Make Your Own Calendar - For Free!

Dear time-conscious reader,

I am a pretty forgetful person, and I also enjoy having regular routines - so I was looking forward to having a calendar when I settled in our little apartment in September.  But I didn't really want to buy one, with only a few months left in the year!  Turns out you can handily make one with stuff you probably have lying about the house.

Packing paper or large paper (I used white packing paper from an Amazon shipment - I always fold and save such Useful Things in my wrapping bag!)
Yard stick, ruler or measuring tape
A pen or marker
Scissors
A straight rule (if you do not have a yard stick) such as a book or piece of cardboard

I just measured out how wide my paper was, and divided that measurement by eight columns, so that I had a slot for each day of the week and a column for notes.  Then I used the ruler to measure how many even lines I could draw horizontally to produce squares, and proceeded to trace them out with a piece of stiff paper for a rule.  Then I used my phone calendar to label each date, and taped this paper to another piece of stiff packing paper, which I then hung on the kitchen wall.  It is most convenient, didn't take long to make, and was inexpensively produced from items I already had lying about the house!

Keeping track of time and still saving pennies,

Mrs H

tweet us @_mrs_h for chewy nuggets
Pin us at Pinterest for pretty photos and intriguing articles
Follow us on Facebook for recipes, giveaways, and brilliant flashes of perspiration!


This post is shared at The Gathering Spot #28. Visit the link for a beautiful collection of posts and blogs!

An Accident Waiting to Happen - Butterscotch Biscuit Cookies

Dear accidental cooks and haste-makes-wasters, 

These delicious cookies almost never happened – they almost became a costly tragedy!  Flying around the kitchen like a whirling dervish, sometimes the cooking bloodlust fills your eyes and you get going so fast you can’t see the corners as you go around them.  Pit stops for hand-washing between raw meat and fresh salad become blindingly efficient, scalding water and soap bubbles exploding, and onions are chopped and thrown into the pot of hot oil before one barely has time to find a knife.  And so disaster can happen in an instant, it can strike without warning.  But let me start at the beginning …

It was a bright, sunny Friday in fall, and Mr H and I were planning to have three or four of the guys over for dinner – and sometimes word spreads about these sorts of events and the numbers can grow without my knowledge, so I always have to be prepared.  It’s downright impossible for any social cook to turn away a hungry guest, and I didn't want to disappoint! 

These guys were in training, and with all their physical exertion could easily put away a ten to twelve-thousand calorie lunch (that’s the equivalent of five or six Red Robin burgers) and I’d seen them sit on my couch and inhale tottering stacks of thick whole-grain pancakes without blinking; so dinner had to be something more substantial than milquetoast and tea.  I got up early and started my preparations: I had come up with a list of dense foods that would all be relatively inexpensive to make.  We would have biscuits, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, roasted carrots, gravy, Caesar salad, homemade barbecue sauce, and a rich apple cake for dessert – a regular carbohydrate orgy.  And there would be plenty of each item!

Since I’m the only female around these parts and the guys could get off work as late as eight at night, I knew I’d have my hands full with preparations come evening.  I did as much in advance as I could.  After washing the kitchen down spic-and-span (I can’t cook quickly in a mess!) and making sure all ten of my dishes were clean, I mixed the dry ingredients for the biscuits in a bowl and set them on one counter with their respective recipe, forks to mix in the fat, and a cup of measured dry buttermilk powder.  On another counter I set up my stand mixer and, in a separate bowl, whisked together all of the dry ingredients for the cake.  I set the butter next to the stand mixer to soften, put the recipe on top of the bowl, and went about my day grocery shopping and cleaning.    

Back home, preparations went into full swing.  It was early afternoon, and surprisingly the men were already off work.  My husband and two of the fellas settled in the living room eating a quickly-made lunch of soup and cheesy bread, busily sharpening knives, and I whizzed about the kitchen at full speed.  I beat eggs, sugar, all the good things for cake, and dumped in the dry ingredients.  The mixer slowed as the dough thickened – wait a minute – dough?  I screeched to a halt and stared into the bowl.  This was not cake batter!  I released the lock on the mixer and the paddle lifted.  Instead of a rich yellow batter dripping from the metal apparatus, a thick dough congealed about it in a massive blob. 

              

The dough stared at me reproachfully. 

                “No!” came my anguished cry from the kitchen. 

                My husband came in to investigate.  I was staring at the bowl in agony.  “What’s wrong?” he asked, as a mixer full of dough in my house is usually not cause for alarm. 

