Enchilada sauce mix

In my November randomness post, I alluded to using an enchilada sauce mix, and some readers were interested in the recipe.  Alas, I find that that recipe is not on my computer anywhere.  I have it scribbled down on the recipe for the Tortilla Enchilada Soup, but cannot find it elsewhere.  I don't even know where I found it to begin with.  Hence this post.

ENCHILADA SAUCE MIX (for equivalent to 1 can red enchilada sauce)

1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon dried minced onion
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1/8 teaspoon cayenne

Combine with 1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes to approximate 1 can of enchilada sauce.

Or, and this is what I do: quadruple the recipe, measuring the spices into a small bowl, and mix them well.  Transfer to a small jar and label.  When ready to use, combine 2 Tablespoons of the spice mixture with the 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes.

This has worked very well in every recipe I've tried it in.  As I mentioned to Vee, I really don't know how authentic it tastes, but it's great in recipes and the price is right!

This 'n' that in the kitchen

I had a few kitchen experiments that turned out well in the past week or so, and just wanted to share them.  I love it when an idea to use up a leftover (or solve some other similar problem) works out well!

I'd mentioned that last Sunday was our corn roast at church.  We ended up bringing some of the leftover corn home, and I reheated it to serve alongside a couple of different meals -- wrap sandwiches and turkey burgers, if I remember right.  I had a couple ears left over after that,  and decided to cut the corn off the cob and put it in this Hearty Butternut Squash Soup. 

In that same soup, I also used up a few more leftovers: a quart of chicken broth, frozen from the last time I cooked chicken breasts in the crockpot; and instead of using fresh sliced peppers and chopped onions, I used dibs and dabs of frozen ones I had on hand.  I changed the recipe up a lot; used frozen pureed squash, left out the beans, and cut the quantities down a good bit.  The soup turned out fantastic and fed us for several meals. 

And then there was the leftover blueberry sauce.  I mentioned in my Friday five that our dear friends Sam and Jenn and their boys had joined us for supper last Sunday. Mr. T had made waffles, and I made this

BERRY SAUCE FOR PANCAKES OR WAFFLES

1/2 cup sugar
1 Tblsp. cornstarch
1/3 cup water
2 cups blueberries, raspberries, OR cut-up strawberries

Combine the sugar and cornstarch in a 2-quart saucepan. Gradually stir in the water. Add the fruit and bring mixture to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Serve warm. Makes about 2 cups.

I had made a batch of blueberry sauce and one of strawberry.  Nearly a pint of the blueberry one was left.   Not wanting it to mold,  I cast about for a way to use it.  We also had in the fridge a cup or two of fresh blueberries that a landowner on a logging job had given to my hubby.  I mixed them with the sauce, put it in the bottom of a pie pan, and made this

DOWN EAST BLUEBERRY COBBLER
3 cups blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. grated lemon zest (optional but yummy)
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. vanilla
1 Tblsp. butter
-----------------
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tblsp. sugar
2 Tblsp. cold butter
1/3 cup cream or evaporated milk

Heat oven to 425º. In a bowl, toss the berries with the next four ingredients (sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla). Place the mixture into a 9-inch glass or ceramic pie plate. Cut the butter into pieces and scatter over the berries.

Sift the 1 cup flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar together into a mixing bowl. Cut in the 2 Tblsp. butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the cream and stir with a fork until the dough comes together. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface; knead 30 seconds or so. Roll the dough into a round slightly smaller than your pie plate and about 1/4 inch thick. Place the dough over the berries in the pie plate and cut several deep slashes in the top.

Bake the cobbler at 425º for 20-25 minutes, until the crust is golden and the fruit is tender. Cool on a rack. Serve warm or at room temperature with powdered sugar sifted over the top.

Serves 4.

This experiment turned out to be absolutely delicious.  I had made this cobbler in the past but I would have had no idea it could turn out so well using the blueberry sauce.

(I left out the sugar in the blueberry part, and also omitted the lemon component because I had put lime juice in the sauce.  I also didn't put the vanilla in with the blueberries, but put it in the topping instead.  I did dot the filling with the butter, though.)

So last week I bought some strawberries at the supermarket.  I had no real idea how I was going to use them, but the price was great,  so I bought 2 boxes.  Of course you know that I didn't get to use them right away.  So I ended up tossing maybe a cup of them, and then decided I would try that cobbler recipe again using diced strawberries instead of blueberries.

This time I did use the sugar, and I think a couple of tablespoons of cornstarch would have been a good idea as well.  I also mixed in about a half cup of strawberry sauce that was left from the waffle buffet.  Again, I left out the lemon zest and juice, since I had put lemon juice in the sauce -- and again, I put the vanilla in the topping rather than the filling.

This also came out very good, though not as good as the blueberry one.  It tastes like warm strawberry shortcake in a pie plate, which is not a bad thing.

And then lastly for my kitchen escapades, a recipe I've blogged about before:   I made one of these S’mores Pizzas to take to a get-together on Saturday.  As you read the post (if you click over), you will see that the recipe actually makes two, but I decided to make just one because I didn't want any leftovers.  What was I thinking?

