Things you probably already know

Just wanted to share a few things (random and in no particular order) that I have discovered and love-which you all probably already know about. But in case I am not the last person on earth to have found them or tried them I will share them in hopes to make other lives a little better (and in some cases yummier).
#1. Executive Homemaker. Have you checked out this blog? I hadn't until I was searching the Internet for some printable cupcake toppers and was lead to it. Fabulous stuff to make a mom and wife's and ladies life a whole lot cuter, funner, easier and more organized. And the best part is you can sign up to have stuff sent to your e-mail. So every couple of days you get a cute free printable sent to your inbox (and it sure beats junk mail). Really cute stuff. Go here to check it out.
#2 The best and quickest way to make doughnuts. Oh my goodness all these years people I have been wasting my time I tell you, making cake doughnuts from scratch (not like I have done it a ton but enough to have considered it a waste of my time) after finding out that you can use those package refrigerator biscuits instead. Now under normal circumstances I think they are terrible as an actual biscuit but deep fry those suckers and cover them in a glaze and they are heavenly. I even used the cheapo Western Family kind and they were divine. I wanted mini doughnuts so I broke each biscuit in half, then rolled the half in a ball, flattened it with my hand, and poked a hole in the middle. Deep fry in a bit of oil. They were the perfect size. I made a simple glaze of powdered sugar, milk and vanilla for half of them and dipped the other half in sugar. WOW-seriously could have eaten the whole plate myself. I am not promoting these as a health food by any means. Those biscuits are loaded with who knows what but if you want to make some good doughnuts quick and cheap-this is the way to go.
#3 Easy applesauce-courtesy of Martha Stewart. I found this recipe in a Martha Stewart Baby Magazine (remember when they had those and the Kids editions too-oh such great magazines that you can no longer get). She was showing how to make applesauce as a baby food. I thought, "why not do the same thing on a larger scale to use for canning?" So here is what you do. Sorry because there are no measurements really.
First start by washing, coring and cutting up your apples into about 1 inch pieces. You don't need to peel them. I REPEAT-DO NOT PEEL. (I would say I use about 25 medium size apples per sauce pan full but I just cut until my pot is full). Put those into a large pot and add water-enough to steam them (I do about a cup and half-maybe two cups-not too little not too much). Put a lid on your pot and steam over medium heat until the apples are soft. They will look like this-only this is taken after I have removed about half of my apples.
Put your apples into a blender with part of the water. You will want to have at least 1/3 of your blender filled with water otherwise your applesauce will be too thick. Blend. You may need to add more water if it is too thick. You can have thicker or thinner applesauce too depending on what your preference is. Better to start with less and have to add more.

Then press through a strainer. If you have one a little larger and in better shape than mine you would be in business but even this small one does the trick. I pour in part of the applesauce and press it around with a rubber scraper. The applesauce will go through and the skins will...

stay on top like this and you can scoop them out and throw them away. You may get the odd skin in your sauce but you will end up with a very smooth and creamy applesauce.

Like this. You could do this on a large scale to can or on a small scale to eat fresh for your family or as baby food. Easy and delicious.

#4 Crock pot Chile Verde. I am posting this on for my friend Tali because I was talking to her on the phone while preparing this and she said it sounded fantastic and oh it was delicious. Whenever I have my choice of restaurant it is Mexican and one of my favorites is Chile Verde. Well here is a super easy crock pot version I just discovered.

You will need:

1-2 pounds boneless pork chops

1/2 cup baby carrots cut up (or you could have more or omit this entirely)

1 jar Salsa Verde

Put the pork chops in your crock pot. Add the carrots and cover with the jar of salsa verde. Cook on low for 8 hours of high for 4 (though my crock pot never takes that long). You can serve the pork chops whole or do what we did and shred them and then serve them on tortillas with beans and all the trimmings. So easy and so tasty. But you probably already knew all of this.

