A Peaceful Birthday

a cream-filled chocolate cupcake à la Hostess cupcakes

While excitement can be enticing, for me a quiet and peaceful birthday is preferable. One daughter was home all day, so she and I went for a long walk in the morning, stopping by a free pile and garage sale along the way. We snagged some gardening supplies and outdoor decorations for the great price of FREE. The other daughter came home around 1 PM and the two of them cooked a nice, late brunch for the 4 of us. The weather was gorgeous all day, so we dined on the deck. After brunch, I worked outdoors, organizing the portable greenhouse and potting some hanging baskets. My lovely daughters also made dinner for the four of us, which we ate while watching a movie using the roku. I also made the ginger ale syrup to use on Saturday night when we celebrated as a 6-some (with son and daughter-in-law). Just a very nice, laid back sort of birthday. 

A few days previous, I had mentioned a momentary longing for a Hostess cupcake, the kind with a cream filling. Well, my two daughters made a batch for us to have as my birthday dessert on Friday. They followed a scratch chocolate cupcake recipe of mine, filling with a copycat Hostess cream filling, and topping with fudge frosting. The copycat cream filling is one of many found online that contains marshmallow cream, powdered sugar, vanilla, salt, hot water, and shortening, like this one. My daughters modified the recipe slightly, making a marshmallow cream substitute with mini marshmallows and corn syrup, and then adding a bit of butter to taste at the end of mixing all of the ingredients. Very delicious and satisfied that longing.

Making Soda Pop

Did you know that there are a couple of kinds of soda pop that you can make at home? I have an aunt who was legend for her homemade root beer at family reunions. She flavored hers with sarsaparilla, sassafras, vanilla bean, and licorice root. This has been on my must-do summer fun list for years. I'm thinking this year on the 4th of July, my family will make root beer.

There's another flavor of homemade soda that I really enjoy and will be making today -- Ginger Ale. There are a few ways to carbonate flavored soda: dry ice, yeast, water kefir, and using club soda or seltzer water. Each has its merits. 

I'm going for easy, so I'll be adding club soda to a homemade ginger simple syrup. Ginger simple syrup is easy to make, simmering fresh lemon and fresh ginger root in water, sweetened with sugar, and cooked down to syrup stage. Finally, the syrup is strained before adding to the beverages, such as club soda or tea.

There's a reason I'm making ginger ale today. It's my birthday! Today, I'm choosing activities that will put a smile on my face. Making ginger ale is one of those fun projects to celebrate the day.

Have a great weekend!

Dyeing Polyester Fleece

Hard to get the lighting right on this.
It's more uniform in color than it looks in the photo.

My daughter Grace had a white bathrobe made of polyester fleece that she wanted dyed another color. I looked into dyeing synthetic fabrics and found a product made by Rit called DyeMore. Synthetic fabrics don't grab onto the traditional Rit dye very well. DyeMore is supposed to be a solution for these fabrics. 

Grace wanted her white robe dyed camel-colored. DyeMore in Sandstone looked like it would produce the correct color. I read and followed the online directions precisely, including using a high-heat dye technique instead of using my washing machine for dyeing. 

I pre-washed the robe in warm, soapy water to remove the manufacturer's finish. Using my very largest stainless steel stockpot, I brought 3 gallons of water up to 200 degrees F, as instructed, before adding the contents of the well-shaken dye bottle. I then submerged the robe. I kept the dye bath on the stove over Medium heat the entire time, noting polyester requires longer than nylon and other synthetics. I stirred as instructed. Then  a little after an hour (the recommended time by the dye manufacturer), I drained the dye bath and robe into the washer and washed it in warm soapy water and dried.

While the robe took color well, it grabbed more of the yellow and less of the tan than I had expected. It turned out more of a creamy yellow than camel. Fortunately for me, Grace loves this color as much as she says she would have loved a camel-color. There was also an issue with the threads on one of the pockets dyeing more tan than yellow. I hope that fades. I also wonder how this fleece color will launder over time. I've had many dyed items fade significantly with numerous washings. I guess we'll find out.

I was reading online that it's a gamble when dyeing synthetic fabrics. You never know how true the color will dye. While I was disappointed the color wasn't what I thought it would be, I'm relieved that this satisfied my daughter. 

