I knew it, I knew it, I KNEW IT!

Lard has making a come back!  Well, isnt that interesting!

Isn’t this a beautiful picture:

Photograph of homemade lard by Peter G Werner/Wikipedia.

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Jam Packed Post ~ Please Read!

I am going to cover a lot of subjects this morning so hang on to your hats! I have a lot of irons in the fire at the moment and I would like to drag you all down with me!!

Shout Out #1: Rachel over at Neat Things.  You have to take a look at the cake she made for a going away party.  WOWZERS! That’s my girl! Her paternal grandmother (the best cake decorator in the world) would be so proud of her.  I have often wished she could have lived to see how her granddaughters followed in her footsteps. Hint:

International Overall Day: is coming together.  I doubt very seriously (VERY seriously) if we can get any sort of proclamation but who cares?  I am however working on contacting companies that sell overalls to donate gift certificates so that we might have a GRAND giveaway sometime in the future.  In the meantime if you wear overalls, love overalls, love someone who wears overalls, join the fun. Leave a comment or email me and we will start a flickr group soon.  Sound like fun? And here is your picture of the day:

This is Rachel on the phone with my mom about a month before Ben was born.  She had been folding baby clothes and getting things ready for Ben’s birth.  I wish you could see the stacks of baby shirts and diapers on the bed with her.  She has always been quite the little organizer.

Friday Baking with NotQuiteJuneCleaver: Will begin again this coming Friday June 5th.  I told you it wouldn’t be long!  If you plan on participating please let me know.  I will make a post specifically pertaining to this event tomorrow (Thursday) with all the new and improved rules and regulations and then on Friday you will find the recipe for the week’s challenge.  Hint: if you don’t have berries of some sort, plan on getting some 🙂 And YES, there will be prizes involved!

Next Holiday: Fourth of July and all the great food that brings!  The last week of this month (June) I will devote to recipes, menus and decorating ideas for the 4th.  For all my friends who live outside the US, bear with us…this is a big deal around these parts!

Cookbook Update: Well, the first agent I approached with my idea(s) passed so that’s not great news.  However, I believe all things in their own time.  In the meantime while I am waiting on a real deal, I am going forward with self publishing my little series of cookbooklets.  Pies will be first and hopefully within 6-8 weeks I will have them in my etsy shop for sale. But don’t hold me to that date  ’cause I tend to over estimate what can be done in a 24 hour period.  But I am finishing it.  It is to the proofing stage…so that is progress.

Crafty: One of our all time favorite librarians is leaving our local library for bigger and better things.  We will miss her.  Today is her going away party (the cake Rachel made is for that party).  I made her a Housewarming Basket for her new home.

(Isn’t that the cutest broom handle you ever saw???)

This is a little part of the note (the pink paper tied with rickrack) I wrote her explaining the components of the basket…thought you might like the info in case you ever had occasion for such a gift.

First of all the broom.  And what a pretty broom it is!  My granny taught me that you NEVER take an old broom in to a new home.  You are supposed to start your new life with a clean sweep!  So now you can!  In  the basket you will find two cloth bags that will do just fine to take to the grocery when you need just a couple of things or to keep your potatoes and onions fresh.  They are sturdy and should last a long time.  Inside those bags are flour, hoping you will always have food and friends to share it with.  Salt so you will always have spice in your life!  Honey to remind you of the sweetness of life and friends, both new and old.  Olive oil for good health all the days of your life.  A wooden cutting board representing stability, peace and harmony in your new home and candles so you will always have light.  The apron is just because.  Just because I wasn’t sure you had one, and if you do…well now you have two! The lavender plant is on of my favorite plants.  I thought you might like it too.  She will need lots of sunshine so you will want to put her outdoors at your new home.  The soap and rag are for your new kitchen sink.  Enjoy the gifts.  You will be missed!

What could I have possibly left out of this post?  If you have gotten this far…THANK YOU!  Oh I suppose I could give you a recipe, that should be about enough.  This is from the Pie booklet…

Yogurt Pie with Granola Crust

1 1/2 c. granola (reserve 1/4 c.)
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/3 c. margarine
1/4 c. honey
8 oz. cream cheese
1 c. lo-fat yogurt
2 tsp. vanilla
fresh fruit (optional)

If granola is very coarse, grind to medium-fine in blender, doing 1/2 cup at a time. Blend granola, brown sugar and margarine. Press onto sides and bottom of 9-inch pie plates. Chill well before using. Soften cream cheese to room
temperature. Beat until fluffy with electric mixer or wooden spoon. Blend in yogurt. Beat in honey and vanilla. Turn into pie shell, spreading evenly. Chill overnight. Before serving, top with fresh fruit (strawberries, bananas or your favorite). Sprinkle reserved granola crumbs on top. Cut and serve.

