Friday Foto Fun with Copper Cookware

It's time for Carrie's Friday Foto Fun!

I got an education this week. Did you know that there are uses for copper cookware other than hanging on the wall or from a pot rack? As an amateur baker, I was mostly interested in how copper cookware could help me in the kitchen:

Bain Marie: a fancy word for a double boiler. Copper heats evenly and that is important if you want your melted chocolate to be perfectly tempered (a.k.a shiny).

Egg White Beating Bowl: for whipping up egg whites into a frenzy. You need frenzied eggs for meringue and for some reason, the copper really aids in this. It's like science and stuff:-)

Sugar Saucepan: for caramelizing sugar. Apparently, copper maintains it's temperature better than other metals. My interest in sugar art is pique by the idea of this. If I had a nickel for every caramel I have broken, I could buy a bakery:-)

Zabaglione Bowl: for beating egg yolks and sugar together. Again, evenly conducted and maintained heat makes the perfect lemon curd (or any other curd for that matter).

I did not know that such beautiful things existed and I found a place to buy Ruffoni Copper Cookware. Now, I need to figure out how to make one of those wish lists for my side bar...

Test Results

Last week, I tested some old seeds to see what I needed to buy for the sowing season. And here are the results:

The peppers didn't do very well:-(

The tomatoes did better.

But the pumpkins did the best!

Bill Organization

We are starting to get all those tax forms in the mail. Now, is the perfect time to organize your paperwork and that's what I did. Here is what it looked like before:



And after:

Much more manageable!

Valentines Mistake Cake

It's time for Carrie's Friday Foto Fun! Here is that cake I was going to post a couple weeks ago:

Cute right? I think it is perfect for Valentines Day don't you? Yeah, well this little ditty gave me a workout. But the upside is you get to learn from my mistakes. Here are a list of errors you can avoid since I made them for you:

First mistake: I was trying to make the cake while caring for my ailing child.

Second mistake: I didn't level the cake off.

Third mistake: I didn't put it on a cake board.

Fourth mistake: I tried to fill a cake without making a damn around the edge.

By the way, this is a chocolate cake (out of a box) filled with raspberry jam (from a jar) iced with chocolate frosting (from a can) and garnished with melted white chocolate. So, if you heed the warnings above, you can throw this together on the fly too:-)

Testing Garden Seeds

Now that I have a garden plan, I have to see if I have enough garden seeds for the plan. Before I go out and buy a bunch of seeds, I have to check to see if the ones I have from last year would fulfill this need. And this is how I do it:

1. I assemble the necessary materials:

Seeds (both packaged and ones that I saved last fall):

AND:

Paper towels, sandwich bags and a marker:

2. I dampen a single paper towel and place approximately 10 seeds on it:

Make sure that they perfect! If they look like this, throw them OUT:

3. Then, wrap up the paper towel and place it in the sandwich bag that has been label with the type of seed and the date. Like this:



4. Put them in a nice sunny area and wait for them to sprout.

1. If most of them germinate, then sow lightly.
2. If only half sprout, sow heavily.
3. And if less than half sprout, they are not viable and you should buy new seeds.
   

Happy Testing:-)

Organizing the Linen Closet

 I don't know about you but, after all the table clothes and napkins and extra linens we use over the holidays, our linen closet is always a diaster. See?

So, I spent some quality time to get a handle on the situation.


I use labels like thes for each room to help me stay organized throughout the year:

Girl Scout Cookie Cake

Some of my readers may remember this cake from last year:

I am bringing it back to remind all of you that we are in the middle of Girl Scout Cookie season!!! If you haven't already, you will soon hear the call of the cookie from your neighborhood Girl Scout and it is important to answer the call.
As a Daisy Leader, I am here to tell you that by buying a box of cookies (of several boxes) from that little girl over the phone or at the door, you can help to change a girl's life! I am just starting off with these girls and some of them have little tiny voices. By participating in the Girl Scouts, girls learn important life skills. They learn to think for themselves, be leaders, give back to the community but the most important thing: They learn to stand in the center of who they are and speak up and say what they have to say. All from a cookie!
Now, I know that it is new year resolution season, but these cookies freeze very easily. So, you can tuck them away and bring them out for snacks at school, in the middle of summer by the pool or for any ocassion for celebrating. And, if that weren't enough, the Girl Scout website has more recipe ideas for you:-)

So, no excuses!! Answer the call of the cookie. It will help a girl in your life to be her best and you will feel great doing it!

