A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Angel Food Cake: To Grease or Not to Grease

I hadn't baked angel food cake in years so I couldn't remember if I was supposed to grease the pan or not. I kept thinking that the trick was to not grease the pan plus I remembered mom doing something like turning the tube pan upside down onto a (glass) soda bottle. Hmmmm...

Gene and I were craving something sweet and I had the cake mix from The Amish Country Store in Branson, but no tube pan and no memory of the "tricks." 

We can all learn from my experimentation:

1) Loaf pans work great.

2) Either greasing or not greasing the pan produces a nice cake.  The difference is in heft.  If you want a truly light, spongy, angel food cake, DON'T grease the pan.  But Gene and I found that we also like the density of the greased pan. It still had the spongy, chewy angel food texture but it was more dense and hefty like a butter cake.

The conclusion must be that even though we were all raised to believe that angel food cake was special and "hard" to bake, you can't really screw it up!

 

 

 

Appetizers with Style: Christmas Tree Veggie Plate

My friend, Jennifer, sent me a pic of the appetizer plate she made for a Christmas work party. I LOVE this!  What a great way to turn a simple veggie tray into a festive wrok of art!

It's as straight-forward as it looks: She halved one broccoli spear, leaving about 3 inches of "trunk" and then laid in bite-sized floret bites to form the tree itself.  Next she decorated with yellow pepper slices for garland and then added cherry tomato ornaments. The final touch is a treetop star cut out of yellow pepper using a small cookie/hors d'oeuvre cutter.

Thanks for sharing, Jenn!

 

 

 

Funny of the Day

Better Than Mom's (Sorry Mom!) Lasagna

 

 

Sorry, Mom, even though you were a fabulous cook, I think in this one instance I beat you at your own game. 

I love lasagna but with only two of us it's something I only get to make when we're having company.  You just can't make a small lasagna!

So for New Year's Eve, that's what I did, although I stepped up a few of the ingredients my Mom used to use, switching out ricotta and cream cheese for the cottage cheese, and using a 50/50 mix of ground beef and country sausage for my Slow Cooker Meat Sauce. 

We were all pretty pleased, patting myself on the back. The result was rich without being overwhelming and not too wet, not to dry, perfect texture. Will be making these changes always from now on.

 

Happy New Year: To Resolve or Not to Resolve

I've spent so many years making huge, multi-page lists of goals, breaking them down all Franklin-Covey-ish into smaller goals, and those into smaller goals...and lasting the first few weeks keeping all those rules and regulations I've laid out for myself. And then I stop and feel the guilt, chastising myself to no end...that ends this year.

The one biggest goal for myself that has always rolled over each year is to publish. I have sold some short stories, a few craft patterns to magazines, etc., but with publishing the NICU knitting book I feel like I can relax. Not that I won't continue to write or knit, just that I can take the pressure off myself of that goal.  It was a personal milestone and now I can continue on, creating and writing and dreaming new projects.

Between that and all the personal things I've learned this year, I decided to make up a much easier goal list this year, the kind of resolutions that will be no problem to accomplish and that will generally give me a little slack to be kinder to myself. I think  that's the key. I've learned this year to be a little kinder to myself.

This is what I've learned in 2011:

Just because someone asks me to do something, I'm not obligated to to say "yes". A favor always has at least two answers:  "yes" and "no" and variations in between.  Saying "no" does not make me a bad person, nor is it a measure of my friendship or love.  Saying "no" does not mean I have a bad attitude, am selfish, or that I'm not a "giving" person.  However, on the heels of that, another thing I learned this year is that if I say No and the other person gets mad or demands to know why I can't/won't do the favor, that's a measure of THEIR friendship to me.

There are friends in my life that I get to spend relatively little time with due to family, jobs, distance, and life in general.  It doesn't mean I love those friends less or that our friendship is any less strong  because we're busy with the minutia of life.  On the other hand, there are acquaintances who I think of as friends who are only around when they want something from me or I'm convenient for them.  I have learned to trust my instincts.  The heart knows the difference between the two.

I cannot take on the world or be all things to all people, nor can I fix anyone else's life, especially when I can hardly cope with my own sometimes.  I have learned that when people talk to me about their problems what they mostly need is just someone supportive to listen, not someone to jump in and fix everything for them or to take on their problems.   I no longer feel like Atlas.  (No wonder I had back problems--the world is a heavy load!)

And the last thing I learned this year is that I really don't need to know everything bad about anybody. I don't even need to know everything at all about anybody. I've found that I really like relating to people at face value without gossip or negative thoughts rolling around in my head--it's so much more pleasant to assume everyone is nice and exactly what they appear to be, especially people whom I'm not particularly close to.

That's a lot of education that's been going on in my brain this year.

For 2012 my resolutions for my personal happiness are:

10)  Take longer baths.

9)  Smile at drama that plays out before me without becoming one of the cast.

8)  Knit more things for myself.

7)  Remember that two negatives only make a positive in multiplication.

6) Sleep in more, with no guilt.

5) Not give a crap at least twice/week about things that I have no control over.

4)  Take more walks.

3)  Share more time with family.

2)  Curse more creatively.

and 1) Eat more bacon.