Photo from  Five Heart Home

These are so good and always a hit, but the reception of this dessert on this occasion had to set some kind of a record.  (To simplify serving at the picnic, I had cut the pizza at home, using a sharp knife dipped frequently in hot water to preserve the look of the marshmallows.  It worked really well.)

The serving table was pretty crowded with food, so I waited until everyone had been through the food line at least once before bringing out this pizza.  Well.  I am not in any way exaggerating when I say that within 3 minutes of placing this on the table, there was nothing left but crumbs.

Lesson learned.  Next time I'll bring two.

Those are my recent kitchen adventures.  What have you been cooking and/or baking lately?

How and why I menu plan

As promised (a l-o-n-g time ago!), here's a post all about menu planning.  I have been planning menus my entire married life, and it's a practice I highly recommend.  I didn't grow up with this type of planning; my mother may have had a rough idea what she was going to serve each week, but she never wrote it down as far as I know.  (When it came to holidays or having guests in for a meal, she did plan the menu.)

However, as a soon-to-be-married gal,  I happened to be in the home of a busy young Christian couple and saw a handwritten menu for the week posted on the fridge.  Right then and there, I decided that I would also menu plan.  It sure helped as a very poor newlywed on an extremely tight budget.  When we started out, we determined to spend $15 per week for groceries.  It never would have happened without a detailed plan, and without paying close attention to what was on sale in a particular week.

Saving money is still one of the main reasons I make a menu plan every week.  I usually start, just as I did over 40 years ago,  by looking at the supermarket flyer for the week to see what's on sale.  Then I plan my meals around what's on sale and what I have in the freezer and refrigerator.

Another way menu planning saves money is that, when I buy something, I have a plan for how to use it.  In the case of produce, it's really helpful to have a plan because it jogs my memory to use the particular fruit or vegetable before it goes bad.

Another reason for menu planning is to save time and frustration. If I look at my menu plan the night before or even the morning of, it helps a lot.  I know what's for supper and can plan accordingly.  If meat or a freezer meal needs to thaw overnight, it can happen.  If it's a slow cooker meal, I can be sure the ingredients get into the cooker in plenty of time.

Okay, so now to the nuts and bolts of how I actually plan my menus.  I have a printed grocery list that I use each week.  I can just write down specifics as to how many, what items, etc. on the lines provided.  It saves a ton of time.  If you want to make a list like this, you will of course personalize it according to items that you regularly purchase.  Mine really needs updating as there are items on here (like Crisco, for instance) that I simply don't buy anymore.

I fold the paper in half, blank side out, and then I jot down the days of the week from Thursday (my usual grocery shopping day) to Thursday.  Then I begin to fill in menus for each day.

When planning menus, I also take into account what my week is going to look like.  This usually saves a trip to the store or a restaurant for take-out on exceedingly busy days.  If I take time to think about it ahead, I will plan an easy meal for those nights, or leave something in the crock pot.

Obviously, the meal for each day varies with the activities the particular day or evening will hold.   For many years, Wednesday night's supper was always pizza along with either soup or salad.  Our granddaughters went to Patch the Pirate Club at church that evening and usually got off the school bus at our house.  Pizza was a favorite and they enjoyed different varieties of soups, in particular.  So pizza and soup was always a given on Wednesdays as I planned.

 Sunday has often meant a potluck lunch at church, so my menu for Sunday has usually included a slow cooker meal or something that will stay hot on a warming tray.  On a potluck day, it will also include some sort of salad and some sort of dessert.  If there is no potluck at church, I will either plan on leftovers  from a previous day or make a slow cooker meal on Sundays.

If we are having company for supper on a particular evening, then of course my menu plan will reflect that.

I try to plan seasonally, too -- lots of main-dish soups or stews in fall and winter, lots of main-dish salads in summer -- and use in-season produce in my menus.

Slow cooker meals are a blessing in any busy season.  I'll plan on making one anytime I want or need to be busy with something else -- be that cleaning, blogging, crafting, or some sort of ministry.  It's just good to have meals that will cook themselves while the cook has to be busy elsewhere.  I've even taken my slow cooker on vacation if we are staying in a cabin or cottage.

In general, I plan to serve several -- usually around four -- meatless meals each week, with chicken and fish or seafood making up the rest of the choices.  I will have pasta or rice once or twice during that time.  I try to vary the flavors -- Italian, Mexican,  etc.  Usually I will plan one "breakfast for dinner" type meal based on eggs.  In hot weather, main-dish salads are a mainstay for us.

One thing I've been trying to be mindful of this summer is to pay attention to what I serve as a side with main-dish salads.  Often my tendency is just to serve some sort of bread -- corn muffins, or French or Italian bread, or biscuits.  I've been trying to serve lighter sides like a cooked vegetable (zucchini or summer squash) or a side salad or just sliced tomatoes and/or cucumbers.  This Smashed Cucumber Salad is one quick and tasty option.

Invariably there are some menus that don't get used in a particular week.  We might eat out or be invited to someone's home for supper.  We might have enough leftovers to stretch for another meal or two.  (Good thing we both like leftovers!)  When this happens -- when there's a menu that doesn't get used -- I just move it to an appropriate day when I plan the next week's menus.