Garden Planning

Winter is a frustrating time for advid gardeners however, now is the perfect time to start making a plan for when fair weather returns. I am starting with seeds. Last year, I kept mine in a small recipe box. Well, have branched out into 2 more boxes this year:

This year, I am going to plant:

Tomatoes
Cucubmers
Pumpkins
Peppers (of varing shapes and sizes)
Onions
Celery
Carrots

Now, that I have a plan, I have to test the seeds....

Calendar Organization

The beginning of the year is the perfect time to organize your calendar and that is what I did this week.

In order to get vacation time requested, it is important to figure out annual doctor's appointments, big projects and trip dates early. If your house is anything like mine, you have information coming at you in a million different directions. On paper, my calendar look like this:


Not the best system for someone who is dyslectic like me so, I use Google Calendar. It is color coded for each member of my family and/or by activity (i.e. gardening, work, cleaning, etc.). You can import calendars too. I have all my U.S. holidays on there and sports schedules so we know when and where the Packers are on. I even have an up-to-date weather forecast on my calendar so, I know if I need to move stuff around for a pending snow storm or if we need a plan B for outdoor activities. I meal plan on my calendar and I even started an editorial calendar for my blog. It is all right there in one spot! I love it!

Believe me, I need to make every second of my day count and Google Calendar helps me to do it:-) How do you keep track of your schedule?

Disclosure: I was not paid by Google in any way shape or form for this review. I just really, really love my Google Calendar and when I find something that works for me, I shout it from the rooftops:-)

Friday Foto Fun with...well, not a cake:-(

It's time for Carrie's Friday Foto Fun! I had a great Valentine's Day cake to share with you today however...

...remember this picture?

Well, it's back!! That's right. My youngest has yet another strep infection! So, instead a decorating a beautiful Devil's food cake with raspberry filling and buttercream frosting, I spent my day taking care of her.

I am not complaining. It is my pleasure to have her to take care of...I just don't have cake to show you, that's all:-(

Rinse and Fertilize Houseplants

The weather outside is still pretty nasty. So, what is a frustrated gardener to do? Well, now is the perfect time to do some maintenance on your houseplants. Even plants get dusty and periodically, they need a good shower. To illustrate, here is a plant before his shower:


And here is the same plant after:



Big difference, right? You simply put your plant in the sink and lightly spray off the leaves. Just like this:


Another important thing to remember is that plants are living things and just like you and me, they get hungry. So, after their shower, break up the soil gently with one of these:

And give them a nice slow releasing fertilizer like this:

Your houseplants will thank you for it:-)

Organizing the Basement

This week, I tackled organizing my basement. With the Christmas decorations going down and the Valentines decorations going up, this is what my storage area looked like:

After a bit of organization, it now looks like this:

Still a lot of work to do but at least I can think now:-)

Happy New Blog Design!

Welcome to my new blog design warming! I am celebrating my Second Blogiversary with a new look and new functionality. Come on in and have a look around. There's lots to see and do here:-)
I have a new navigation bar on the top of the blog. You can reach my Home Page , or learn more about me by clicking on the About/Contact, button. You can find and sign up for my rss feed by clicking on Subscribe or check out who I like by selecting Links. My Disclosure statement is there to let you know that sometimes, I actually make money on this blog but it will never make me write untruths. And finally, the last button show how you can Advertise on my site.

The advertising option is something new this year. I have been approached several times with opportunities to host advertising on my site but I didn't have a way to handle these requests. Now, I do:-)

There are other things that are new this year. I have new Feature and Headlines on the top of the blog. Now, you can see at a glance what is going on with Susie's Homemade. If something catches your eye, click to your heart's content:-) Also, I added another navigation bar which houses all of my recipes. I think you will find that it will be much easier to find that perfect dish for dinner tonight:-)

So there you have it. Another year, another blog design.