be a bit more adventurous for Easter dinner this year, and found this article the other day on NPR with a number of recipes in it. Adam followed the recipes exactly, since these were all new cooking concepts.

chicken and rice soup - we had this with homemade sour-dough bread. It was the perfect complement to it! The lemon flavor was quite prominent in the soup, but it wasn't overpowering. If you try this, be careful with the eggs so they don't cook up wrong. This was our "first course" which we had for lunch between General Conference sessions, and we had the rest of the dinner after Conference ended.

roasted leg of lamb - this was expensive! 30 bucks for a not-very-large piece of meat! We wondered at first if we'd like it - if not, that was a pretty big waste ... but hey, at least then we'd know to not spend that kind of money again. But it was good! Lots of rosemary and garlic and other herbs in it. Adam is sold - we'll have this maybe once a year just because of the cost.

asparagus with dill and garlic - asparagus was something I never had as a kid, but have liked quite a bit as an adult. It also had melted parmesan cheese over it.

There is also a recipe for an Easter bread (the red eggs on it look kinda yucky, if you ask me). Adam planned to make it but we ran out of time and didn't really need it anyway because we had the sour-dough to go with the soup.

roasted new potatoes with feta cheese - this was not included in the article but Adam found it to be a side to the lamb.

Thai Coconut Soup

2010-03-26T23:07:00.001-05:00

Thai Coconut Soup
¼ cup cilantro (fresh)
olive oil
1 leek (bottom part)
galangal (cut 3-4 round slices)
lemon grass, cut in half
lemon leaves
1 Tbsp. fresh ginger

Put all the above mentioned ingredients in saucepan and brown over medium heat until it gets light brown.

Then Add:

Canned coconut milk (shake first) – 1 can of coconut milk + 1 can full of water.
2 Tbsp. fish sauce
½ lime (squeeze the juice)
Palm sugar (to taste)
Shitake mushrooms

Boil everything gently for another 5 minutes.
Remove inedible pieces of lemon grass and galangal.
Add seafood as desired (for example: cod, shrimp, and scallops.)
Sprinkle with red pepper to get a kick (I used some red curry paste instead and it was great!)

cooking links

2010-03-26T17:47:00.001-05:00

Adam found these links today and I thought they were pretty interesting. These are obviously the writer's opinion as far as "best" and all, and some are not very practical if you're on a tight budget (for example, get rid of all your non-stick pans and replace with cast iron and/or copper). But they're something to think about at least.

unusual cooking concepts

easy ways to improve your cooking

tips for great home cooking

common errors made in cooking

home-cooked Chinese

2010-03-24T11:09:00.003-05:00

One of the missionaries requested meatballs, sweet and sour meatballs. So Aaron took the suggestion and ran with it. He's got a handful of Chinese recipe books and was excited to use them. We made two dishes with lots of rice and some steamed asparagus on the side.

Lychee Pork
Company's Coming Chinese Cooking

1 1/3 cups flour
2 tsp salt
3 large eggs
1 1/2 lbs pork tenderloin cut into small cubes
cooking oil for frying
20 oz can of lychee* fruit with syrup
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp dry sherry
2 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp water
1 1/2 tbsp cornstarch

-Stir flour and salt in medium bowl.
-Beat eggs with fork in small bowl.
-Dip pork in flour and then egg until coated.
-It said to deep-fry, but we just did a simple pan-fry, just making sure pieces were cooked all the way through. It will be fairly light colored because of the flour. Remove to paper towels to drain.
-Combine next 6 ingredients (lychee - soy sauce) in medium saucepan. Bring to boil.
-Stir water into cornstarch in small cup. Stir into lychee mixture until thickened. Pour over pork. Stir lightly until combined.

*Lychee is an incredibly sweet berry found in China and southeast Asia. We got our can at an Asian supermarket here in Calgary.

