Fall Baking

Yay, Fall is here! And because it's finally officially Fall, it's time for me to make pumpkin flavored food (our favorite!).
On Monday I made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip bread. This is one of our favorite things, and last year I made at least ten loaves. The recipe I used last year called for two packages of pudding (!!) and vegetable oil. (It calls for coconut pudding, but I always substituted with vanilla. I don't like anything competing with the pumpkin flavor) While it is melt in your mouth delicious, it's a little too decadent to eat as much as we eat of it. So I decided to change it up and I found a more healthy recipe that has applesauce instead of the oil and pudding.
While it is more healthy, it just is not as good as my pudding pumpkin bread. It's sort of dry and really chewy and it tastes more like applesauce than pumpkin. I don't think I'll be making that exact recipe again.

Then, yesterday with my leftover pumpkin puree I made pumpkin cookies. Someone emailed me this recipe last Fall (I wish I could remember who!), and they are super easy and delicious!

PUMPKIN COOKIES
1 cup shortening
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
1 and 1/4 tsp pumpkin spice
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour (all purpose)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Beat shortening, pumpkin, egg, powder, spice, sugar and vanilla until creamy. Fold in flour, soda and salt. Drop by spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet and bake 13-15 minutes at 350 degrees.

CARAMEL ICING
3 tbsp real butter
3/4 tsp vanilla
4 tbsp milk
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup powdered sugar

Frost cookies after they are cool. Combine butter, vanilla, milk and brown sugar. Bring to a rolling boil over medium heat. Boil for five minutes-stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in powdered sugar.The powdered sugar may clump, just stir and the clumps will disappear. If the icing gets too thick, add very hot water 1 tsp at a time to thin.

When I make the cookies, I usually drop the spoonful of batter into a bowl of cinnamon sugar and roll it around. Then I put it on the cookie sheet and squish it flat with a spatula. That way, it's got more of a cookie shape and less of a globular shape. I also omit the caramel icing, I'm sure it's good, but these cookies are tasty enough without it. They're sort of like a pumpkin snicker doodle.

Enjoy!

My first completed project since...2005!

So, here's the shirt. The shirt has lots of problems, but I like it. See those two weird seams in the back? I misjudged how big I was, and had to insert a panel late in the process. They're kindof special...but then again so am I.

I'm really proud of the sleeves though. I've never done a good sleeve before, so these little cap sleeves were quite the accomplishment for me!

I would've taken a picture with it on, but when it's on I can't get it off! The fabric just doesn't have enough stretch, so I'm going to have to make a cut down the back and put in buttons or a zipper in the side or something. Bummer.

But I can't be too harsh on it beings it's the first thing I've sewn from beginning to end in three years. It's pretty good considering that! The top half is from a Vogue pattern, and I free-handed the bottom part using another shirt as a pattern.

I'm Officially Official now!

Southern Girl, from Introducing Ya'll to Arizonians has given me a blog award! It's the Arte Y pico award, and despite my two years of high school Spanish, I can't read the blog that the award originated from. That's cool, I trust Southern Girl, I'm sure she didn't just sell my soul or anything. I hope.

Thanks Southern Girl! I hope you continue to read my blog!

The tale of three sewing machines

It's been probably three years since I've last sewn, beings I didn't have a sewing machine. But, my birthday was last week (the 9th) and now I have one!

My dear Husband and my Mom bought me this, and everything to go with it:

A brother CE-4000! I've already made a giant mess of my work area, as I'm sure I will do for the next few months :)

And this is from my in-laws, they gave it to me a few weeks ago. Isn't it gorgeous?! Even my H, who hated the idea of having "old" furniture loves it. When you unfold the leaf there is a gorgeous painted sewing machine inside.

And now I guess I can use this! It's a QVC tiny serger my boss gave me years ago. I've never had a reason to use it, but I'm hoping i can finally get some use from it.

So now I have three sewing machines. I've already made one shirt ( I hated it, but it was practice) and today my bff and I spent about 7 hours making her a fall dress. I had forgotten how much fun this is.

Grandma's 6 week Bran muffins

My Grandma used to make these for my mom when she was growing up. The recipe was lost for awhile, but my mom found it a few months ago and copied it for me (the original is still on my Grandma's original recipe card--it's pretty cool)

The claim is you can keep the uncooked batter in the fridge for 6 weeks. I don't know about that, the longest it's ever lasted in my house was 3 weeks.