I feel as if this is just a haphazard list of tips and suggestions, but hopefully it will be helpful to someone.  One final thought:  Years ago I often participated in Menu Plan Monday with Laura over at I'm an Organizing Junkie.  Although I've gotten away from posting my plans here on the blog, Menu Plan Monday is still going strong.  Click the link and you will also find links to Laura's informative pages as to how she menu plans and why she menu plans.  She considers this practice to be life-changing.  Maybe you will too!

Tuna Pasta Salad

Photo from Taste of Home

I came across this recipe in an older issue of Taste of Home and we really enjoy it, so I thought I would share: Tuna Pasta Salad. I've made this main-dish salad twice this spring already.  It's a perfect warm-weather supper along with some sort of side.  Tuesday night, we enjoyed it with sauteed fiddleheads as a side dish. 

(Interestingly, you know how photos will sometimes pop up on your device from one year ago today?  I happened to glance at my "one year ago" photos and found they were of fiddleheads, which we tried last year for the first time.  We were eating fiddleheads on the exact same date this year!)

Anyway, back to the salad.  I like to double the quantities of pasta and tuna (I use Ronzoni gluten free elbow macaroni), and leave the dressing quantities the same.  The single recipe makes plenty of dressing, even with the additional pasta and tuna.  I also use chives (since I have a plant in my backyard) rather than green onions. 

Mr. T declares this to be "one of those meals I just can't stop eating."  (Now you know why I double the recipe.)  It's a good basic main-dish salad and calls for no ingredients that wouldn't be on hand in most pantries.  We enjoy this meal and I hope that you will, also.

A vintage recipe for National Cookie Month

Pillsbury cookbook from my collection

When I shared that squash recipe a few days ago,  I mentioned how I used up a lot of our Blue Hubbard squash (from our very first garden over 40 years ago)  by baking dozens of squash cookies.  To do this, I adapted a recipe for pumpkin cookies.  I thought it might be fun to hunt that recipe up and share it here.

It came originally from the Farm Journal Homemade Cookies cookbook.  My mother subscribed to Farm Journal magazine (as did her mother before her) and in the 1960s and 1970s Farm Journal published a number of excellent cookbooks.   I acquired as many as I could.  In a way I suppose these cookbooks were the forerunner of Taste of Home magazine, for many recipes came from good farm cooks all over the United States.

Here is my cookie recipe:

SQUASH COOKIES

1/2 cup margarine, softened
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups mashed cooked winter squash
2 1/2 cups flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 cup raisins if desired

Cream together margarine and brown sugar.  Add eggs; beat thoroughly.  Mix in vanilla and squash.

Sift together dry ingredients.  Blend into creamed mixture.  Stir in raisins if using them.

Drop dough by heaping teaspoonfuls about 2 inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheet.  (The old recipe says greased baking sheet, but I use parchment now and you probably do, too.)  Bake at 375º about 15 minutes, or until lightly browned.  Remove cookies to cooling racks.  Makes 5 dozen.

Hope you enjoy this vintage recipe if you try it!

Sometimes the simplest projects ...

... make a world of difference!  The above project may not look like much to you, and I admit it is pretty simple.  But it has sure made a difference in the way the top of my dresser looks.

My earring storage (for lack of a better word) has been bugging me for awhile now.  What I had was a nearly flat wooden container of sorts made from a piece of scrap wood and popsicle sticks, glued together by my then-7-year-old son many, many years ago.  He designed it with four compartments to hold earrings.  I have used it all these years even though he has told me numerous times to just throw it away.  I finally agree: sentiment can be carried too far. 

I kept my more seasonal earrings in a jewelry box and the ones I wear most often on this little wooden tray.  It's nearly impossible to keep it free of dust.  It was never designed to be a long-term earring organizer, but honestly, I am not one to shop for such an item.  This was working okay and I didn't have time to hunt for one.

One day, either on Pinterest or a blog, I forget which, I saw a nifty earring organizer made from plastic canvas in a picture frame.  I pinned it and forgot about it.  A couple of weeks ago I remembered it again,  and did find my pin.  I thought that I had both a picture frame and a piece of  plastic canvas on hand, but didn't have time to do anything about it right then. 

Yesterday I was dusting in the bedroom and just became really disgusted with that heap of dusty earrings.  I hunted up my picture frame, but couldn't find a whole piece of plastic canvas.  So, rather than give up on the whole project, I decided to improvise and just use the partial piece of canvas that I did have, without a frame, and see how that worked.

You can see that it worked admirably. 

When all of the earrings were in place, I needed a quick hanger.  I grabbed a piece of green satin ribbon that happened to be on my crafting desk, slipped it through a hole in the canvas, tied a knot and push-pinned it to the wall.  Easy!

And later that day when I walked into the bedroom, I could not believe the difference it made to have that earring clutter gone from the dresser.  Things looked so neat!  It honestly made a difference to the entire room. 

Yes, I admit I am easily amused.  Not to mention frugal.

Simply random mid-March thoughts

Just a few random thoughts and happenings from the week ..