Sweet and Sour Meatballs
Hawaiian Meatballs
Joy of Cooking

1 lb lean ground beef
1/2 cup soft bread crumbs moistened with milk (we used quick oats)
1 beaten egg
1 clove garlic, pressed
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp soy sauce

-Combine ingredients and form into 1-inch balls and saute in 2 tbsp vegetable oil until brown.
-We finished cooking in oven (about 15 minutes at 350) after pouring can of pineapple (chunks or tidbits) and sweet and sour sauce on top.

Sweet and Sour Sauce
Company's Coming Chinese Cooking

1/4 cup reserved pineapple juice (from can of tidbits)
2 tsp cornstarch
1/3 cup ketchup
3 tbsp white vinegar
2 tbsp dry sherry
1 tbsp water
splash of soy sauce (says Aaron)

Stir pineapple juice into cornstarch in small bowl. Add next four ingredients and stir.

Over all impression - excellent. I'm not even a big fan of Chinese food and it was pretty good. I wouldn't suggest making both recipes at the same time though, simply because they are both rather sweet (with the lychee and pineapple). The missionaries went back for seconds (and thirds) and almost left us with no leftovers.

cake mix cookie sandwiches

2010-03-19T19:46:00.006-05:00

If you're in the mood for something sweet and don't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, these are great - looks like a cookie, tastes like cake. All you need is:

one cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1/4 cup water

Mix together and drop by tablespoon on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. There's lots of variation, depending on what flavor of mix you use, and you can always stir in chocolate chips, raisins, or candies. I used a yellow cake mix and added 1/2 cup applesauce (minus 1 egg and the water), along with a tsp of pumpkin pie spice and a tsp of cinnamon. Whatever you're in the mood for.

To make them into sandwiches, simply frost the bottom of a cookie and match it up with one about the same size. If you want to make a lot, drop the batter by the teaspoon and you'll get something closer to an oreo size (which is what I did for the cookies shown). These are just plain rainbow chip cookies, so they definitely needed some fun frosting in the middle.

Shrimp and Asparagus Pasta

2010-03-16T00:35:00.002-05:00

I was surfing blogs this week and came across this blogger's link to this this recipe. I made it tonight and it was so yummy! We're not big fans of bell peppers (they taste too acidic for us), so we left it out.

Ingredients

8	ounces penne, whole wheat
16	ounces shrimp, cleaned and peeled
1	red pepper, sliced
1	lb asparagus, cut in one inch pieces
1	tbsp olive oil
1/4	cup parmesan cheese
1/4	tsp red pepper flakes
2	tsp oregano
1	tsp basil
1	clove garlic, chopped

Directions

In a large skillet heat olive oil over medium heat.
Add garlic and cook for one minute.
Add asparagus and sautee' asparagus for 3 minutes.
Add shrimp, red pepper, oregano and basil.
Cover and cook for 5 minutes or until shrimp are pink and vegetables are tender-crisp; stirring occasionally.
Meanwhile, cook pasta as directed on package.
Drain pasta. Add shrimp & vegetables.
Toss with 1/4 tsp red pepper and parmesan cheese. Serve & enjoy!

thyme grilled vegetables

2010-03-12T18:19:00.000-06:00

Adam found this recipe for grilled vegetables with thyme, and yum! It's red potatoes, bell peppers (red, yellow, and green) and pearl onions with thyme, a little bit of salt, chicken broth, and olive oil. That's it!

You can do them on the grill as the instructions say. Or you can do it in the oven in a baking dish at 350 for the same timing as on the grill.

Awesome Bread Recipe

2010-03-10T15:12:00.003-06:00

Just posted this on my personal blog. Hands down the best bread recipe I have ever tried. It is a whole wheat honey bread. YUMMY!:)

Italian Sausage and Pasta Bake

2010-03-09T00:36:00.001-06:00

I cut this recipe in half and still had enough to feed 6 adults! I didn't have any fennel seed, but it still tasted good without it. It wasn't my favorite, but Aaron really liked it. From Recipezaar #286627.

