Filed under: Recipes
1-21-12
We have a new diet to follow in our house for a condition called Interstitial Cystitis. I am going to keep a diary of what foods we eat in hopes that it helps us or someone else.
Flattened chicken cooked in a frying pan with butter and salt, red mashed potatoes with almond milk and butter, broccoli, mushroom and red pepper mixture, blueberries. Vanilla ice cream for dessert.
Snacks today: Clif bar crunchy honey granola bars, organic Wheat Thin type crackers, string cheese, and blueberry muffins.
Breakfast: Mighty Tasty cereal
There is a great tutorial for making a pretend checkbook. My kids just love this! The tutorial is found on Just Something I Made.
The kids made some cookies for Santa today. We used this great recipe that I found on a Cooking Light Bulletin Board.
Melissa’s Iced Sugar Cookies
2 sticks (1 cup) butter, softened
1.5 cups sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
3 eggs
3.5 cups flour
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
Mix the butter and sugar. Add in vanilla and eggs. Next put in the cream of tartar, salt and baking soda. Finally, add the flour and mix just until it is mostly mixed together. Refrigerate the dough for 2 hours or more. Roll out the dough and cut with cookie cutters. Bake at 350 degrees for 6-8 minutes.
*I like to roll my dough in between two sheets of plastic wrap and then cut.
* I also only make 1/3 of this recipe since we don’t need a lot of cookies. Here are the adjustments we make:
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup +2.5 tbsp+ 1 tsp sugar
1/3 tsp. vanilla (I just eyeball it)
1 egg
1 cup + 2.5 tbsp + 1 tsp. flour
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
1/3 tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt +tiny bit more but less than 1/16 (I think I made these last time with just the 1/8 tsp. since I used salted butter)
My Secret Santa put out an S.O.S. call for some rice bags the other day. They were easy enough to make so these are checked off the list.
Directions:
1. Sew on all four sides of some fabric leaving a small hole on one of the sides.
2. Using a funnel, pour in some regular white rice.
3. Sew up the hole.
4. Heat in the microwave when ready to use. I usually do at least one minute, but it depends on how hot you like it.
Filed under: Christmas
My Secret Santa loves gum so I painted on snowman faces to the white part of the gum packaging. I hope she likes it.
Filed under: Christmas
For our neighbor treats I took an empty hot chocolate can and reused it. Simply cut out a wrapping paper rectangle to fit your can and tape it in place. I made my rectangle a little longer and cut to size.
I have seen this treat many times and finally decided to give it a try since we love salty and sweet snacks.
1. First, put your square-shaped pretzels on a cookie pan. I like to line mine since the Kisses might melt through. Lay a Kiss (we used Hugs) on top of each pretzel.
2. Bake in the oven at 200 degrees for about 4 minutes. See note below about time for melting.
3. Take the pretzels out and the Kiss should be starting to melt. Top each Kiss with an M&M.
4. Wait for the chocolate to harden again.
*Note: I think that using the Hugs was a mistake since the inside has a different type of chocolate. It was hard to get the Kiss to melt just right so that it melted onto the pretzel. I ended up putting the pretzels with the Kisses and M&Ms back into the oven at 350 degrees for about another minute. The treats came out nice and melted at that point. I then put them into the freezer to stop the melting. The problem with this method is that some of the M&Ms cracked from the heat. The taste was much better though with more melt and the Kisses didn’t fall off.
I followed a great tutorial to make this frame from Craftily Ever After. It was so easy! Now I just need to slip in a photo. 
When I saw these popsicle stick snowflakes on Crafty Nest, I just had to make one. They turned out so neat and are hanging in my son’s room. To make it easier, I did the beginning shape (hexagon) as a template and left it as is to make more. It is much easier to glue them together with a template underneath as a guide. 
These little candy mice were perfect for our toilet paper tube owls. Just glue (I used a cold setting hot glue gun) on some ears and then glue the two Kisses flat sides together. Glue on some eyes and a ribbon tail. Also, I snipped off the paper tag that sticks out of the Kiss. I got this idea from Family Fun.
