350 degrees

12 x 18 would work  I used a Bundt pan–greased and floured

Beat:

1 1/4 cups oil

2 cups brown sugar

Add:

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups canned pumpkin (or one 15 oz can)

4 eggs–beat in 1 at a time

Gradually beat in:

2 cups flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Bake 30 minutes or longer for Bundt pan

When cool can be frosted or left as is. I whipped up a cream cheese frosting that I could eat all by itself by the bowl full!! I tinted it orange for a festive touch!

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Post tags: Bake, baking, Bundt, bundt pan, Cake, canned pumpkin, cinnamon, cream cheese frosting, halloween, Pumpkin, pumpkin cake, Thanksgiving

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Here are two easy and cheap  homemade cleaners that contain no harmful chemicals and still smell good!

Homemade Soft Scrub

Mix together

1/4 cup borax

1 cup baking soda

1 T biodegradable liquid soap (I use citrus castille)

Add enough water to make a pasty consistency

add 10 drops essential oils ( I like the smell of lemon and orange for cleaning)

If the scrub gets dry add a few more drops of water.

Anti-Bacterial Spray

To 1 cup white vinegar add

3 cups water

10 drops grapefruit seed extract

10 drops tea tree oil

1 teaspoon castille soap

10 to 20 drops lemon, lavender and/or orange essential oils

I am hoping to find my blogging mojo again. We are still creating messes all over the place–I promise to share more soon!!

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Post tags: baking soda, blog, blogging, borax, castille, castille soap, Cleaners, cleaning, cleaning supplies, essential oils, grapefruit seed, grapefruit seed extract, harmful chemicals, Homemade, lavender, Lemon, liquid soap, ORANGE, scrub, Spray, Spring, spring cleaning, tea tree oil, white vinegar

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I think I should change the title to “An Overabundance Of Brightly Colored Photos On Another Gloomy Day!”

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Post tags: activity, Building, candy, color, colored photos, gingerbread houses, leftovers

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Last weekend I had a family brunch at our house. The girls and I made these mini frozen fruited cheesecakes. The vanilla wafer crusts were supposed to fit neatly inside a mini muffin liner but that wasn’t the case at all. Maybe it had something to do with the Whole Foods brand vanilla wafers I bought as opposed to the vanilla wafer brand.

Anyways, other than being a little buried in a large paper liner, these little bites were a perfect addition to our brunch.

Place 12 vanilla wafers in the bottom of your muffin liners, flat side up

Whisk together 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt ( Seven Stars Maple YUM!), 1/2 cup  softened cream cheese, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, 1 teaspoon honey

Plop a spoonful on each wafer

At this point you could top with fruit or put the mini’s straight into the freezer for 1 to 1 1/2  hours then remove and top with fruit. (depending on how cold you want your fruit) Let them sit out about 15-25 minutes before serving–but not longer they need to be a little frozen to stay firm.

We used some very mini chocolate chips on ours too. Any leftovers we popped right back in the freezer for later.

I linked to Seven Stars above. I LOVE this yogurt. If I am not making my own this is what I am eating! Next week I will tell you all about a keifer and yogurt making workshop I attended this week with Warren Taylor of Snowville Creamery—oooh ahhh!! Very exciting stuff!

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Post tags: Cake, Cheesecake, cheesecake bites, choc, chocolate, chocolate chips, cream cheese, family, family brunch, Food, Foods, freezer, fruit, Fruited, honey, keifer, lemon juice, Maple, mini chocolate chips, muffin, recipe, seven stars, snowville, teaspoon honey, teaspoon lemon juice, Thursday, vanilla, vanilla wafer, vanilla wafers, vanilla yogurt, warren taylor, whole foods, workshop

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I LOVE hot and spicy food.  I saw a recipe for Fermented Hot Chili Sauce at Nourished Kitchen and thought it would make tasty gifts to share.

Holy crap–this is some hot, hot sauce!

I bought just about all the habanaro peppers at our grocery along with a few jalapenos and a couple of pablanos for flavor. I cut the stems off and threw them into the food processor with a few sweet onions, several cloves of garlic and a few handfuls of basil and salt and a little sugar. I mixed up the only living cultures I had-keifer starter-with a little water and threw that in too. I put everything into a mason jar–it took several tries as just inhaling the fumes were tough! I let it sit on my counter for about 12 days. There wasn’t much bubbling and not much liquid so I ended up just bottling it up seeds and all.

The brave decided to try it yesterday………….

I ate some on tortilla chips and yes it was hot but super tasty. I love the taste of habaneros!  I think it will be really good in a bowl of beans and rice topped with some yogurt! Mmmmm

The Nourished Kitchen blog is loaded with really delicious recipes!! Be sure to check them out.

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Post tags: basil, beans and rice, Chili, chili sauce, cloves of garlic, CULTURES, Fermented, Food, habanaro, habanaro peppers, habaneros, Hot, hot chili, hot peppers, hot sauce, Hotter, hotter than hell, jalapenos, Kitchen, mason jar, onion, onions, pepper, Peppers, recipe, SAUCE, spicy, spicy food, sweet onions, tasty gifts, Than Hell, Thursday, tortilla, tortilla chips, yogurt

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The Hoover at work!

Luckily there was still this pan full for the rest of us!

