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by you can count on me

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by little english

Food Love : Virginia is for Lovers Glazed Sugar Cookies!

Baked these delicious little cookies last night for the BF, who happens to love grocery store smiley face cookies. I'm not sure if all grocery stores have these but locally, we have a grocery store named Giant that sells these big sugar cookies with old fashioned glaze frosting and they are delicious! So delicious, I had to hunt down some comparable recipes and try to make them myself, its really difficult to eat just one! I got the VA shaped cookie cutter at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello when I visited there over the summer. It's pretty neat, check it out if you're ever in the middle of VA. Honestly, you won't find much else in the middle of VA so you might as well. Or actually, check out Madison's Montpelier instead, its bigger and there's an indoor bowling alley.





Here's the recipe:


I found a no-roll sugar cookie recipe over at Bettycrocker.com that is delicious, so you can just roll the dough into balls and then smash with the bottle of a glass, or you can chill the dough & roll it...I rolled these last night and it worked just fine! The glaze recipe was also found on the net but I can't remember where - I recommend doubling or tripling the recipe for enough frosting for an entire batch!


No Roll Sugar Cookies:

1 Cup White Sugar
1 Cup Powdered
1 Cup Buttery or Marg. Softened
3/4 Cup Vegtable Oil
2 Tablespoons Milk
1 Tablespoon Vanilla
2 Eggs
4 1/4 Cup Flour
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 Teaspoon Cream of Tartar
1/2 Teaspoon Salt


- Mix wet ingredients until creamy and then add dry ingredients until well blended, Cover, & Chill until dough is firm. Roll dough out or (Shape Dough into balls and roll in sugar, if you just wanna make delicious sugar cookies, skip this step if you use the glaze frosting), cut & place on ungreased cookie sheet (and if you don't decide to roll the dough, flatten to 1/4 inch thick with bottom of glass), Bake at 350 degrees for 10 - 13 minutes.


Delicious Glaze Frosting (like Grocery Store Smiley Face Cookies):

1 Cup Powdered Sugar
2 Teaspoons Milk
2 Teaspoons Corn Syrup
1 /4 Teaspoon Vanilla
Food Coloring of Choice

Stir Powdered Sugar, Milk, Corn Syrup, & Vanilla until it is smooth & glossy, if it is too thick add more corn syrup. I added about 2 more teaspoons to this recipe to get the right consistancy.

Food Love : Banana Crumb Muffins!

I meant to post this recipe for my last Etsy Bloggers Carnival but since I was x-mas slammed, I didn't get a chance to post it until now! These are the most delicious banana muffins ever - great for breakfast or any time really. I stole the recipe from allrecipes.com!

What you'll need:

1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt

3 mashed bananas
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup melted butter

optional: nuts

optional: Delicious crumb topping (highly recommended)

1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespons flour
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon of butter

(I don't really go by this to do the crumb topping, I just pinch and eye ball it!)

The specifics:

Bake in preheated oven at 375 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes, ready when toothpick comes out clean.

Makes 10 big, fluffy, and delicious muffins.

(Don't try to get 12 out of the batter, you'll end up with smaller, less fluffy and delicious muffins - for more just double the recipe!)

Here's how to make the most delicious muffins ever:

1. Gather above ingredients and vintage Pyrex since its so cute and awesome for baking.

2. Sift dry ingredients, melt butter, lightly beat the egg. Put your banana, sugar, egg, & butter in the same bowl.

3. Mash together bananas, sugar, butter, & egg. I like to use a potato masher, works great! Keep mashing until your ingredients are well blended and banana pieces are roughly the size of peas.

4. Add banana mush to your dry ingredients and stir.



5. Optional Crumb Topping: gather together ingredients & use pastry cutter to blend topping.

6. Fill baking cups with batter almost to the top, or roughly 3/4 full. Sprinkle with Crumb Topping and bake! I like to use an ice cream scoop, makes things super easy!


7. Bake 18 to 20 minutes. Cool. Then eat majorly delicious muffins!

Etsy Bloggers Street Team : Blog Carnival : National Brownie Day!

For yummy homemade cake like brownies, one of my favorite recipes comes straight from the back of the cocoa can!