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs Italian sausage (mild or hot)
olive oil (optional)
2 onions, coarsely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 large sweet red pepper, coarsely chopped
28 ounces meatless extra chunky pasta sauce
213 ml can tomato sauce
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon fennel seed
5 cups penne pasta
1 (284 g) package fresh spinach (trimmed and coarsely chopped)
3 cups shredded provolone cheese or mozzarella cheese
1 cup grated asiago cheese or parmesan cheese

Directions

Cut sausage into 1/2 inch chunks. I large skillet, brown sausage over medium-high heat, in batches and adding oil if necessary. Transfer sausage to a bowl.
Pour off any fat from pan. Add onions, garlic and red pepper, cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes or until softened. Stir in pasta sauce, tomato sauce, basil, oregano and fennel seeds; bring to a boil, stirring and scraping up any brown bits from bottom of pan. Return sausage and any accumulated juices to pan; cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until sausage is firm throughout.
Meanwhile, in a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta for 6 minutes, add spinach;cook for 1 minute. Drain well and return to pot. Add sausage mixture and provolone/mozzarella cheese; stir to combine well.
Transfer to 2 greased 8-inch square baking dishes or 1 13x9-inch dish. Sprinkle with Asiago/parmesan cheese. Cover dish with greased foil, greased side down.
To serve: Bake, covered with foil, in in 375 degree F. oven for 30 minutes or for 1 hour if from the refrigerator. This freezes beautifully (thaw in refrigerator before baking).

Stuffed Jumbo Shells

2010-03-08T00:15:00.002-06:00

This was yummy and a hit tonight with friends. I got the recipe off the back of the box of shells. I ended up using just half the box of shells- I now have some to use for another recipe :) I didn't have any spinach- so I just cooked the ground beef with the onion and garlic for 5 min. and didn't add any water. I didn't have any parmigiano cheese, so I used 1/4 c. of Parmesan and 1/4 mozzarella mixed together for the filling. This is an easy recipe to adjust to what is on hand.

1 box jumbo shells pasta
1 lb. ground beef
2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 bag (6oz) baby spinach
1 cup finely diced onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 egg
1/4 cup Parmigiano cheese
1 jar sauce
1 cup shredded mozzarella

PREHEAT oven to 350
COOK jumbo shells according to directions: drain, reserving 1/3 cup of the cooking water
COOK ground beef in large skillet until meat is no longer pink. Drain grease.
ADD oil, spinach, onion, garlic and reserved pasta water. Continue cooking 10min, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat.
ADD seasonings and blend well. Let mixture cool enough to handle.
STIR in egg and Parmigiano cheese.
POUR 1 cup of sauce into 13 x 9 baking dish
FILL jumbo shells with meat mixture and place in dish. Pour remaining sauce over shells, sprinkle mozzarella over the top, and cover with foil.
BAKE for 30 min.

random news flash

2010-03-06T20:29:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted much on this blog lately because we've had a series of cooking failures here. Not horribly bad, nothing burned or destroyed, but just stuff we didn't like.

The verdict is in: after multiple attempts, we do not like foods made with coconut milk.

Sweet Potato and Black Bean Chili

2010-03-06T19:56:00.002-06:00

I found this while looking for meat-less meals. I didn't have any chipotle chili, so I used a combination of cayenne and chili powder. Turned out OK. I have wimpy taste-buds and can't handle spicy.
Found the recipe here.

Ingredients

2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion, finely diced
1 small sweet potato, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground chipotle chile, (see Note)
1/8 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 1/3 cups water
1 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed
1 cup canned diced tomatoes
2 teaspoons lime juice
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Preparation

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and potato and cook, stirring often, until the onion is slightly softened, about 4 minutes. Add garlic, chili powder, cumin, chipotle and salt and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add water, bring to a simmer, cover, reduce heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook until the potato is tender, 10 to 12 minutes. Add beans, tomatoes and lime juice; increase heat to high and return to a simmer, stirring often. Reduce heat to maintain a simmer and cook until slightly reduced, about 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in cilantro.

lemon pie

2010-03-02T19:14:00.000-06:00

Made this tonight for dessert - it's another new one for me, but I'm not counting anymore. It's very tangy - if you don't like lemon, you probably wouldn't like this. I do like lemon, and I loved this!

