Basket Breakdown – 5/26/2012

28 May

Thank you to Cheryl D. for use of her picture again this week! 

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This week had corn, cantaloupe, tomatoes, pineapple, artichokes, bananas, orange bell peppers, lettuce, oranges, potatoes, and apples.

I wish I had been able to have artichokes again since my last ones went bad before using them. I want to try Stuffed Artichokes, maybe some other time. The potatoes and peppers would be good with sausage and scrambled eggs for breakfast burritos. The rest we would have eaten or possibly juiced, I love pineapple banana juice!

Contributions are available today, Monday, as usual, even though it is a holiday. I got my order in, a conventional basket and a fresh herb pack! I was having major Bountiful Baskets withdrawls with not participating the last 2 weeks!

Note: The type and amount of food may vary from another basket because of geographic location and because of variances in how case ends are distributed once everything is distributed evenly. Cheryl D. also volunteered and got an extra item for volunteering.

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Basket Breakdown – 5/19/2012

24 May

I apologize for getting this up so late! My brother got married this past Saturday, so we are visiting with family. I didn’t get a basket this week, but still wanted to share what there was and some recipe ideas. Big thank you to Cheryl D. for use of her picture! Oh, and big thank you to Jami C., for ordering the extra case of organic green beans to share and for processing them all for me since I was busy. I love having a great Bountiful Baskets community!

This past weekend’s conventional basket had corn, tomatoes, onion, cucumber, cauliflower, lettuce, lemons, blackberries, strawberries, apricots, pears, bananas, and green peppers.

The tomatoes, onions, and green peppers would make a great Tomato or Pizza Sauce, to go on a Cauliflower pizza crust. Or, they can be diced and added with grilled corn to make Roasted Corn Salsa.

The strawberries and lemons would make an amazing strawberry lemonade. I haven’t had a chance to make it yet, but when I get home, the strawberries and lemon juice ice cubes in my freezer will be used to try it out.

I will not be participating again this weekend, but if I can get a good picture from someone, I’ll try to post, no guarantees! I’m definitely missing Bountiful Baskets!

 

Note: The type and amount of food may vary from another basket because of geographic location and because of variances in how the ends of produce cases are distributed after everything has been distributed evenly.  Cheryl D. also volunteered this week and got 1 extra item for volunteering.

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I Was a Senior Hottie!: Then and Now

18 May

I know this isn’t a normal subject for my blog, but a college sorority sister is hosting a blog link up called “I Was a Senior Hottie!”.  A few friends have been posting old photos from high school in the recent months, and with it being graduation time, I decided it would be fun to participate.  I’m getting it in just in time though, since I didn’t have any of my old photos with me.  Luckily, I’m visiting my parents right now for my little brother’s wedding, so I dug out some old photos.  And you are in for a real treat, I found a photo from each year of school.  Ah, memories!

Freshman Year

Sophomore Year

Junior Year

Senior Year

 

Same hairstyle all throughout high school.  And, I guess things haven’t really changed:

Christmas 2011

I’ve put on some weight having 2 kids, and look older, but otherwise, I haven’t really changed all that much.  And, I’m ok with that.  🙂

Old Fashioned Beef Stew

14 May

This is a recipe out of one of the very first cook books I received, the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book, 11th edition.  I haven’t made a whole lot from this book, but I like that it has a lot of cooking tips and pointers throughout the book.  This is a very tasty stew, and even though it’s a little warm out for stew now, I still wanted to make it.  I did it on the stove top, which is very time-consuming, but you can do it in the slow cooker as well.  I just forgot to get it in the slow cooker this morning!

Old Fashioned Beef Stew
Original recipe here

What you need:

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 pound beef stew meat, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups beef broth
1 cup water
1 medium onion, cut into thin wedges
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 beef bouillon cube
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, crushed
1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram, crushed
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 bay leaf
3 cups cubed potato (about 3 medium)
1 cup frozen cut green beans
1 cup frozen whole kernel corn
1 cup sliced carrot (2 medium)

How to make it:

Place flour in a plastic bag. Add meat cubes, shaking to coat. In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, heat oil.  Add meat and brown; drain fat. Stir in beef broth, water, onion, Worcestershire sauce, bouillon cube, oregano, marjoram, pepper, and bay leaf. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for 1 to 1 1/2 hours or until meat is nearly tender.

Stir in potato, green beans, corn, and carrot. Return to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, about 30 minutes more or until meat and vegetables are tender. Discard bay leaf.

