Food

Pickled

Posted by

1

For real!
I honestly and truly thought that when the kids went back to school I would have more time…well you know productive time..less time spent trailing kids around wiping counters, throwing away half eaten fruit and flushing toilets…you know typical Maid mom chores.

Well it turns out that is not the case.  I have to admit I volunteered  was assigned to be in charge of the PTA fall school fundraiser….WTH? I had not idea what behind the PTA scenes meant. Parents coming together for the greater good of kids and school right?  Mostly but add in some high school BS,  me in my running gear, hat, and no shower with the mom who is in heels, the cutest tunic and leggings and looking fabulous…I am not sure this is my bag.  Proof of this being that some huge pile of laundry ATE my laundry room…whatevs, I am slinging cookie dough and cookbooks. For the kids.

Truth is right now I wish I was as thin as I have spread myself.

Jon I gone doing clinical hours in WI 2 days and one night a week and has taken on a schedule of 36 hour weekends at the hospital to get his hours in at work = paychecks! So we are buying cookies, magazines and counting the days to his FNP graduation in December 2014!!

I am working really hard on ebay and have a steady 5 clients that I consign for along with my own thrifted/bargain price new kids clothing and goodies and am on target for my biggest month….you can check out my store here Saronjah 😉

Meanwhile the garden is sputtering out its last offerings and we are heading into fall and Halloween…our family’s favorite holiday.

I did have time to make some refrigerator pickles, a friend gave me a recipe last year that I saved, took shopping and lost somewhere in my purse after buying all the ingredients…I can’t be alone here can I ?
So these are sitting in our fridge, all calm, cool, and pickling while our life runs past like videos on fast forward.

Patchworkreality Pickles

I will share the recipe, that we punted with in a few weeks if we deem them edible.

Frozen Raspberry Lemonade Popsicles

Posted by

0

Today marks the official first day of summer…I know some of you have been enjoying summer weather for a while, but blue skies and wispy clouds combined with higher mercury readings are finally here in MN!!!  Yeah!!!

That means little bodies are heating up and taking to the water.  At our house my kids are huge fans of anything sweet that comes from the freezer.

This is a rendition of a recipe I saw on-line and tweaked a bit.

None of the ingredients in this are hard to find or really all that great for us…(read: no paleo here;)), however it is a treat and as treats go, they are not usually broccoli…am I right?!

Ingredients:

  • One box of Raspberry Jell-O (you could really use any flavor, strawberry would also be really tasty)…8 serving size.
  • Lemonade mix, enough for 8 servings, more or less depending on your tartness preference.
  • Water
  • Ice
  • Sugar (Optional)
  • Dixie cups
  • Plastic spoons or Popsicle sticks

Ebay 1589

Boil 4 cups of water and stir in Jell-O, lemonade and any sugar if you like to sweeten your mixture.
Add ice cubes to a glass measuring cup, add water to equal 2 ½ cups total, then add to Jell-O Mixture.
Pour into paper cups; I put mine into a muffin tin to keep it steady for the little helpers I had, also to catch the drips.  I also used a funnel to help keep things neat. Put in freezer for 2 hours.

Ebay 1591
After 2 hours they should only be partially set. This is when we added plastic spoons, I did this so little hands could hold onto then better and avoid a stick, put back into the freezer for another hour or two. This made about 14-16 pops with the Dixie cups approximately 3/4 full.

ENJOY!!!!

2013 June 658

This Cake is on Fi-yah!!

Posted by

3

Raiven just celebrated her 9th birthday.

We chose to have it at our house and she was allowed to invite up to 9 girls, including her self to spend the night.

All but one was able to spend the night, they all came and played, made a craft and had cake and ice cream.

We are big campers at our house so we set the tent up, since there was still 6 inches of snow outside, in the base ment, for the girls to sleep in.  In nice weather we would have set it up outside.

After seeing this cake:

Credit: Amam Cara…Cakedecorating website

Hubby and I decided to do our own take on a bonfire cake:

Here are the ingredients:

2013 May 160 copy

Cake mix of your choice, along with ingredients needed to make cake, which may vary.

Pam or non stick spray.

Pirouette cookies.

Hard butterscotch and cinnamon candies, at least 25 of each

Here is how we did it, as always feel free to do what you like and works best for you.

Bake cake according to directions on the package.  We used a yellow cake it is a favorite, also I thought it would be neat to take some scoops of the cake mix before baking it and add red or yellow coloring and plop them in so when you cut the cake the inside had more of a fire look,…maybe next time.

We baked the cake in a 9 X 13, cut it in half and sacked it, you could do 2 round pants as well.

Let it cool, frost as you normally would, we used chocolate.

Then take the butterscotch and cinnamon hard candies, put them in a baggies and pound them until crushed, almost like a sugar.

Then put them on a sheet of tinfoil that has been sprayed with non stick spray and put in the oven at 350, here are the candies we melted:

2013 May 172 copy

This does not take long 5 minutes or so, it will look a little liquidy and bubbly, also when you melt the candies you can choose how thick to make them which will change the time depending on the thickness.

Once cooled, break into pieces and put on your cake however you like, add pirouette cookies as the “loge for your fire.

We added fire to the edges, the candy stuck very well to the frosting.

2013 May 169 copy

Ta-Da bonfire cake!

2013 May 164 copy

Sing with me This cake is on Fi-yah!

2013 May 167 copy

Happy 9th Birthday!!  This girl knows how to party 🙂

2013 May 253 copy

 

A new friend in the oraganic celery

Posted by

0

Hubby is up in the kitchen chopping and slaving away making soup for dinner.  I hear him say “Hay Tanna look what I found in the celery.”

I hear footsteps, it is quiet for a minute, “Momma come up here quick!”  I then here Tanna’s feet pounding down the stairs, guess she is going to find me first.  “Momma, we found a caterpillar in the celery!!!!”  I hear the the big kids bus roll up outside before I can comment, so I encourage her to share what she found today with the kids as they come in….”WE FOUND This IN THE CELERY” with hand gestures that are sure to win her an Oscar at some later date.

They look in her little plastic bowl…”oh cool”.

Two minutes later Tanna says a little less emphatically “it’s dead.”  

Well at least it lived a pesticide free life and boy was the end exciting.

Can’t wait for the table talk tonight over soup!

A Heart-y Breakfast

Posted by

1

It is the day…the one some people can’t wait to spend with the person they love, others can’t stand to be  alone and all the latter people are celebrating and the day that some anticipate with anxiety and hope.  There are so many expectations what sould be given on this day that I think the sincerity of simple love can be lost to the material expectations…but this is no soap box…today. 

At our house there are no built up expectations or shiny bling, it is similar to most other days, with perhaps a little more focus on love and family.

So what better way to start the day than with homemade heart waffles, topped with fresh crushed sweet strawberries,  and whipped cream spiked with just a touch of almond extract… and nothing says momma and poppa love you more than spikes of bacon on the top, like sprinkles only much tastier.

My mom has had this waffle iron since I was a kid and it was so fun to use it this morning when heart shaped waffles actually made sense. I am sure she got it at Dayton’s back in the day but I see Target has a similar one.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!