15-oz can sweetened condensed milk
4 egg yolks
3/4 cup lemon juice (freshly squeezed = about 6 lemons. I used the little bottle things and it took about almost 2 full ones.)

graham cracker crust - either store bought or homemade

1. Mix the condensed milk and egg yolks with a hand-held mixer at medium speed until the mixture lightens, about 3 minutes.
2. With the mixer running, pour the lemon juice in slowly until it's entirely incorporated.
3. Pour into graham cracker crust.
4. Bake on center rack of oven at 350 for 20 minutes or until it's completely set.
5. Let cool for at least an hour before eating.

We ate it with vanilla ice cream. The pie would go great with a meringue, which you could use the egg whites for after separating the yolks. I was a klutz and broke one of the yolks in the whites, so they were no good for the meringue and I dumped them.

yam cake

2010-02-26T12:13:00.004-06:00

Aaron bought a yam this week. He claims he's going to do something with it, but has yet to do it, so I took a chunk off the end and tried something myself.

The original recipe calls it Golden Yam Brownies but they didn't look like brownies. They were a little flat for cake, but that's a bit closer to the truth. I skipped the glaze, added a tsp of cinnamon, and switched out the all-purpose flour for some whole wheat flour. Turned out great! Aaron isn't big on sweets, but he's gobbling this stuff right down.

Here's to trying out new recipes with random vegetables!

Linguine with Shrimp and Creamy Roasted Tomatoes

2010-02-09T13:20:00.003-06:00

This was delicious! Shrimp was on sale here the week of Super Bowl, so we got a good deal on it. This would make a great Valentine's Day dinner :)

* 1 1/2 cup(s) grape tomatoes
* 1 tablespoon(s) extra-virgin olive oil
* 1 teaspoon(s) thyme leaves
* Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
* 3/4 pound(s) linguine
* 1 cup(s) heavy cream
* 3/4 pound(s) large shrimp, shelled, deveined and halved lengthwise
* 2 teaspoon(s) fresh lemon juice
* 1 teaspoon(s) finely grated lemon zest
* 1 tablespoon(s) coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. In a large ovenproof skillet, toss the tomatoes with the olive oil and thyme and season with salt and pepper. Roast the tomatoes for about 25 minutes, until starting to brown and their skins split.
2. Meanwhile, in a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the linguine until al dente; drain.
3. Add the cream to the tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Cook over moderate heat, gently crushing the tomatoes, until the cream thickens slightly, about 3 minutes. Add the shrimp and simmer over moderate heat until cooked through, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add the linguine to the skillet along with the lemon juice and toss over low heat until the pasta is coated, about 1 minute. Add the lemon zest and parsley and toss. Transfer the pasta to warm bowls and serve at once.

Turkey Brine

2010-01-27T13:50:00.002-06:00

As someone who has cooked more then her fair share of bad turkeys - this was amazing!

http://www.recipezaar.com/Kittencals-Brown-Sugar-Turkey-Brine-148225

Usually at our house we eat turkey the night it is made - freeze the rest - then avoid using it because it was so bad - in a few months throw away freezer burned turkey. These leftovers won't last the week!

Simple Sesame Noodles

2010-01-18T22:12:00.002-06:00

Got this from The Pioneer Woman.

Prep Time: 10 Minutes Cook Time: 10 Minutes Difficulty: Easy Servings: 8

Ingredients

* 12 ounces, fluid Thin Noodles, Cooked And Drained
* ¼ cups Soy Sauce
* 2 Tablespoons Sugar
* 4 cloves Garlic, Minced
* 2 Tablespoons Rice Vinegar
* 3 Tablespoons Pure Sesame Oil
* ½ teaspoons Hot Chili Oil
* 4 Tablespoons Canola Oil
* 2 Tablespoons Hot Water
* 4 whole Green Onions, Sliced Thin

Preparation Instructions

Whisk all ingredients (except noodles and green onions) together in a bowl. Taste and adjust ingredients as needed.
Pour sauce over warm noodles and toss to coat.
Sprinkle with green onions and toss.
Serve in a bowl with chopsticks. Yummy!

