Fruit Leather

Today I decided to try making fruit leather. I don't actually like fruit leather, but my husband thinks it's awesome. He was purchasing it regularly for a while, but then the novelty wore off and the stores stopped putting it in high-traffic areas. I think he pretty much forgot about it's existence, which I thought was great because the crap is expensive and I don't understand the draw. Anyway, I ran across a recipe on Pinterest a while ago, and it sounded insanely easy to make. We just went strawberry picking yesterday and came home with 18 lbs of strawberries, so it sounded like a good day to try it out. I looked up the recipe on Pinterest again, and also found a few recipes for fruit leather on the cooking apps on my phone. Everybody listed different amounts and different fruits, but the gist was the same: Puree whatever fruit you want, add a splash of lemon juice and enough sugar to make it taste good. Spread the mixture on a baking sheet covered in Saran Wrap. Dehydrate.

I put strawberries in my blender until it was pretty much full and included 3 apples that have been sitting in my fridge since God-knows-when. I added some lemon juice and spooned in a random amount of sugar, tasted it and added more. I ended up with about 6 1/2 C of pureed fruit and I think I put about 6 Tbsp of sugar in it. That was the easy part. I was a bit concerned about putting Saran Wrap in the oven, but every recipe I found said to do it, so I lined my cookie sheet. Did the Saran Wrap have to go up the sides? Would the puree get more liquid when it was heated and end up getting under the Saran Wrap? How big of a problem would that be? What was the point of the Saran Wrap anyway?

Sadly, my questions were the wrong ones. No, the Saran wrap does not have to go up the sides, in fact it's probably better if it doesn't. No, the puree never got more liquid. I doubt it would have been much of a problem if it had. I still don't know the point of the Saran Wrap. But the question I didn't ask - should I secure the Saran Wrap with anything? - YES, Tape. Once you put the puree on and start spreading it around, the sides of the Saran Wrap start trying to fold over. Quickly. And they don't stop or take turns. You need to tape that sucker down in several places on each side before you put the fruit on it.

I found three ways to dehydrate the leather. The most obvious was a food dehydrator with solid trays. Since I already told you I put it on cookie sheets, you've probably figured out that I don't have one of those. The second was in the oven with the door cracked for 6-8 hours at 150 or 170 or the lowest setting on your oven, depending on who wrote the recipe. The third was in your car with the windows cracked. Now I live in the middle of nowhere in Florida, so I figured the car idea sounded great. No electricity used, my oven would be available if I wanted to make something else, and hey, it's Florida, of course it's hot enough! No. The sun didn't come out today. It only got to about 80 degrees outside, and not much hotter than that in the car. I took one of my cookie sheets out and left it in the car for a few hours figuring that it was still morning and it would heat up later in the day. The second cookie sheet didn't have anywhere flat to sit so I put it in the oven and turned it to 200 degrees. My oven goes down to 170, but I've dried a lot of things at 200 and I'm not a patient person. Besides, I don't like running air conditioning with the oven cracked open. I checked in two hours, and it looked exactly the same. And the oven was cold. I don't know what happened, but it didn't make me smile. So I turned the oven on again to 200 and ended up baking it for 4 hours. I got my tray out of the barely warm car around 1:30 in the afternoon and put it in the oven too. I baked that one for about 4 1/2 hours.

In the end it tasted good (if you like that sort of thing), but the edges got crispy before the middles were done. Maybe that's because I was bad and baked them at 200. Maybe not. Either way, I don't suggest baking Saran Wrap at 200 degrees. For the most part, it did fine. However, Some the the edges got holes melted in them, even in areas where it was covered with fruit puree. I threw away all of the fruit puree that came in contact with melted Saran Wrap, but next time I think I will make this without the Saran Wrap. The fruit leather peels off of the Saran Wrap easily enough that I don't think I will have trouble removing it from my cookie sheets either. And next time, I will make sure it's sunny before I start throwing stuff in the blender :-)

Bathroom flower arrangements

My bathroom has been about halfway decorated for three years. I decided maybe today was a good day to finish -or at least continue- decorating it. So I pulled out my baskets and some fake flowers and greenery that I bought when I was maybe 15 to decorate a shelf along the ceiling of my bedroom. I know that sounds crazy, but I swear it looked good. I can't find a picture, so I guess you'll just have to trust me.  Anyway, it took about 5 minutes to make these two baskets...

