Project 2016 -- Florida or Bust: Kitchen Makeover -- The Difference a Little Light Can Make

I got the backsplash done and the kitchen cleaned up. On one of my last trips to Lowe's, I found some battery operated puck lights in the clearance section. It was just the thing to give my kitchen the little extra oomph. Thanks for watching the trip!

Happy Makeover.



                                                                                                                            

Knit Yourself a Boyfriend or Husband!

Sometimes I get sent the weirdest things because they are related to knitting. Here is a woman who knitted a life sized man as part of her university design class. He is a cushion with a story!

Read more and see the cute video here.

Project 2016 -- Florida or Bust:Kitchen Makeover -- With a Little Help From My Family!

My brother-in-law is the greatest!

As some of you who follow my blog know, I am in the home stretch with my kitchen make over. Counter tops -- check! Cabinets painted -- check! Walls painted -- check! Down to the back splash for this weekend's project and I got a call from my sister who said she and her husband wanted to come over and see for herself what I had done so far. I jokingly said that I would welcome their visit as I could use my BIL's help with the recycled tile backsplash.

Right on schedule, my Sis and BIL showed up. He brought an old shirt with him to work in and as I set the big mesh pieces of tile, he started to cut the little pieces to fill in around the outlets. He turned an ALL DAY job into just a few hours. After almost 40 years as my BIL, he's turning out pretty useful!

I have to say that one of the best purchases I ever made was a small wet saw. I have done several small tile jobs (and the next job on my list is the guest bathroom tile around the tub) and a wet saw makes a HUGE difference on how fast you can get the job done. Renting one is possible, but when I bought it, the saw was on sale for under $150 and it would have cost me $75 to rent one for a day. Now 10 years later, 2 houses, and a few tile jobs later, buying it was a great decision.

One of the things that I wanted was to make sure that all of the outlets were brought out to the level of the tile and had plenty of support behind it. Cutting all the little pieces was tedious work, but will make all the difference in the long run.

Tomorrow, I will grout the tile and that will be it until the next project! I am so glad it is almost over. Now to plan a little get together for my friends and neighbors to break in this new kitchen. What's a new kitchen if you can't share and enjoy it!

Happy Grouting!

Pressure Cooker Meatloaf -- Yes, It Can Be Done!

I need to get better at thinking ahead about meals. I got home after work tonight and puttered about the house -- mopping the kitchen floor, starting laundry, feeding the dog and suddenly I realized that I needed to get started on dinner, but it was after 7:00 PM. I had some ground beef in the fridge that I had enough foresight to pull out of the freezer earlier in the week, but my plan for it had been meatloaf.

So, I said to myself, "Self -- I wonder if it is possible to do meatloaf in the pressure cooker?" And off I went to google it. Yes, you can make meatloaf in a pressure cooker and there were a lot of ideas on how to do it. I quickly scanned the first few pages at the top of the search and saw that most of them said to use the steam basket for the meatloaf. DARN! My pressure cooker did not come with a steam basket. Now what? Mini loaf pans! I had some in my pantry and I thought it was worth the try.

I prepared my meatloaf, but I'm not giving you my recipe. Not because it's a family secret, but more because I never make meatloaf the same two times in a row. I sometimes throw in whatever veggies I have in the fridge, I sometimes use crackers, breadcrumbs, leftover rice or oatmeal and I use eggs and milk interchangeably as a binder. Sometimes I add Louisiana Hot Sauce for spiciness and sometimes not. The point of this post is not to share a recipe for meatloaf when there are a lot of them out there that are better than mine, but to suggest a way of cooking the meatloaf in a pressure cooker if you don't have a steam basket.

After filling 4 mini loaf pans with the meatloaf, I placed two on the rack at the bottom of the pressure cooker. I had to pinch the ends just slightly to get them to fit side by side.

I poured a cup of water into the bottom of the pressure cooker. (If I had been smart, I would have poured it in first that way I didn't have to be careful not to pour it in the meatloaf.)

I added the other two other meatloafs and turned them the other direction. Once both of them were placed, they stacked nicely and did not tip into the lower tier. I cooked them for 12 minutes with the regulator rocking slowly. While the meatloaf cooked, I microwaved some Brussels sprouts to go with it.

OOOOOHHHHHH! It worked! The little loafs were not really pretty. You could dress it up a little with gravy or ketchup. But they tasted great! And we were eating within 30 minutes of googling "pressure cooker meatloaf"! I would have to say that the only thing that was missing was the caramelizing of the meatloaf when it burns in the oven. I admit that eating the burned fat/ketchup mix out of a pan is the best part of the meatloaf. The pressure cooker actually steams the meatloaf so no burning is possible. Oh, well.

(Missing your meatloaf, Mom!)

Happy pressure cooking!

