Cornbread from scratch

Cornbread is a staple in our house. We always have a couple boxes of Jiffy cornbread mix in the cupboard because my husband LOVES cornbread. I've always found it to be too dry and not worth eating, but hey, if he doesn't say anything about the massive amounts of chocolate I eat, I'll let him have the cornbread. So one day last week I went to make cornbread... and we didn't have any! I was confused. I looked through every cupboard. How could we be OUT of cornbread??? I'll make some from scratch, I thought. It couldn't be too hard, and I know I've got cornmeal around here somewhere because I bought it for one of those kids sensory exercises you find all over Pinterest. Nope. I had corn starch. Not really the same thing.

So the next time I went shopping I bought a big bag of corn meal plus two boxes of Jiffy just in case I was an idiot and couldn't make good cornbread from scratch. A few days later I made "Homesteader Cornbread" from Allrecipes.com, and now I'm seriously considering giving away the Jiffy. It was easy. It was cheap. It used only ingredients that I already had (plus the cornmeal). And I actually liked it. Not enough to choose it over sweet rolls or croissants, but enough to choose it over nothing, which is a huge step for me. Unlike cornbread from a box, you don't feel like all of the moisture has been sucked out of your mouth when you're eating it. My husband said that cornbread was the kind of cake he wanted for his next birthday (weirdo). So for anyone curious enough to try it, but too lazy to look it up themselves, here is the recipe:

1 1/2 C cornmeal
2 1/2 C milk
2 C all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2/3 C sugar
2 eggs
1/2 C vegetable oil (I used olive oil)

In a large bowl, mix together cornmeal and milk. Let stand 5 minutes. Add all other ingredients and stir until smooth. Pour batter into a greased and floured 9x13 pan. bake at 400 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

QUICK. EASY. CHEAP. DONE. How did Jiffy convince us all to keep buying those stupid little boxes?

Alex's 3rd birthday cake - Lightning McQueen

I decided to make a birthday cake for my neighbor's son, Alex. He's really into cars right now, so I decided to make him a Lightning McQueen cake. I also wanted to try a technique I found on Pinterest that allows you to make coloring pages into buttercream images. You can find the link to the post I followed here.

First you need to find a picture that you want to copy and print it out in the correct size. If it has any text on it, you will want to flip the image before you print it. I realized that my image was going to be a mirror image but didn'tcare which direction the car faced. I didn't think about the fact that the numbers on the side of the car and the word "Rusteze" on the hood would be backwords until I put it on the cake. Go me.

You are going to place your printed image on a flat surface such as a piece of glass or the underside of a cake pan and tape a piece of wax paper over it. Then make your frosting. I suggest using a fairly thick buttercream for the outlines and then thinning it a bit for the fill. I used a fairly thick buttercream for the whole thing and it didn't end up being completely flat. Do your outlines first. If you have a very detailed picture like I did and you want to use a thin outline tip, that's fine, but use a thicker line for the outside line. I used a thin line all over and you could see under it on the final cake. Then fill in everything else, starting with the smallest, most intricate area first. When you are doing the larger areas later, you will want to frost right over the small lines and intricate areas with your main color of frosting. When you finish, you will want your entire picture to be about 3/16" thick.

Then put it in the freezer for about 15 minutes Longer is fine- you just want to make sure you give it enough time to freeze. When you remove it from the freezer, untape it and flip it onto your cake quickly, then (also quickly) peel off the wax paper. Your image will stick to the wax paper when it is frozen, so you don't have to worry about doing the actual flipping quickly, you just need to peel the wax paper off while it's still frozen. I imagine if you move too slowly you can probably put the entire cake in the freezer with the image and wax paper attached for 15-20 minutes, and then take it out and peel it then. My image did not turn out as good as I was hoping but it's still much better than I could have done freehand. I will try it again some other time using the tips I've posted here and see if I have a better experience. Please let me know if you try it and how it works for you!

Raising tadpoles - part 1

Like most kids, my son has a fascination with animals. The problem is that while we used to have a ton of pets, we got rid of most of them before he turned a year old because with a baby in the house, we just didn't have time for snakes, lizards, rabbits, etc. We still have a dog and two cats, but he wants a turtle. Or a horse. Or the bird at the pet shop. Or the squirrel climbing a tree. Mainly he wants a turtle, and oddly enough I've seen two turtles crossing the road in the past week that I could have taken home with me instead of just moving them away from traffic. The problem is that I don't want a turtle or any other animal that I have to feed and house and possibly even buy.