Makes 5 servings (about 7 cups).

Slow Cooker directions:

Prepare and brown meat as above. In a 3 1/2- or 4-quart slow cooker, layer meat, onion, potatoes, green beans, corn, and carrot. Decrease beef broth to 2 cups. Combine beef broth, water, Worcestershire sauce, bouillon cube, oregano, marjoram, pepper, and bay leaf. Pour over meat and vegetables in slow cooker. Cover and cook on low-heat setting for 10 to 12 hours or on high-heat setting for 5 to 6 hours or until meat and vegetables are tender.

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Freezing Onions

14 May

About a month ago, I found myself short on onions.  How, I’m not sure, but it happened.  That has since changed, as today I looked and I had 6 onions sitting on my counter.  So, what to do with them?  What I’ve been doing with a lot of other things, freezing them.  I really, really don’t have a lot of room left in my freezer, but these bags are small and can go into the nooks and crannies of the deep freeze.

To start, I cleaned and peeled the onions, then used my Pampered Chef food chopper to dice them up.   I could have used my food processor, but’s a 2 cup size, so not really worth the hassle of using.  I want to get a bigger, nicer one some day.  Anyway, once it was diced, I put 1 cup portions into FoodSaver bags that I cut to size.  The onions were a little juicy, so I first put them in the freezer to freeze, then vacuum sealed them to avoid getting moisture in my FoodSaver unit.  The 6 onions yielded 12 1-cup bags of diced onions.  I plan on using these for soups, stews, casseroles, that sort of thing.  It will be really nice to have onions pre-cut, got all the tears out of the way today instead of crying more in the future while cutting.

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Zucchini Brownies

13 May

My kids loved these!  Aside from seeing a little zucchini on the top, you can’t even tell it’s in there.  Frosting would easily hide that, but I just didn’t have the time for frosting yesterday.  And, these don’t really need frosting, they are very good on their own.  This recipe doesn’t use eggs, and trust me, you don’t need them.  They bake up well without and are very moist.  Even if you aren’t a fan of zucchini, these are worth a try!

Zucchini Brownies
Original recipe here 

What you need:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups shredded zucchini
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, optional

How to make it:

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Grease and flour a 9×13 baking pan.

In a large bowl, beat together the oil, sugar and vanilla until well blended.  In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.  Slowly stir the flour mixture into the oil and sugar mixture. Fold in the zucchini and walnuts. Spread evenly into the prepared pan.

Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes, or until brownies spring back when touched gently.  Allow to cool, then cut into squares.

 

Optional frosting:

6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup margarine
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Melt together the 6 tablespoons of cocoa and margarine; set aside to cool. In a medium bowl, blend together the confectioners’ sugar, milk and vanilla. Stir in the cocoa mixture. Spread over cooled brownies before cutting into squares.

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DIY PVC Bike Rack

13 May

I was tired of the bike and scooter mess in my third garage.  I had been shopping around to see if there was any kind of small bike rack I could use in my garage, but they were a little out of my price range.  So, I searched on the internet some, and came across a few plans to make a bike rack out of PVC pipe.  I recently used PVC pipe for a sign project for Bountiful Baskets, and it was really easy to work with, so I decided to give it a try.

I used these sites to help with my plans: Project #4 – DIY Bike Rack Made from PVC Pipe, Make your own Bike Rack, and PVC Bike Rack

My supplies that I purchased at Lowe’s:

40′ of 3/4″ Schedule 40 PVC pipe, cost $8.12 for 4 10′ sections of pipe
34 Tees, cost $8.74 for 3 10 count bags and 4 single tees
6 90 degree elbows, cost $1.86

Total = $18.72, plus tax

You may opt to use PVC cement to hold it together, but I did not use any at this point.  It is staying together well, plus, I want the option to adjust, add, or take away as we get new scooters or bikes.

You also will need a way to cut the pipe.  There is a pipe cutting tool available, shown below.  This one was $9.97 at Lowe’s.  I bought it, but will probably return it since I was able to use my tree cutting tool, also shown below, with success.  You can also use a small hacksaw to cut the pipe.