                I realized what had happened even as I stood there.  I pointed a trembling finger here, then there.  “I mixed the wet ingredients for the cake – with the dry ingredients for the biscuits!” 

                 “Hmm, well …” my husband looked from me to the mixer.   In the living room, nobody else seemed to share my concern. 

                “It’s a waste!” I raised hue and cry.  Wasting food is horrible in any instance, but this was eggs and butter and sugar – expensive ingredients as ingredients go, and I hardly had enough to spare! 

                But the treacherous mixture had to be dealt with, so I started thinking.  The dough looked thick enough to stand in the oven, so I prepared a cookie sheet and piled on blobs.  I threw it in the oven at a random temperature and tried to regain my momentum, remixing all the ingredients for biscuits and cake.  The first pan emerged looking hopeful, and I broke off a piece and ate it.  I took a plate out to the living room.

            “Would you like,” I said, “a biscuit-cookie?” 

One of the guys gingerly picked off a corner.  “Are you sure it’s good?” he said warily. 

“Oh yes,” I said.  “Eat it.”

He cautiously put the bite in his mouth.  

Moments later the plate was empty as they all cheered.  “You should sell this recipe!” one of them applauded.  “This is so good!” 

                Throughout the rest of the evening, no matter what was in the oven – meatloaf, carrots, biscuits – there was always a second pan of cookies baking.   My cookie sheet only held a few at a time so it took a while, and the temperatures ranged from 350 to a soaring 450. 

                

Butterscotch Biscuit-Cookies

These are especially good if the next day you toast them briefly in the toaster oven – they magically taste like toasted marshmallows!!!! The cookies are tender-soft, their flavor complex and mellow.  Even days later, they are still soft!  They freeze well, and are soft when they thaw.  I would guess this makes about 4 or 5 dozen – I do not quite remember how many I ended up with as they were eaten as they came out of the oven! 

Whisk together the doubled dry ingredients from Cook’s Illustrated Best American Classics buttermilk biscuits:

4 cups flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

Set aside. 

In a stand mixer or bowl, we will have the wet ingredients from a single batch of King Arthur Flour’s Legacy Apple Cake. 

Cream together:

1 cup softened butter

1 cup light or dark brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

Beat in, one at a time:

3 large eggs

Mix in:

¼ cup cider or apple juice concentrate

1 generous teaspoon Mapleine (I used Mapleine instead of vanilla, which the original recipe calls for.  You can use vanilla, buttercream, or whatever flavoring you have on hand.  The Mapleline & brown sugar lends the cookies that decadent butterscotch flavor.)

Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix with the paddle or a wooden spoon until just mixed. 

Put generous tablespoonfuls on ungreased parchment paper (if it is greased, the cookies will spread too far in the heat and be thin around the edges). 

Bake at approximately 350 degrees F for 8 to 12 minutes, checking for doneness frequently with the first batch.  Take them out while they are still soft, but browning around the edges and on top.  Even if they are over baked, they will stay soft – I know this because I forgot about a pan or two so a few cookies were very well done! 

Serve to hungry boys or freeze. 

Variation: Mix in peanut butter chips, or really any chip.  

from tragedy to triumph, 

Mrs H

twitter.com/_mrs_h

Fried Hobo Pockets: Imagine, If You Will, Perfection

Dear determined cooks with hungry mouths to feed,

This dinner or lunch has a lot going for it - you can stuff it in your pocket and head off to work in the fields and eat it later (if such is your lot in life), you can make a dozen and leave them on the counter for grubby hands while you work on a more intense project; you can fill them with an infinite variety of different things so that you will never run out of options, and you will always have something to go in these delicious pockets. 

Hobo Pockets are a foil-wrapped dinner of various root vegetables and meats, peppers, and whatever else you wish to pack into them.  They are traditionally cooked on a grill or over a fire, but they can be baked in the oven and I have done them both ways.  We always enjoy them - serve some piping hot cornbread alongside, and you are set for a meal! 

This dinner combines the magic of all that, plus the irresistible sparkle of frying.  I was making a thick stew one night for dinner, and a batch of fry bread, when this ideal begged to be tested and proved to be worth my while.  Mr H enjoyed it, it was easy to handle, minimal cleanup afterward - what's not to love?  Since the recipe is an amalgamation of two recipes, Hobo Pockets and Indian Fry Bread, I was at a loss as to what to call them.  Mr H did not approve of my ideas of "Fried Indians," "Indian Hobos," and "Fried Hobos," so we settled on calling them simply Fried Hobo Pockets (but I still end up calling them Fried Hobos for short!).  

