Diaper Bouquet

Since I'll be away next week, and JoAnne (my office-mate) will be returning from maternity leave the week after, I thought I'd have a "Welcome Back" gift waiting on her desk for her.

It's a diaper bouquet, made from the diapers that were left over from the diaper cake that I made for her baby shower. I saw some on Pinterest, and I thought it would be a good way to (1) welcome her back and (2) use up the rest of the diapers. It would have looked a lot better if I would have remembered to use different colors of tissue paper to simulate greenery and other flowers, but I worked with what I had, and I'll do better the next time I attempt one.

Beef Jerky

Lately, I've been wanting to make beef jerky, and today was the day! I used my American Harvest Snackmaster Elite, which I haven't used in forever, and the American Harvest Original Beef Jerky Spice and Cure that must have come with the dehydrater.

Tom was a complete nay-sayer when I broached the idea with him - he said he probably wouldn't like whatever I made. Boy, was he wrong, we both loved it! The flavor was great - not too much pepper, and just enough salt.

Ashley's Wedding Shower

This morning, at work, we celebrated the upcoming wedding of Ashley. For the breakfast potluck, I made Eggs Benedict and Eggs Florentine. I combined a few different things while putting them together.
I cooked the eggs in the oven in a muffin tin - it wasn't quite as easy as all of the web sites made it seem. The oven was preheated to 250°C. One tablespoon of water was added to each cup of a muffin tin. Eggs were cracked individually into a small bowl, then poured into each cup in the tin. The muffin tin was put in the oven and the eggs were cooked for 12 minutes - an average of the times from different websites that I researched. The tin was removed from the oven, and the eggs were allowed to cool for a few minutes. Using a spoon, the eggs were removed from the muffin tin. Now, they didn't come out of the tin as easily as I had hoped, and they were done more than I wanted, so next time, I would cook them for less time and use a small spatula to loosen them up before taking them out of the cups.
For the Eggs Florentine, I made Speedy Creamed Spinach, a recipe I got from the McCormick website. I've used this creamed spinach recipe for years, so it just seemed logical for the dish.

Speedy Creamed Spinach

Ingredients

• 2 pkgs (10 oz each) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
• 4 oz regular or reduced fat cream cheese, cut into small pieces
• ½ t garlic salt
• ¼ t onion powder
• 1/8 - ¼ t ground nutmeg
• 2 T butter

Directions

1. Thaw the spinach and squeeze dry, reserving the liquid. Add enough water to the liquid to equal ¾ c liquid total.
2. Place a 12-in skillet over medium heat until hot, add cream cheese, spinach liquid, garlic salt, onion powder, and nutmeg. Whisk until melted and completely smooth, about 2 min. Add spinach and stir until well-blended. Cook 3 min or until thoroughly heated, stirring occasionally.
3. Add butter and cook 1 min longer or until butter is completely melted.

For the assembly, I started with English muffins which were split, toasted and buttered. For the Eggs Benedict, the next layer was Canadian Bacon that had been warmed in a skillet, for the Eggs Florentine, about a tablespoon on creamed spinach. The next layer was an egg, and then each was topped with Hollandaise Sauce. For the Hollandaise Sauce, I used the Betty Crocker recipe, which follows:

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

• 3 large egg yolks
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• ½ cup firm butter

Directions

1. In 1 1/2-quart saucepan, vigorously stir egg yolks and lemon juice with wire whisk. Add 1/4 cup of the butter. Heat over very low heat, stirring constantly with wire whisk, until butter is melted.
2. Add remaining 1/4 cup butter. Continue stirring vigorously until butter is melted and sauce is thickened. (Be sure butter melts slowly so eggs have time to cook and thicken sauce without curdling.) If the sauce curdles (mixture begins to separate), add about 1 tablespoon boiling water and beat vigorously with wire whisk or hand beater until it's smooth.
3. Serve immediately. Store covered in refrigerator. To serve refrigerated sauce, reheat over very low heat and stir in a small amount of water.

The sauce was super easy to make, but a little too lemony for my taste. Either way, it worked well for my purposes. The dishes worked out pretty well, but they were overdone, since I assembled them the night before, put them in the refrigerator and reheated them in the oven while I was getting ready for work in the morning. I would definitely make them again, but not do the make-the-night-before thing.