Project 2016 -- Florida or Bust:Kitchen Makeover -- In the Home Stretch

I am nearing the end of my kitchen project. Last weekend and this, I have been painting the walls. I went with three different intensities of the same color. About 40% of the kitchen will be covered with the lightest color and 30% with each of the two darker colors. The colors play well with the cabinet colors and will look great with the recycled glass tiles purchased for the back splash.

I went with a "soft-gloss" for the sheen and "scrubbability". It was an
option which is between a satin and a semi-gloss with Valspar's Ultra Kitchen & Bath paint. This paint is both a low odor and zero VOC (volatile organic compounds). I can vouch that the low odor is true as within 24 hours you couldn't smell new paint in the house.
The paint covered easily in two coats -- even the darkest color.

I put the darkest color on the walls around the refrigerator and the cabinets next to it. The lightest color went on the walls around the window. This made sense to me as the window is large and it would have looked odd to me to have a very dark wall with a big bright hole in the middle. The medium color is on the wall where the stove sits. I like the way the three colors work together in the room to provide some depth.

I am looking forward to being done with this project. I guess I always think that DIY projects will be easier than they reveal themselves to be.

Happy Painting!

Notorious prison escapes: Dirty laundry, bed-sheet ropes, knitting needles and duct tape - Washington Post

Interesting piece of trivia. In light of this, you would think that knitting in prison wouldn't be allowed. However, most knitting needles are made of aluminum or wood now and not of steel.

"George Blake, a British double agent, used a ladder made of rope and knitting needles to escape Wormwood Scrubs jail in 1966, five years into his 42-year sentence for treason. With the help of accomplices, he made his way to the border of East Germany hidden in a secret compartment inside a camper van. Blake ended up in the Soviet Union and still lives in Russia, where he receives a KGB pension and last year celebrated his 90th birthday."

To read about other methods of escape, here is the link:

Notorious prison escapes: Dirty laundry, bed-sheet ropes, knitting needles and duct tape - Washington Post:

'via Blog this'

Making an Oil Candle in a Citrus Fruit

I saw this on Facebook yesterday and since I had a bowl full of pink grapefruit, I thought I would try it. Of course the picture on Facebook was just a picture so I did what I always do -- Googled it! There were several how to sites and blogs about it and it was quite easy to do.

It does not smell like grapefruit -- more like something being fried in canola oil! I don't know if this would be more than a clever centerpiece on a table, but since you can eat the inside first before making the candle, it would be one way of recycling the rind or at least re-purposing the fruit.

Happy . . . well. . . whatever.

New Pair of Socks on the Needles

It has been a long time since I knitted a pair of socks. The last pair was knitted more than 18 months ago. So, I thought it is just about time to get to work on another pair. This time I am using a pattern out of Cat Bordhi's e-book, Cat's Sweet Tomato Heel Socks. The pattern is a lace sock in fingering weight yarn called Minnesota Moonlight. I love the Sweet Tomato Heel and have used it in prior socks and basically bought the book just so that I could get the instructions on how to do the heel! But I have never done any of Cat's actual sock patterns. So of course I start with a lace pair!

The yarn that I have chosen is Crystal Palace Yarns - Mini Mochi (80% merino wool and 20% nylon) in color way "Beach". Shell pink, sky blue, sand beige, and green water is nice and summery for a pair of light summer socks. However, I fell in love with the color, before I thought about the yarn's construction. There is quite a bit of fuzz and a lack of twist in the yarn and this makes the yarn rather "splitty" and hard to knit itty-bitty stitches on US size 1 needles.

I am hoping these socks end up thin enough for me to wear in dressier shoes. All of the other socks that I have knit worsted weight socks, so these will be the first sock weight socks.

Happy knitting!

Yarn Fast

I know that there are knitters out there with WAAAAAAY more yarn than me. But I think I am getting out of control. And being the control freak that I am, when I think about my lack of control on the yarn front it kinda makes me well. . . frazzled.

So, I am making a pact with myself to not buy any yarn for six months! That's right until 09/08/2013, I will not buy any new yarn. I have planned out several projects over the last few months and bought the necessary yarn for all of them already. But I haven't started many of them; therefore, no changing my mind and no falling in love with "some fuzzy this" or "some lace weight that". I am sticking to the four months if it kills me.

Not only do I have several projects (the Flirt Skirt for one) planned out and ready to last me over my three month yarn buying abstinence, I have all of that wool I bought and dyed and am in the process of spinning and plying and knitting. I also have not finished my Chelsea Skirt. That alone should keep me plenty busy through my June expiration date of my yarn buying fast.

So again, I promise no new yarn for at least a month.

By the way, I just heard about a new yarn shop only about an hour from my house -- any one up for a road trip on Saturday?

Happy drowning in my stash!