  Snow is probably the big story here.  Big storm on Wednesday, lots of snow, cold, ice, and wind.  Sometimes it seems as if this winter is going on forever.  (And there *was* once a time in our state's history, sometime in the 1800s, when there was a frost every month of the year, so I guess it's not impossible.)  On the other hand, as my husband says, if it all melts at once, we are in for a lot of flooding. 

I do enjoy watching the snow fall, as long as I don't have to drive in it.  And it is pretty to see a clean layer of white, looking like meringue or 7-minute icing, covering everything once again.

It's also nice to see the longer daylight, even though daylight saving time in mid-March still seems a bit odd.  And the higher, brighter winter sun feels good, although I'd rather not see all of the cobwebs, dust and crumbs it tends to reveal indoors.

Does anyone else have those strange little spiders that look like miniature daddy long-legs and leave drifts of webs everywhere?  The webs look sort of like cotton batting to me.  They are dense and white.  I've seen a few of these at church, so I can't blame it on the wood in our cellar which might be the natural guess as to why we have them.  They seem able to spin these webs very quickly and it's impossible to stay ahead of them. 

This is Zone 3 week in FlyLady's system ... the bathrooms.  Yesterday I scrubbed the tub and shower using my favorite homemade Tub and Shower Magic.  It works great on bathroom sinks and countertops, too.  If you've never tried this, you might like to give it a try.  I find that by using this once a month, and maintaining by use of Tilex Fresh Shower every day, the tub and shower stay looking fairly decent in spite of our hard water. 

I've been working at trying to reduce our grocery bill, and this week I actually succeeded.  It's still not low, but we spent about $15 less than the previous week.  I've made a number of meatless meals from some of my favorite basic cookbooks -- More-With-Less Cookbook; Jane Brody's Good Food Book
(Lentil Soup; Rice, Corn and Cheese Casserole); and Jane Brody's Good Food Gourmet (from which I plan to make Lentils Ole this week, to serve over baked potatoes with taco toppings.  Any of these books will give you some good ideas for inexpensive, nutritious meals that taste good.
Another thing I do to save money is to make a lot of my own spice blends, onion soup mix, taco seasoning mix and so on.  Many of these recipes I've found in More Make Your Own Groceries by Daphne Metaxas Hartwig, and its predecessor, Make Your Own Groceries, which is hard to find at a reasonable price.  Check in local used bookstores, thrift shops, etc. and I hope you will find one!  More great recipes for this type of thing can be found here: 100-plus Recipes for Homemade Mixes and Seasoning Blends.

If you are interested in more homemade ideas, check out the "homemade life" label in the label cloud to the right.  There are quite a few of them there, from bagels to swiffer refills!




Today I have corned beef in the slow cooker, along with carrots and potatoes, to serve with homemade baked beans for supper tonight.  This is my go-to recipe for making corned beef in the crock pot: Glazed Corned Beef Dinner.  At the end of the cooking time, one transfers the meat and veggies to a baking dish and adds the glaze, cooking it in the oven for the last half hour.   I recommend it!

I probably had much more to say, but this is our day to clean the church and so I had better have lunch and get ready to go, since Mr. T is now home from work.  Enjoy the randomness!
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Green, green, it's green, they say

The back of an envelope; this calendar page featured art by Rebecca Barker

Those words, which I think are from a 1960s folk tune, were going through my head as I worked on this little recycling project -- handmade bubble mailers.  These handmade padded mailing envelopes are a pretty "green" craft -- in fact, they are twice green in that they use not one but two recycled components.

I wanted to send a little handmade necklace to a friend, but had none of the small bubble mailers on hand.  I didn't have time or inclination to go to the store and so decided to try a tutorial I had saved some time ago, and make my own mailing envelope.  I had actually saved several different tutorials, but the one I've linked to above is the one I used.

Scrapbooking paper or wrapping paper was my first thought, but one of the other tutorials suggested using the heavy paper from magazine covers.  That would be nice, but I had another thought -- why not try using some of the beautiful calendar pages I've saved over time?  Some of these I have framed, others just tacked up as they are.  But I still had a stack I couldn't bear to throw away and no real clear idea how I would eventually use them.  So I tried using one and it worked so well I made a bunch of envelopes in 2 different sizes -- 5x7 and 6x9.  I often use padded mailers to send small items to faraway family and friends, and I know they will enjoy receiving these special homemade ones.

I had lots of bubble wrap on hand, recycled from various boxes of goods from here and there.  So that is my second "green" component -- I was re-using another on-hand material.

A couple of helpful hints:  I did find that, in using the calendar pages, the 5x7 envelopes didn't really need to be lined with bubble wrap.  I did use it on a couple of them but then decided it wasn't necessary.  I did add it for all of the larger envelopes.  I also found that the bottom seam on the envelope -- the first seam you glue -- really should be reinforced with tape before mailing.  I had glued it with rubber cement and clamped it with clothespins overnight, and it looked fine when I mailed it.  But when my friend received the envelope, that entire seam was open!  Don't know if it was due to heat, humidity, or what, but it was open.  Thankfully, the necklace survived the trip just fine!

But it could easily have been otherwise.  So that is why I recommend taping that bottom seam shut.

