How To Make Homemade Shake And Bake For Chicken Or Pork

This is almost a clone for the commercial Shake n Bake product. It is very tasty! :-)

Demonstrating Linoleum Block Cutting And Printing

I was honored to be among those demonstrating how to make art at the "Stars of Texas" annual art show in Brownwood Texas. This is the third year I have been invited to do this and it is something I always enjoy. This year, I demonstrated Linoleum Block cutting and printmaking.

Hand Finishing Fine Silver Jewelry: Pre-Firing Phase

In my Etsy store (link over to the left), I sell handmade jewelry.  This video shows a portion of the finishing process that happens on each piece. I also talk about the time involved in making these items, and why an artisan-crafted item may have a selling price that is far above the value of the materials used to make it. Craftspeople always face the challenge of understanding who their market is, and in this video I talk a little about that.

Giveaway For Reaching 100 Subscribers on my You Tube Channel!

Woohoo! I've reached a great milestone and want to say thanks to all of you for an awesome beginning!  To celebrate, I am having a little give away. :-)   To Enter: Subscribe to my "Pecan Corner" You Tube channel, then comment on You Tube on this video (click through to watch it on You Tube, then you can see the comment box) answering this question: "What are the best kind of gifts for celebration give-a-ways from individual channels?"

Must comment on You Tube before Midnight Saturday night, January 24th 2015. Winners will be announced on Monday Jan 26th 2015. Winners must message me within 48 hours (by mid-day Wed the 28th) with their mailing address and their choice of prize. Thanks a bunch!!!

Homemade Candy for Gifting: Martha Washington Candy Recipe!

YES there IS still time to make these for Christmas! They are unbelievable simple to make, and I share a little melting trick to make the chocolate coating easy to handle. The video also shows how I packaged them for giving.  Paul described these little gems as "Mounds on Steroids" LOL! Enjoy! And MERRY CHRISTMAS! :-)

Christmas Recipe Challenge & Our Chex Mix Recipe

Hopefully, over the week the comments thread on this video will fill up with tasty family favorites! Do you have a You Tube channel? Make a video  and come share in the comments on You Tube!  Watch til the end to find out how to take part. Maybe your name will be drawn for the "Christmas with Martha Stewart Living" book give away! :-)

When a friend gives you Basil... make Pesto for the freezer!

My latest video gets you ready for one of the easiest, quickest, after-work home cooked meals there is: Pesto with  pecans! :-)  Enjoy!

Putting Up Pear Preserves

A New, Healthy, Idea for a Coffee and Chocolate Gift Basket

 We were asked to make up themed gift baskets for a church women's conference, and my assigned theme was "Coffee and Chocolate". Always in season, but who wants to keep doing the "Starbucks and Godiva" thing?  I really wanted to step out and make one that was a little unusual.

Personally, we drink Community Coffee because we think their Medium Roast is the best daily coffee there is - we switched from Folgers a couple of years ago. We can no longer buy the one pound bricks in our local stores, so we order 8 or 10 pounds at a time direct from this small, family-owned company in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There are two different women who pack our orders, and they sign their names to the packing list. They always get it right and I appreciate them.  It is great - every once in a while the Community Coffee folks email us a 15% or 20% off sale, and orders over $60 get free shipping. So we have wonderful, perfect coffee on hand.

That is what got me started down the Creole coffee road for my gift basket, and it snowballed from there to include Mexican Chocolate and Cafe de Olla. Partly because these wonderful, traditional American coffee & chocolate drinks are so good they deserve a much wider audience. And partly, also, because all of these can make use of Molasses.

Molasses is "unrefined sugar" to the Nth degree: Sugar cane molasses is a natural sweetener that contains a whopping bunch of naturally occuring nutrition in its unmodified, un-additive, un-messed-with, good, natural form.

 

 Check this out from the World's Healthiest Foods: 
Percent of Daily Value of Nutrients in 2 teaspoons of Blackstrap Molasses (notice that "blackstrap" type has about double the nutrition of regular unsulphured molasses - which is also good if you can't buy blackstrap in your local store):
 manganese 18%
 copper 14%
 iron 13.2%
 calcium 11.7%
 potassium 9.7%
 magnesium 7.3%
 vitamin B6 5% (there are other B vitamins / Niacin too)
 selenium 3.4%
Calories per 2 tsp: only 32 (1% of Daily Value)

How cool is that? All these old Southern ways of cooking and eating are actually healthy for us after all. Cooking in iron skillets (to add natural iron to our diets), using molasses, flavoring our spinach and greens with bacon grease (Vitamin K is fat soluble!).... oh I am getting sidetracked here... back to the gift basket!

Here are the recipes I used:

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Creole Coffee:

Brew a nice breakfast coffee. To each mug, add 2 teaspooons of molasses and, if desired, 1/4 cup hot milk or cream.

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Cafe de Olla (Mexican Coffee):

6 cups of water
6 Tablespoons ground Coffee (regular roast, regular grind)
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
2 Tablespoons Molasses
1 Cinammon Stick
Evaporated Milk to taste

Bring water to a boil in a saucepan. Add all the ingredients except milk, and simmer for about 5 minutes. Strain into mugs and add undiluted canned milk to taste.  If the leftover coffee gets cold in the pan it can be gently reheated, just don't boil it again.

Mexican Coffee is very similar to old fashioned cowboy coffee or "creekbank coffee", in that it is made the same way: boiled up in a pan and then strained.  The addition of spice and sweetener is a matter of personal preference and availability.

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Mexican Hot Chocolate

1 can Evaporated Milk
1 cup of water
1 block Mexican Chocolate
1 Tablespoon Molasses

Stir and heat until the chocolate melts, then whisk until frothy. This is very rich, so this recipe makes 3 servings. The reason there isn't extra sugar is because Mexican Chocolate has unrefined sugar in it already, along with vanilla and a hint of cinammon. If you can't get any in your stores, use powdered cocoa, brown sugar, a half teaspoon of vanilla, and a dash of cinammon.

~~~~~

I just wrote the recipes out by hand and doodled in colored markers to decorate them, then layered them onto a piece of cardboard and wrapped in clear wrap so they would stand up nicely in the basket. 

It all came together with a pound of Community Coffee, a bottle of blackstrap molasses, a box of Nestle's Abuelita Mexican Chocolate, a package of Fiesta Brand Cinammon sticks, and the recipes, all fluffed up with some red and green tissue. It is very cute, if I do say so. We will find out what others think when they auction it! :-) If it proves to be popular, I may make some of these up for Christmas gifts.