Good 'Old Fashioned' Cleaning

I tend to let a good cleaning go a little long sometimes. I will use my long daily commute as an excuse. Getting home to start dinner at 7:00 PM makes wiping down the stove at 8:00 PM the last thing I want to do. So, my 6 month old stove was beginning to look a little worse for wear. Mainly around the one burner that I use most--the front right one. (Did I just admit to the whole blogosphere that I'm a slob?)

Obviously, I didn't want to scrape off the burnt on grease and scratch the porcelain stove top, but a dishrag with plain soap and water just wasn't cutting it. So what do I do? Why google it of course! I came up with a lot of options in how-to articles and other people's blogs:

• Oil Eaters
• Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
• Baking Soda and Vinegar
• Easy Off Oven Cleaner
• Sokoff*
• Dawn Power Disolver
• Goo Gone
• Greased Lightning

A lot of different suggestions, but all of them required a cash outlay and trip to the store except for two. I had
Goo Gone and the duo of baking soda and vinegar. Being the penny pincher that I can be, I decided to try the one of the two options that I had on hand.

First I tried the Goo Gone. Granted on Goo Gone's website they have a cleaner specifically for cleaning grills and ovens, but I only had the original formula. After cleaning the stove with soap and water to get the crumbs and loose splatters off, I sprayed the Goo Gone on to the baked on stains and let it sit for 3 - 5 minutes. After the wait, I used a paper towel to remove the Goo Gone and then used a plastic net scrubbie to scrub the the cook top. Hmmm. No change.

I wiped the area again to get any residue from the Goo Gone and got out the old fashioned baking soda and vinegar. According to a couple of the how-to articles that I read, I could just sprinkle on the baking soda and then spritz the vinegar on.

Using a small spoon, I sprinkled the baking soda around the burner taking care to cover all of the stains.

Next, I took another spoon and dribbled the vinegar into the baking soda. It immediately began to bubble up.

I let the baking soda and vinegar sit for 3 - 5 minutes and then wiped it off with a rag. WOW! "Old fashioned" nothing! There was only one little spot left.

Another round of baking soda and vinegar and a little elbow grease with the plastic net scrubbie again and the last of the baked on grease was gone.

Woo hoo! A clean stove and no trip to the store for expensive cleaners. So what other amazing things can baking soda and vinegar do? Here's what I found by googling again:

Clear a clogged drain - One cup of baking soda followed by 1 cup vinegar. Wait 10 minutes and pour in a cup of boiling water.

Cleaning stained carpet - Sprinkle on baking soda and spritz on vinegar. Let it foam up, scrub, allow to dry and vacuum. (You may want to test on an inconspicuous spot or spare piece of carpet to make sure it is color fast.)

De-lime and clean a shower head - Pour 1/2 cup baking soda and 1 cup vinegar in a large plastic bag and tie it on to the shower head. Leave in place for an hour.

As an air freshener - Mix 1 teaspoon baking soda, 4 teaspoons vinegar with 1 cup of water and spray with a fine mist sprayer.

Non-toxic, inexpensive and pet friendly, vinegar and baking soda can be a great alternative to expensive cleaners.


*I was unable to find the manufacturer of Sokoff. I found it for sale on several sites, but did not want to link to any one retailer.

I Remember Momma

If today had been Saturday or Sunday, I may have gotten through it without any thought as to what today is. But because it is a workday, the first thing I did was look at my Microsoft Outlook and saw that it is April 5, 2013—five years since my mother passed away.

As many moms and their daughters fair, we had our ups and downs. In my younger years, there were times that we always seemed to be mad at one another and either fighting or not speaking to each other. "When I grew up", I thought, "if I have a daughter, we will be great friends. I won't be fighting with her all the time. I will never go weeks without speaking." (Hmmm. Like I said, as many moms and daughters fair. . .) But Momma was great after I moved away and got married. She never tried to interfere in my marriage but was always there when I needed her even when I moved away from the state that I grew up in and lived 20 hours from home.

I was born in her later years and the picture that I still have of her in my mind's eye was about the time she turned 50 years old, right about the age that I am now. She looked "old" to me then, but everyone always commented on how young she looked—too young to have grand children. When I came home over the years or she came to visit me, I was always momentarily shocked at how old she looked to me. My minds eye still expected to see 50, but I saw 60, 70 and then 80. The picture above is one of my favorite pictures of her. I think that it was one of her passport pictures. It was a British Passport—she never did become a US Citizen. She was 24 years old.

Momma was a beautiful woman. Daddy always tells the story about how he and a buddy were on leave in London during their WWII adventure. Back in those days, the movie theaters in England had ushers that sat you. Daddy’s friend asked the usher to sit them next to a couple of pretty girls—maybe money changed hands—maybe not—but that was the day my parents met. She was his souvenir from the war.

