Bottles

I love the look of wine bottles - all lined up and filled with the fruit harvested from our back yard vines. There is something so elegant and refined about them. Too bad I'm not much of a wine fan. I prefer my grape juice to be processed into jelly form. Yum! (Hmm . . . jelly making has been on my t0-do list since harvest time. Maybe being stuck inside with this big snow storm we are expecting will inspire me to finally get busy. Okay, off to go thaw some juice now.)

Oh yeah,

I should probably mention that the close-up shot is much prettier than the reality.

Wine making is a messy business.

You should see my basement wall. It is stained a lovely shade of purple.

Warm Comforting Friendly Chocolate

If someone offered you free chocolate you'd accept. I know you would. Don't try to tell me any different. I wasn't born yesterday.

Hershey recently sponsored a cookie exchange promotion - and they sent me free chocolate to share with my friends. I know! Everyone wants to be my friend now! Chocolate is the best!

Check out the fun time we had! The kids made some gingerbread aprons to wear to the swap. You just have to have the proper attire for such an event don't you know.

We put cute little stickers onto the recipe cards that Hershey included and gave them out as invitations. Then we spent a fun afternoon baking up these yummy chocolate-spice sugar cookies. The picture doesn't do them justice. They tasted better than that. I promise.

We set up a few games and a craft area for the kids. They loved these simple paper bag gingerbread houses. Not only was it a fun craft, but the finished product made great gift bags to fill with cookies and deliver to neighbors later on.

We got together to swap and chat, but most importantly - EAT. All those yummy cookies had to be sampled. Our neighbors in the karate studio, mortgage agency, and fire department were all pretty happy with our "left-overs" too.

Christmas cookies have got to be one of the greatest traditions ever. What other holiday has people busy baking for days on end with the specific intent of giving away most of what they create?

So now, that I have spent so much time baking and thinking about chocolate I am completely distracted with the thought of going on vacation this summer. I know - totally off topic - but it will make sense in a minute, I promise.

My husband's cousin is getting married in PA this summer and we have already decided that we will take a family vacation at the same time. Hooray! (Cue tinkling memory music) I remember taking a family trip to PA when I was a kid. We visited the Amish country, saw deer (deer! Deer! DEER! - family joke, sorry) and went to, what will forever live in my memory as the greatest amusement park ever, Hershey Park. Now, I know that most everyone will say that Disney is better, but I don't know anything better than Hershey. The town has street lights shaped like kisses, lots of fun rides, and it smells like chocolate - honest, the whole town! Since that trip years ago, anytime I smell chocolate (like while I was baking those cookies above) I think of our fun time at Hershey Park and get that warm smushy feeling inside. Sooo...

I can't wait to share my love of Hershey with this little one and her big kid siblings. Candy stores, chocolate museums, amusement parks, zoos. What's not to love about a town dedicated to chocolate?

I wonder if Hershey will have a vacation promotion? If so, I'm signing up!

* Full disclosure - As I stated above, I received supplies from Hershey, but they did not require my promotion of their product and no other compensation was received. It's just simply hard not to talk about free stuff - especially chocolate. Yum!

I love my freezer!

I really do! The freezer is one of the greatest inventions - it allows me to cook when I want and skip it when I don't. While talking with my Mom & sister this week I realized just how much of a weirdo I am in the way that I cook, but it works for me, so for those of you who have asked questions, here are my helpful (and not-so-helpful) hints.

There are TONS of freezer menus out there, and most come out okay, but they are all just so random! My favorite recipes come from here:
SavingDinner.com  because they not only give you the recipe, but also a shopping guide for everything! Who wants to spend an entire afternoon writing out a grocery list - not me. I just grab one of these (I have the 1st 4 Mega Menus) photocopy the shopping list, add my own needs, and take off!. Later, when I get home, I follow the "quick prep" steps, and chop all the veggies etc.

I usually wait until the next day to do my assembly (simply because the kids need my attention) but within an hour or two I have 20 meals in the freezer (they will keep us fed for well over a month when you figure in all of the nights out, instant inspiration for something "different" and what not), my kitchen is clean, and dinner for that night is simmering in my crock-pot. LOVE IT!

