Earlier this month, I talked about wanting to make my own jam.  Sidebar:  I’ve been reading the Game of Thrones series so as I just wrote that, I wanted to say mine own jam. 

Sorry, back to it.  A couple of weekends ago, we visited my dad where I was sure to find the greatest jam making recipe in all the land.  When I asked him where his recipe was so I could copy it, he said JUST GET A BOX OF SURE-JELL AND USE THE RECIPE ON THE BACK OF IT.  (He’s hard of hearing so everything comes out as a yell.)

You don’t have a recipe?

NO.  I JUST USE THAT.

After a few moments of utter disbelief including shaking my head and furrowing my brow, I finally accepted the fact that my dad, who could most certainly live off the land if need be, just uses some box recipe for his delicious jellies and jams that I’ve been eating my whole life.  Talk about wind out of my sails. 

What to do now?  My plan was to take his recipe along with another one I found online and tweak it for my tastes.  Now, I guess I’ll still do that, only instead of reading his recipe off of a worn and tattered card from the last 20 years, it’ll be from a brand new box of this.

I do vaguely remember seeing Sure-Jell in the house when I was a kid, and the box was always pink, which means he goes with the less or no sugar recipes.  Normally, I would follow suit, but take a look at the ingredients.  What the what is fumaric acid and sodium citrate?

		SURE-JELL FOR LESS OR NO SUGAR NEEDED RECIPES Recipes     SURE-JELL FOR LESS OR NO SUGAR NEEDED RECIPES is a dry premium fruit pectin that can be used to make recipes with at least 25% less sugar than other regular pectin recipes. Look for the pink box! INGREDIENTS: DEXTROSE, FRUIT PECTIN, FUMARIC ACID (FOR TARTNESS), SODIUM CITRATE.

Better to stick with the full-fledged sugary kind so at least I know what is in it.

SURE-JELL PREMIUM FRUIT PECTIN Recipes     SURE-JELL PREMIUM FRUIT PECTIN is a dry pectin product that can be used to make either cooked jams and jellies or quick-and-easy freezer jams and jellies. INGREDIENTS: DEXTROSE, CITRIC ACID (ASSISTS GEL), FRUIT PECTIN.

Ever wonder what baking powder actually does in a recipe?  Well, I haven’t.  Until I forgot to add it to muffins I made Saturday morning.  Oops.  Then, as they say, I found out the hard way.

I was making the blueberry muffins I always make for our breakfast and to take to the mountains to share with our friends, and I was putting the mixture in the muffin tin when all of a sudden GASP!  I forgot the baking powder!

No time to add it since everything was already mixed, so better to see what would happen.  Surely, not much, right?  Wrong.

Apparently, baking powder gives muffins their muffin quality.  Meaning the rise and consistency.  When one bakes without baking powder, they get something more along the lines of these:

Flat, rustic (if you will) looking “muffins”.  Ones that didn’t rise enough to enclose the blueberries and make them flavor surprises instead of just blueberries sitting on top of some flat baked something or other. 

On the bright side, they actually taste fine.  Kind of dense.  Kind of like a scone.  So, they may not be pretty, but, looks aren’t everything, am I right ladies?

Here’s what I mean by dense:

Please ignore my claw hand and the blur.  It was quite difficult to get a good picture whilst holding the “muffin”.  But, hopefully you can see the dense look and how completely opposite it is from light and fluffy.

Here’s another view:

Moral of the story:  Never underestimate the power of baking powder.  Or any other ingredients for that matter.  Even if it sounds strange like salt or pepper or eye of newt.  Chances are someone somewhere left those out once and paid the price.

I’ve been trying to get in as much exercise as I can lately.   Since I’m pregnant, it’s easier said than done.  One, I’m tired.  Two, there is no time.  Three, I don’t want to have to shower twice a day.  Typical excuses, yes.  But true.

Lately, I’ve been sneaking to the gym that is downstairs at my workplace to walk on the treadmill for 10-20 minutes at a time.  I call it my smoke break because one should not be punished with no breaks just because one doesn’t smoke.  Yeah.

I feel really great about it, and it’s such a nice break.  Sometimes I turn on the TV that’s in there and watch something fun like HGTV, Food Network or dare I admit it, Days of Our Lives.  I just can’t help it. 

Mostly it’s Food Network.  Which can be kind of counterproductive to what I’m doing down there in the first place because I watch things such as chocolate milkshakes with chocolate shavings on top being made and immediately add that to my to do list for this weekend.  Not quite the picture of health.

I can’t escape it though.  When I have time, I browse Pinterest where I come across all kinds of delicious recipes as well.  What’s a girl to do?  Especially one whose will power is as weak as mine.