...which look great with the one other set of wall hangings we already had.  

I still want to hang a couple of pictures or something  on the other walls to finish off the look, but no ideas yet.

If you have never played around with flower arranging before, but would like to try your hand at it, I do have a few tips. If you are working with fake flowers, buy more than you will need and plan to take some back or keep the leftovers for a later project. Try to make sure that at least most of what you buy (especially the greenery) has wired stems so that you can bend them into just the right position. Try not to cut anything you don't have to. If a stem is too long, try folding it first. That way if you want it to be longer later, you can still adjust it. You will notice that I used a lot of greenery and very few flowers. Using too many flowers tends to make the arrangement look gaudy and unnatural. I could have used a few more flowers without making these arrangements look bad, but they would have needed to be small flowers placed in the background. You may have noticed that while I didn't use many flowers, I did use a lot of variegated greenery. Using greenery with different color patterns keeps the arrangement from looking boring which makes the flowers unnecessary. If you can make an arrangement with only greenery that looks good enough to display, then when you add a few flowers it will look amazing. When you add your flowers, please note that flowers should not always be placed in the front of an arrangement. Often people don't want to "hide" the flowers in the back, but placing bits of color toward the rear of an arrangement can help give it depth, and again, make it look more natural.

The hardest part is starting. I don't talk to people about flower arranging often, but when I do, they usually ask how to start. Which foam should they buy? How big should it be? Do you start in the center and work out, or start from the edges and work in? Answer: whatever you feel most comfortable with. Honestly, I don't like foam. So I don't use it. Sometimes, with certain arrangements in certain vases (usually fresh flowers in a shallow vase- think something you would see at a funeral) you do need to use foam. But I don't work for a florist anymore, so I can just avoid those particular arrangements.

When I did the basket that is hanging on the wall, I started from the outside and worked in. I knew I was going to want the big split leaves to be placed in a way that would give the arrangement character. They had wire running through the stems, so I just folded the stems so that they pinched the basket and held themselves in place. After that, I really had no idea, so I picked out a sprig of variegated leaves and put it in the basket. Too small. I needed something that would fill up all that empty space. So I grabbed a bouquet of fake pothos leaves and jammed that in there. After fluffing and repositioning most of the leaves, it looked pretty good, and there was an obvious spot for a flower. I tried putting two there, but it looked dumb. I think some wispy springs of tiny yellow or purple flowers on the left side of the arrangement would make it look a little better, but since I don't have any of that laying around, we may never know. I did this arrangement while it was hanging on the wall so that I could see how it looked with the other wall hangings, and so my three carefully placed leaves didn't get bumped or bent out of place.

When I did the small basket in the right picture, I didn't know what I wanted, so I figured I'd start with the base. I cut a loop of ivy big enough to fill the basket and jammed it in there. The leaves poking over the front of the basket just did that on their own. It looked good, but boring. So I decided to use some variegated leaves and since the speckly ones were just little sprigs, it seemed natural to have the leaves travel up the basket handle. Once that was twined into place, it looked kind of out of place, and I knew I would need to add a bit more of it on the other side of the basket. There wasn't much room left and I didn't figure I needed to add much of it anyway, so I stripped two leaves off of another sprig and pushed them into the ivy. That did the trick, but I wanted to add a splash of color, so I got two small bunches of flowers off of another vine and arranged them in the basket. And we're done! See, when you listen to my thought process it seems simple. And I don't sound like I know what I'm doing any more than you do. So stop planning (or staring at an empty basket and calling it planning) and just do the first step. The rest will fall into place before you know it.

I was going to do a step-by-step on how to arrange a vase of fresh flowers so it looks like it came from a florist, but I don't have any fresh flowers and I think that tutorial is going to need a lot of pictures... maybe some other day :-)

Update: My husband doesn't like the spotted foliage. He says it looks diseased. I don't have many other options lying around, so until I get around to buying something else, the baskets have been changed to crotons:

