The Learning Curve

There should be a name and formula for a handcrafters trial and error way of learning how to make something.  I see an idea (and I confess, most of my creativity comes from other people's work...) and I think "I would like to try that!"  or "I could do that!"  Sometimes it turns out well, and I can add improvements, other times, not so much...

I saw a post on a friend's FB page for "Yarn Balls".  They are just what the name implies--balls of yarn that you put into your dryer along with wet clothes, and they work to soften the clothes, eliminating the need for chemical fabric softeners and dryer sheets.  They are made with 100% wool yarn, and felted in the washing machine, so that the fibers bond themselves to each other, and they work  crazy good.  There are any variety of videos showing how to do this, and since I have bags of yarn in my closet that will never be used for anything else, I decide I want some of these babies.  Wind the yarn, put it into old pantyhose, tie it off, and wash in hot water in the washer, then dry.  Cut away the nylon, and voila!  Yeah, right.

The first batch of six, I put into the pantyhose, and tied them off like beads on a necklace.  Dropped them into the washer, and when I came back, the nylon had torn apart on several of them, and the yarn had wrapped around and around the washer's agitator, so that I had to get a scissor and cut away the huge tangle.  Several of them survived.  Luckily, I have a lot of yarn.  Not so many pantyhose, however, especially in the winter, when I live in knee socks and boots...

Second attempt.  I had some odd cone yarn, already in balls, and so I used that as a base, and wound some yarn around them that I knew would felt well.  I raided my stash of pantyhose, and found some knee-highs that had dead elastic tops, and this time, tied the balls  using cotton string, and cut them apart, so they were individuals in the washer.  Learning curve step one.  When the wash cycle is done, some of the strings have worked their way off the nylon, the felting yarn has come off the cone yarn, and massed itself to itself--another big mess--nothing salvaged this time, except the cone yarn balls, which have not felted, or oddly, come unwound.

Third attempt.  I used some brain cells thinking up a feasible substitute for the pantyhose, since I had exhausted my supply.  In my attic is a roll of white nylon that must have been meant for sheer curtains, folded double so that it is more than 120" wide.  I cut about 10" and stitched it into a tube.  This time, I put each ball into it's own separate covering, knotted each end, and into the hot water they go.  Another step up on the learning curve:  I do not ignore them.  After about 5 minutes, I check back, and find that as the yarn compresses, the covers are not shrinking along with them, the way pantyhose would have done, and some of them are beginning to unravel inside.  I pull them out, rewind the ones that are coming apart, and reknot to take up the slack in the coverings.  After that, things go better, and I now have a collection of yarn balls, which I intend to pass along to people who will give them a try.

I have been using the first ones that I made for a couple of weeks now, and they really do seem to soften up the clothes, and there isn't any static cling.  I put three into the dryer with a load of laundry, and who knows why they work?  I had purchased some plastic ones a while back, and they were useless, not to mention very noisy. 

So--I used up one bag of yarn, and no longer have to purchase dryer sheets.  A win/win!  And, I learned a lot...

It's Cold And Everybody Wants Soup!

Soup has so much appeal when it is freezing out.  It's warm, it's smooth, not a lot of chewing involved, and if you know how to spice it up just right, it's delicious!  This recipe originated on a web site, but I fiddled with it.  I don't know how much changing it requires before it becomes an "original" recipe, but here's what I did.  We just reheated the leftovers, and enjoyed a second dinner, plus one more container is headed for the freezer.

Creamy Crock Pot Chicken Soup

2 tbs vegetable oil
4-6 medium sized carrots, 1/2" dice
1 c chopped celery
1/2 chopped Spanish onion

4 c chicken stock
2 c water
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 pkg (5 oz) Carolina long grain rice and wild rice

4 tbs butter
1/4 c flour
2 c warm water
1 env powdered milk

salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a saute pan, and sweat the vegetables until they are a little soft.  Put them in the crock pot with the stock, 2 c water, chicken breasts and the rice package.  Set the crock pot on high for a couple of hours, then turn it to low for another 3 hours or so.  If you are out all day, set to low for the day.  Half the time I don't think about dinner until noon, so I give the heat a boost, just to get it cooking.

If you are at home, about an hour before serving, pull the chicken out and let it cool down so that you can shred it without annoying your fingers.  If you don't have the luxury of time, you'll just have to do it while it's hot.  In any case, put it back into the crock pot to reheat.

Melt the butter in the saute pan, add the flour, some salt and pepper, and anything else that occurs to you by way of seasoning, and cook until bubbling.  Dissolve the powdered milk, whisking out the lumps, and gradually whisk into the butter flour mixture, and cook until thickened.  Stir this into the crock pot.  By now things should be looking and smelling pretty good, so get the soup bowls out and ladle away!