Overnight Coffee Cake

Beat the following until fluffy–

4 eggs, 2 cups sugar, 1 1/2 cups coconut oil, 2 t vanilla  (I used 1/2 coconut oil and 1/2 butter)

Mix with a whisk–

6 cups pastry flour, 8 t baking powder, 2 t salt  ( I also added cinnamon)

Add dry alternately with 2 cups of milk or buttermilk (I used plain yogurt)

Pour into 2 oiled 9x 13 pans  (I used 1 9x 13 and 1 deep dish pie pan)

Lay fruit on top ( I used a  frozen berry mixture)

Topping– 1 1/2 c sugar, 1 1/3 c flour, 2t cinnamon, cut in enough butter to make it crumbly)

Put in fridge overnight

Bake 350 for 40 minutes

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Post tags: Bake, baking, blog, c flour, Cake, cinnamon, coconut oil, coffee, coffee cake, deep dish, dish pie, double recipe, family, friends, Home, mixture, pastry flour, photo, photos, Pie, post, powder, recipe, Recipes, Thursday, yogurt

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Isn’t this the most beautiful dish?? And it’s tasty too!

1 small butternut squash peeled and seeded and cut into 2 inch cubes

1/2 an onion

1 T cumin seeds **** see my senior moment note below

1 T corriander

1/2 cup cilantro

1 cup dry cranberries

1 cup crushed walnuts

salt

So I mixed up this wonderful mixture and ate it. And it was really good. BUT because I just copied the ingredients from the Crunchy Bits (Fall Harvest Squash Rice) post and didn’t pay attention to the fact that it called for cumin seeds –mine did taste a bit dusty! -and that she also put her squash in the food processor! As you can see-I did not. But still it was good. I did think it needed something wet with it or on it. I bet processing the squash made it more moist. Today I may add some cut up apple or an orange to my bowl full. Mmmmm (also I skipped the walnuts because we are sensitive to them)

Either way–a beautiful dish to eat!

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Post tags: apple, butternut, butternut squash, cilantro, corriander, cranberries, crunchy bits, cumin, cumin seeds, Fall, Food, Harvest, onion, ORANGE, photo, photos, RAW, recipe, Rice, Thursday

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It is a sweet  and tasty dough

In a large bowl mix the following together:

2 cups luke warm water

1 1/2 T yeast

3 eggs

1/2 cup honey

1/3 cup melted butter or oil

Add:

6 cups all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

Cover loosely and let rise about 2 hrs

At this point divide dough into 4 balls—freeze (up to 1 month) or refrigerate (up to 5 days) unused portions

Cloak dough and form a ball. Poke hole in center with thumbs and stretch about an 8 inch circle in center

Place on parchment on cookie sheet, cover loosely about 25 mins.

Heat oven to 350

With scissors, cut slightly angled, horizontal cuts almost all the way through the bread. Spread pieces out. You can brush the top with an egg wash and sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds.

Bake about 35 minutes.

I have three more loaves I turn into tasty bread wreaths —- I might just use them to impress my family and friends with on my Thanksgiving table!!

This was yet another idea/recipe from Family Fun!

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Post tags: Bake, basic dough recipe, Bread, Cook, dough, egg wash, family, family and friends, family fun, poppy seeds, recipe, Thanksgiving, thanksgiving table, Thursday, whole wheat flour, wreath, yeast

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You start with pie crust for these and because I don’t make pie crust I bought some from the refrigerated section of my grocery. That right there makes this recipe a little easier to tackle!

Roll out pie crust on a floured surface. You have to roll these rather thin.  Use leaf shape cutters to cut out leaf pairs.

Fill one side of your leaves with any of the following: chocolate chips, marshmallows, peanut butter, nuts, cream cheese and jam or a combination of any of these.

Brush the edges of the leaves that hold the stuffing with an egg wash (1 egg scrambled with 1 teaspoon of water). Put matching leaf cover on top and pinch the edges together–like a pie crust.

Brush the egg wash on the tops of each mini pie and sprinkle with colored sugar and regular sugar.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 12 minutes or until edges are brown.

It  is hard to tell what is hiding inside each little pie so if some little people … I am not naming names…. have an issue with some of the contents of the leaves you may want to use certain shapes for certain inards …. or risk most of the little pies either torn in half or left with bites taken out of them to see if they picked the right one! Or maybe that’s just my picky family.

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Post tags: Bake, choc, chocolate, chocolate chips, colored sugar, cream cheese, egg wash, grocery, leaf, leaf shape, leaves, marshmallows, nut butter, nuts, peanut, peanut butter, photos, Pie, pie crust, pies, recipe, shape cutters, shapes, stuff, Thursday

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Last year I pulled a page out of Family Fun all about Halloween candy experiments. And this year I book marked a page from Mothering Magazine and another link a friend posted on facebook. Low and behold—they are all from the same website …. Candy Experiments.

My kids trick or treated twice this year, so to say we have lots of candy is an understatement!! They went through their stash and donated all sorts of goodies in the name of science.

We tried several experiments from the website. The most exciting being floating M’s and S’s.

Put some M & M’s in a glass jar and some skittles in another.

Add water and watch……..

Floating M’s and S’s!!

We made some sculptures with the sticky candy

We also tried color separation (chromatography) by adding m&m’s to a few drops of water and then dipping a coffee filter in. We waited until some of the color was absorbed and you could see the colors separate.

Did you know that laffy taffy floats?

We did a lot of mixing, soaking and poking.

And we still have lots of donated candy to play with tomorrow!

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Post tags: Candy Experiments, chromatography, coffee filter, color, color separation, colors, experiment, facebook, family fun, FLOAT, Floats, goodies, halloween, halloween candy, Kids, mothering magazine, Parenting, photo, photos, science, sculptures, skittles, sticky candy, taffy

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