The Dish Graveyard

Yesterday my mother-in-law asked me to take her to some thrift stores around town and to the "dish graveyard," our name for a permanent yard sale/trash heap that is about 30 minutes south of where she lives. My husband and I have driven past the place a hundred times and never stopped. We've pointed it out, made fun of it, and talked about how we can't believe its still there, but never once considered stopping. I wasn't looking forward to going at all, but she wanted to get some chairs and a cedar chest she had seen there previously that wouldn't fit in her car. I wasn't expecting to find anything for myself at any of the thrift shops- I was just going because she asked me to (and I don't like letting people borrow our truck.) I figured while we were out, I would look for little figurines for next year's panoramic Easter eggs. I've looked at all of the retail stores and found NOTHING, so I wasn't expecting much. We went to four thrift stores in town and I got one 1/2" tall figurine of a watering can that looked like it came off of the top of a bottle or something. The cashier couldn't figure out what it was, so I got it for free. I also picked up a couple of 50 cent baskets, a pair of kids shoes, an organizer/carrying case for spools of thread, and some tissue paper for gift wrapping or pinata making. My mother-in-law got some toys for my son's upcoming birthday. Not overly eventful. Then we went to the dish graveyard, where I planned to do a lot of "I can't believe you're considering purchasing that" eye-rolling.  It started out about as I had planned. The cedar chest that she had found before was gone, and the chairs that she had wanted were creaky and stained and she decided she didn't want them after all. So we started looking through the tables of dishes, old Christmas ornaments, broken figurines, McDonald's toys, etc. I think we were there for about 3 hours, and amazingly, I loved every minute of it. I got a lot of adorable figurines, and couple of pots and baskets. Many of the figurines will be set aside for panoramic eggs, but I did get a bunch that were to large or for different holidays too. Of course, they all needed a good scrubbing with baking soda and bleach, but I only spent $7, and I'm not afraid of dirt. This is about half of what I got after it had been cleaned up. The other half has been scrubbed and is currently soaking in a bleach solution.

Anyway, one of the things I like most about looking at piles and piles of trash (and by trash I mean dirty, old, possibly broken, practically free crap that might be able to be cleaned up and re-purposed into something that no longer resembles anything that would be described as trash) is that it makes me start looking at things differently and thinking about making stuff. Unfortunately, nothing incredibly creative has come from our adventure yet, but it did get me in a crafting mood... and I had bought all those baskets.

Continue...

Homemade Oreos, Take 2

So today I decided to try a homemade Oreos recipe from  My Kitchen Addiction. It uses dutch process cocoa, and it produces flatter, more Oreo-like cookies than the  last recipe, which were more like Oreo Cakesters. I couldn't find dutch process cocoa at Wal-mart, so I got "Hershey's Special Dark blend of natural and dutched cocoas" instead. Anyway, here is the recipe as I made it:

1 C margarine, softened
1 C sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract (imitation, because I'm cheap)
2 C flour
3/4 C special dark cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Combine margarine (or butter) and sugar in mixing bowl and beat until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and beat until well-mixed.

At this point, the original recipe tells you to "whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Gradually add the dry mixture to the creamed mixture, beating on the lowest speed.  Continue to mix on the lowest setting until the dry ingredients are just incorporated."  This is a pet peeve of mine. While mixing all of the dry ingredients separately made sense when my grandma was growing up, it rarely serves a purpose now that everyone has electric mixers. If the recipe assumes that you have an electric mixer, WHY do we still need to use that extra bowl? I have run across one recipe where it actually did matter and I had to make a note on my recipe so that I wouldn't skip that step again. But because it is apparently widely believed that you do need to mix your wet and dry ingredients separately, I always have a moment of worry that this will be the second recipe where it actually does matter. Guess what? This recipe isn't it.

Add all of the dry ingredients and mix well on a low speed. I reserved one cup of flour, mixed everything else in, and then added the last cup of flour to try to keep the dust at a minimum. Once everything is wet you can pick it up to medium speed to get it all mixed together quicker.

Next, the recipe said to divide your dough into two disks, wrap with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for one hour. I seriously considered skipping this step as well and just putting the lid on my mixing bowl and putting the whole thing in the refrigerator, but I decided to be good. After they have refrigerated for an hour, take out one disk, place it on a floured surface (I use a pillow case taped to my table), roll it to 1/16" - 1/8" thickness, and cut with cookie cutters. Once that disk has been cut up and moved to a cookie sheet, remove other disk from fridge and repeat. After having done all of this, I can honestly say that this dough is as easy to work with warm as it is cold. And it is very easy to work with. If I ever make them again, I will probably try rolling them out without refrigerating them at all.