Have you tried dyeing synthetic fabrics? What's been your experience with using fabric dye?

Fragranced Candle Not Burned All the Wax?

My son and daughter-in-law gave me this wonderful candle for Christmas. I used it while working out all winter and enjoyed its relaxing fragrance. Like so many jar candles, this one couldn't burn all the wax. There's about 1/4-inch of wax at the bottom of the jar. It's still delicately fragranced. And I didn't want to lose that aspect of the candle. I thought it might make a nice "sachet" for my pajama drawer.

I've got the remnant of wax in the jar set inside a drawer and am pleased that it gives just a hint of fragrance to my pjs. I'll eventually melt the wax and combine it with wax from similarly-fragranced candle remnants. But until then, it makes a nice "sachet".

Hanging Salad and Herb Baskets

We have 6 hanging baskets for plants for our house (5 are matching). In 2018, I had them all filled with flowers. Then in 2019 I thought to fill them with nasturtiums for edible blossoms. In 2020, I planted them with red leaf lettuce. Unbeknownst to me, one basket had a hitch-hiking nasturtium seed in the soil and gave me a very pretty little plant alongside that basket's lettuce. At the end of last season, I thought I'd like to grow several types of plants in each basket. That's what I'm trying this year. Here's a photo that I saw online that I'm trying to imitate.

So far for the baskets, I've started parsley, red and green leaf lettuce, and nasturtium seeds, plus I took cuttings from my existing thyme plant. I can add radish, spinach, and cilantro seeds directly to the baskets when transplanting my seedlings and cuttings. I think they'll be pretty. It looks like the best appearance comes from a very full basket. So, that's my goal. These will all hang along the eaves of the back of the house, where we get the most sun exposure. 

Pretty and edible -- that puts a smile on my face!

I was needing a new potholder . . .

If you remember, a couple of years ago I patched my oven mitts. That fix lasted a good two years. So, I'm satisfied with the work done then. However, my oven mitts have now developed actual holes (not just thin spots as before) right where my fingers need to be when I grab a hot baking pan out of the oven. In fact, I got a sharp surprise about a month ago when grabbing the pizza out of the oven. Ouch!

Anyway, I've been looking at oven mitts in stores and online for a few weeks. Most of what I find in the stores are all made in other countries. As I'm still trying to buy from my preferred countries, this left me with shopping through Etsy. As we all know, Etsy can be a bit expensive.

One afternoon, I just thought, "utilitarian items don't need to be pretty. It's okay with me if utilitarian items look utilitarian." Thinking in this way gave me the freedom to just sit down and sew a potholder, using some of my fabric scraps.

If you're practiced at making over blue jeans, you know that you wind up with lots of denim pieces like lower jean legs (jean shorts anyone?). A cut off lower leg of a pair of jeans is just the type of thing that a packrat like me will hold onto for years. Because, well, you know, you just might need that piece of denim. 

I used one denim leg (along with other scraps as an insulating layer) to make this denim potholder.  Using scraps that I had on hand meant little risk should it not turn out and no expense. The whole project took less than an hour and was ready to use that very night when making dinner.

It's nothing special to look at. But it is a utilitarian item, after all. Why am I telling you about my new potholder made from blue jean scraps? I know that sometimes I have a hard time beginning a project because of fear of failure. In sewing projects, that failure might be not turning out as well as my mind envisions. In these cases, I have to give myself permission to fail before I even begin. Using scraps that were free to me is just such "permission." Nothing at risk, but a lot to gain -- makes me think of the Nike slogan, "Just do it."

Now that I've actually made this one (and solved our potholder problem), I'm wishing I'd done this several weeks ago. Having a usable potholder would have saved my family members a burn or two. 

Sorry to Be AWOL Last Week

If you look really close, you can see my beet sprouts.
These are from seeds I saved from a beet plant last year.
I wasn't sure if they'd sprout or not and began to think not after 3 weeks.
Then one day, they surprised me!

After Easter, I crashed and crashed hard. I was exhausted to the point that I knew I couldn't do everything that I would normally. I had to drop a couple of items from my usual list in order to put in serious effort on other agenda items. So, I'm sorry that keeping up with this blog was one of the things I had to drop for the week. 