I use leftover Campfire Lasagna, stew, or miscellaneous pieces of leftover meat and vegetables to make up the filling.  

Fried Hobo Pockets

This is finger food, so let it cool briefly before serving!   

Use a leftover very thick stew, leftover Campfire Lasagna casserole, or make a thick stew filling with the following suggestions: 

Root vegetables and winter stores (onions, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, turnips, cooked beans, celery, squash, pumpkin, garlic, canned peppers) 

Meat (cooked stew meat, leftover steak, ground beef)

Spices (taco seasoning, Cajun seasoning, BBQ seasoning, a favorite blend, or miscellaneous spices and herbs such as fennel seed, caraway seed, dill weed, thyme, parsley, cilantro, cayenne pepper, salt, seasoned salt, fresh-ground black pepper)

If you are using leftovers, briefly heat them so they are not chilled.  If making the stew, cook until hot and soft. 

Make a batch of fry bread and prepare the rounds and heat frying oil as instructed. 

Fill the rounds with a spoonful of filling, as much as possible without tearing.  It is important that your stew is very thick because if it is too brothy, the breads will tear.  If the stew seems watery, add some flour and cook the stew until thick before filling the breads.  Fill with as much stew as possible so that the pockets are not too doughy once cooked, adding a few cubes of cheese if desired, and pinch the dough closed around the stew.   

Fry in an inch or so of hot oil (olive, peanut, canola, whatever you have).  Rotate about 1 - 2 minutes on each side or until thoroughly browned and crispy. Set on paper towels or a cooling rack and serve hot. 

Suggestions: Serve with sour cream, Hasty Dipping Sauce (most highly recommended by Mr H as the perfect companion for this dish!), or bottled hot sauce. 

Variation: For a breakfast version, try stuffing it with a mixture of cooked sausage or bacon, scrambled eggs, cooked peppers and small pieces of tomato (seeded), and various chopped herbs (parsley, thyme, etc).  

Off to amalgamate more recipes (you may be surprised when you learn just what I accidentally amalgamated next...), 

Mrs H

tweet us @_mrs_h for chewy nuggets
Pin us at Pinterest for pretty photos and intriguing articles
Follow us on Facebook for recipes, giveaways, and brilliant flashes of perspiration!

Sparkles Giveaway: And the winner is ...

Dear readers, join me in congratulating our sparkly body gel winner -

Britni! She will receive a bottle of sparkling body gel and a handy-dandy scrubbie-fluff from my sister Melissa, from her new Mary Kay home business.

Britni, you will shortly be receiving an e-mail from me requesting your mailing address.

Thank you to everybody who participated in this wild giveaway!  Your frugal tips in the comments section were appreciated by all the readers! 

Rushing off to spruce up with sparkles, 

Mrs H

twitter.com/_mrs_h

P.S. Still think Melissa should do another giveaway?  Post suggestions for her next gift in the comments below - here's her website if you need ideas!  If anybody's asking, this set is definitely my current favorite ... 

Slow-Cooker Dinner - Campfire Lasagna

Dear rustic camp fellows huddled around the flickering fire,

I suppose you could do this in a Dutch oven over the fire, but I haven't tried that yet; I'll test it out when I visit my family back home, and we cook dinner in the big cast-iron beast on the fire pit!

For now, however, the slow-cooker will stand in as a modern version of gleaming red embers to cook this hearty dinner.  I suggest serving it with a chopped salad and perhaps a slab of hot bread!

Campfire Lasagna

I was trying to make something very filling for the husband, and it turns out this dinner did the trick - it fills a crock pot of about 4 quarts, and we more or less lived off of it for several days, in various re-imaginings of the leftovers!  

Serves two for a very long time or a family for one night.

2 thinly sliced potatoes (peeled if you wish)

1 pound cooked ground beef, pork, or turkey with taco seasoning and, if you wish, chopped chile 

Sauteed onion and garlic cloves

One quart diced tomatoes & french-fry cut carrots, boiled for 5 minutes (boiling optional)

1 c pinto beans, boiled in water with salt and 1 bay leaf for 1.5 to 2 hours until softened

Grease the crock.  Beginning with the potatoes, thinly layer these ingredients repeatedly until they are all used up.  Cook for at least 3 hours on high; after 2.5 hours, remove the lid and top with cubed cheese (cheddar, jack, or a mixture).  You can turn it to Low and let it sit all day, if you prefer.  Serve steaming and beautiful straight from the crockpot, with hot pepper sauce on the side.  