Bake at 350 for 12 minutes. Let cool completely before filling.

The recipe on My Kitchen Addiction has a simple buttercream frosting recipe to use as the filling. You can use any buttercream recipe you like, but I don't have a favorite buttercream recipe, so I decided to use theirs. It made about twice as much as I needed, so I have halved it for you:

1/4 C (1/2 stick) of butter (or margarine), softened
2 Tbsp half and half (or milk)
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt
3 1/2 C powdered sugar

Mix together everything except the powdered sugar. Then mix the powdered sugar in a cup at a time (to reduce dust). When finished, put in a frosting bag  (or plastic bag with one corner cut off) and pipe onto half of the cookies. Top with the remaining cookies.

I'm not sure about this recipe yet. The cookies are even more bitter than actual Oreos, and I don't know if the filling will be enough to counteract that. Right now the cookies are crunchy and the frosting is still really soft, so they are almost impossible to eat. I will post and update once the frosting firms up and I try them again.

Home-made Oreos, Take 1

Today I decided to make homemade Oreos. There are tons of Oreo recipes on the internet and my husband is kind of an Oreo addict. After looking at a LOT of recipes I noticed that there are basically two recipes that have been tweaked a bit in a thousand different ways. For the cookie, there are recipes that use devil's food cake mix and recipes that use dutch process cocoa. The ones that use dutch process cocoa tend to have more ingredients and form a dough that you roll out and cut with a cookie cutter. The ones that use cake mix form a dough that you roll into balls and plop on the cookie sheet. They end up looking more like whoopie pies than Oreos, but I chose to start with them anyway. I've never bought dutch process cocoa before and my baking cabinets are already overflowing with the junk food ingredients I do keep on hand. Plus, they were easy and I already had all of the ingredients. If you keep cake mixes on hand like I do, you probably have all the ingredients too. Ready?

1 box devil's food cake mix
2 eggs
3/4 C shortening

That's it. Mix together until smooth. Roll into 1" balls. The recipe I used did not say to flatten the balls, but you really should. Then bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Let cookies cool on baking sheet.

This is how the cookies turn out if you flatten them halfway.

Left pic: The left 6 cookies I flattened to about 3/16" before baking. The 6 on the right I didn't flatten at all.
Right pic: Finished "Oreo" made from the flattened cookies.

These cookies look nothing like Oreos and don't have the same crunchy texture either. They are very yummy and ridiculously easy though, so I will probably make them again. Now, for the filling:

Again, there are basically two filling recipes, and  again I chose the easier one that I didn't have to buy ingredients for. The filling I used is basically buttercream frosting. I'd give you the recipe, but frankly, it was a flop. I didn't use as much condensed milk as the recipe called for and I still needed to add a cup and a half more powdered sugar to keep it from being soup, so just use your favorite buttercream frosting recipe (or look one up) and you'll probably end up with about the same cookies I have. They are awesome. And simple. They are not Oreos. My husband may like them, but he will still make me buy Oreos. So once this batch has been eaten, I will buy dutch process cocoa and the ingredients for the other type of filling and we will try Home-made Oreos, Take 2.

Update: I ended up making them open-faced since they were so thick. I was worried that they would not be stackable, but after a few hours of letting the frosting harden, they did just fine. When my husband tried them, he said they tasted exactly like Oreo Cakesters. I think they are close, but better.

Crochet blankets

I've been fairly busy lately, but unfortunately not doing anything worth blogging about. Yesterday I planted my garden and today I worked on digging out our burn pit a little more. I was just about to sit back and relax with some crocheting (which isn't really far enough along to be exciting), when I realized that I could talk about my last crochet project, which is my favorite so far. I'm pretty new to crochet so baby blankets are my favorite thing to make. They are quicker than regular sized blankets and much easier than anything that has a specific shape or size. Plus, they make excellent gifts. I got this pattern through Pinterest and you can get it here for free. It looks a bit complicated at first, but after you do all of the steps once, you'll have it memorized. It's pretty much the same row over and over and you just shift it a few stitches every three rows.

Anyway, it's lightweight, which makes it go fairly quickly and use very little yarn. Also, it's perfect here in Florida where you need to swaddle your baby without overheating him or her. I used Loops and Threads Snuggly Wuggly Big! baby yarn from Michaels. It sells for about $10 per skein. I always go to their website on my phone and use the 40% off coupon (They will scan it right off your phone so you don't need to plan ahead and remember to print it) This blanket took about half of one skein, so this blanket only cost me about $3 to make. I will definitely make many more of these for future gifts.