*****
This is very forgiving. I didn't have chili oil, so I used a few shakes of crushed red pepper flakes. It was too much heat for my daughter, but the husband and I both loved it. I also didn't have any fresh garlic (WHAT???) so I used garlic powder, no rice vinegar so I used red wine vinegar, and I didn't have any green onions so we were deprived of that. And I only had about 1-1/2 Tbs of sesame oil left in my bottle. It was still OH SO GOOD.

The other thing I did differently: She said to cook the noodles first and keep them warm, then do the sauce. What a PITB. I did the sauce while the noodles were cooking, and it was done well before the noodles were. I whisked it again after they were drained, then combined them. Yummy.

Broccoli Salad

2010-01-18T20:15:00.004-06:00

This is another from Recipezaar. It's #24862. Dressing can be made ahead of time and makes plenty. It's very thick at first and then thins out as the sugar dissolves. I ended up having to add more broccoli to even out the flavor and texture. I used regular raisins and peanuts instead of sunflower seeds.

Ingredients

3 broccoli, heads (cut into bite-size pieces)
5-10 pieces crisp bacon, crumbled (Baco's do not work)
2 tablespoons red onions, chopped
1 cup golden raisin
3/4 cup sunflower seed (I use unsalted)

Dressing (best to add just prior to serving)

1 cup mayonnaise (low-cal will not be the same)
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar (optional) or 1/2 cup prepared mustard (optional)

Directions

Put all of the salad ingredients in a bowl and pour on the dressing.
Mix well.
Chill.
Keeps well in the refrigerator, but is best served within an hour or two while ingredients are still crunchy.

Cream of Potato Soup

2010-01-18T20:08:00.004-06:00

This is a tasty and warm comfort food for those chilly days. I got it off of Recipezaar. It's #149810. I followed the recipe exactly and it was yummy!

Ingredients

1 cup chicken broth
3 cups potatoes, diced
1/3 cup onion, chopped
2 teaspoons parsley flakes
2 tablespoons flour
2 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups swiss cheese, shredded
paprika
salt & pepper

Directions

Simmer broth, potatoes and onion until vegetables are tender.
Stir in parsley flakes.
In small bowl, blend flour with a few tbsp of the milk.
Add to the potato mixture.
Stir in remaining milk, cooking until soup thickens.
Add the cheese, stirring until it melts.
Season with paprika, pepper and salt to taste.

pizza night

2010-01-16T18:43:00.000-06:00

In conjunction with Amanda's post with pizza crust and sauce recipes, here's how we do pizza night with friends:

We set out all the toppings in their own bowls. We make a whole bunch of little crusts about the size of your hand, and everyone makes their own mini-pizzas.

I make our sauce, which is posted here. Our toppings include the usual Americanized stuff like pepperoni and black olives. We have multiple kinds of cheese like motz, block Parm (not the stuff in the green can), and goat cheese. We have Italian sausage, Italian spiced pulled pork, olive oil, diced bell pepper, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, capers, dried herbs like oregano and basil ... we use the "Jamie Oliver's Italy" book to get ideas for topping combinations.

The missionaries LOVE pizza night!
(And yes, the one with the beard has permission to grow it - he has a skin condition that makes it difficult to shave cleanly.)

Homemade Pizza

2010-01-16T15:21:00.003-06:00

My husband LOVES pizza! High end, take and bake, take out, frozen, you name it - he likes it (he even eats those Totinos party pizzas - ewww!!)