Okay here is what I've learned about freezing - your main enemies are air and water so . . .

• Make sure that you double bag everything, even if you think you will be using it soon and squeeze out as much air as you possibly can. 

• Throw your food back into the fridge for at least an hour before tossing it in the freezer - it will freeze better (faster = less ice) after it has been chilled. 

• Make sure your meat is dry - really dry, before freezing. I often place it in the fridge uncovered for an hour or so - the fridge naturally dries food out, so it is good to go right into your baggies and then the freezer after that. (Don't worry about meat you are bagging with "wet" marinade - it contains salt which changes the point at which it freezes.  Usually marinades won't cause freezer burn.)
  

• Cut meat into smaller portions so that it freezes quickly - a large cut of meat will lose a lot of it's natural juices and most of it's tenderness if frozen whole. 

• Fruits freeze best if you can spread them thinly on a cookie sheet & allow them to freeze individually before re-packaging into baggies. For juicy fruits like peaches, make sure to add citrus juice (for color) and sugar (for texture).

• Veggies are a pain, and aren't worth the effort - just buy them frozen from the store (they freeze them instantly after picking, actually giving you FRESHER results). To do it at home requires blanching, which I just can't be bothered to do. The exceptions to this are onions, carrots, peppers, etc (stew vegetables), which you intend to allow to cook with your meat, just toss them in with the meat so that everything is ready when you need it. 

• Sometimes it is worth it to freeze things that don't require freezing - for example, I often pre-measure my flour salt and shortening to make crust and store it with the filling ingredients for my mom's Pork Pie. Now, Flour & salt certainly don't need to be frozen, but it makes my assembly go much faster when I don't have to pull out a recipe at all.

• Write the cooking steps directly on the bag as often as possible - usually they are simple "toss in crock-pot for 8 hours" or "cook at 350 for 30 min." Why force yourself to pull out a cookbook if you don't need to?

That's it - a few hours of prep for a month of easy dinners. Just thaw your meal in the fridge for 24 hours or under running cold water for 1 hour - cook & eat.

Bon Appetite!

New Dishes - from my Basement

H


ooray! My new dishes were just delivered! Happy dance! Twirling! Jumping!

I know, dishes aren't usually that exciting, but I have been waiting for mine for a LONG time. When we first moved into our current house (five years ago) we knew that new dishes were needed, but we thought that we would wait for some of our remodeling to be done.

Fast forward 5 years - for my birthday this year (6 months ago) DH said he would buy me new dishes. Unfortunately, it seems as if all of the dishes out there in the world are now stoneware. If you haven't noticed, stoneware is extraordinarily heavy, bulky, and often is marked by silverware, resulting in a dirty gray haze. On the other hand, there is the very light and thin Corelle brand, but they shatter when they are dropped (our kitchen floor is tile, not a good combination) and usually the styles look cheap and/or dated.

So, for 6 months I have been searching for the perfect dishes, with absolutely no success. Until last week! My mom and I went to Maine on a mission to buy dishes. We looked at several stores, and then noticed a Villeroy and Boch outlet. In the window was a beautiful pattern - the same one that has been in my basement wrapped in newspaper for years.

Our beloved friends from Germany had gotten together to buy us a tea set as a wedding present. We received a teapot, sugar and creamer set, 6 cups, saucers, small plates, and a platter.

Lights and bells went off in my head! Why not complete the set we already had and loved (but unfortunately, weren't able to use), rather than settle for something I wasn't thrilled about. Sadly, the last time we used this beautiful set was:

5 years ago! I couldn't believe it when I unwrapped them!

So, after a quick phone call to my husband I received his blessing to spend WAY TOO MUCH on the plates that we needed. If we had to buy the entire set, it would have been out of the question, but because we already had quite a few pieces, the total cost came out to approximately what I was expecting to spend originally.

So, in the end I got what I wanted, cleaned another box out of my basement, and stayed on budget! Those 5 years worth of waiting and 6 months of searching were all worth it!

Testing 123

Test test test - wish I knew what to write . . .  off to make dinner :-)

Here is what we are having - I love Menus for Moms!