Here are some of the envelopes I've made:

Envelope front; from calendar page featuring art by Shelly Reeves Smith

Envelope back; from calendar page featuring art by Rebecca Barker

Envelope front; from calendar page featuring art by Rebecca Barker

Envelope back; from calendar page featuring art by Rebecca Barker

Envelope back; from calendar page featuring art by Rebecca Barker

Envelope front; from calendar page featuring art by Shelly Reeves Smith

Envelope front; from calendar page featuring art by Rebecca Barker

Envelope front; from calendar page featuring art by Rebecca Barker

Envelope back; from calendar page featuring art by Shelly Reeves Smith

Envelope front; from calendar page featuring art by Shelly Reeves Smith

Envelope front; from calendar page featuring art by Rebecca Barker

I am so pleased to have created something beautiful and useful from what might otherwise have been thrown away!  In addition, I love the idea that I can share some of my favorite artists with my friends.  Do you have magazines or calendar pages in your stash?  If so, you might like to try this project also!

My favorite versatile recipe for baked goods

Last week (or was it the week before?) I had some leftover mashed potatoes in the fridge and remembered this wonderful recipe I often made in years gone by. It makes 100 rolls, doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, or whatever. Even though I had plenty of mashed potatoes, I divided the recipe in half. I made half of the dough into dinner rolls and half into cinnamon rolls. I used the doughnut glaze recipe (again, half of it) on the cinnamon rolls. This is a fantastic recipe! If you don't have leftover mashed potatoes on hand, this is so good that it's worth cooking a few potatoes for. The recipe is from the More-With-Less Cookbook by Doris Jantzen Longacre.


Edna Ruth Byler's Potato Dough Baked Goods

Makes 100 doughnuts or rolls

Dissolve:

3 pkg. dry yeast in

1 cup lukewarm water

Mix in large bowl:

1 quart scalded milk

2 cups mashed potatoes (no milk added)

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

Let cool to lukewarm, then add:

Yeast mixture

6 cups flour

Let stand until mixture foams up (about 20 minutes)

Add:

2 eggs, beaten

1 Tablespoon salt

11 to 12 cups additional flour

A little more flour may be needed, but dough should be soft. Turn out on floured board and knead until satiny. Let raise in warm place until doubled in bulk.

Doughnuts:
Roll out dough, cut doughnuts, place on trays and let raise until not quite double. Fry in hot shortening (375 degrees). When drained and while still hot dip in glaze mixture. Insert a stick through holes and let a number of doughnuts drain over glaze bowl until next ones are ready to do.

Glaze:

Combine:

1 pound powdered sugar

1 Tablespoon butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

Dash of mace

Enough rich milk to make thin icing

Cinnamon buns:
Prepare a mixture of sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Roll a piece of dough to about 18″x9″. Spread dough with butter and sprinkle over some of the sugar mixture. Roll up the dough as for jelly roll. Cut 1 ½” chunks and place in greased pans, pressing down lightly on each chunk. Cover and let raise in warm place until nearly double. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until browned. These may be iced with doughnut glaze as soon as they are taken from the oven.

Sticky buns:
Handle dough same as for cinnamon buns, except make a mixture of brown and white sugar, cinnamon, and a little white corn syrup and water. Spread in bottom of heavily greased pans with nuts, if desired, before putting in rolls. Immediately after baking, invert pans over trays and let syrup run down before removing pans.

Dinner Rolls:
Shape dough as desired; place on greased pans, and bake at 400º starting on a lower rack and changing to upper rack about halfway through for 15 minutes of baking time. Brush tops lightly with butter to remove any floury appearance.

Coffee Cake:
A good way to use all the leftover bits of dough -- put dough in greased pan, dab or punch holes in it, and spread leftover sugar, syrup, or butter mixtures over. Let rise and bake as for cinnamon buns.

To freeze:
Let baked goods cool. Wrap or place in large plastic bags and freeze the same day.

Note: This recipe is also quite good using part freshly ground whole wheat flour in place of some of the white flour.

Shifting into Frugal Automatically

A number of years ago, we owned a car which developed a somewhat alarming problem: while the driver was merrily tootling down the road (hopefully a country road), the transmission would suddenly, without warning, shift into neutral. Usually, one could shift back into drive and all would be well until the next occurrence. My hubby, who can be as pessimistic as the next person when he chooses, elected to put a positive spin on this problem and explained that the vehicle was simply "shifting into neutral automatically". Ever since then, this phrase has been in common use in our family whenever we need to put a positive spin on a situation.

Often, when the need for flexibility comes up in my daily schedule, I find that I think of it as shifting my gears. And it is amazing how this shifting does take place almost automatically when each day is yielded to God.

Over the past few years, I think many of us have come to the conclusion that becoming a bit more frugal would certainly be a wise move. I've been thrilled to see that I haven't forgotten how to be frugal ... that, indeed, it came back to me almost automatically.

There was a time, many years ago, when I was very frugal indeed, buying chocolate chips, for example, only for very special occasions. I well remember baking cookies for Vacation Bible School and decorating only the tops of M&M cookies with the M&Ms, using perhaps 4 to 5 on each cookie top, and none in the cookie dough, to make the candy go farther. Early in our marriage, we got by spending only $15-$20 per week for groceries. Later on, when our children were away at school, we chose to eat meat only on weekends when they were home. While they were in college, we ate many a meatless meal -- and enjoyed it!