A few weeks ago our tomato plants got attacked by tobacco worms, which are fairly attractive, very destructive caterpillars that turn into plain-looking brown moths. They reeked havoc on my plants but also provided me with a unique opportunity- a  completely free pet. I saved one of them from being a skid mark on the bottom of my shoe and put it in a plastic jar. My husband found a stick and some moss and drilled holes in the lid, and we dropped in a few of the already half-eaten green tomatoes. For almost a week, Ronan was ecstatic. he talked about his caterpillar (which he called a crap-pillar), all the time. He walked around with his jar showing it to anyone that would look. Then the darn thing cocooned and it was back to "Mommy! Mommy! Turtle. Hold it?" Even when there were no turtles anywhere nearby. (My son just turned 2 last month, so his vocabulary and sentence structure are understandably limited) I still hadn't figured out what I was going to do about Ronan's recent pet fascination when the answer forced itself on me.

Now for anyone that doesn't know me, I am a tree-hugger. Not literally, but I am more of an animal/nature lover than anyone else I know. I still go outside sometimes after it rains to save the worms from drying up and dying on the sidewalk. So when I went to clean my son's swimming pool and found hundreds of tiny tadpoles, there was no choice to make other than what I was going to put them in and where they were going to go. I think I ended up with about 300 miniature tadpoles, each approximately the size of a flea. Trust me, it was fun trying to separate them from the -even more plentiful- mosquito larvae. I put 200 of them in a ten gallon aquarium and the rest in a large fishbowl. I went to two of the local boat ramps but couldn't find any suitable pond plants, so I ended up adding some sphagnum moss instead. Now if you haven't used sphagnum moss before, let me just say that it is a good staple to have around if you are the sort of person that takes in random creatures from outside. It is very versatile. It can live in water or on land and if it doesn't get enough water, it will just dry up until it gets more and then quickly become lush and green again. It available at most pet stores, though I would recommend a reptile store if you have one nearby. We bought a block of it (It came in a cube shaped bundle, tied together and covered in plastic) at least 5 years ago, and even though we have used it for many things, we still have most of it left. it lasts a long time for three reasons: 1- It EXPANDS when you get it wet. (You should soak it for at least 20 minutes before you use it so that it reaches its full size and becomes more pliable) 2- You can reuse it. I soaked WAY too much for my tadpole tanks, so now the portion I'm not going to use is drying in sun and will be put back away later. 3- You can't kill it. I mean I'm sure you could burn it or poison it or something, but you can't accidentally kill it because of its completely flexible water and lighting needs. So:

aTank

aPlants (to hide in)

aNon-chlorinated water (We have well water, but if you don't, you can just let some sit uncovered for a few days)

rFood

What the heck do you feed a tadpole? In the wild they eat pond scum, but I didn't have a good way to bring any of that inside. And it's gross. So my husband did some research and found out that they love boiled letuce. He chopped a couple of leaves and boiled them for 10 minutes. Then he froze it in icecube trays so that I would have single servings. After it was frozen, I popped them out and moved them to a ziplock.  If I have to make more later, I will probably just spread it out on some wax paper so that I can break it all up and have more more control over how much food they get at a time. Anyway, they love the lettuce. I've had them for about a week now and they've grown a lot off of it. They still attack the lettuce with tenacity every time I drop some in, which is once every few days. I haven't read anything about tadpoles and iceburg lettuce (the kind that comes in a round head like cabbage), but iceburg lettuce has basically no nutritional value and you should never feed it to turtles, iguanas, or other animals that live off mainly greens. I gave my tadpoles Romaine lettuce, but I assume they would also enjoy other types of greens. If you don't have lettuce, you could even try using chickweed or dandelion greens, both of which are non-toxic.

Ronan doesn't seem very excited about the tadpoles. I don't think he understands what they are and they are too small to catch his eye. I'm not sure how big they will get since the full-grown tree-frogs are only a little over an inch long, but he loves seeing frogs no matter how small they are, and with 300 tadpoles, I think we're going to get a LOT of frogs.

Garden Chicken Bake

I have a confession to make - I can't cook. I mean, most of my friends would say that I can -in fact most people would probably say that I can- but that's just because sometimes I do. I can read and follow directions, so if I have a recipe in front of me, it tends to turn out pretty well. When I say I can't cook, what I mean is that I absolutely NEED a recipe. If I'm baking junk food, I can just kinda make stuff up and it turns out good. I rarely follow a dessert recipe to the letter. If I use a recipe at all, it's more of a guide or an inspiration. I usually end up changing at least half of the ingredients. And I've always wanted to be able to do that with real food. But I can't. Even with simple stuff like chicken, I need a recipe. I don't know how long to cook it, or at what temperature, or if I need to turn it, baste it, season it, etc. And don't even ask me to add, remove, or substitute ingredients.