The original recipe skipped the first veg saute, and used a box of Rice-a-Roni long grain and wild rice.  I couldn't find this in my store, and thought the Carolina packet looked fine, and it was delicious, so I'll stick with that.  Also, the thickener was twice the butter, and 2 c half and half.  I imagine this would be lovely and rich, but I wanted to cut the calories.  Also, I don't see why this wouldn't work with chicken on the bone--maybe legs, but certainly the boneless breasts made things simple.  Anyhow, just thinking out loud.  Hope you like it!

Pineapple USD Baby Cakes

I've been absent for a long time--ran out of things to say, I guess.  Or maybe too many hours on jet planes has fried my brain.  Anyhow, we had company last night for dinner, and since there was a test recipe from America's Test Kitchen that needed reviewing, I decided it would be a "comfort food" menu.  The test was Mac and Cheese that is made ahead, and frozen in a disposable foil pan.  It baked up very nicely, and we all thought it was pretty tasty.  The trick is to undercook the pasta so that it isn't mushy after being frozen.  So, what goes with M&C?  Meatloaf, and I thought a homey dessert would fit the bill--pineapple upsidedown cake.

So, since I can't help tweaking any recipe that comes before my eyes, I decided to make baby cakes.  That single slice of pineapple was just calling out for a starring solo appearance, and it made a very nice presentation.  And what has to be in a pineapple dessert?  Rum, of course.  A little of that went into the topping and the batter as well.  So--here's the recipe--made it up myself!

 

 

Serves 8 

8 Buttered  Ramekins

1 can Pineapple slices in juice

8 maraschino cherries

8 tbs brown sugar

10 tbs melted butter

1 1/2 cup flour

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

2/3 cup white sugar

2 eggs

2 tbs rum

 

Heat oven to 350*.  Butter the ramekins.  Drain off the pineapple slices, saving the juice.  Put 1 tbs of brown sugar into each ramekin, patting it flat with a small fork.  Drizzle in some melted butter and a little rum.  There should be about 8 tbs butter left for the cake batter, and 1 tbs of the rum.  Put the pineapple slices on top of the sugar, with a cherry in the middle.

 

Cream the egg, butter, and sugar until light colored, and add in the rum.  Combine the dry ingredients and add to the butter mixture, alternating with the pineapple juice, finishing with the dry ingredients.  I didn't measure out the pineapple juice--just added enough to look like a good cake batter-not too thick, not too thin.  Pour batter over the pineapple slices.

 

Put the ramekins on a large baking pan, spacing them out so that the heat can circulate.  Bake 25-30 minutes, until top springs back when you touch it with your finger.  Cool on a rack-loosen the edges of the cake while it is still warm.  When the ramekins are cool enough to handle, upend onto the serving plates.  I think if you wait too long, the sugar in the bottom will not come out nicely. Enjoy!





 

                                                                                                                                                                                               

Mac and Cheese

Who doesn't like Mac and Cheese?  Those of us who shouldn't be eating it only manage to make it once in a blue moon, but goodness knows, life is too short to survive the kind of deprivation required to maintain the weight of the previous decade, and I have long questioned if it is worth the struggle.  I go to Weight Watcher's off and on, especially when I have a friend who motivates me, and this last time I ended up the "biggest loser" of the three of us who signed on.  By "BL" I mean the one who gave up first and managed to gain back that which was lost.  Well--I did okay for a couple years, anyhow. 

Weight Watchers has left me with several recipes that are really good that I truly like, and this is the one for Mac and Cheese.  I will write the original and then offer my variations.

12 oz elbows
1/2 cup fat free sour cream

12 oz fat free evaporated milk (1 can)
1 TBS Dijon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 pepper
1/8 tsp nutmeg

8 oz reduced fat Colby or cheddar

2 TBS bread crumbs
2 TBS grated Parmesan

Boil the pasta until al dente.  Drain, and put into a baking dish.  While it is hot, add the sour cream, and mix it in.

Scald the can of evaporated milk--this seems to be necessary to keep it from curdling during the baking.  Add in the salt, pepper, mustard and nutmeg.  Reduce the heat to low, or take it off the heat and stir in the cheese until smooth.  Pour it over the pasta. 

Mix the bread crumbs and the Parmesan and sprinkle over the top.

Bake 350* for 40 minutes

Okay--here's me.  My oven runs hot, so I turned it down to 335*.  I also pulled it out after 30 or so minutes, since the last time I left it in too long, and the creaminess sort of clogs up between the pieces of pasta.  This time it was perfect.

My bad self also lightly browns up a package of fresh chorizo and stirs that in.  This time I had a package of Johnstown Chicken Sausage (with red peppers and cheese), and I just sliced that up and put it in without browning, since I thought the cheese would probably just melt out and mess up the frying pan, and besides, it looked pretty cooked right out of the package.  I have no idea what this does to the calorie content or the WW points--just that it makes it into a meal.  Also, I only had 8 oz of pasta, and only used 4 oz of regular cheese, and MT and I finished less than half the pan.  I don't know how many servings the original is supposed to serve.

Something else that I just thought of--I only had about a quarter cup of the FF sour cream, so I added about a quarter cup of FF mayonnaise...