Over time, the kids married and left home, and we were spending less on food and other necessities but, because it was just the two of us now, we could pretty much buy what we liked. I don't mean that we routinely bought shrimp or expensive steaks -- not at all -- but if, for example, I wanted to bake cookies I would be sure that I had parchment paper on hand -- and I would throw the paper away after each use.

And that is why, when I began to realize I needed to reinstate frugality, I was so delighted to find myself, one cookie-baking day, reaching automatically for my much-used, reusable, teflon cookie sheet liners. Shifting into frugal automatically!

Miracle Bread: a fabulous bread recipe!

(Photo from Home Joys)

I tried a new recipe for bread yesterday, and it turned out so delicious I just had to share. Gina, over at Home Joys, has been doing a series on homemade bread. The information she is sharing will be of special interest to those who have never tried making bread, or have tried and failed. However, it's also very helpful to those of us who may have been baking bread for years. There is always more to learn in life!

This recipe is super simple and requires no kneading. It produced two gorgeous loaves of French (or Italian)-type bread (or it can also be used to make bread in loaf pans or even to make cinnamon rolls). The bread is simply delicious. (I used poppy seeds on mine since I was all out of sesame seeds.)

As I was mixing the dough, I told myself that if the bread turned out well, I would use the recipe to teach my 2 oldest granddaughters (ages 7 and 9) how to bake bread. So I will definitely be doing that! I can just imagine what a feeling of accomplishment it will give them to have produced something so wonderful with just a minimum of effort and a few basic ingredients.

So check out the recipe and give Miracle Bread a try. I predict that your family will love this bread as much as mine did!

Fall comfort food -- soup and bread

Steaming bowls of soup accompanied by hearty homemade bread -- this is some of our very favorite comfort food in our family! We could eat a different soup (or leftover soup) every day for quite awhile and not get tired of soup. Maybe in a few days I can get together some posts with recipes and links to more of my favorite soup recipes. Meanwhile, I will just share the links to what I prepared this past Tuesday evening. Both the soup and bread are somewhat unusual.

This Cream of Lentil Soup recipe was a new one for me. I kept seeing the recipe in a back issue of Country Woman magazine and was really intrigued by it. We love lentil soup, and I have a favorite recipe for it. But this Cream of Lentil one was so unusual, I just had to try it. It was delicious! The combination of flavors was subtle and yet complex -- it all added up to one very good soup. I used evaporated milk instead of cream. My only problem was that there really wasn't enough liquid (since one drains the cooking liquid from the lentils before assembling the soup) t o make it properly "soupy". I ended up adding some fat-free half & half to bring it to the right consistency. I'd definitely make this again.

To go along with this soup, I made an old favorite -- Herbed Oatmeal Pan Bread from one of the early issues of Taste of Home. I always seem to crave this bread in the fall. It's so hearty and rustic-looking.

What are some of your favorite soup and bread recipes?

Condensation catchers

Here it is, already the sixth Building our Homes Together over at Prairie Flower Farm. I am taking a detour from the more spiritually-minded posts I have been sharing. Today I am sharing something extremely down-to-earth and practical (and maybe to some, a little bit odd): condensation catchers for behind the toilets.

In our part of the country, summer can be very humid indeed. So much so that toilet tanks sweat, and it's pretty much a necessity to keep a towel or something else behind the toilets to soak up the condensation in hot weather. I have usually just used a neatly folded old towel, which works quite well and can be tossed into the washer and replaced quickly. But sometimes, especially in a small space, the towel gets sort of messy-looking. I wished for something equally effective, but prettier.

On someone's blog, I had seen a pattern for making a bath mat out of an old towel and backing it with cotton fabric, then trimming with an embellishment of some sort.

I had posted a link (I hoped) to that blog, Scent of Water, but discovered that it is no longer available, so took the link out.

Anyway, I decided to adapt that good idea to make a mat to go behind the toilet. I cut an old towel into 4 pieces vertically (after first cutting off the ends) and used 2 of them to make this mat. I backed it with part of an old muslin curtain and trimmed it with a shell-themed candlewicking design (which had resided unfinished in an old sewing box for years). I was pleased with how it turned out, and it looks great in my seashore-themed downstairs bathroom.

This led, of course, to making another mat for the upstairs bathroom. And that inevitably led to the idea of making two more mats, for a total of four, so that I could easily replace them as they got soaked and needed to be washed.

So here are two more -- one embellished with the picture from an old calendar towel, and the other with a fabric napkin that had seen better days. As you can see, on the one mat the muslin tore a little bit (this is, after all, muslin that saw years of use as a curtain prior to this) but I just sewed around the tear and it's holding up fine even after going through the wash a good number of times.

This last mat goes perfectly in the upstairs bathroom. The fabric trim is a scrap from a bag my daughter made one time.

