fresh laundry
the Homely Home Part 5: Holiday without the Crazy December 29, 2012
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Even though it can be a time fraught with emotions and expectations, those same hopes make for positively Maximum Enjoyment on some more earthy fronts. Like eating special Holdiay Food… This year, I dedided to go with what I enjoyed best, and for loooow stress, what was easiest. The dinner was basic: spiral ham, sweet potatoes with butter, green beans with a little vinegar and freshly ground black pepper, and some sourdough bread (and, heh, more butter). But, since this is a Festival(!) there had to be some sweets there somewhere. And while doing something completely unreleate, I found a simple, homely home solution: DUMP CAKE. This was something that was just totally intriguing from the get go: one pan, one can, more butter, NUTS, and ice cream. (Lots of inspiration here: 30 Delicious Dump Cake Recipes.) PEACH DUMP CAKE You will need: – 1 – 8×8" inch cake pan – 1 (16 ounce) cans peach slices (I used lite syrup) – 1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix (used only 1/2) – 1/2 cup nuts of choice (I used PECANS!) – about 1/2 cup butter – ground cinnamon 1. Grease your baking pan with a little butter. Serve plain or with some lovely vanilla Ice Cream! THAT’s IT! If you want to make a bigger cake, use 2-cans of peaches & all of the cake mix, etc. Unbelievably good! And you can make variations of this to infinity – you just substitute different fillings, nuts, etc and WOW!
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the Homely Home Part 3: it’s alive December 12, 2012
Long ago, when time was slow(er) and lavish in my life, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen.
It was here that I think the Seed of Crafty was actually planted.
At an early age, I learned to cook, and at 10, I would come home from school and make dinner for a family of 6.
Cooking has a lot in common with crafting. There’s processes to learn, ingredients to combine, steps to take that lead, hopefully, to a happy plate.
I’ve always enjoyed it and much later, my friends told me they loved to watch me in the kitchen because there was nothing wasted in my efforts: fast and furious, they say, and ready to sample the goods. Methinks this was because when I was a cooking child, I wanted to play and the sooner the chores were done, the sooner the fun could resume (and what “kid” doesn’t love to lick the spoong!).
Now, much later on the timeline, I seem to have come full circle, or at least back to where taking one’s time can actually add to the goodness of the result.
And, even though the kitchen in this house is very small and can’t even fit a complete table, it can still work it.
In fact, it feels very cozy to make things here then take them into the dining room to eat.
In my many travels, it seems like the dining room in most of the homes I’ve been in is more of a Special Event Area of some sort that only gets enlisted a handful of times during the year.
In this house, there’s nowhere else to go! (Although I do enjoy sitting at the twee table on the stool with a cup of warm of some kind.
But something was missing with my coffee or tea and another craft from my past has resumed.
When I was a young woman, twenty-ish or so, I loved to bake.
Most favorite thing on the menu: Bread.
And here adventure (or folly) begins…
To boldly go: Sourdough starter a cookin’ in its jar.
I think it has about 2 days more to go/grow – off to find a recipe!
If you’ve got one, please share!!