Gone a Long Time

I have just nicely rested up from two long drives. First I went to NYC with my son and then to Monroe, Connecticut via Ithaca with a friend. However, now I am back and ready to post. There are a wide range of little tidbits to pass on this week.

A reader shared a story with me (thanks Kim) that I want to let you know about. She accidentally dropped her daughter’s phone in water while cleaning and holding the phone with her shoulder. Kim was trying to multitask. We all do and sometimes more successfully than others. Necessity is truly the “Mother of Invention”. Not wanting to have to go out to a store, Kim searched her cupboards and came up with couscous which she felt was similar to rice. She put the phone and couscous in a food storage bag. Before sealing it Kim remembered she had read somewhere that those little silica packs that you get in new purses and other items would help to dry things out too. For good measure she dropped one she had saved in the bag and sealed it up. The phone remained there for 24 hours. SUCCESS! The phone was working. Thanks again for sharing your story, Kim! I’m going to collect some of the silica packs to have on hand.

What do you use to keep your brown sugar from getting hard? I have used the little terracotta disks that are sold for that purpose but I get better results from a slice of bread.  When I worked in a restaurant many years ago we had huge bins of sugars. The chef/owner always had some bread in the brown sugar to keep it soft and that is when I started doing it. I have read that a slice of apple and even a marshmallow will keep brown sugar soft as well. When I fill my brown sugar canister I just toss in a slice of bread. The bread never gets moldy or rancid. It works like a charm. If you have another method please leave it in the comments section. I would love to know!

There used to be quite a lot of recipes that required buttermilk. There seem to be less these days but still you do occasionally run onto some. I hate to buy a quart of buttermilk when I only need a cup or half cup. A good substitute for butter milk is to add white vinegar or lemon juice to regular milk. Let’s say you need a cup of buttermilk. You put a Tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice in a one cup measure and then fill the cup with milk. Viola! Homemade buttermilk.

Appliances with a stainless steel finish have been very popular the last few years. A couple of years ago I bought a refrigerator with the brushed stainless steel. It was a pain to keep clean. Every little fingerprint was very noticeable. I have discovered that they sell moistened wipes specifically to clean these appliances but before I found out about them I had experimented at home with various products that I had on hand. Glass cleaner didn’t work but when I tried my dusting spray it worked beautifully! Since I always have that on hand and it takes very little to clean the outside of the refrigerator it is a much more cost effective method for me than the wipes.

I was also having a hard time keeping my black stove top looking good. Cleaning it with the dishcloth left awful streaks. Even drying it after wiping was still not that much better. For this task I tried the glass cleaner first, as I had with the refrigerator,  and it is awesome. Dries completely streak free!

This past Sunday we celebrated a couple family birthdays and our postponed Easter dinner. For the one birthday guy I made a pudding poke cake. It is just like the jello poke cake but with pudding instead. I used a yellow cake mix, banana pudding and frosted with chocolate frosting. It was kind of like a banana flavored Boston Cream Pie. Our other birthday celebrant had an entirely different cake. I used a white cake mix prepared as per package directions. I separated the batter into four bowls and dyed each one a different color. Using a prepared Bundt pan, I layered the different colors of batter. Then I took a knife and cut through it gently so as not to completely mix the colors. I wanted them vibrant and swirled a little.

The second cake needed a fluffy and light frosting. I ran across a cream cheese frosting that seemed to fit the bill. It worked better than I hoped and was so EASY! The recipe follows:

1- 8oz. pkg. of cream cheese (there’s no need to soften this and you can use     the low fat or regular)

1 cup of powdered sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla

1 pint of heavy whipping cream

Combine the cream cheese and sugar. Blend with the paddle for the mixer, if you have one, until smooth. Add the vanilla. Lastly, add the whipping cream a little at a time. Once all of the whipping cream is incorporated, whip until stiff peaks form. It’s that simple!

I am learning about blogging more and more as I go. I need more pictures in my blog. Ideally, I should remember to take them as I do things and then share them with you. I am working on making that a habit. I promise more pictures in the future.

Let me know if you try anything on the blog and how it works for you. You can either leave it in the comments section or email me with the link provided. I would love to hear from people.

See you next time!!