Yeah, I know--I confess I cook by the seat of my pants, and each time things are different.  It depends a lot on what is in the house at the time.  Works for me!

Present To Self

  I decided that since we are travelling so much this fall, that I had better get a start on Christmas shopping.  One year we went on a cruise right before Thanksgiving, and I swore I would never do that again.  Never say never.  We have all sorts of places to go before the holidays and I wouldn't miss any of them.  But, it is going to require some planning, and so I have started prowling my favorite stores, and investigating on the web.  Boxes are already arriving at our house, pretty much daily, and I'm sure our mailman is wondering what's going on here. 

 

Of course, once I start looking around, I manage to find all sorts of things that would be just perfect for ME!  I confess that this happens every year.  I see all sorts of wonderful things that I didn't know were out there, and I buy myself a "treat".  I have been looking to replace my hand mixer for a while now.  A small dilemma, since the one that we have is still working after 46 years.  It was a wedding gift, and a testimony to the Sunbeam Company that manufactured it.  I had looked in the stores at the new ones there on the shelf, and found that they are all pretty big and clunky, and wasn't happy to commit the extra shelf space.  And, there is a certain amount of Yankee Guilt in giving up something that still works and does the job.

 

But, then I saw this model, with a nifty little stand that will sit very nicely on my lazy Susan under my cabinet, and not roll around and tangle its cord with the other appliances that reside there.  Had to have it.  I found one online for a very reasonable price and my other favorite thing-Free Postage!  Present for ME!  Oddly, it too is a Sunbeam....Hope it lasts 46 years!

That Took Long Enough To Figure Out!

We have lived in our home thirty-seven years now.  When we moved in everything worked, plumbing, electricity, water, which was what we needed at the time, what with four kiddies aged 5 and under.  The person who did the decorating before we got there really had a liking for bright colors (shiny orange and red on some of the woodwork), and big loud wallpaper patterns.  Job one was getting the black and white striped sanitas off the walls in the front hall, and on from there.

We worked our way through the house, up and down, in and out, until it looks pretty civilized, and we enjoy living here.  Unfortunately, there are several rooms looking like they should be done over, but as I get older, it seems more daunting, and I am reluctant to look too closely at the flaws. 

There are several corners which have been ignored--the interior of the upstairs bathroom closet, the back stairway (whose woodwork remains an unfortunate beach cabana blue) and the dark red linoleum tiles in the downstairs bathroom closet.  All these places have doors that close...

One area that we always lamented was our front porch.  It had been enclosed before we got the house, with 18 windows wrapping around from the north side, across the front, and all the way down the south side of the house.  They were painted shut for years, a good air lock for cold winters, but making an oven-like space in the summers.  MT chipped out a few windows each year so that we could ventilate out there, but the porch's flat roof always leaked, and the paint on the ceiling was peeling away in little squares.

A couple of summers back, MT decided it would be the year of the porch.  Actually, years of the porch.  He rebuilt all the windows, with sash weights so that now they open, and easily, I might add.  He has made screens for most of the windows, and spent countless hours tracking down leaks and tarring the roof, so that when he scraped and painted, it would stay nice.  He replaced the old light fixture with a new lighted ceiling fan, and painted up the wicker furniture that we had brought down from the ancestral home more years ago than I like to think about.  Finally, we don't feel like we are walking our visitors through the garage when they come to our house.

We've always enjoyed eating dinner out on our little back deck in the summers, but this year due to weather conditions, there were many mosquitoes.  We were getting chewed up out there, and one night we decided to eat on the front porch.  We put the overhead fan on, and brought out a couple of candles, and suddenly have a new favorite sitting place.  Just goes to show--there's always something new in your life, even if you've been in the same old place for many years...

Eye Appeal

Cupcakes have made a comeback.  They seem to have appeal on so many different levels--you don't have to purchase a whole big cake, you can sample a bunch of different kinds in one bakery box, they are always pretty, and everyone gets their own. 

 

Someone came up with the idea of using Ice Cream cones instead of cupcake papers, and I wanted to give it a try.  It isn't quite so simple.  I think the directions said to bake them in a muffin tin, which I probably did the first time and it worked out pretty well until I tried to manage them after the baking was complete.  They tend to be top heavy once the frosting goes on, and transporting them was a nightmare.

I tried again, and decided if I cut holes into an upside down foil lasagna pan set onto a baking sheet, things would turn out better.  My first attempt was a qualified success, since I started with X slits in the pan that I enlarged to squares.  But they were uneven, and some of the cones again tipped over in the car.  Note--they still got eaten...

Attempt #3 worked out very well.  I traced the base of the cone onto a piece of cardboard, enlarged it a bit, then scribed the circles onto the foil pan, and cut them out with my kitchen scissors.  The cones set much more solidly in the pan, and even though these never made it out of my kitchen, I'm sure the transportation issue would be solved.  They bring a smile to the faces of the kids--they can't wait to get them!  And some of them aren't so small...