So those are my very simple condensation catcher towel mats. They are simple and very primitively sewn -- they are so thick, it is hard to sew them neatly -- but they are serving their intended purpose beautifully. In fact, we have had so much humidity this summer that I'm thinking about making two more.
If you would like to make these yourself, it's very simple. From an old towel, cut 2 pieces the approximate size you want your mat to be. Cut a piece of fabric the same size -- I used part of an old curtain, but muslin or any cotton type fabric would work. If you wish to embellish the mat, stitch the embellishment onto this fabric at this time. Then stack the pieces -- the fabric one and 1 towel piece right sides together, then the second towel piece on top of that. Pin securely and stitch around the edges using a 1/2" seam allowance, leaving an opening for turning. The turning is a bit of a chore because the towels make it thick. Then hand-sew the opening closed. Press the finished mat neatly and then top-stitch as desired to hold the layers of the mat together well. Larger, similar mats make great washable bathmats and may be as decorative as you like.

Our vegetable garden 2010

Let me say right up front that we are not true gardeners. Neither Mr. T nor I has what might be termed a green thumb, and we do not have a really good place for a garden; our property is general is too wooded and shady. Many years ago we had prolific gardens shared with other people in more ideal locations, but until last year we had not attempted to plant a vegetable garden for a long, long time.

We tried planting one last year but it really didn't do much. Some things didn't come up; others didn't produce much. Our tomatoes got the dreaded late blight. Our best harvest was leaf lettuce and a few winter squash.

This year's is looking a little better. Again, we had some things that didn't come up: winter squash and green beans. We were able to get some squash plants from friends. Their first squash didn't come up either, and when they replanted it all came up, so they had plants to give away. It's still an unknown as to whether our tomatoes will get late blight, but they look good so far.

Here's a photo taken from the balcony above the garden. Left to right: winter squash, two tomato plants (though you can only see one), lettuce, carrots, and zucchini. Not all of the lettuce came up at first, and you can see a tiny line of sprouts where Mr. T recently replanted it. Not all of the carrots came up either, so as he has thinned the carrots he has tried replanted the thinned-out ones further down the row. It has worked so far. Our zucchini is doing the best of anything and we are thankful to have it!

You can also see at the back right corner a sunflower, and in the front, sort of centered between two marigolds, a gladiola plant. These two (sunflower and gladiola) were started by our 7-year-old granddaughter in the greenhouse at school and later planted here. You can see they are doing quite well. The sunflower got blown over by wind and partially broken, but Mr. T has staked it up and it seems to be doing fine. The gladiola has yet to bloom and we are all waiting eagerly to see what color it will be!

And that is our little garden plot for this summer!

Another swiffer cover finished

Here is the most recent sewed swiffer cover I have made. I thought I would make two of each kind (crocheted, for dry mopping, and sewed, for wet mopping). I like the idea of having two so there is always a clean one ready when I need to mop. These are made using thin terry kitchen towels from Walmart.

This is the pattern I used:
Swiffer Cover. The pattern calls for terrycloth, but I decided to try using a kitchen towel instead and it worked very well. The first one I made had a coffee motif on the towel and the colors went really well with the swiffer. This one, as you see, has a grape and vineyard motif. It doesn't go quite as well color-wise, but is still attractive. On this one I used large vintage buttons in a wine color.


Here it is in place on the swiffer, button side up.



And here again, only now you can see the side that will be in contact with the floor when mopping.

I have used this and the only problem I see is that one really needs to wring it out before mopping rather than just dipping it in a bucket of cleaning solution and mopping away.  But that is easily done and not a huge problem.  Other than that I was very pleased with how it worked, and especially pleased with the $1 price tag!  I could have avoided even spending that by utilizing a used terry dish towel, but I thought the thinner, stiffer cheap ones would work better for this purpose -- wouldn't slide around so much.  That turned out to be true.

It makes mopping more fun to use something so decorative, and one gets to be frugal at the same time. It's a win-win!

A different baked bean recipe

With summer events and entertaining in full swing, it's always nice to have an easy recipe one can bring along to share at cookouts, picnics, etc. Here is a new favorite recipe of ours.

Baked Beans

1 lb. dried great northern beans
Bacon fat (or use oil)
Small amount of bacon bits or leftover cooked bacon, crumbled
1 large onion, chopped
1 tsp minced garlic
2/3 cup ketchup
1/3 cup barbecue sauce
1 c. water
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. coarsely ground pepper

Soak beans overnight. In the morning drain and rinse beans, discarding liquid. Place beans in Dutch oven and add 6 cups water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 1 hour or until beans are almost tender.

In the Dutch oven, melt a tablespoon or so of bacon fat, or use the same amount of oil. Saute the chopped onion in this until tender; add the garlic and cook 1 minute longer. Stir in all of the remaining ingredients and place in an ungreased 3-quart casserole dish. Cover and bake at 300º for several hours or until beans are tender and reach desired consistency, Stir every 30-60 minutes and add water as needed.

This is a major revision of a recipe called New England Baked Beans from Taste of Home. To my mind, these are not New England-y at all, since true New England baked beans would not contain ketchup or garlic, nor would they ordinarily start with great northern beans. But these beans are very delicious! My 9-year-old granddaughter, a real bean aficionado, loves these. I just took a large batch of these to a church cookout and there were only a few left over.