After much searching and experimenting I think we have finally found the best homemade pizza

Sauce: from recipezaar - we add 1teaspoon water and up the sugar to a full teaspoon

http://www.recipezaar.com/Ultimate-Pizza-Sauce-114392

seriously this sauce is amazing! you could spread it on a saltine and it would be a pretty good pizza :)

Crust: just tried it today:

http://www.recipepizza.com/doughs/pizza_dough.htm

I cooked it on a pizza stone (you can buy an unglazed tile and it would work just as well - cost about a buck vs the $40 for a "pizza stone")

Toppings: you can figure that out - put on whatever you like - my one suggestion, don't put on too much cheese - it is easy to think you have to cover it in cheese... it is ok/better to still be able to see some of the sauce, once everything melts it will cover the sauce anyway

slumgullion

2010-01-11T20:34:00.002-06:00

Well, I didn't make it to 50 recipes in 2009 - I got to 42. Oh well. It was a good effort.

I have no idea what the name of this is, but it's a pasta dish with a rather random combination of vegetables. It tastes good, is quick and simple to make, and is great for a cold winter day! It's from the "Chicken Soup for the Soul Cookbook."

8 ounces elbow macaroni (I used mini penne - just something small)
1 tbl. oil to saute
1 cup diced onion
1/2 pound hamburger
1 15-oz can diced tomatoes
1 cup diced celery
3/4 cup diced green pepper
Worcestershire sauce
salt
cayenne pepper
sharp or Parmesan cheese - OPTIONAL

1. Make the pasta as normal.
2. Saute the onion and then add the hamburger and cook until browned and crumbly.
3. Add tomatoes, celery, green pepper, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and cayenne. Cook for a few minutes until everything is heated through.
4. Mix with pasta to serve.
5. Put grated cheese over the top if you want.

The Worcestershire sauce, salt, and cayenne all have measurements of 1 tsp or less, but I didn't measure any of them.

If you like it a bit more saucy, you'll want to add more tomatoes. It's pretty loose with not really any SAUCE to it.

The original recipe also called for the vegetables to all be minced. I did a fairly large dice on it all so they were more the same size as the pasta, and I like the combination of the tastes. We've actually made this before (I think Adam did before, and I did it today) - it's quick, easy, and good!

Brickle

2009-12-16T19:07:00.002-06:00

I got this recipe from my mom, who got it on the internet. It's ridiculously simple, and everyone who takes a bite immediately says, "Wow, I need this recipe!" It's been my contribution to three different Christmas get-togethers so far!

Ingredients:
1 tube saltine crackers
1 lb salted butter (don't substitute)
1 C brown sugar
12 oz. pkg chocolate chips
5 Heath bars chopped up, or 1 bag Heath bits

Preheat the oven to 350.

Get a cookie sheet with a rim and line it with tin foil. BEFORE you finish this recipe, check to make sure it will fit in your freezer! (My biggest mistake...)

Then, lay the crackers out on the foil. They should pretty much cover it perfectly, but you may need a few more. Don't overlap; lay them all flat.

Melt the butter over medium-high heat. Stir in the brown sugar. When the mixture starts to bubble, turn the heat to medium-low and stir constantly for three minutes. The mixture will be runny, but definitely caramel. Pour the caramel over the crackers.

Put the crackers with caramel in the oven for about ten minutes, or until the caramel is well-spread and bubbly.

Take out the pan and sprinkle the chocolate chips over it. Leave it alone for about five minutes until the chocolate chips melt. Then get a spatula and spread the chocolate out evenly.

Sprinkle the Heath bits on top of the chocolate.

Put the pan in the freezer and leave it for 4+ hours.

When you're ready to eat it, peel the tin foil off the back of the brickle. Then break the brickle into irregular pieces. (I used the edge of a plate for this.) Enjoy! FYI: This keeps best in the fridge or freezer so it doesn't get sticky.

peppermint cupcakes

2009-12-14T11:39:00.002-06:00

Number 42 of 50 ... I'm closing in on the end, and it's a darn good thing because we're pretty much at the end of the year! We're going out of town in a week, and I still have 8 recipes to go!

