Vickie Howell took a beat-up thrift store chandelier and fixed it up for her daughter-to-be’s bedroom. It went from this:
To this:
It was a pretty simple project. All you do is prime the chandelier, paint the color on, and finish up with a glossy varnish. She used $3-$5 non-toxic fabric paint and didn’t seem to have any trouble painting it on the metal. The end result looks expensive and fun. Great idea. (Via)
A reader named Christy e-mailed Savvy Housekeeping with a question:
My family has recently moved out to the country and we have new neighbors with dairy cows and they have offered us raw cow’s milk and the cream off the top. I am very interested in feeding my children organic food these days and with all the new resources we have found in this small country town I would love some recipes for making things with the cream and milk. Can you help??
Christy, I tell you, if I had a supply of fresh cream and milk, I would be all over it. I would get into butter churning, making cheese, the whole thing. The main reason I don’t do those things is that with the price of milk, I’m not sure it’s cost-effective to make my own. (A gallon of milk costs about $3.50, and so does a pound of mozzarella on sale.) But a free, fresh supply of milk and cream? That’s dairy gold, my friend.
Although I’m not to sure about pasteurization and raw milk and all that, here are some things you can make with milk/cream in general:
* Whip cream: The first thing that springs to mind is whip cream, which you make by adding about 1/3 cup of sugar for every pint or so of cream and beating it in your mixer until it stiffens. You can use whip cream as a topping for desserts, folded into mousse, and a host of other delicious options.
* Butter: Or you can omit the sugar and keep on churning the cream until you make butter. You can freeze butter for storage, spread it on toast, and use it in practically every kind of cooking situation. You can even add fresh herbs and make flavored butter.
* Cheese: Of course, I would make cottage cheese with the milk, but I would try some other cheeses too. Ricotta and Mozzarella are fairly easy to make. However, you do have to get some extra ingredients, like citric acid and rennet to make cheese. You can buy them at a specialty store or invest in a cheesemaking kit. While that sounds difficult, I have watched people make cheese, and it’s really pretty simple and fun.
* Buttermilk: Then there’s buttermilk. It looks like it is a simple matter of adding lemon juice or cream of tarter to milk and letting it curdle. And what is a good Southern biscuit without buttermilk?
* Sour cream: After you do that, you can take the buttermilk, combine it with the milk, and make yourself some sour cream, which can be used in all kinds of baking, not to mention Mexican food.
* Creme fraiche: Or you can make the vastly superior creme fraiche by combining unsweetened whip cream and buttermilk together. Creme fraiche can be used in soups, over fresh berries, or spread on a nice piece of french bread.
* Yogurt: And finally, you can try your hand at making yogurt. I don’t know much about yogurt, but it’s a practical and healthy thing to have around. On top of serving it with berries/granola/etc for breakfast, you can cook with yogurt. Lots of Indian cooking uses yogurt, for example.
Hope that helps you Christy. Good luck!
The lemon orgy continues around here. I made these lemon bars on Sunday and they were gone by Monday. They had a shortbread-like crust and a rich lemon curd filling. Here’s how I made ‘em.
Lemon Bars
Ingredients:
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Sift together 1 1/2 cup flour and the powdered sugar. Cut the butter into small pieces. With your fingers, start to work the butter into the flour until the entire mixture is the size of small peas.
Press the mixture into a 13X9-inch baking pan. Make sure to cover the bottom and along the side of the pan to avoid leakage, like so:
Back the crust for 20-30 minutes until it is starting to turn golden brown. Remove from oven and reduce to 300 degrees.
Meanwhile, make the filling. Mix together sugar and eggs until the sugar is dissolved. Add the lemon juice.
Now, taste the filling. What you are looking here is a balance between sweetness and the lemon. You neither want the filling to taste too sweet nor too lemony but a meeting between the two extremes. Adjust the lemon juice and sugar accordingly. When it tastes lush, custard-y and balanced, you have it right.