Easter is like many other significant holidays for me. Every year, I put a lot of work into pulling the entire holiday together for my family. I know many here don't "do" holidays to the extent that my family does, so I don't tend to post all that I do. Anyway, we had a wonderful Easter. I hope that you did, too! 

My Tomato Seedlings Grown from Seeds

I started a bunch of tomato plants the last week of February and have been growing them under lights indoors ever since. This is what my six-week old plants look like now. I'll be able to transplant these out to the raised bed garden, under plastic tunnels, after the 22nd of April. The Farmer's Almanac says I could transplant these out around the 12th to 18th of the month in my area, but my particular microclimate is a bit cooler than other parts of my zip code, due to lots of tall evergreen trees all throughout my neighborhood.

Anyway, just updating. The plants are looking healthy. I hope they will size-up a bit more before planting time.

So, a cost analysis -- I bought seeds this winter, spending about $3 for enough seeds for two seasons, so estimating $1.50 for the seeds for this batch of plants. I also bought potting soil in which to start the seeds and have been using electricity for the grow lights. A high estimate for a batch of 10 seedlings (some to give away and some to plant) is around $2.75 to $3.00, or 28 to 30 cents each plant. In some past years, I've bought a 4-pack of small seedlings for around $2.50, or about 60 cents per plant. And in other years, I've bought the much larger plants for about $2.50 to $3.00 each plant. 

Starting from seeds -- 30 cents each. Buying small seedlings -- 60 cents each. Buying large plants -- $3.00 each. 

The happy side bonus is that I get to watch the plants grow bigger and bigger with each passing week. You can't put a price tag on happy moments, can you?

Happy Easter!

 

Wishing you a Happy Easter!

Our Easter Menu

Mounce, Grace. Easter Watercolor. 2021.
Watercolor and gouache on paper. 7 in. x 10 in.

Yet another holiday celebrated as an outdoor event! We plan on having a cook-out (surprise, surprise), so that we can have our son and daughter-in-law with us. Our plan is an early afternoon brunch. And we'll once again use our patio fire ring. With the fire, we all stay warm as we roast our main dish. Here's the menu:

Brunch Kabobs (ham chunks, smoked beef sausage, green and red pepper chunks & mushrooms)

Egg and Cheese Strata

Baked Apples

Tomato and Watercress Salad

Grilled Canned Pineapple Slices

Banana Bread

Orange Juice, Coffee, Tea

Rhubarb Pie

All simple foods, wholesome and made from scratch. I think it will be delicious. As you can see, this is not at all a traditional Easter Dinner. Hopefully by next year, we'll be back to normal holiday celebrations. What are your plans for Easter?

 

Pom Pom Chick Critter

Just wanted to show you my cute (and itty bitty) pom pom chick friend. He looks like he's ready for Easter.

My Worst Cooking/Baking Fail Ever: Whole Wheat Brick

It was mentioned in the comments last week that doing a post on our worst cooking or baking fails might be fun. So, I'll share mine, and you can add yours in the comments. 

I was 19 and sharing a house with two girlfriends for the summer, while we all did local farm and cannery work. (I know, I used to live such a glamorous life. Aren't you envious?!) My roommates worked the day shift driving combines while I worked 3rd shift (overnight) packaging asparagus. My sense of time was askew all summer long. I slept in the day and was up all night. I did my grocery shopping literally at the crack of dawn, after my shift ended. On my days (nights) off, I was often at a loss for something to do. If I tried to sleep during the night, it would throw me off for my next shift. So, I just stayed awake on my nights off, reading, playing solitaire (with actual cards), going to the 24/7 laundromat in town, going for midnight bike rides, and baking or cooking.

One night, I had a thought to try baking yeast bread. I'd never baked yeast bread before, but had baked a lot of biscuits, cookies, and cakes growing up. I went to the grocery store and bought a small bag of whole wheat flour and yeast. It was around 3 AM when I came home, and my roomies were sound asleep.