Peppermint cupcakes

I made these as a test-run for Mindy's wedding on the 29th. The only change I made was that I put in 3/4 tsp of peppermint extract instead of 1/2. The flavor was barely there with the lesser amount, and I liked it a bit stronger. I took them to playgroup, and the whole batch was eaten right up. The other moms gave this a thumb's up and wanted the recipe too.

chocolate pretzels

2009-12-10T11:30:00.004-06:00

This isn't in my count because we've made them before, but I thought this recipe would be fun for others who might want to try it for Christmas. We put them also in the box to Adam's brother. They're SO GOOD, especially with egg nog! Note that they're not chocolate-covered regular pretzels ... but soft-dough pretzels that are chocolate and sprinkled with sugar.

Oh, these are from a cookie cookbook that just has the title, "Cookies."

1 cup all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup superfine sugar (put regular granulated sugar in the blender, then pulse it so you don't burn out your motor, until the sugar is like dust. It's different from powdered sugar, and really makes a difference in the texture.)
1 egg

1 egg white
raw sugar sprinkles

1. Sift together flour, salt, cocoa powder.
2. In a separate bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and egg. Add the flour mix and combine.
3. Roll the dough into a ball, wrap in wax paper, chill for 1 hour or freeze for 30 min.
4. Grease cookie sheets, preheat oven to 375.
5. When the dough is chilled, roll into small balls. (Recipe estimate is 28 - when we make bigger pretzels, it makes only about a dozen.)
6. Roll out each ball into a rope, then loop around to make a pretzel shape. Put on greased cookie sheets.
7. Brush the pretzels with the egg white and sprinkle with the raw sugar.
8. Bake 10-12 minutes, cool on wire rack.

The first time we made these, it was to give them away. We had to make a 2nd batch, because we ate the entire first batch within 30 minutes of them coming out of the oven.

Doomsday cookies

2009-12-09T10:32:00.000-06:00

Number 41 ... we made these to go in a Christmas box sent to Adam's brother in Iraq. I overcooked them a bit because they were pretty hard at first, but they got better after they'd been in the cookie jar with other cookies for a day or two.

The recipe is in the book Chicken Soup for the Soul Cookbook, and called "doomsday cookies" because the story that goes with it says that the author's mom said that she would make enough "to last until Doomsday."

1 1/4 cup canola oil
1 3/4 brown sugar, packed firmly
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour (the recipe says whole wheat, I used white)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
chocolate chips
chopped pecans or walnuts (I used pecans)
3 cups rolled oats oatmeal

Cream together oil, brown sugar, and egg
Add vanilla, then flour, salt, soda, and powder.

Add chocolate chips and pecans.

Add oatmeal - the recipe calls for 3 cups. I added one at a time and mixed as I went, and stopped at 2 cups. I think they'd be WAY too dry with that 3rd cup. If necessary, add a little bit of water to moisten after the oatmeal is added.

Spray a cookie sheet with no-stick spray, and drop batter in mounds - I used a large soup spoon for this. They'll spread to be pretty flat so leave some room between them.

Bake at 350 for 10 to 13 minutes. Do NOT leave them in the oven past 13 minutes, even if they seem like they're not done. Any longer will strip what's left of the moisture, and you'll have nothing but crumbs when you try to move them to a cooling rack with a spatula. Yes, I learned that the hard way.

banana cream pie from scratch

2009-12-03T11:14:00.002-06:00

Number 40 was a banana cream pie from scratch. Last year, I got pretty turned off by the "banana cream pie" made from a box of vanilla instant pudding so I wanted to try it from scratch this year for Thanksgiving. I actually did this as a test-run a couple of weeks before for a couple of the missionaries who were transferring the next day. It turned out great! We're never going back to the boxed instant pudding junk for this!

Old fashioned banana cream pie

Some notes ...

