Homemaking Organized Blog

Archive for May, 2010

Crackers have been on my mind for some time. They are a great quick snack and paired with cheese and fruit can become dessert, tea, or hors devours.

Yes you can buy crackers in the store but why when you can make so many different kinds.

And what if you have a food allergy, not only does price of crackers go up but selection goes down.

So recently I spotted a great recipe for some yummy looking crackers in some obscure magazine.

Yeah I promptly lost track of the magazine including the recipe.

I thought I had found the recipe in a Martha Stewart magazine  but I couldn’t locate it again.

Then I thought they had been in my Taste of Home Healthy Cooking magazine but I couldn’t find that either.

Note to self to keep track of recipes and magazine finds.

Then my aunt loaned me one of her copies of Mary Jane’s Farm magazine. Loaded with cracker recipes! I made the two below. Yummy yummy! They were quick and easy and it was a fun time for Peanut and I.

Make some crackers today!

Cracker recipes

Martha Stewart’s Simple White Crackers

Gluten Free Crackers

Graham Crackers (nummy)

Cheddar Gold Fish Crackers

King Arthur Flour Crunchy Crackers

“We are poor so we can only afford to buy the best.”

My aunt loves to tell me about a close friend who once told her that her mother lived by this quote. What does it mean? Buy quality. Quality lasts longer and you will save in the long run as there will be few replacements needed. Quality does not necessarily mean expensive though. Do your research.

We’re well into our container gardening this year and in case you were wondering how others were going about it I’ve dug up a couple of links for you…

1. My friend sent this one to me.  You’ll like it. Originally published in 2008, and loving called a patio farm, Jan has done a lot of experimenting on what can grow in pots and how.

And here’s a nice pick of her garden as of April

2. How to make your own salad bowl. With the recent (and yet again) ecoli breakout maybe it’s time.

3. And here’s a nice site all around about the ways of porch gardening. Lots to browse through so take your time

and be sure not to miss this carnival

Our Own Update:

Our gardening update is the tomatoes and peppers are in their containers and we had a hail storm…

Well we’re going strong with the garden. We’ve been getting out there every day watering, checking, tapping our fingers, waiting.

Tomorrow we’ll put out the tomato starts. I’ve been hardening them off the last 2 weeks and now they just hang out outside waiting for me to transplant them. I’m scared. I admit it. Tomato plants are so fragile and tempermental at the beginning that I get nervous any time I touch them. Last year we didn’t pluck or trim the suckers or whatever you call that so we’re going to do that this year. If I remember correctly we let them grow wild until about July and the finally my husband convinced me to leave him alone with them for a morning. When I came back he had hacked and twisted them into submission. I was afraid they were dead but they kept giving us great tomatoes all season long.

This year I also have to be a bit more careful about blossom end rot. I had that problem with some last year. I have the lime and I have to be more diligent about checking the water reservoir early on. They (I use the Garden Patch) say you only need to water once a week but I found myself needing to water every couple of days and when it got scorching sometimes daily.

The potatoes are doing well. They took a while to get going because it was still a bit chilly outside but they’re doing well now and we will probably need to top them off with more potting mix next week.

That’s all for now!

I really like cake. My whole family just loves cake…except for my husband. But that is another story. He enjoys them well enough but would rather have a pie than a cake any day.

Lately we have been into America’s Test Kitchen. You know the show where they find the best way to make a dish and test all kinds of methods, ingredients, and gadgetry. I had received their cookbook as a birthday present several years ago and true enough I turn to it for any basic recipe I’m about to embark on. I brought home some of their DVDs from season’s 3 and 6 to watch and we got hooked. We really enjoy cooking as a family and trying new things. All three of us. Peanut gets to mix spices, assemble veggies and she cracked her first solo egg a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway then we decided to take the plunge and subscribe to their annual online tv thing where you can watch all past and current shows for $20 a year.

We are having a ton of fun and my weekly menu has altered a bit as a result. I’m also finding myself spending a great deal of time in the kitchen so if you’ve noticed less updates all around blame America’s Test Kitchen.

We’ve been slowly making our way through the various cakes to see if we can improve on what we already thought was perfection (our own cake baking).

So far we have made the Classic White Cake with Almond and Raspberry filling (please note you won’t be able to see the full recipe unless you subscribe or take the plunge and sign up for the 14 day test drive WITH your credit card which they won’t charge until the 14 days are up). My husband loves this one. And I was surprised at that because as I said cake is not his thing. It’s also super easy. The key is to assemble your ingredients beforehand and weigh your flour and sugar. I have heard to weight certain ingredients but had never done it. Since I was using King Arthur’s new Organic Cake Flour which I was pretty sure is a bit denser than Queen Guinevere (sp) I thought I ought to weight it. Not possessing a regular kitchen scale… wait I think I had one before we moved. Oh well I used my old mailing scale and adjusted for the weight of the bowl.

The goal was to make cake baking a little easier. This was easy too. The egg whites were put in the milk and that easy addition to the flour/butter mix made it go very fast.

So voila!

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Our second cake to test drive was the chocolate cake. Being allergic to soy it’s only been the last several years that I found chocolate without soy. As a result I had NEVER baked a chocolate cake. Go figure! So I figured why not my first chocolate cake be one that has been tested etc.

The goal was to make a chocolatey tasting cake but not a decadence cake with a fluffy frosting not a ganache or non-chocolate tasting frosting. There were issues with cooling the melted chocolate and not ‘cooking’ the eggs by adding the sugar too fast. And whipping cream was used in the frosting which probably added a few more pounds to me.

This cake took a little more time than the raspberry one and it took us much longer to devour because the chocolate was so intense.

The end result while good was a bit too chocolatey for me (ducking the tomatoes and eggs being thrown). Not being able to eat chocolate for so long means I eat it in small doses. The cake came out wonderful though and all was perfection as you can see.

Mother’s Day is just around the corner…I mean just! So what are you doing? Lavish gifts? Dinner out?  None of the above? Well if you’re like me and like to acknowledge all the mother’s you know, just not as lavishly as you do your own mother, then here are a few links for small crafts and cards to make for the special mother’s in your life.

Take Me Home: Printable Mother’s Day cards.

Mother’s Day Tissue Paper Card

Make Handmade Sachets for Mother’s Day

Spring Bouquet for your Mother’ Day table.

Darling and Cute Eco Mother’s Day Crafts

Mother’s Day Crafts for Kids to Make

Mother’s Day Cup and Saucer Flower Holder