He asked her to marry him in a letter after he got home to Indiana. I never thought to ask her what gave her the courage to move half way around the world to a farm town in Indiana where she only knew one person who in reality she could not have known really well. She left her family in England, flew to the United States and barely a few days later was married in a ceremony planned by her future mother and sister-in-law.

She only got to go home to see her parents occasionally. Money and vacation time had to be saved up. When my two older sisters were young, she took them with her and when my twin and I were born she took us twice. Her father died in the late seventies and her mother died in the nineties at 80 something. But Momma stopped going to England to see her after the Alzheimer's got bad and she couldn't remember who Momma was. I know how dreadful that feels.

First there was the forgetfulness of where things were or getting us girls' names mixed up—but that was normal in our household especially for my twin and I. But then she couldn't remember friends she had known forever when they came to visit and then she couldn't remember my twin and I. She remembered my older sisters somewhat longer and she remembered my Dad the longest. Even after the Alzheimer's and Parkinson's had done its worst, she would still smile when she heard my father's voice.

I can't believe it has been five years. I miss you, Momma.

Tilapia in Yogurt Dill Sauce

One of the things that I did during my screen fast was to try a recipe for Tilapia in my pressure cooker. This is a great recipe to use with homemade yogurt. Here it is:

Ingredients

2.5 pounds of Tilapia
1/2 tsp dried dill
salt
pepper

1/4 cup yogurt
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp dried dill
1 tsp Dijon mustard

Prepare dill sauce first by combining yogurt and milk with dill and Dijon mustard. Set aside.

Arrange fish fillets in bottom of pressure cooker on rack and fill bottom of pressure cooker to below the rack with water. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and dill. Place lid on cooker and heat until regulator begins to rock. Cook for two minutes and cook immediately by immersing in cold water. Remove fillets and serve with sauce.

I think that this sauce would be really good with salmon, too.

Happy pressure cooking!

Making Yogurt

Last Sunday -- Palm Sunday -- my church challenged everyone to do a screen fast. What is a screen fast? A screen fast is a decision to deny yourself something that you spend a lot of time at -- to give up movies, TV, video games, and social media to focus on Christ during Holy Week. I decided to give up screens for a week. But I had to fill up some of that empty time with something, so I decided to try something that I have wanted to do for a long time -- make homemade yogurt.

I love yogurt. I eat a lot of yogurt and buying the little cups of single serve yogurt gets expensive. Even the large containers of yogurt is expensive at $5 or $6 per quart and milk is only about $3.00 per gallon. I knew that if I could make yogurt, I could save money.

I had already talked to an acquaintance at a party just before Christmas who makes his own yogurt -- he made it sound so easy. I had done some research on the internet about making yogurt and there it sounded easy -- it was just a matter of finding the time. And now, with my screen fast, I had time.

This is the method/recipe I decided to use:

Ingredients

1/2 gallon whole milk
1/4 c Greek yogurt with active culture (I used FAGE on my first batch)
Tools

Food Thermometer
Microwave Oven
Picnic cooler
Container (I used a 2 quart Pyrex dish)

1) Heat the milk in the microwave using a heat resistant container to a temperature of 185° to 195° stirring occasionally. In my Pyrex dish, it took about 15 - 18 minutes.

2) While the milk is heating, pour warm water of 120°  in a picnic cooler. This will be where the yogurt sits while the culture multiplies.

3) As soon as this temperature is reached place the bowl in a sink full of cold water and stir until the temperature reaches about 120°.

4) Remove about 1 cup of milk and mix into the 1/4 cup of yogurt. When this is completely mixed, pour it back into the warm milk and cover with lid or plastic wrap. Transfer the container to the cooler and let sit UNDISTURBED for at least 6 hours. Remove from the cooler and refrigerate.

My first batch was not really great. In my research, I read that the time to leave yogurt to culture was anywhere from 3 to 12 hours. I left my first batch for 3.5 hours. It tasted like mild yogurt but was not very sour. (I like mine pretty sour -- more like Greek yogurt.) The first batch also did not set up enough, in fact it was somewhat slimy and thin. Not such a great consistency. But not being one to waste food, I just mixed it with some cooked apples and it was delicious. I also used some to make a yogurt dill dressing for Tilapia that I made in my pressure cooker.

My second batch was much better. I used 1/4 cup of the first batch as the culture for this batch. I left the yogurt in the warm water filled cooler for 6 hours. This yogurt set up nicely and was a much more pleasant consistency. It was somewhat more sour although still rather mild tasting.

The last batch that I made sat in the cooler for 8 hours. This yogurt was perfect! Very thick and just right in sourness. So, at least for me, I found the perfect length of time. So easy to add a little culture to my life!

I served my yogurt up with some cooked Fuji Apples. No sugar, just the apples with 1 cup of water in my slow cooker. Yum.

Happy fermenting!