Next, sift 1/2 cup flour into the mixture and stir until smooth.
Pour the filling into your crust and bake 35 minutes until it is set. Cool and cut into rectangles. Enjoy!
Chard is a great alternative to spinach in your garden. First of all, chard is a perennial, so you can keep growing it all year long. Just plant it in early spring after the first frost. It is a “pick and harvest” crop, which means you keep taking leaves from the outside of the plant and let new leaves form, so you have an ongoing supply.
Secondly, chard is gorgeous. It comes in all kinds of colors, but I especially like the deep scarlet above. It makes a great decorative plant as well as an edible.
Third, chard does better in hot climates than spinach. I have not been able to get spinach to grow where I live in California because they always bolt or freeze before they get big enough. Chard is hardier. It handles heat, drought, and even frost better.
Chard can be used in almost any dish that calls for spinach. It has a stronger flavor than spinach, most earthy, perhaps. One of my favorite ways to prepare it is in Orangette’s Plain Jane with Chickpeas recipe. It’s so simple, yet makes a great side to any meat dish.
Plain Jane with Chickpeas by Orangette
Ingredients:
Directions:
Trim the central ribs from the greens. You should wind up with about 1 pound of leaves, or a bit less. Wash them well in a pan of water, and drain them well in a colander.
In a 12-inch skillet, warm the olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and onion, and sauté until the onion is soft and translucent, about 5-10 minutes. Add the chickpeas, and stir to mix. Add the greens, season well with salt. The leaves are bulky, so you may need to add them in batches, letting them cook down before adding more. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the leaves have wilted enough that you can cover the skillet. Cover, lower the heat—you want to keep the contents of the pan cooking gently and slowly, with no aggressive sizzling or burning—and cook until the greens are tender, about 15 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, and stir in the lemon juice.
Serve warm. Taste and adjust the seasoning just before plating.
I really like these pillows of little girl heads. They are silk-screened on vintage matlesse backing. Kind of quirky and fun, especially for a little girl’s room. And they are a reasonable price at $18 each. (Via)
I like this gray bathroom featured on Apartment Therapy. Apparently, they are tiles from Heath Ceramics in Marin County, California. Looks like the tiles costs about $30/square foot. I like the simplicity and serenity of this space, but wonder if you can get the same look for cheaper.
I’m not sure how to categorize this, so I’m putting it under “saving money,” since I’m pretty sure after you look at Fast Food Ads vs. Reality, you’re not going to want to eat fast food for awhile. (Except for when it’s free, of course.) Aside from being high in fat and chock full of chemicals and preservatives, fast food is pretty gross in reality. Case in point:
Arby’s Beef ‘n’ Cheddar
KFC Famous Bowl
Ick. More here.
I have two bushes of ripe lemons outside, so I have begun making things with the juice. Of course, lemonade is a natural, and tasty, choice.
In my opinion, perfect lemonade is sweet, but not so sweet that it overpowers the lemon juice. I don’t like overly sweet beverages in general. Here’s my recipe. It makes one gallon:
Perfect Lemonade:
Ingredients:
Directions:
Put sugar and 1 cup of water in a sauce pan and heat, stirring constantly until all the sugar is dissolved.
Add the sugar/water mixture and lemon juice to a one-gallon pitcher. Fill the rest of the pitcher with water.
Pour yourself a glass of lemonade and relax.
I guess there is such a thing as a free lunch after all. First, go get your free tacos from Jack-in-the-Box. If you’re still hungry, you can use your $2 gift card at Subway (if you live in California, that is). Next, have some Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee and finish it off with an ice cream. Do all this now, while you’re waiting for your free packet of seeds to grow.
Hey, I didn’t say it was going to be a good free lunch…
I’m not sure how legitimate it is to like a beer because it is adorable, but I really want to try this Hitachino Nest Beer. Apparently they sell it at Whole Foods.
The packaging is awesome, and the beer is supposed to taste good too. (Via)