This weekend, my family and I will be traveling to the mountains where we will dine and play fun games with some of our friends.  To the dining, we are bringing a side (veggie=1 point) and a dessert (-1 point).  But what?  With all the inspiration I’ve had lately, it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with something.  So far, my top choices are:

Frozen banana bites

or these

Decisions, decisions.

Do you plan on making anything delicious this weekend?  Or do you have any recipes you want to throw into the mix?  If so, please share in the comments section!  Happy Friday!

Moving into a house that was previously owned and landscaped can leave you with projects upon projects.  At least, if you’re me it does. 

I like painting/decorating my own house and landscaping my own yard.  So far, my husband and I haven’t found our perfect plot of land on which we can build our dream house and create a garden worthy of the Shire, so we continue to live in the land of the used.

This house, which we’ve been in for almost two years now, came with really good landscaping although it needed some cleaning up.  And some personal touches.  Everyone knows I don’t like to spend a lot of money unless it’s absolutely necessary, like for a delicious meal or a glorious pair of shoes.  Otherwise, I’m all about rocking what I’ve got, but some additions are needed.  I’ll get to those in the spring.  For now, I’ll focus on the topic at hand, the lovely crepe myrtle. 

We have one at the very end of our driveway, at the edge of our back yard.  It’s a Miami.  And despite being in a fairly shady area, it blooms nicely in the summer.  However, last year, I noticed its branches were thin and spindly, which I took to mean something was wrong.  After some research, I found that crepe myrtles love proper pruning, and based on what I know from my dad, pruning a prune-loving bush/tree/shrub helps them to grow back thicker the next year.  Who knows if this is correct or not, but it works for him.  And, his yard is pretty much to die for. 

Last year, I pruned our myrtle ever so slightly, and it did seem to be a bit fuller when it bloomed.  So, this year, I am following suit.

According to this site, which I love, the best time to prune a crepe myrtle is late winter.  According to my dad, it’s February.  Same difference.  Last weekend was as good a time as any, so I started by sizing up the ol’ myrtle.

Unfortunately, with all the other trees and the cloudy skies, it’s hard to see her.  You can kind of see the skinny offshoots, also called suckers, coming out of the top of most branches though. 

None of the branches I would be pruning would require anything larger than loppers, so I broke these out and commenced to lopping.

After about five minutes of steady work, I was left with this:

Mostly strong, sturdy branches with only a few suckers.  I think it looks good and healthy, and I feel hopeful about beautiful pink blooms in the summer, but we’ll see.  I’m nothing if not a beginning gardener, but you gotta start somewhere, right?  Don’t be afraid to just get out there and do it. 

I think what holds many people back from working in the yard is fear of messing something up and time.  Well, let me be the first to tell you that you will mess something up.  And that’s okay.  Better to learn from experience than never try.  Especially with gardening because the rewards are so great.  Flowers, hello? 

As for time, from start to finish, this whole process took me about 15 minutes.  Including the disposal of this discard pile to the woods.

So, basically time schmime.  At least on this project.

We all know I love a less than 5 ingredient dish.  I mean, it can be 10 ingredients, but the less the better for me.  Not only because of the time it takes to gather and prep a lot of ingredients, but also because I believe that the fewer additions, the healthier.  Mostly.  Not really in the case of vegetables and such but you know what I mean. 

Anyway, so the other day, I was at Trader Joe’s when I spotted this:

And approximately zero seconds later, it was in my basket. 

That night, I decided I must use it in something, and lo and behold, that something turned out to be pasta salad.  Probably the easiest pasta salad I’ve ever made.  Here’s the “recipe”.  I put that in quotes because you can vary it in many ways, like most of my concoctions.

8 oz. pasta, cooked and drained

1/2 bottle of Trader Joe’s balsalmic vinagrette (or any kind you want)

1 cup cherry tomatoes (or any other veggie you want although I do believe all pasta salads should contain tomatoes)

1 cup sugar snap peas (or any other veggie you want…just so happens I had these peas on hand and thought they would be a delightful crunch in the salad.  Plus, look how pretty they look with the tomatoes.)

Salt to taste

Grated parmesan cheese as garnish, optional

Mix and eat.  (I ended up adding a smidge more vinagrette because I like the tanginess, but I suggest starting with 1/2 of the bottle then working your way up if you want more.)

Delish!  And versatile.  After a few days of eating this as a side, my husband added some chicken to the leftovers and took it for lunch.  He’s smart, that one.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned the 475 million acorns in our yard.  It was a project that kept hanging over our heads until finally a couple Sundays ago, we decided it was time to get ‘er done son.

I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t had a chance to upload pictures of the clean, pretty much acorn free, finished product.  But don’t mistake my slowness for indifference.  Getting the yard cleaned up was utter jubilation.  A Carolina Jubilee if you will.

Here’s a look:

And a close up:

What a difference from this:

Hoo boy.  Glad those are gone!