1. The recipe says to scald the milk - I looked it up and basically, you heat the milk in a saucepan stirring constantly until just before it boils, and immediately remove it from the stove.

2. I mixed an entire banana mashed into the filling before pouring it over the sliced bananas in the crust. This was suggested in the comments, and it added to the banana flavor.

3. I put it in a regular pie crust. We think it would be better in a graham cracker crust.

4. If you have shallow pie plates, this makes enough filling for 2 pies.

chocolate zucchini bread

2009-12-02T10:51:00.000-06:00

We had the missionaries over for dinner for Thanksgiving, and they came over the day before to help with some of the prep work. Elder Davies had apparently never cooked anything at all before (how is he surviving out here?), so we made him make the chocolate zucchini bread. With heavy supervision ... he almost added a tablespoon of salt instead of teaspoon. Eeww!

He used this recipe. He forgot the chocolate chips, which made the bread REALLY dark tasting. It wasn't too good straight out of the oven, but it was much better after it sat for a day. Then it reminded me of the Hershey's special dark chocolate bars - if you like those, this recipe would be good for you.

My Mother's Turkey Stuffing

2009-12-01T11:35:00.003-06:00

Use Pepperidge Farm dry stuffing--8 oz. equals approximately 4 cups (a large turkey uses about 24 oz. stuffing). Empty into large bowl. Melt 1/4 lb margarine or butter in 1 cup of hot water. Add 1/4 cup finely chopped onion, Bell's Poultry Seasoning (sage), 1 tsp. salt, pepper, and 2 Tbsp chopped celery to stuffing mix.

Mix thoroughly; add water and melted butter and mix again. Let cool somewhat for the next step. Add 1 beaten egg to mix and stir again (if the stuffing is too warm during this step the egg will cook into lumps). Stuff turkey (after cleaning it of course).

one of many versions of "dirty rice"

2009-11-23T19:35:00.002-06:00

I made dirty rice to go with baked fish a la New Orleans. The dirty rice is #39 (the fish was #6). Be aware that with adding all the extras to the rice, it makes quite a lot. If you're making this for just a couple of people, cut the recipe at least in half, if not more.

Greek style shrimp

2009-11-23T11:03:00.001-06:00

Number 38 of my 50 was Greek style shrimp found here.

We skipped the suggested salad and served it with rice. We also substituted the white wine with white grape juice.

pork and mushroom ragout

2009-11-22T10:44:00.002-06:00

Number 27, from my book called Secrets of Slow Cooking.

a boneless pork loin roast - about 1 1/2 pounds

1 1/2 cups canned crushed tomatoes, divided
2 tbl cornstarch
2 tsp. savory
sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
8 oz. package sliced mushrooms
1 large onion, sliced
black pepper

cooked egg noodles or some other pasta.

Brown pork roast on all sides in a skillet with cooking spray or a little bit of oil.

Put half of tomatoes in crockpot with cornstarch, savory, and sun-dried tomatoes. Mix it up.

Put mushrooms, onion, and roast in crockpot. Pour the rest of the tomatoes over the roast and sprinkle with pepper.

Cook on low 4-6 hours until roast reaches internal temp of 165.

Put the roast on a cutting board and cover with foil. Let stand 10-15 minutes, then slice and serve with noodles. Pour sauce from crockpot over the plated food.

pasta with chicken and sun-dried tomato

2009-11-21T08:26:00.002-06:00

This is #36 - I have no idea where it came from. I just had this list of ingredients stashed in a note on my other blog.

bowtie pasta cooked like usual

chicken breast cut into bite-size pieces and cooked in a skillet, then set aside while the vegetables are being cooked

2 tbl. olive oil to cook the following:
1/2 cup sun-dried tomato
1 zucchini, diced
1 summer squash, diced (not sliced)
1-2 garlic cloves minced or crushed
1-2 tsp rosemary
1-2 tsp basil

Toss all together with pasta and chicken. Add a little more olive oil if it's too dry for you until it's how you like it. There's not a sauce with this.