Month: July 2018

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and brush an iron skillet with olive oil.
2. Trim the leaves and stems from the underside of the cauliflower and cut the bottom stem even with the florets so that the cauliflower sits flat.
3. Stir together the olive oil and garlic. Begin by brushing the bottom side of the cauliflower with the garlic oil. Season the underside and up inside the cauliflower head with salt. Turn the head over and brush the top liberally with the garlic oil. Sprinkle with salt and Parmesan cheese.
4. Place the cauliflower into an iron skillet. Roast until the center of the cauliflower is tender when pierced with a knife and the exterior is golden brown.

If you don’t have an iron skillet you can use a pie plate. This was super delicious and I intend to have it as a regular part of my weekly menu.

Tips and Tricks

*I recently read a hack online that caught my attention. I bruise easily on my upper forearms. Through a process of elimination I have determined it is partly hereditary and partly the fact that as a child I was sunburned a lot. When I was little sunscreen wasn’t a thing yet. When I read that soaking a cotton ball with vinegar (white or apple cider) and using it to gently massage a bruise would help it disappear more quickly I had to try it. The instructions were to massage the bruise with the vinegar soaked cotton ball and then leave the vinegar on your skin for 30 minutes. I can definitely say that it helped. There is a kind of long explanation for why this works but for me it was enough to know that it helped lighten the bruises. I tried it on one that was older and one that just happened and it worked on both. They are not gone but better. Interestingly the older bruise seemed to fare better than the fresh one.

*Last week I had an interesting conversation on Facebook. It was about those kitchen tools that you use to break up ground meat as you are browning it. One Facebook friend said she broke up boiled eggs for egg salad with it also. I have always used a pastry cutter for eggs but I am going to give this method a try too. I thought you might like to know about it as well.

*For a friend’s birthday we went to an old-fashioned five and dime store a little over an hour away from me in East Aurora, NY I purchased a reusable toaster bag to make, among other things, grilled cheese sandwiches. You must know me by now, I have to check products out and see if they deliver. This I can honestly say delivered. I thought I might miss the butter on the outside of the sandwich but I really didn’t and the cheese was nicely melted. I am going to get a couple of packages for my bachelor sons! The bags will be right up their alley!

*In my backyard, growing up the side of a tree, I found a poison ivy vine. Since no one needs that around I did some research to find a safe for the environment way to get rid of it. What I found was a mixture consisting of 1 gallon water, 1 cup of salt and 1 Tablespoon of liquid dish soap. I actually cut the recipe in half since I didn’t have that big of an area to treat and I used a spray bottle to apply it. In my next blog post I will update you on how it worked.

*This past week I tried the baking soda in the water trick to boil easy peel eggs. I followed the directions exactly but it didn’t work for me. Giving it a second try is on my agenda but for now I am disappointed.

*While investigating the perfectly peelable boiled egg I stumbled upon some other knowledge. I knew that if you put eggs in water and they floated it meant they were not good any more. However, I didn’t know that if when placed in water the egg lays on its side at the bottom it is still quite fresh. If it stands upright at the bottom it is still eatable but should be eaten soon or hard-boiled. Incidentally these are the best eggs to boil for easy peeling are the older ones. They are also, supposedly, better for making meringue!

Projects

I have had a few since my last post that I want to share with you.

*For a friend’s birthday I wanted to add something homemade to her gifts and since we are nearing July 4th I settled on this item. I had seen something similar on Pinterest but I changed it somewhat.

I used a piece of denim cut from an old pair of jeans for the blue field on the flag. It is handy that I have a button jar and was able to get 50 slightly off white buttons for the stars. I’m a collector so I happen to have a collection of vintage rulers and yardsticks. I chose a Coca Cola ruler with the golden rule printed on it to use as an anchor for my “flag” and some sisal twine that I had to use as a hanger. The only thing I purchased was the ribbon to use as the flag’s stripes. I chose red and slightly off white ribbon with frayed edges. I was quite pleased with how it turned out and my friend really liked it. Win! Now, I am working on one for me. Everything will be exactly the same but I am making only 13 “star” to represent the original states and they are going to be arranged in a circle as the flag was at that time. Let me know if you try this! I would love to hear about any variations.

*My friend, Shannon, had sent me some vintage wooden thread spools. I wanted to make something for her out of them. I did save some for myself! Anyway, I settled on a wreath idea and then decided to make the theme, quite fittingly, a sewing one. I wrapped ribbon around a grapevine wreath, hot glued it to secure it and then proceeded to add sewing items. The vintage spools were wrapped with ribbon which was hot glued in place too. I made the hanger out of a piece from a measuring tape and created a pennant banner using Scrabble letters for the center of the wreath. I think Shannon was pleased. Below is the end result.

*My youngest daughter is getting married this summer and we decided to make the invitations. Sara came up with the idea to use vintage sheet music since she is a singer and her fiance plays guitar. Music is certainly an important part of their lives.  I just happened to have sheet music in my craft room closet and overwhelmingly it was composed of love songs.

My oldest daughter had the almond color card stock that we used inside. I used Word to produce the invitation and for the RSVP card. On the RSVP card I asked them to respond to my phone number or to a Gmail address I created just for wedding responses.

I used a glue stick to attach the actual invite to the sheet music, used a hole punch to create holes for the ribbon that tied the invite and a paper-cutter to cut the sheet music to exactly 8.5 inches. When I made the template I determined that was the size I needed to be able to fold the sheet music and have it fit into a standard business size envelope.

The only things we purchased were some nice off white envelopes and some black ribbon. I have had several compliments on how they turned out.

Techy Stuff

*I have a website that is my go to site for hard to find books, movies and music. They even have textbooks should you be looking for one. The site is alibris.com .  Check it out! If you sign up for their emails you get $5 off your first order. The emails contain promo codes and coupons.

*Always on the look out for ways to save money, make money and conserve, I read about a website where you can search for coupons for the items on your grocery list or the ones in your weekly sale flyer. You just select the ones you want and print them out. The address is lozo.com  . There is also an app that you can get for your smart phone from Google Play or the iTunes app store.

Before I sign off I wanted to give you an update on my DVD selling which I did using deluttr.com and secondspin.com. Decluttr is a definite thumbs up! They paid for postage and were quick to process my box and pay me on PayPal. Second Spin, not so much. I neglected to read the fine print! They didn’t reimburse me for shipping since what I sent back didn’t total $10 worth after they deducted the cost for a case and another small thing. I thought all of the stuff I sent in was in excellent shape but they didn’t. So, I actually lost money on that transaction. Although, I didn’t read the fine print well enough I still didn’t like the way they deducted the cost of items off the order total. That seems very arbitrary since I thought I sent in “as if” new items. Big, disappointing thumbs down for them!

Please leave a comment and see you soon!!!