6 cups 100% Bran flakes (not cereal!)
1 Cup boiling water
3 Cups sugar
5 tsp. baking soda
1 qt Buttermilk
1 Cup oil (vegetable)
5 Cups flour
4 Eggs
2 tsp Salt

In a huge bowl, Mix 2 cups bran flakes with 1 cup boiling water. Add sugar, eggs, and oil, mix well. Gradually add flour, salt, baking soda and 4 cups bran, alternate with buttermilk. Mix well.

Bake the desired amount, refrigerate excess up to 6 weeks. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Makes about 6 dozen.

That's it!

The bran flakes are a little hard to find, but I found them in the bulk section of my local grocery store for .37 cents a pound! (A pound makes about 1 batch)

And just for fun, I took pictures of the process.






These are the bran flakes-they look like wood shavings.
Added 1 cup boiling water. I'll be honest, this smells terrible. But hang in there! It's worth it.
Added sugar, eggs, oil
Mixed well
In a seperate bowl, I mixed the remaining 4c bran, flour, salt, and baking soda.
Then I alternate the dry ingredients
with the buttermilk
until both are all mixed well
Then I took out a few cups, and tossed in some raisins and cinnamon
and mixed well.

And then my memory card was full. I filled a muffin tin half full, and sprinkled the top with cinnamon sugar. mmmmm. You can toss almost anything in these: Cinnamon apples, cranberries, applesauce (especially if your mix gets a little dry), walnuts etc.

*edit 9/9/08 I have to add that you can't half this recipe or double it. Something goes off and they wont turn out right! Also, be sure the bran you're getting is not cereal, that doesn't work. It has to be wheat bran. Good luck!

mmmm....cupcakes.

I have an incurable sweet tooth. Always. So tonight I made coconut cupcakes while Dimples was at the Gym. (I know I know I'm a bad wife for making delicious yummy cakes for my husband to come home to from the Gym. I suck:)

Anyways, I've never really tried to use a frosting tip before, so I tried just for fun. It puts lots of frosting on the cupcakes. And that's okay with me. I LOVE frosting.

And the verdict iiiiiiiiiis:

I'm Terrible at it!

But that's okay, because sprinkles cover all my failures. They also now cover my floor and my counters and the inside of the grills on my oven :)

Have I mentioned lately ...

how much I love my Husband?!


I had to work on Saturday evening, and I came home to this:

No, not a scary clown balloon with a man body...It's my husband making me dinner! (I don't do our pics online)

How sweet is he? He actually made this beef pot pie from scratch, even though he worked all day. I love him alot.

And it was GOOD, too!

So about that jam....

I said I would post my experience, and I'm getting there :) It's been a crazy week this past week. My last week at my full time job was insane (as I suspected) and there's been a HUGE fire in the area. It came dangerously close to my mom's house, but the firemen stopped it at the road, luckily. While it is still burning, my mom's house is out of danger, so I can finally relax a little. Okay, back to jam.

I made two kinds, Cherry and Apricot. Both were surprisingly easy. I finally found a cherry pitter at my mom's house and pitted 5 cups of cherries. I remember why I hated this job as a kid. My fingers were stained purple from the juice until I soaked them in lemon juice. Gross!

Then I threw the cherries in a big pot with lemon juice and took a cell phone pic when it was all bubbly.

Sweet. I tossed in 1/2 tsp of margarine to keep it from foaming, then scooped it into jars. Piece of cake! The hot jars sealed themselves and I went home to make my apricot jam. I was a little better about pictures this time, but I think that ended up being a problem.

Here is my 5 cups of chopped and pitted apricots.

And here are the apricots and lemon juice in the pot, with pectin.

Here I am adding 7 cups of sugar. 7 cups! It was way too many, even though it's what the recipe called for. blech. anyways....

Here it is bubbling and boiling like crazy. Yum. BUT...see those little black spots? I burned it. That's what I get for multi tasking.

Then, I ladled it into Jars. A note of advice for your own jam....don't just ladle it. Get a funnel! Not only did I ladle it into the jars, I ladled that sticky crap all over my counter. Fun times.

Then, I turned the jars upside down. (You'll notice I used paper towels for this. I broke my 6 month no paper towel freeze. I thought they would be more sanitary then a dirty old kitched towel.) After about 5 minutes I flipped them upright and one by the seals went "pop" as the jam cooled. This means that the lid is sealed, and the jam will last for a year. Well, at least I thought they all sealed. Except this trouble maker. It exploded instead.

And the final result of both:

Yay!

So the good points: Made my jam, had fun, used up lots of fruit, it's pretty

And the bad: Too sweet! It's like diabetes in a jar, very messy, boiling jam burns when it boils out of the pot onto a finger, messy counter tops, time consuming.