Being young, stupid, and impatient, I thought something like this, "oh, you don't need to really follow these instructions to make bread. I'll just mix up the dough and bake it." I used all whole wheat flour and didn't knead the dough at all. I don't think I even knew what kneading bread dough looked like. I just stirred together the flour, water, sugar, salt, butter, and yeast, then plopped it all into a loaf pan. The recipe on the bag of flour said that this made 2 loaves. We only had one loaf pan. So into the single loaf pan that dough went. I didn't allow the dough to rise, instead I popped it into the oven as soon as the oven was hot.

I decided to lie down on the sofa and listen to some music, quietly, while my bread baked. Our range was really old and didn't have a timer function. So, we'd have to keep an eye on anything we were cooking. I bet you can see where I'm going here. I fell asleep, and the next thing I knew my roommate was yelling at me to wake up, saying that the house smelled like smoke. (no smoke detectors in those days) I was able to retrieve my blackening brick of whole wheat from the smoky oven. Was that thing ever a brick! It was not sliceable. It was not at all salvageable. I did learn a lesson on following instructions. I wouldn't try making yeast bread again for another 9 years after that disaster.

This was the one cooking/baking that I would give myself a grade of a complete F. F, not only for the result being a failure, but also to myself for thinking I didn't need to follow instructions. Oh well, we're all young and stupid once, right?

Your turn. Share your biggest cooking/baking fail ever.

March Grocery Recap

I'm going to finish this up for the month a day early. For March, I had roughly 3 1/2 grocery trips. Early in the month, I piggy-backed on my daughter's shopping at Target for 1 gallon of milk, spent $2.59. A few days later I was shopping at Fred Meyer for garden items and picked up a bag of ground flax seeds for $3.29. Mid-month, I did a pick-up order at Walmart to begin restocking a couple of things, spending $46.20. Because I'm also shopping in person at WinCo now, I also shopped there mid-month to pick up regular food items to get through the month. I spent $62.99. And finally, the other day, I did another pick-up at Walmart to restock flour. I spent $37.70. My monthly spending for March came to $152.77.

This is what I bought:

3 gallons vegetable oil, Walmart, $4.44 each

8 10-lb bags flour for bread, Walmart, $5.98 each (these bags are airtight, reusable zippered plastic and can store without probs with bugs; exp date is Feb. 2022)

1 5-lb bag whole wheat flour, Walmart, $4.14 (trying a new brand)
2 5-oz bags dried cherries, Walmart, $2.98

1 bag oyster crackers, WinCo, $1.19
2 boxes crackers, WinCo, $1.28, $1.58
1 box animal cookies, WinCo, $1.38
1 box toasty o's cereal, WinCo, $1.68
10-lb bag sugar, WinCo, $4.95
1 bag chocolate chips, WinCo, $1.68

1 can black olives, WinCo, 98 cents
1 jar mayo, WinCo, $1.98

1/2 lb pastel M&Ms, WinCo, $1.95

2 jars instant decaf, $6.32 ea

bag of ground flax seeds, $3.29

3 gallons 2% milk, 1 gallon whole milk (for making yogurt), WinCo, $2.28 ea for 3, $2.78 for 1
1 gallon whole milk (for making yogurt), Target, $2.59
2 lbs shredded sharp cheddar, 2 lbs shredded mozzarella, WinCo, $4.98 each

2 18-ct eggs, WinCo, $1.45 ea

8-ct box all-beef corndogs (special dinner for daughters), WinCo, $4.58
refrigerated cinnamon rolls (special breakfast for daughters), WinCo, $1.69

10 lbs apples, WinCo, 50 cents/lb
1 bundle celery, WinCo, 98 cents
1 head cabbage, WinCo, 48 cents/lb
8 bananas, WinCo, 42 cents/lb
3 cans frozen orange juice conc, WinCo, $1.30 each
3 cans apple juice conc, WinCo. 99 cents each

I didn't shop for meat as I had planned. I'll get to that in the next week. I did stock up on flour for yeast baking. (I also keep standard all-purpose flour on hand.) I'm also trying out a small bag of 100% whole wheat flour from the same company. 

We are still eating out of our freezers and pantry. In addition, our garden is now producing kale, watercress, and chives for us several times per week, and the sorrel will begin producing in early April. 