What you'll need:

1/2 cup + 2 tbsp butter or margarine
1 tsp vanilla
6 tbsp cocoa
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (if desired)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup sifted flour

1. Cream butter or margarine, sugar, and vanilla; beat in eggs.


2. Beat in cocoa & flour until smooth, stir in nuts if desired.


3. Bake in greased 8 x8 x 2 inch pan at 325 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes. Eat when cool!

Etsy Bloggers Street Team : Blog Carnival : Get Ready for the Holidays : Recipe!

I absolutely love baking and usually have something yummy and delicious around for a snack! I also have dreams of owning my own cupcake store. But cookies are deliciously too, so I thought I'd share my secret family recipe for chocolate chip cookies for this weeks Blog Carnival: Aunt Mary's Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe!

Aunt Mary's World Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Mix wet ingredients together:

1 cup shortening
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat & add 2 Eggs

Sift dry ingredients together then Add to Wet Mix above:

2 cups floor
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Add as many chocolate chips to mix as desired!

Bake on ungreased cookie sheet @ 350 degrees for 10 - 12 minutes


I generally mix the wet ingredients together with a hand mixer, then sift together the dry ingredients, stir dry mix into the wet ingredients, then blend with a mixer again. If you bake the cookies around 10 minutes and take them out they'll be soft and chewy, if leaving them in for the full 12 minutes they will turn out crisp and crunchy!

(Tip: If you don't have one of those ice cream scoops, you should really get one - I think my Moms stole the idea from Martha but its super handy for cookie dough, cupcake batter!, and all sorts of things other than ice cream!)

Pinching pennies like your grandparents - msnbc.com

As food prices rise, some are rediscovering old-fashioned home economics

By Allison Linn

Senior writer

updated 11:07 a.m. ET Aug. 26, 2008

In today’s fast-paced society, the Hillbilly Housewife Web site — with its traditional recipes for making cornmeal mush and tips for turning leftover rice into breakfast pancakes — would seem to be a relic of a bygone era.

But with food and gas prices rising at a faster pace than most paychecks, the site devoted to frugal ways to feed a family has recently seen traffic increase by a third, to about 300,000 unique visitors a month. Susanne Myers, who took over the site from a friend about a year ago, says she’s been deluged with e-mails from people looking for cheap ways to fill their families’ stomachs.

“Especially toward the end of the month I get a lot of e-mails from women, (and) they’re pretty desperate,” Myers said.

They come from all walks of life, she said. One day, it might be a woman who has $20 left to feed her five kids; the next, a woman who was able to give up her pricey Starbucks habit after stumbling on Myers’ recipe for homemade mocha drinks. When milk prices surged, she got a lot of questions about using powdered milk, a cheaper alternative that the site advocates in many recipes.

Until recently, food was considered so cheap in the United States that many families rarely bothered with the type of serious, cost-saving home economics common a generation or two ago. Now the skyrocketing cost of everything from cereal to eggs is prompting some Americans to turn to traditional techniques for stretching a dollar or a meal.

The change comes as overall food and beverage prices have risen 5.8 percent over the past 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and some household staples have notched even bigger gains. Americans paid a whopping 12.1 percent more for cereal and bakery products this past July than they did a year ago. Fruits and vegetables are up 10.1 percent over the same period.

Many expect grocery prices to continue to rise as global demand increases and farmers and ranchers pass on higher costs for everything from chicken feed to fertilizer.

The food inflation is clearly affecting American lifestyles. An April survey by market researchers NPD Group found that more than half of adults who described themselves as “financially challenged” were trying to use up leftovers more often and prepare more meals at home than they did a year ago.

Harry Balzer, a vice president at NPD who long has followed U.S. eating habits, said Americans are still eating out but are choosing cheaper restaurants or skipping desserts and side dishes. To save money at home, he said, more people are choosing grain-based foods, such as pizza and pasta, over meat-based meals.

He doesn't think they will spend a larger percentage of their paycheck on food.

Grocery chains are reporting similar trends.

Supervalu Inc., whose brands include Albertsons, Cub Foods and Save-A-Lot, is seeing more customers redeeming coupons, taking advantage of sales and buying store brands as they grapple with rising food prices. Spokeswoman Haley Meyer said the retailer also has noticed more shoppers swapping out pricier items for cheaper alternatives, such as ground beef instead of steak.

“We’re seeing consistent customer numbers — we’re just seeing a shift in what they’re buying,” she said.

At Wal-Mart Stores Inc., spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien said customers appear to be substituting chicken for red meat and buying more pasta.