Coming up - a fabulous use for leftovers this may leave!  

Washing crockery, 

Mrs H

twitter.com/_mrs_h

Who Am I? Questions Foodists Ask

Dear studious eater,

Food has always been at the center of cultural discussion - even our country's anthem gives it a nod with amber waves of grain - and the varying floods of popularity and thought have flowed up and down every possible eddy.  There has perhaps been no time in history, however, when food has been more at the heart of heated debate than today.  

Some people won't eat anything that has meat in it, and others won't eat anything without meat.  Some people refuse to eat anything that hasn't been processed in some way, while others refuse to buy any food item with more than three ingredients.  Some argue that our diets are oversaturated with grain and causing the current waves of gluten-intolerance or thyroid dysfunction as our bodies are overwhelmed with gluten, and they advocate cutting down on the grains in our diets.  Some are fully vegan, eating no by-product of animals which includes everything from meat to eggs to honey.  Some take it a step further and eat nothing but raw, vegan meals.  The most extreme examples, I suppose, would be the few subjects who have determined the exact half of food required by the human body for normal cell regeneration, and eat only that in the hopes of slowing their cellular turnover and living with a lifespan twice as long as the normal human being. 

That is pretty extreme.

But where do we, the "normals," fall in all of this?  Everybody has reasons and assumptions driving their food habits - some of them unconscious, others laboriously developed over hours of research or painful testing.  Money, preference, opinion, local availability, commercials, popular sales, far-away droughts - millions upon millions of factors pour into our decision-making. 

A rich winter stew topped with pasta, cheese, and fry-bread - but no meat

Sometimes the decisions come about slowly and gradually, over the course of years - like the evolution of eating our home.  I noticed that we weren't eating as much meat as we once were, and with our declining consumption of it my interest in it was also waning.  I found myself picking it out of dishes or asking for the tofu replacement when we went out, and when we were eating it at home I would slip my pieces of meat onto my husband's plate (who told me, "No matter what, I will always eat meat!").  The decision to cook less with it at home was birthed from an amalgam of reasons, as most decisions in the kitchen are - in the early stages of this decision, I was doing my research on plants, growing conditions, pesticides, and this all leaked over into the meat department where I learned more than I wanted to know (but never as much as I could know) about meat production.  This trickled down into a decision to buy only the finest meat, grown on open pastures in organic country and butchered and packaged in clean environments.  This turned into expensive cuts of meat that became ever dearer to buy, and eventually it was simply easier to cook most dishes without meat than shell out the hefty price of high-quality meat every night.  I'll reassure those of you who were worried that I'm not vegetarian (you meat-lovers can breathe easier for a moment!).  I still enjoy meat, and eat plenty of it in my opinion.  Just not at every meal, or every day.  

But, I didn't even know what I was up until recently.  I was a nameless mutt in a world of pure-bred, pedigreed eaters - people who knew their dinner-plate identity and could sum it up in a brief sentence.  You could toss a word out and their food preferences were clear to everybody.  I, on the other hand, required a stumbling paraphrase and some odd looks.  "Why," people would say, "are you picking the meat out of your dish?"  Or even more humorous, "Why are you eating vegetables, are you vegetarian?"  I would falter, "I like meat, you see, I just don't eat it much, so I don't like it as much as I used to."  

Horrified looks as my omnivore friends realized they were in the presence of an Other.  "You don't eat meat?"  I would try to explain: yes, I do, just not often.  But they were already confused.

Finally, I learned I was not the only one in this twilight zone of uncertain pedigree - there were others sharing my plight, and for the same and various reasons.  Health, cost, availability, interest.  And somebody, somewhere, came up with a name for it.  Definition: A person who eats meat less frequently, that amount to be determined by the individual.  Term: Flexitarian.

Ah, I am a flexitarian.  I have a name!  A name that is not solidly defined yet, but a name, nonetheless - and I can grow in to this name!

Eventually, I presume percentages and quantities will be attached to the loosely-defined Name so that stastistics and health recommendations can be made.  But, until then, I'll just casually use my new name and hope that, with a term to wrap the definition around, my pedigree will be soon accepted and I can prance with the rest of them.

Chewing the fat, 

Mrs H

twitter.com/_mrs_h