HAVE A LOVELY WEDNESAY!

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Whoa! It’s Wednesday already???

Yep. And Husband’s flight back to Tunisia leaves at 13:45. So we are up and at it this morning. He is packed and visiting with the kids. Hannah is off to her first day at “school” this morning. First day EVER. She has never been in a classroom, so at nearly 21 this ought to be an experience! She is enrolled at the local vo-tech taking computer tech classes. Rachel, Benjamin and I will take Husband to the airport.

Tomorrow I will be going to stay at my brother’s for a couple of days to let his wife get back and check on her job. I will be home Friday evening and Saturday morning Rachel and I will hit the floor running and baking and decorating and making! She has her first real catering job! How exciting is that. Would I have catered anything at 17? Nope. Not hardly. But she is off and running. I am the helper. I think we need special aprons for this dont you? Anywho, this is a REAL catering job…decorated cookies, cream wafers (duh), finger sandwiches, salad puffs,  bite sized brownies, punch and we are even doing the paper goods and setting up. So yeah, this is a big deal for her and quite possibly will lead to other jobs. Cool huh?

Gotta get rolling!  Have a great Wednesday.

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Successful Bakewell Tarts!

As you know this weeks baking challenge is Bakewell Tarts.  Here is a photo of ours.  They are YUMMY.  Let me know you yours are turning out!

Also, I may be out of pocket for a couple of days.  My “little” brother who is 6 years younger than me is having bypass surgery in the morning.  Yeah, I can’t believe it.   Here is a picture of us “a few years back”.

We have really been a lot closer since Mom and Dad are both gone now.  I told him this morning when Husband goes back to work (27th) I would come up and help out some.  I have experience with this sort of thing.  He said “Well, you had a whole year and a half off.  That should have been enough of a vacation.”  It has been a year and a half since Mom passed and I was her primary care giver.  So as much as I can,  I will plan on going up early in the day (its only about 1 1/2 drive) and he and I can visit, go thru old pictures like we have planned on doing for a long time and I can take him out and about if he wants and I can still be home way before dark.  His wife works and I know she won’t be able to just take off indefinitely.  And I know from taking care of my dad after all of his heart surgeries, he will need some help during the day for a little while.

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The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I have been looking thru vintage publications today.  I will tell you why another time but for now I want to tell you what I have found.  Women have always been obsessed with their size.  And publications have always unrealistically (and rather cruelly) portrayed women by only showing that wasp-waisted mom icing a cake, that mom you know good and well will never take a bite of that lovely cake! Was it girdles?  Was it truly portion size?  Was it that there really wasnt fast food readily available?  Did they actually move more?  I don’t know, but I want that waist size.  Truly I do.  I want to wear a shirt waist dress and it be so incredibly fitted that if I eat a sandwich you will be able to tell! What I don’t want to do is starve or get a terminal illness to get it.  Yes, as a nation we have gotten fatter (there is no nice word for it) but also, no matter how small the average was…it was never small enough! So I think it is a losing battle! When I get through with this post I think I will have that last piece of cake I can see from where I am sitting.

Then some things are coming full circle.  Aprons for instance.  OH MY-I would say 8 out of 10 women in ads have on aprons.  The other two have on a bra.  Just a bra…lots of bra ads! But the aprons just jumped out at me. There are instructions and patterns to order. Ahhhh the good old days!  A 5 cent magazine with patterns for sale for the price of a stamp! This was a page from The American Family Magazine November 1952:

I also saved this scan as a pdf if anyone wants a copy leave me a note. And the ads for sewing projects and ads for sewing machines.  Am I not buying the right magazines or are these no longer ad-worthy?

Here are just a few lines I have run across that make me smile…and grimace…

Family Circle June 1959 ~ Page 69 ~ an ad for Libby’s Tomato Juice.  Shows a couple hugging and looking over in a bassinet at a newborn…awwwww…then you read on.  If you are staying slim for him, you’ll be happy to know Libby’s Tomato Juice can make it easier…blah, blah, blah…

Same issue Page 71 ~ an ad for Diet Delight Bartlett Pears...the pears that make it fun to watch your weight!