Wal-Mart also is seeing a brisker business in its ready-to-eat items, perhaps because people are choosing to buy items like a pizza from Wal-Mart rather than going out. Aiming to capitalize on that switch, the company recently launched a television commercial promoting its take-and-bake pizza.

Still, don't expect all Americans to start baking their own bread and preparing bean dishes from scratch. While the price spikes have prompted some people to try their hand at those things, and to say they will give up restaurant visits, Balzer said most Americans just aren’t willing to give up the time savings and convenience of prepared food.

“We love eating,” he said. “It’s the shopping, the preparing, the storing and the cleaning up. You’ll have a hard time convincing me that Americans will be willing to do this more.”

For those people who are trying to shop and eat more like their grandparents did, the change in behavior isn’t just a matter of time management. Accustomed to years of drive-through restaurants and pasta in a box, many simply don’t know how to cook from scratch.

The Hillbilly Housewife site assumes that its readers have only basic knowledge and offers detailed instructions including recipes, grocery lists and a step-by-step strategy for feeding a family on $45 or $70 per week. Another menu is specifically geared to families who are receiving a subsidized food box from the nonprofit Angel Food Ministries.

The site also recommends scouring grocery ads for sale items and planning meals based on what you can buy cheaply. And it counsels its readers to avoid items that might be marked up during high demand times, such as cranberries around Thanksgiving or condiments before the Fourth of July.

The site, one of many similar homegrown communities that have popped up on the Web, also is rife with tips for substituting traditional ingredients with cheaper ones, such as margarine instead of butter or beans instead of meat. Families are counseled to stretch orange juice by heaping glasses with ice cubes and to cut hot dogs into thin strips so they last longer.

Leftovers, which in many homes are forgotten in the back of the fridge, are assiduously incorporated into future meals under the Hillbilly Housewife’s guidelines. Myers, who lives in Rock Hill, S.C. and has a 5-year-old daughter, can stretch a whole chicken into several meals.

“I call it the rubber chicken,” she said.

Carol McManus remembers well the strategies for making a chicken into dinner one night, sandwiches the next and then a soup stock. Years ago, when her five children were young, she made a game out of seeing how much money she could save at the store while still making good family dinners, she said.

Spaghetti and meatballs might be repurposed the next night for pizza sauce, while pot roast might show up one night with potatoes and the next night with vegetables. She tried to shop as infrequently as every two weeks, since multiple trips to the grocery store often translate into higher bills.

McManus, whose children are now grown, runs a restaurant on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard and recently completed a cookbook, “Table Talk,” focused on easy recipes for family meals. If there is an upside to the down economy, she said, it might be that people will re-embrace things like sitting down together for a meal each night.

She said she learned the value of a family dinner — as well as some of her frugal strategies — from her mother, who was a child during the Depression.

“Putting a meal on the table every night was like the most important thing to my mother and I think a lot of people growing up during the Depression,” she said. “That showed love, doing that.”

© 2008 MSNBC Interactive

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26349819/

Even more fantastic Vintage Pyrex on Etsy!

Recent Vintage Pyrex from Etsy

Fourth of July BBQ Party / Cute Picnic Project from Design Sponge

Custom Condiment Carry All for the 4th of July!



july 4th is right around the corner, which means one thing: barbecue season has begun! so bust out the burgers and tofu dogs and don’t forget to b.y.o.b! at the end of the day you’re certain to have a little sunburn and a lot of empty six-pack holders lying around. with a bit of gift wrap, these simple cardboard constructions can be transformed into super handy condiment and picnic supply caddies for your next shindig. for larger gatherings you can put one on each table, and when summer is over they’ll make great holders for knitting needles, paintbrushes or pens and pencils. just click here for the full project instructions or click “read more” below.

have a safe and fantastic 4th!
-derek & lauren

here’s what you need:
-empty cardboard six-pack holder
-decorative paper such as giftwrap or wallpaper
-rubber cement
-pencil
-scissors

1. flatten the cardboard caddy and trace around the shape onto the backside of your paper. Cut out two pieces.

2. apply an even coat of rubber cement to the backside of your paper and the cardboard. let sit for a minute, then smooth paper onto carboard.

3. fill with ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, forks, napkins, etc.!

4. party! party! party!

Take me out - Chopsticks

Recently made a bundle of hand painted chopsticks in carrying cases for a friend! Posted a few sets on Etsy last week.