I know there are a lot of people that are like me when it comes to cooking. Being able to "make dinner" without the help of frozen entrees has become a dying art. Now that most women work, making dinner from scratch has become too much of a hassle and no one does it anymore. Which means that we aren't learning how. A little over a year ago, I became a stay-at-home mom. I quickly fell in love with Pinterest, taught my son sign language and myself crochet, and started spending time outside. This year I have a garden, and we are already having trouble eating everything it produces. I decided that we are going to eat or preserve everything that comes out of the garden. We are not letting anything go to waste and we are not giving anything away. Now I realize not giving ANYTHING away sounds kind of selfish, but I am doing it to force myself to learn how to make the most of my garden instead of just giving away everything that doesn't conveniently fit into my meal plan. To reach my goal, I will have to dehydrate, freeze, and learn how to can. I will also have to find recipes that use whatever vegetable I happen to have large amounts of or  *gasp* I'll have make to some up. Today I created my first recipe, and amazingly enough it tasted good.

Garden Chicken Bake

1 zucchini, thinly sliced
4 banana peppers, sliced in rings (mine taste more like bell peppers though every once in a while you get a bite with a little bit of kick)
2 chicken thighs, cooked, deboned, and chopped
barbeque sauce (I used Jack Daniels Steakhouse)
parmesan cheese
mozzarella cheese, shredded

In an 8x8 pan, make a layer of zucchini, then a layer of peppers. Next sprinkle on a layer of Parmesan cheese. Add a layer of chicken and another layer of zucchini. Then put the barbeque sauce on. I didn't use much barbeque sauce, but my chicken had also been grilled with barbeque sauce, so if your chicken is plain you may want to be more generous. Then add the rest of the peppers and the rest of the chicken and cover with mozzarella. bake at 350 for 25 minutes.

It turned out great and used up zucchini and peppers from the garden AND leftover chicken without me having to add a bunch of new ingredients, so I call it a success! And now I'll be less worried making up dishes in the future :-)

Update: My zucchini are doing terrible this year, but the peppers are still going strong so I ended up making this recipe again, but layering it with cooked yellow rice instead of zucchini. It was also very good.

birthday cakes

I adapted this recipe from Brown Eyed Baker's chocolate buttercream recipe, which can be found here. My husband and I do not generally like whipped frosting. In fact, we don't like whipped food at all. Eating flavored air kinda makes me want to gag. I don't know why I thought this recipe would be worth trying- aside from the fact that pretty much all the other recipes I could find call for heavy cream, which I have never purchased in my life. But I tried it, and it wasn't good. Now if you like whipped frosting, I would recommend it. I could almost taste it, and for flavored air that's pretty high praise. I added an extra cup of powdered sugar, which made it thick enough for me to eat, though another cup or two probably would have been even better. It tasted very sweet but not very chocolaty, so I added some unsweetened cocoa powder, and I think the resulting frosting is delicious. In the future, I may try adding more powdered sugar and chocolate. I'll have to see how it tastes with the cake and how it stands up to the heat. Our party is outside and it's supposed to be in the 80's that day. Anyway, here is the recipe as I made it:

Whipped Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

1 C butter or margarine, at room temp
3 1/2 C powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 C semisweet chocolate chips, melted and cooled slightly
1 Tbsp special dark cocoa powder

Whip the butter with the whisk attachment on your mixer for 5 minutes on medium. Slowly add the other ingredients, starting with the powdered sugar, mixing the whole time. (While adding the powdered sugar you will want to mix on low speed) You will need to stop occasionally to scrape the sides of the bowl. Once everything has been incorporated, mix for another minute or two. Enjoy!

The white cake (which is actually confetti cake) also got buttercream frosting, but I just used this recipe from my homemade Oreos:

1/2 C (1 stick) of butter (or margarine), softened
4 Tbsp half and half (or milk)
2 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt
7 C powdered sugar

Mix everything except the powdered sugar together. Then add the powdered sugar one cup at a time.

I made both cakes from boxed mixes because I don't feel making cake from scratch is worth it unless it is a  flavor you can't get in a box (like Apple Dabble Cake - YUM!)

update: I wasn't really thrilled with how plain my cakes turned out, but they ended up sagging in the heat so I'm kind of glad I didn't spent too much time on them. Luckily, Ronan is only 2 years old so he didn't know the difference. Maybe next year I'll learn my lesson and have an indoor party. I didn't take a picture before we left because I was going to put toy trains on my son's cake before we served it, but after sitting in the heat so long it wasn't stable enough to put the trains on, so this picture was taken right before we cut them.