How you cut your pipe will depend how many items you want to store, and on the size your bike tires and scooters.  For the scooters, I made it wide enough so most of the scooter could fit in.  For the bikes, they have 2″ wide tires, so I cut the pipe to have a 2″ wide section in those parts.  Here is a picture with my dimensions:

I ended up with the following:

20 8″ sections
10 12″ sections
12 10″ sections
3 5″ sections
6 3.5″ sections
6 1.5″ sections’

If you decide to use 1″ PVC pipe instead of 3/4″ PVC pipe, you may need to adjust the measurements slightly, and the cost will be a little higher, but shouldn’t be too much more.

This was a really fun project for me.  It took a little trial and error to get the openings the right size, but after that, it went pretty smoothly.  This turned out to be the perfect size for the opening of my third garage, so we can easily open up the garage and get the bikes and scooters out right away.  I also made sure to get my kids involved.  My older daughter counted out the number of tees and elbows from the plans I drew up, then both my daughters helped me count out the items we needed at the store.  I did all the cutting, but they were able to help with the assembly.  I have found some other neat PVC ideas online, so we may be doing more projects like this in the future!

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Basket Breakdown – 5/12/2012

13 May

This week, I got the conventional basket for $15 and 5 loaves of 9 grain bread for $12.  I’m so sad that I didn’t get the Italian themed veggie pack this week, but I’ve got some other things coming up and I won’t be able to use it all.


This week, I got bananas, pineapple, apples, apricots, mangoes, honeydew, blackberries, spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, avocados, and red potatoes.

I can’t decide if I will just eat the apricots or maybe dehydrate them.  The blackberries are already eaten.  I’m not sure what I’ll do with the spinach yet, but I’m excited to have it again.  I now have plenty of red potatoes, so I’m sure I’ll be making Crash Hot Potatoes this week too.

Note: The type and amount of food may vary from another basket because of geographic location and because of variances in how the ends of produce cases are distributed after everything has been distributed evenly.  I also volunteered this week and got 1 extra item for volunteering.

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Lemons, lemons, lemons!

8 May

This past week’s Bountiful Baskets had a case of approximately 38 lbs lemons available as an extra.  A friend of mine decided to get them and wanted to share, so I went in on the box.  There were 3 of us, and the box had 75 lemons, so we got 25 lemons each.  So, what does one do with 25 lemons?  I cut and peeled them, then ran them through my juicer.  I probably could have left the peels on, but I didn’t want the lemon juice to be too strong and tart.

I was very happy to end up with about 7 cups of lemon juice.  1 cup was made into lemonade, 4 cups are currently freezing in ice cube trays in my freezer (each cube is 1 oz), and 2 cups is in a container in the refrigerator until I decide what to do with it.  I may make some Strawberry Lemonade next, since I have plenty of strawberries.

The lemonade was really easy, here is how I made it:

Lemonade

What you need:

1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice (about 4 – 6 lemons)
1/2 cup sugar
4 cups water

How to make it:

Pour lemon juice into a 2 quart pitcher.

Heat 2 cups of water and the sugar, and stir until sugar dissolves.  Let cool.

Pour sugar and water mixture into the pitcher.  Add another 2 cups of water to the pitcher.

Depending on your taste, you may want to add more or less sugar or water.

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Basket Breakdown – 5/5/2012

6 May

Oh, late truck again!  Not as late this week, but enough that I still spent most of my morning on site.  But, again, we had a great group of volunteers to help move things along.  That’s what makes this so worthwhile for me, it’s not just the produce at great prices, it’s the people I work with and meet each Saturday.

So, this week, I bought the conventional basket for $15, and shared 1/3 of a case of lemons, $7 for my share (the whole 38 lb case was $21).

I apologize that the picture quality isn’t the greatest!  On the upper left, you can see my share of the lemons, it was a box of 75 and I got 25 for my share.  The rest is the conventional basket, mangoes, Granny Smith apples, artichokes, beets, Romaine lettuce, jicamas, tomatoes, pineapple, oranges, bananas, strawberries, and red potatoes.

The lemons I plan on juicing, then blend some strawberries to make Strawberry Lemonade.  I need to work on a plan for the jicama, artichokes and beets, and when I do, I’ll post the recipes.  The mangoes, pineapple, and oranges will make juice or smoothies.  The red potatoes, I will most likely use to make Crash Hot Potatoes to go as a side this week, possibly with some Lemon Herb Chicken, since I have a lot of lemons.

 

Note: The type and amount of food may vary from another basket because of geographic location and because of variances in how the ends of produce cases are distributed after everything has been distributed evenly.  I also volunteered this week and got 1 extra item for volunteering.

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