Lessons from Martha #3

This is one of those lessons that I was like, "you have got to be kidding me-all these years and I never knew this!!!!" This likely is not news to many of you but I will share just in case I am not the last person on earth to know. In this particular episode Martha had a guest, Dani Fiore (a cookie making queen) on to demonstrate her stained glass sugar cookies. Martha asked what sugar cookie recipe she used and Dani said her basic sugar cookie only (and here is the light bulb moment) she left out the baking powder so they wouldn't rise and lose their shape. Are you kidding me???? All these years of making sugar cookies that grow as they bake and end up looking like blobs instead of the cute cutouts and all I had to do was leave out the baking powder???? I had no idea. So I tried it immediately with my normal sugar cookie recipe and they turned out good but they still grew a bit. So I tried again using her recipe and they were fantastic. They didn't rise, they held their shape and they tasted great. I even tried the whole stained glass thing which was cool but a lot of work. So next time I would just use the recipe and adjust my baking time and leave it at that. I know, not exactly life changing but for sure sugar cookie changing for me. Why didn't I think of that? Thanks once again Martha.

Homemade Granola Bar Update

Recently I brought you this post sharing a recipe for allergy free homemade granola bars that I saw on Martha Stewart. I have been making these things like made and recently decided to add a 1/4 cup of peanut butter to them (obviously you wouldn't do this if you had a peanut allergy) but HOLY COW- totally kicks them up a notch and makes them a bit chewier. You have to try them. I eat an average of 3 of these a day. Just add the peanut butter to the oil, sugar, honey mixture after you have boiled it for 1 minute and removed it from the heat. These are seriously sooooooo good.

Lessons From Martha #2

This past week while catching up on my Martha Stewart episodes I was intrigued by a segment she did with a lady named Alana Elliott. This lady created a company called No Nuttin that makes and sells a variety of products that are dairy, gluten, peanut and nut (to name a few) free. It is a Canadian based company (George, have you heard of it?). She shared her recipe for homemade granola bars. They looked super delicious and the ingredients weren't too off the wall that I thought, "these are going to taste like cardboard" so I gave them a try. And they were DELICIOUS!!!! Really easy to make, really tasty, sweet but healthy. Small fry can't get enough of them. I like knowing exactly what is in them (having a nut allergy myself). Something about them screams that they need peanut butter (I am not allergic to peanuts) so I think next time I might try them with peanut butter chips and chocolate chips on top. Here are what mine looked like.

Go here for the recipe. I didn't have gluten free crisp cereal but just used good old Rice Krispies and they turned out great. I am loving that I found this recipe. It is a great one. Thanks Martha.

Lessons From Martha

Bare with me while I get to my point: A few weeks ago my friend called me to tell me about some guy on Doctor Phil who had done a study that said that stay at home moms had an average of 30 to 40 spare hours a week or something like that. Totally stupid!! She wondered if I was watching. I was not but I wanted to see if I could find the show so I was flipping through the channels on Dish Network cause I have seen Dr. Phil on late at night occasionally. Well I kept flipping but could not find the show. HOWEVER guess what I found scheduled to come on at 2:30AM-MARTHA STEWART. My first thought was, "Martha, how could this have happened to you? 2:30am!!! Are you kidding me?" You put wacky infomercials on at 2:30 am not Martha Stewart. Needless to say I set our DVR to record every episode. Now this may be shocking to some of you, considering that I am fairly opinionated but I actually really like Martha Stewart. I am not a big fan of everything she does, and I am not so obsessed that I will do everything she says or buy anything just because it has her name on it, but the women is amazing and what I love the most is that she started with nothing just like all the rest of us and has built such a huge and amazing empire. She is really knowledgeable. Well that is my opinion anyway. So in watching her episodes I have come to learn some new cool stuff. Now sometimes I just delete the whole show-like really Martha the last time I found myself saying, "gee I wish I had a recipe for linguine with clams was um....NEVER" but other times I learn stuff like this:

Martha said she never lets tin foil touch her food. I am sure I am the last person to hear that, but I have never worried about having tin foil touch my food. I don't know why she doesn't want tin foil to touch her food but that is what she said. She suggested lining it with parchment paper first before you wrap food in it. So the other night we had tin foil dinners (the camping food of my youth) and I lined the tin foil with parchment first. And let me tell you-they turned out amazing. The food was moist, it didn't stick, it didn't burn to the bottom, it slid right out and was perfectly cooked. What a brilliant idea. So glad I watched Martha, thanks for the idea!!