Our Built-in DVD shelf with TV mount

In December, we remodeled part of our house. In our entire 3 bedroom house, we had one tiny hall closet in addition to our standard bedroom closets. There was no where to store anything, but all of our rooms were enormous. We decided to rip out our closet wall and build a large walk-in closet, stealing the space from the adjacent bedroom. In addition to the wall we built to separate the closet from the second bedroom, we also had to build a wall where the front of our closet had been since we were putting in a standard door where the 7 foot closet opening had been. When you first walk into the room, there is a wall directly to your right. If you follow that wall to the back of the room, you reach the door to our new closet. I don't feel like my post so far is making much sense, so if you are confused, maybe these pictures will help:

View from the second bedroom:
Here the closet has been ripped out and the new door and wall have been added to fill in the space from the old closet opening. The brown walls are part of the second bedroom. The blue walls are the inside of the master bedroom's old closet. After this picture was taken, we added another wall separating the new closet from the second bedroom between the door and the vent in the ceiling.

This is the same wall from the other side, after all of the work has been finished and our new DVD rack has been built. The door on the left goes into the closet. The door on the right is the entrance from the hallway.
 Someday, my husband will get around to finishing the trim around the closet door.

Anyway, we didn't want to put anything between the two doors that would stick out into the isle because then you would have to walk around it to get to the closet. More importantly, it would become an obstacle any time you were moving anything large in or out of the closet. So, we decided a DVD shelf and TV mount would be perfect. It would only stick out about 6" and we could still get good use out of the wall space. The only problem is that DVD players never fit on a 6" shelf, and since we're cheap and don't pay for cable, the TV is useless without a DVD player. 

Luckily, we realized all of this before we finished building the wall. We noted where the cross-braces were, and my husband ran the electrical wires to where we were going to want an outlet before we put up the drywall. Then when he built the DVD shelf, he made a cubby in the wall so the DVD player would fit and he put an outlet into the ceiling of the cubby so we could plug in the DVD player and TV. This would have been much more difficult if the wall had already been finished, and I'm not sure we would've attempted it. We plan to divide another room in about a year and I will definitely spend a long time thinking about what we may want against the new wall before we finish building it.

New Fire Pit - Part 2 of 2

About 2 months ago, I wrote a post about the beginning of my latest project: turning my trash heap of a burn pit into a pretty, stone-lined fire pit. You can read about the early stages of my project here. I have finally completed it, and it is everything I had hoped it would be. To recap, this is what it started out looking like:

Technically, this is what it looked like after many hours of digging. It started out shallower on the right side, which is where we decided we wanted our burn area to be. So, in this picture I have already started digging the hole on the right side, using the dirt to help fill in the left side. We knew before we even started that we would need to buy dirt to fill in the old hole, and we were right. It ended up taking 5 pickup truckloads of dirt and we probably should have used 6.

I'm cheap, and patio bricks are expensive, so I spent a long time thinking about what to line my new burn pit with. When I thought up the answer, I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner. Broken concrete! I've seen it listed free on Craigslist a lot (usually as fill) and always wondered why anyone would voluntarily put a big pile of concrete in their yard, even if they did need to fill in a hole. I still would never use it as fill, but for wall-building, I'm in. I looked through the free ads and did a search for "broken concrete". I got a few results, but they were all about an hour and a half away. I decided to wait for something closer. 

After about a month of waiting and religiously checking Craigslist, I gave in. Not only had there been no ads posted closer to me, there had been no ads posted, period. I e-mailed a guy that had posted an ad for broken concrete a month earlier, fully expecting it to be gone. It wasn't, and he seemed relieved that someone finally wanted the pile of rubble that had become a permanent addition to his front yard. He said that it had been put there with a loader and we would need to bring a sledgehammer to break up some of the bigger pieces. Perfect. I had been worried that all of the concrete would be broken too small to use as bricks, since apparently the only known use for broken concrete is filling in holes. We took the truck and utility trailer and loaded up all the concrete he had. I wasn't sure it was going to be enough, but it ended up being EXACTLY what I needed with nothing left over. 

After I dug out the new hole, I used a 3 foot level and a garden rake to make the whole circle even and level. Then I put my shovel in the middle of the circle and used a stick on a string to mark out a circle. Once I placed the first layer of concrete, the circle looked like this:

I added dirt to the outside of the circle after every layer and sometimes had to pack it in under the outside of the concrete pieces to keep them from leaning or wobbling. I saved the biggest pieces for the top layer to help stabilize the wall and because I think it looks better that way. Once I finished the wall, it suddenly became clear how uneven the rest of the yard was. In some places the wall stopped a foot and a half below the level of the grass, in others it was 6 inches higher than the ground around it. My husband tilled all of the ground within 3-4 feet of the wall, and I used a shovel and garden rake to smooth it as much as I could. I tried to keep the top of the concrete level with the ground around it so that mowing would be simple. Now we just need  to plant some grass! 

Final cost breakdown for this project: $60 for dirt, about $150 for gas to go get it and the concrete, ? for the grass seed.