We've been baking several times per week lately. A pan of brownies one day, applesauce muffins the next, followed by a couple of loaves of sandwich bread, cupcakes, pie, etc. There is always something to snack on in the kitchen. Breakfasts are toast, cereal, oatmeal, fruit, and/or yogurt. We've had a lot of homemade soups for lunches lately. Plus sandwiches, eggs, fruit, veggies, yogurt, cheese. As I've mentioned in past posts, dinners are homey and filling scratch foods like pizza, macaroni and cheese, eggs, meatloaf, chicken casseroles, chicken and dumplings, beef stew, chicken nachos, chicken salad, bean/TVP burritos, rice and beans, TVP meatballs and spaghetti, etc. 

These past few months have been rather easy on the budget, but I expect next month will be a big-spend month. I want to pick up several packages of meat and will need to restock some pantry items from the restaurant supply. Buying those institutional-size packages may be cheaper per unit, but up-front they seem costly. And that about wraps up my grocery spending for the month.

Pressing Spring Blossoms

These beauties fluttered out of a re-used envelope I had sandwiched between a stack of books and my nightstand. I'd completely forgotten about doing this last spring and came upon them this past week quite serendipitously as I was cleaning and organizing. A Johnny Jump Up blossom is charming and uplifting to find in the garden but an even greater treasure to "find" as a pressed flower in the still off-season.

I pressed these on a whim one afternoon, with no particular end purpose other than to preserve them. However, there are many crafty things that can be done with pressed flowers and leaves. A couple of crafts that I've done: framed "prints" made with pressed leaves adhered to art paper, as well as greeting cards and gift enclosures made with card stock and pressed blooms. I've also seen more impressive projects, such as pressed flower phone cases, pressed leaf candle lanterns, and lacquered pressed blossom trays.

While pulling weeds from pots, I noticed that I have a nice Johnny Jump Up plant in one of my deck containers. The plant looks healthy and will hopefully provide a lot of blooms for me this spring. 

I pressed leaves and flowers every summer growing up. I had almost forgotten about that simple pleasure, then last year I pressed just a couple of blossoms. I'm so glad that I remembered to try this again, as pressing flowers is such a beautiful way to celebrate spring and summer. And I'm equally glad that I found these pressed flowers when I did. Otherwise, I might have forgotten to press more blossoms next month when the Johnny Jump Ups bloom in my area.

How about you? Do you ever press flowers or leaves?

An Ugly Pie is Better Than No Pie

I was thinking that sometimes the foods that I prepare are not all that attractive. If I were to grade my meals, I think they'd be B-students on average. I rarely produce something that is A-level, and have only produced a complete F item, once. I should say that my grades would be based on several factors: appearance, taste, economy, and nutrition. Most of the time, I do well on economy and nutrition. Taste ranges from so-so to pretty good. Appearance seems to run the gamut. I've produced some remarkably unattractive meals before. And I've also produced a few really nice-looking meals. 

My pie fell in the less-attractive category this time. Here's a comparison:

A Pinterest pie

My pie

But here's the thing, it doesn't matter to my family one bit that I made an ugly pie, so long as it was tasty. And that's why I say an ugly pie is better than no pie. My family is smart enough to value mediocre-looking meals rather than have no meals at all.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with these thoughts. Perhaps I'm thinking about the futility of perfectionism in some areas of our lives. The pilot of my next airplane flight -- yes, I want perfectionism. The next time I need dental work that involves a drill -- yes, I want perfectionism. But the appearance of our daily meals -- hmm, I think my time may be wasted on perfectionism in that area.

Anyway, the pie was delicious!

Update on Frozen Apple Juice Concentrate Made in the USA

So, I have 2 updates on frozen apple juice concentrate. I had reached out to Tree Top customer service to ask if every step of production for their frozen concentrate apple juice was USA. The reply I received was that, yes, all apples are grown in the USA and all bottling/packaging is done here in the USA as well.

In addition, I picked up WinCo brand frozen apple juice concentrate last week and it, too, is a product of the USA. (The lids of frozen juice concentrates are stamped with country of origin.) I now have 2 USA frozen apple juice concentrate brands to choose from in my area. The bonus with WinCo's product is it was actually less expensive than Walmart's product of China frozen concentrate.

As with the frozen blueberries from Dollar Tree, "made in the USA" doesn't always means "more expensive." In an ever-increasing spiral of grocery prices, that's a good thing to know.