Toga!

I finished my toga!

Tom and I are attending GeoWoodstock in Cincinnati later this month, and one of the activities is a Roman Festival, where 100 trackable medallions will be handed out at random to people who wear togas. After doing some Google image searches, I decided to lean heavily on the idea of a Doric Chiton. With a large tablecloth (for the garment), some curtain tie-backs (as a belt), gold crochet thread (I crocheted a headpiece), two large buttons (on the shoulders) and a sheer cloth remnant (the sash), I think I've come up with something that I can wear proudly. And even if I don't win a medallion, at least I had fun creating the ensemble!

Brussels Sprouts Gratin

Happy Thanksgiving! With family coming over, Dad put me in charge of providing the vegetable dish, and Wanda sent me a recipe for Brussels Sprouts Gratin - so I thought they'd be perfect to try. I enlisted the help of my nephew, and together we made a pretty good tasting dish.

Brussels Sprouts Gratin

Ingredients:

• 16 oz brussels sprouts, trimmed of outer leaves and sliced in half
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• black pepper, to taste
• olive oil spray
• 1/2 tbsp butter
• 1/3 cup chopped shallots
• 2 tsp all purpose flour (or gluten free flour for GF)
• 3/4 cup fat free milk
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp fresh thyme
• 1 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
• 2 oz grated Gruyere cheese, divided

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Spray an 8"x12" gratin dish or casserole with olive oil. Add the brussels sprouts and season with salt and pepper. Spray more olive oil over the brussels and place in the lower third of the oven. Bake 15 minutes, toss and bake an additional 10 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, heat a medium nonstick pan over medium heat. Add butter and let it melt, add the shallots and cook until softened, about 4 to 5 minutes. Sprinkle the flour over the shallots to make a roux, whisking for 1 to 2 minutes. Add the milk and stir with a wooden spoon until the roux is incorporated into the milk. Cook over medium-low heat for about 4 minutes, stirring, until the sauce thickens. Add fresh thyme, parmesan and half of the grated Gruyere cheese into the white sauce and stir until the cheese is melted and incorporated into the sauce.
3. Pour over the brussels sprouts, and top with the remaining cheese. Bake for 15 minutes until top is lightly browned and bubbly.

The grocery store was out of Gruyere cheese, so on a recommendation that I found on the Internet, we used Jarlsberg. As I mentioned, I think it was a good dish, but the best part was the bonding time with my nephew!

Recliner Pillows

Well, after eight months of working on them on and off, I've finally completed the pillows for the recliners.

They are very simple, but I kept putting off finishing them because we wanted to put zippers in them - something I've never tackled before. I, of course, am concerned with all of the imperfections, but Tom is pleased, so I'm glad they're done.

Halloween Potluck

We had a potluck at work today, and these were my contributions.

I made regular old deviled eggs, but decorated them with spiders made from cut up black olives.

This was veggies and dip.

And finally, I made Candy Corn Poke Cake.

Candy Corn Poke Cake

Ingredients

• one box of white cake mix plus the fixn's needed to make it
• food coloring
• 14 oz sweetened condensed milk
• whipped topping
• candy corn

Instructions

1. Make the cake batter as directed. Then divide it into three equal parts. Color one yellow, one orange, and leave one alone. Make sure you add enough to make it really vibrant.
2. Spray the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan . Spread the yellow layer evenly across the bottom, and then stick it in the freezer (make sure it is sitting flat). Leave it in there for 20 minutes.
3. As soon as you pull it out, very carefully add the orange layer, pouring it as evenly as possible around the pan, and gently spreading it out to cover the yellow. Put it back in the freezer for 20 more minutes.
4. Preheat your oven to the temperature specified on the cake mix.
5. Taking out the cake batter pan, again, carefully spread the white layer. Let it sit on top of the preheating oven for at least 30 minutes.
6. Bake according to package directions. As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, poke holes throughout the cake with the end of a wooden spoon. Pour the sweetened condensed milk evenly over the cake, making sure to fill each hole.
7. Refrigerate overnight. Right before serving, top with whipped topping, candy corn, and enjoy!
8. **Note, the candy corn tends to bleed into the whip cream, so if you aren't going to be serving it right away, you might want to wait to top it

I think the hardest part for me was creating the colors, that food coloring is hard to work with.