Right now I am working on a granny square throw blanket for my son's bed. He loves bright colors, so I think this will be perfect when I'm done. I haven't been crocheting much lately, so who knows how long that will take though...

Easter party dishes

We had an Easter party and egg hunt yesterday at our house. As usual, we had a very small turnout. I invited  over 80 people plus six families of neighbors who I've never met before. 13 people showed up. And only 7 of those were invited by me. The others only came because I told the people I invited to PLEASE bring any friends they knew with kids. If someone is writing a blog about how to get people to show up at your party, I need to read that. If someone is writing a blog about how to get people to RSVP for a party, I need to read that  next.

Anyway, since I had no idea how many people were coming, I bought way too much food and candy just in case. The party cost us maybe $120, and we have about 15 lbs of chicken, tons of drinks and lots of snacks left over. Luckily, since we are used to throwing parties where no one shows up, we did it smart, so all of our leftovers can be used later. If you are going to throw a party where you are unsure about the turnout, I have a few tips.

First, only make things that you personally will eat later. I love deviled eggs, and they are always a hit at parties. They were the first thing I decided to make- partially because it's Easter and partially because I knew I wouldn't have a bunch of leftovers to throw away. After I cut the eggs in half, I put them in water with a few drops of food coloring for a minute to make them more festive. I used yellow, pink, blue, and green, and left about a third of the eggs white. The yellow didn't show up very well, and the green and blue look about the same, so I think next time I will only do pink and blue. I deviled 18 eggs (36 pieces) and only had 2 pieces left over.

I made a vegetable tray because vegetables are cheap and they are something I will eat as a snack in the evenings (and should eat more often instead of cookies and ice cream). I also made chocolate covered strawberries with white chocolate dyed orange so that they looked like carrots. They were kind of cute, but white chocolate isn't as well-liked as regular chocolate, so ended up with more leftovers than I expected, but again, they are something I will have no problem finishing off by myself. Also, nobody is really used to orange chocolate, so most people asked what they were before trying them and a lot of the kids didn't like them. Next time I will just do regular chocolate and they won't be as cute. If you decide to make these -especially for a large party- I suggest making some kind of label for them.

Lastly, I made cupcakes, because what event is complete without some sort of cake? I used a chocolate buttercream recipe that I found on the internet, and I thought it was a little bitter. I will have to try another recipe next time. I used the frosting to make birds nests for my jelly bean "eggs" and as a base for my marshmallow flowers (cut a marshmallow into 4 slices with scissors and dip the cut end in colored sugar for the petals). I also frosted some and put pre-made frosting flowers or carrots on them. If you've read my blog before, these are the frosting flowers and carrots I had leftover from the panoramic sugar eggs I made last week. At the end of the party, we had 11 cupcakes left. I'm not sure if I will eat all of those before they go bad (My husband won't help- he hates chocolate), but if a few of them go bad, at least cupcakes are cheap.

We bought canned soda because we rarely drink soda, so this way we wouldn't have a bunch of partial 2-liters going to waste. Cans are more expensive, but will store for a long time and we can drink them slowly or use them for my sons birthday party in two months. 

We grilled chicken for lunch. I bought about 20 lbs of chicken just in case we did have a big turnout. I checked around and found chicken quarters for $1.49/lb and drumsticks for $1.00/lb. We waited until after everyone had arrived to start up the grill so that more of the appetizers would get eaten. Then my husband grilled enough food to feed everyone times three. After the party, I cut up all of the cooked chicken and put it in Ziploc bags in approximately 1 lb portions. Then I froze it for future use in chicken alfredo, chicken salad, and other dishes calling for cooked chicken pieces. The uncooked chicken was also split into single serving bags and frozen for later use. I like buying my meat in bulk, but unless I portion it up before I freeze it, it never gets used. After all, if you are cooking for a family of three, what do you do with a frozen block of 20 drumsticks or 4 chicken quarters, or a 5 lb roast?

Anyway, I had a party planned for at least 50 people. Even though only 13 came, I will be throwing out no more than a few cupcakes, I have plenty of meat stored for future meals, and everyone had a good time. To me, that is a success.