Then there’s always the ever present ad for Lysol…for ‘feminine’ cleansing…NOT kidding.  YIKES!

And the ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes that show a darling girl with her prom dance card and a lit UNFILTERED cigarette! That could also explain the weight loss!

I will be uploading more stuff to share soon.  I should be doing laundry and other things but I sure got caught up in these lovely old magazines!

Last but not least, a recipe:

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Friday Baking with NotQuiteJuneCleaver Week Three

I suppose this really really fun challenge we are doing will pick up as we go along. I have to say I am a teensy bit disappointed in the number of participants but its still new and hopefully we will have more entries soon!  Personally, I am going to keep trudging forward and welcoming the change to seek out new recipes to try and share.  Week Three’s recipe is a salute to England.  I place whose cuisine is much maligned at times and unjustly so, in my opinion. Meet your new goodie:  The Bakewell Tart!

There are as many variations of the famous (in the UK 😉 ) tarts as there are folks who bake them!  I was first introduced when I spent a few days in England last October.  On one of our many “grab and go” walks, I saw this little tart that looked very yummy.  And so it was.  I realized about half way thru it contained almonds (allergy alert!) but I kept eating it anyway.  You know just about anything with almond flavoring is delish, so I just told myself it was flavoring and not the actual almonds!  And I lived, as you see. I understand after (too) much time spent reading about these little lovelies,  I didnt actually eat a Bakewell Tart or pudding as they are also called, since I didn’t eat it in Bakewell, a small market town in Derbyshire.  But it was tasty nonetheless.  Yep, some things we would never call a pudding are called just that across the pond.  Husband and I were discussing what he eats while at work.  They have an English cook on the rig and he makes and serves many things Husband is unfamiliar with.  Like Yorkshire Pudding.  Which we in no way would ever consider a pudding.  A popover maybe.  A biscuit?  A roll?  But pudding…nope. Oh! A future challenge maybe?

Several times since then, I have seen them in British food magazines (which I am obsessed with) and have thought I must try to make them.  As I started looking for a recipe, low and behold, they are IN THE NEWS!  Last month at the G20 summit in London, Jamie Oliver (cutie patootie and  Britain’s own Naked Chef, in case you live under a rock and don’t know who he is!) cooked THE meal served at 10 Downing Street for the dignitaries. Jamie is all about using fresh local foods but also wanted to bring notice to all corners of the UK.

On the menu was organic farmed salmon from Shetland, Scotland,  lamb from north Wales with foraged wild St George mushrooms and mint sauce and dessert was hot Bakewell Tart with custard made with free-range eggs from Prince Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall farms (which I will visit one day I hope).

WOW, I simply had to try them now! If they were good enough for that dinner...well they would be a treat for us!

As I was doing some recipe research, I found that some glaze the tarts, some don’t.  I am glazing mine!  So if you want to search out a version you would like better than this one, by all means, do so!  But same rules apply…you have to make it and blog it!

Without further ado, I give you The Bakewell Tart:

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Happy Mother’s Day!

We had our gathering yesterday since I had to take Husband to the airport early this morning.  He has a week long class in Norwich England – lucky dog.  I just wanted to pop in and say hi and show you some of my goodies from Mother’s Day.  Beautiful sunflowers from oldest daughter and her husband:

And this adorable cupcake painting and cupcakes to go on a necklace from Rachel and cards and letters as well…

We framed it and hung it in the kitchen today…and will get chains for my cupcakes!  A good time was had by all…crawfish, salmon for those of us who do not partake of the mudbugs. We had 5 of our 6 kids (and spouses) and our dear friends the Whitakers.

And last but not least the Strawberry Whopper Cake!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend.  And don’t forget to check out the baking challenge for this week!

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Friday Baking with NotQuiteJuneCleaver Week Two

Good morning!  As you know I had one heck of a week!  So I didnt get the cake made before today but yesterday Rachel and I made Mama’s Fried Pies! I will make the cake tomorrow for our Mother’s Day/Rachel’s Belated Birthday Party.  Until then here are my pictures of the pies.  And if you will bear with me I will also post challenge #2. Tomorrow I will announce the winner of this week’s prize – the chances of winning are pretty good for someone because I don’t have everyone’s entry!  So leave me a link people so I can add your name! Okay…Mama’s Fried Pies.  We made strawberry filled pies.  Using frozen strawberries we had put up a few weeks back. And bite size.  Next time I think we will make them a bit bigger as they were kind of hard to fill and seal this small.  Other than that they were easy and YUMMY!