I had been looking for a slightly different baked bean recipe, as we have them every Saturday night, and a little variety is always good. I tweaked this somewhat before even trying it, since I couldn't stand the thought of 1-1/2 cups brown sugar, 1/3 cup molasses, and 2 cups of ketchup (which contains sugar also). This recipe was described as being "slightly sweet" which is certainly an understatement. When I first tried the recipe I did use the full amount of ketchup and cut the brown sugar to 1/2 cup and kept the molasses the same. This quickly changed, the next time to 1 cup ketchup and 1 cup water, with the 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/3 cup molasses. Then I had to be away on a Saturday morning and my son made the beans. He changed the ketchup component to 2/3 cup ketchup and 1/3 cup raspberry chipotle barbecue sauce. He forgot the molasses, which is probably just as well. Since then, I've been making the beans with the proportions given here in the recipe.

At this point, I'm alternating between this recipe and my regular baked bean recipe. We enjoy them both!

To make cleaning more fun...

 
Last spring, I crocheted a swiffer cover. I really like the idea of being able to just throw the cover in the wash rather than using the disposable covers. This is the tutorial I used: Crocheted Swiffer Sock. For this first one, I followed the directions to use 2 colors of yarn.


The swiffer cover worked well and I liked using it. However, I tended not to use it because I only had one cover.  I should have followed the suggestion of the designer and made a second cover right away so I would always have a clean cover on hand. However, I hadn't done this.

I decided this week that the time had come to crochet a second cover, and made this one of my crafting goals for the week. I had planned to use 2 colors of yarn as before. But when I saw how this variegated yarn was working up, I decided it was plenty colorful all by itself.

The pattern went very quickly since I wasn't stopping to change colors. If you are using up scrap yarn for this, you might need to use 2 colors, but otherwise I would suggest just using some variegated yarn for interest rather than bothering with color changes.

Now I will have no excuse not to use my swiffer for dust mopping!

My next project will be making a button-on cover to use for wet mopping with my swiffer. This crocheted one is actually meant to be reversible, with the smooth side for wet mopping and the textured side for dry mopping. I thought this was a great idea, but it seemed to me it could be problematic with getting the cover dry in between uses, and I certainly didn't want to make more cleaning work for myself. I've found a pattern for a sewed button-on cover, and if I'm smart I will make two of them to start with!

Another pillowcase project

Today for Building Our Homes Together, I thought I would share some homemade grocery bags that are truly frugal to make. It seems that in some parts of our country, it is now pretty much mandatory to use reusable grocery bags. These are especially frugal because you may already have the makings right in your linen closet! Have fun with this idea!

Here's the post, which again, is an older one:

I mentioned how I seemed to be in a real pillowcase mode with my Christmas gifts this year... I made vintage style ones and also embroidered and cross-stitched ones. But it went beyond that. I saw a tutorial for making pillowcase grocery totes from existing pillowcases. You can find it here:

pillowcase grocery totes

I had so much fun making these. I wanted to make a set for each of my daughters for Christmas. I think I ended up with a set of eight for each girl, plus I made a few for myself. Mostly, I just used pillowcases I had on hand. We love flannel sheets, but we don't love flannel pillowcases (not to sleep on, anyway; I've occasionally used some as sort of slipcovers for pillows). And every set of flannel sheets comes with two of them. They turned out to make gorgeous, sturdy grocery totes. I also purchased several pillowcases at the thrift store for 50¢ each to use for this project. Each tote took an hour or less to make. It was so much fun to see how the different prints turned out!

A snowflake tote.

This was a king-size pillowcase from the thrift store.

A blue toile in flannel

This flannel sheep pillowcase made a smaller tote, so I kept it for myself.

More snowflakes.

A western design.

Most importantly, I managed to devise a way to present the pillowcase grocery totes as a gift! That had been on my mind for some time. Of course I could have just stuffed them in a gift bag or a large box, but then the recipients would have to think of a way to store them. My idea was to make the gift packaging something that would be usable for storing the bags.

As I observed shoppers at my local supermarket, I noticed that most of them who use fabric bags just bring them all stuffed into one bag, and then just send that bag along on the conveyor ahead of their groceries. I also envisioned that they probably store the fabric bags in just the same way -- stuffed into one bag and hung on a peg or nail or whatever.

So it made sense to package the bags within one of the totes. But I wanted/needed some sort of label -- something to make it look a bit gift-y and to identify it. So I came up with the idea to make a clear plastic pocket for the container tote and to attach it with bias tape. I then made up a label to slip into the clear pocket.
For the plastic pocket, I utilized a clear plastic pocket that had come on a package of pillowcases -- a set that I had bought to embroider. I cut the pocket off, then edged it with bias tape and sewed it to the tote, then slipped the label in.

The pocket without the label in place.

I designed the label to be the right size to fit the pocket and printed it out on card stock. I figured that when the recipient starts using the bags, she can put anything she'd like in the clear pocket -- coupons, shopping list, a picture of the kids, whatever. I am quite pleased with how this idea worked out.

The pocket with label in place

So there you have it. I couldn't share all this before, much as I wanted to, because then two Christmas gifts would no longer have been a secret! Hope someone else can use this idea!

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