So you'll notice there is no recipe posted on here. It was so sweet it's almost gross. I won't ever use it again (it was the recipe in the ball pectin package). My boss gave me an easy recipe for freezer jam, and my mom just called to say the peaches were ripe, so I guess that's next!

I did it!

I made Jam. And I am ridiculously proud of myself. I've also come to realize I may be the only person in the world who gets excited about Jam. Everyone I told or gave a jar too responded with an "oh, that's nice dear" and then gave me crazy side eye.
Also, I tried to take step by step pictures, but I've come to the realization that I'm no Pioneer Woman! I've also decided that she is either Magic or has three hands.
So, I'll have a few crappy cell phone pics that will follow that detail my amazing feat of making Jam (but drastically skip steps), and I get to cross something off my June list!
I've also picked a huge bucket of apricots that I hope to turn into Jam and/or freeze tonight, so I guess that's another thing I can cross off.

No Cherry Pitters?

It's Cherry season here in Northern CA. Big beautiful Cherries are everywhere the eye can see. There are trees in yards that are bowing from the weight, and stands on every corner. (Maybe not every corner, but I've seen several). My coworkers brought in two big bowls to share, and since it's the end of the week and they weren't going to get eaten they told me to take them home. Sweet, I'm going to make cherry jam, I thought.
Well, first I had a nap (don't judge me! You're never too old for a nap). Then I had dinner. Then I talked with DH and we looked for houses online. By 8:45 I remembered I had Cherries to pit, but no pitter. So I said to DH, hey, lets walk to Target, it's beautiful out and I need a cherry pitter. So we walked the 6 blocks to Target (Past a Linens and Things, which I'm kicking myself for). Would you believe that they don't carry Cherry pitters!? It's Northern California! There are orchards everywhere and you don't carry Cherry pitters? Do you not eat fruit?? C said, "See, nobody uses Cherry pitters anymore".

"Well, what do they use to pit the cherries, Smarty Pants? "

"Nothing. They buy Jam."

Oh.

Etsy

I don't think that I've raved about Etsy much before, and I don't know why I haven't! I love Etsy. Love. There are so many great things that you can buy that are handmade and eco-friendly, what can be better than that? Another thing I think is great is that the shipping is always super reasonable. Its not like ebay where you pay $2 for the item and then $25 for shipping. I love it.

My most recent Etsy purchase were two soapdishes, one for my bathroom and one for the kitchen, from the seller Sumiko. They looked pretty in the pictures, but when I got them, the pictures did not do them justice! They are beautiful. Even my husband thought that they were pretty cool :)

Here is the one I purchased for the bathroom:

The seller actually pressed a real Hydrangea leaf into the clay, so you can see the veins and everything. It's beautiful.

This is the one that I got for the kitchen, and its equally beautiful. The picture does not show how pretty the flowers are.

So my point is, if you haven't had a chance to check out ETSY yet, you should. You'll be surprised at what you can find.

wahoo for sewing

I'm pretty proud of myself today. I am wearing a sweater that a few months ago I decided I was going to throw away. I just hated the buttons. They were shiny flower shaped buttons with Rhinestone petals. Ugly and Childish, so the sweater sat in my closet. I didn't throw it away because its the only button up work sweater that I own. Then it lost a button. More hmmhawing about throwing it away, nobody would want it anyways.
Then, last night I decided that I needed to wear a sweater today. So I pulled it out, and remembered the button Fiasco. Then I remembered I had some buttons in my sewing box from my sewing class three years ago. I found an adorable set of retro-fifty white dome buttons that have been around forever. I remember seeing them in my moms sewing box growing up.
So, I popped off the nasty flowers, popped the big white domes on and voila! My sweater is adorable! It looks like a 50's housewife sweater or something, and I love it. Its my new favorite.
So, I'm pretty proud of myself for recycling my old sweater instead of purchasing a new one.
I need to sew more.

Burnin' down the house

So last night I made pumpkin bread when I got off work. I only had about two hours between jobs, so I thought that I would make it count. After it cooked, I took it out of the oven and set it on a burner to cool.
Fast forward to 10 minutes later, I smell something burning. I run to the kitchen and there is my pumpkin bread smoking like a chimney. C had decided he was going to make a hamburger, so he had turned that burner on, and forgot about it. I didn't notice that it was on, because why would an empty burner that hasn't been used for days be hot?
Ya, it almost caught on fire. C insisted that it would still be good, we just had to scrape off the burned bottom. Well the smoke from the part that was burning filtered through the rest of the bread, and it was ruined. grrrrr.
We're just lucky we didn't leave the house or anything, it could have burned down.