Month: November 2010

This is great when you want something a little more impressive than plain breadsticks. It also makes a nice hearty meal when served alongside some tomato soup. One loaf made a few meals for us this week. You’ll need: One batch of dough for The Best Homemade Breadsticks EVER! 2 tablespoons butter 1/3 to 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese Parsley or other herbs Garlic powder roughly 1 cup shredded Mozzarella cheese (more if preferred) 1 package Pepperoni Follow the dough recipe up to the point where you punch the dough down. Instead of rolling the dough in to a rectangle divide it in to two balls. Roll one ball in to a long rectangle, about 7 or 8″ x about 20″. It doesn’t need to be perfectly square.  Place on to greased cookie sheet.  Next, sprinkle some shredded mozzarella cheese over the dough, leaving the outside edge clean. Spread pepperoni over the cheese in an even layer, again staying away from the edge. This will be the bottom of the loaf. Now you’ll make the top. Roll the remaining ball of dough out as you did the bottom. Cut in to 3 strips. Fold the strips over, pinch to seal, and

I am really happy with this shelf design.  I like it because I can build these shelves completely on my own and the design is very easy to adjust for specific measurements and uses.  I’ve tried to share some of the details here.  If you’re a visual learner like me you can probably figure it out from the pictures.  Scroll down and look at the finished product first if you need to. We were in desperate need of shelves for the basement but I definitely didn’t want to buy any.  We had a giant pile of lumber in the backyard that we salvaged from the shed fire… …and we had lots of metal shelves that were here when we moved in.  I looked it up and they are called gondola shelves.  Who knew? The shelves themselves are flat.  They would typically mount on to a bracket coming off of a backboard.  That type of shelving wouldn’t work out well in our basement but I knew the flat shelf pieces would come in handy.  I measured several of the pieces we had.  Then, I made several rectangles out of 2x4s.  The rectangles are just large enough that the metal shelves sit

For those of you who knit, these little mistletoes make great stocking stuffers and secret santa gifts.  Directions here. Have fun!

Since so many of my fellow bloggers take wonderful pictures (Julie & Abbie I’m looking at you!) I want your advice.  I really want to upgrade to a nicer camera.  Our current camera is a Kodak EasyShare C533.  It does the job but lacks that extra umph that really great photos have.  Most of my photographs are what you see here: either landscape shots or people and projects indoors.  I would like to photograph things that I bake too but my current camera does a terrible job at that.  I’ve been scoping out the ads but don’t know what to look for.  Mom & I are going out on Black Friday so I want to be ready if there is a deal. What features are most important? Is one brand better than the others?  (I’m a little partial to Nikon since yearbook class) Anything to avoid? I’d love any advice you can give me!  Thanks in advance! 🙂

First, don safety glasses: Aren’t these stylish?  They’re even Harley Davidson although you can’t tell from the front. Next, choose your target.  Your aim doesn’t have to be exact, just general.  Here’s mine: Smash it to bits!  Salvage anything useful and haul the rest away.  Then, break for dinner and visiting with friends. The next morning, before church,  hurry and finish up.  Vacuum up too.  Try out your paint color of choice. Ahh, much better!!! I got a good workout and this space is on it’s way to being much more useful.  Have you ever demolished anything?

I am on a mission to get the loose ends tied up on my home repair projects.  I’m busting through that list of trouble spots and it feels good!  As I push and sort through the junk in the basement I occasionally stumble across a relic from my past.  Some I won’t part with, such as the stuffed Curious George my Dad bought for me when I was born.  Also staying is my black cowboy hat from the days of horse shows and the sole ribbon that Pooh and I won in halter class.  Pictures of old friends I don’t know anymore?  I’ve not decided. Leaving?  My collection of a dozen or so  liquor bottles.  Filled with water and bits of highlighter they used to look pretty cool near a blacklight… Now they look pretty funny there on my kitchen counter with the mixer, dough rising, and a stack of bills to be paid.  Time to dump them out and recycle them.  Lucky for me (and my parents) there was only a short period in my life where I indulged.  Do I regret it?  Not really.  I don’t have to wonder what I’m missing, I know I’m not missing much. 

Long, and I may be way off, see what you think… Last night as Brian and I were cleaning the barn my mind wandered to raising chickens.  We only have our laying flock right now but for the past two summers we have raised Colored Ranger meat birds.  If I remember correctly we started with 100 the first year and upped it to 200 last year.  We sold out the first year with almost zero effort.  This past season we had enough birds left to freeze some.  That’s not really a bad thing considering our customers do like to pick up more birds throughout the year, especially around the holidays.  Still, part of me had expected us to sell out again.  We had launched our website and our first newsletter got rave reviews.  I had higher expectations. Where was the problem?  I have a theory, although I may be wrong.  I think that the price makes people uncomfortable.  I think that’s why some of our customers buy only one time.  They like the idea of the product but the cost surprises them and they don’t want the pain of pulling out their wallet a second time.  The only other explanation

Because I just can’t get enough of this room… What kind of home decor deals have you found?  Re-purposed anything cool lately?  I’d love to hear about it.

I’ve posted the recipe before, you can find it at the bottom of this post.  I have some helpful tidbits to add now that I’ve been making it for a few years.  Stick with me here, canning pie filling is not as complicated as I probably make it sound.  Here’s what I wish I had known: This year I bought a peck of apples and it made exactly 7 quarts. The original recipe yields 7 pints.  So double it for enough sauce for 7 quarts. 1 quart makes a small (8 or maybe 9 inch) pie.  For a bigger pie you might prefer 1 quart + 1 pint. Based on the size pies you want, use the appropriate size jars. I.E. I can all quarts because I don’t like wasting lids or time processing and I don’t have big pie plates.  I process them longer than the 25 minutes called for, more like 35 minutes just to be safe. I used pasteurized apple cider this year in place of apple juice. De-li-cious. The key is to heat the apples all the way through. If you don’t do this they will shrink during processing and you will have a few apples