Leave me a message today so I can add your name to the jar for this first week’s prize!  Do I sound like a broken record??? Well just do it already!

Now for this week’s challenge:

S’more Cupcakes!

These are the Rachel’s beautiful cupcakes!  She is the expert on these but I will post the recipe and she can elaborate on the instructions later if you need more info.  Same rules apply this week.  Make ’em, take pictures of ’em, blog about ’em, leave me a link about ’em and I will add your name to the jar for next Saturday’s drawing. Oh, and other like to look too!

Rachel found this recipe at  How to Eat a Cupcake and it’s funny when I went there to get the recipe, I see she has a recipe for Challah up…that was my first choice for this week’s challenge!  Maybe soon.  I loves me some Challah…and then French Toast made from leftover…but that’s for another week.  On to cupcakes!

Makes 16-18 regular cupcakes

Cupcakes:

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups finely crushed graham crackers (about 20 grahams)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 cup milk chocolate, chopped (Rachel used milk chocolate chips)
• 7 Minute Frosting

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Mix flour, crushed graham crackers, baking powder, and salt together and set aside.

3. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add vanilla. Alternately add flour mixture and milk and beat until batter is almost smooth. Fold in chocolate chips.

4. Spoon batter into cupcake papers, filling cups about 2/3 full. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool.

5. Frost cooled cupcakes and sprinkle with grated milk chocolate or graham cracker crumbs or decorate as desired (see photo for Rachel’s version)

The original recipe calls for Swiss Meringue ( recipe is available at the link for the original recipe but Rachel used 7 Minute Frosting)

7 Minute Frosting

* 1 1/2 cups sugar
* 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar or 1 tablespoon white corn syrup
* 1/8 teaspoon salt
* 1/3 cup water
* 2 egg whites
* 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Place sugar, cream of tartar or corn syrup, salt, water, and egg whites in the top of a double boiler. Beat with a handheld electric mixer for 1 minute. Place pan over boiling water, being sure that boiling water does not touch the bottom of the top pan. (If this happens, it could cause your frosting to become grainy). Beat constantly on high speed with electric mixer for 7 minutes. Beat in vanilla.

P.S. Thanks Gesikah for reminding me about the browning of the frosting.  Rachel used the culinary torch.  I suppose it could be done under the broiler VERY VERY briefly…but wouldnt recommend it ’cause you might have a blaze with the paper cupcake cups!  Ummm…might have to forego browning if you don’t have a torch and just sprinkle with crumbs.  Sad to say.   Let me ponder this…if anyone has any suggestions let me know.  You could just all go out and buy a culinary torch. 😉  We have really enjoyed having one.

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Friendly Reminders

Just a couple of things this morning…

You can click on the picture to go to the original post.  I will be posting the first recipe on Friday with the rest of the rules and such.  So sign up!

And remember the Monday after Mother’s Day is…

and I will draw a name from the mason jar for the giveaway…click on the picture to go to the original post and add your name if you haven’t already done so!

That’s all I have for today!  Got a ton of things to do!  Have a happy Wednesday!

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Welcome to Friday Baking with NotQuiteJuneCleaver!

If you recall, several weeks ago I announced a little something I am starting here on my blog.

This FUN will begin on Friday May 1st. Which just also happens to be Rachel’s birthday and we will likely be baking something yummy! I will tell you more about it as we go but for now…how about signing up? I will conduct this very cool blog activity in much the same way Kelly is doing her Blue Ribbon Mondays. Which is VERY VERY cool!! And seriously, if you have not stopped by Kelly’s blog and signed up for her Blue Ribbon Mondays…get your happy self over there!

Just sign up below and more instructions and such will follow over the next week as I work out the kinks and will have some buttons and such for you to use to link us all together. Oh yeah and you know there will be prizes. Baking related prizes…now that IS cool huh? For now all you really need to know is:

1. It is going to be fun!
2. You know you want to participate
3. It involves recipes and baking and prizes
4. That’s enough isn’t it???

Anywho, leave me your name and let me know you are up for the challenge. Oh, I didnt mention it would be a challenge did I??? Oh well it will. I will give you a recipe on Friday(beginning May 1) and by the next Friday you have to have made it and posted about it on your blog WITH PHOTOS. There will be several ways to get your name in the now extraordinarily famous mason jar for the drawing to be held each Saturday for the week’s participants. Each Friday one challenge will end and another will begin. Doesn’t this sound AMAZING???

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