One of the Last Strawberries

Ok. You're going to think I'm goofy. Well...

Heart Strawberry

Here's one of the last strawberries we got from our strawberry patch this year. I thought it was cute. I've never seen such a pretty heart-shaped strawberry.

I hope this put a smile on your face today.

Take care.

Under the Weather

We're having some kind of weather here. It's extremely hot one day and raining the next. Sunny one minute and cloudy and raining the next. I guess this is taking a toll on some of us down here.

Last week, my boss was sick and stayed home a couple of days from work. Before he left, our safety director got ill. Then one of the engineers came down with something. See where this is going? Yeah. I got a head cold from all of this. Lovely! So a small bunch of us are running around with runny noses.

They say summer colds are the hardest to get rid of. I really hope not. I've been taking echinacea tincture at night and waking up good in the morning. A few hours after waking, the sneezing comes and I'm no good for the rest of the day.

Right now my nose is stuffed after a bout of sneezing. Just in time for swollen nasal passages just before bedtime. Try to fall asleep with that going on.

I hope you all are well and keep well.

Take care.

Easy Cinnamon Biscuit Roll

I'm always on the lookout for easy recipes to add variety to our meals. Here is one I found on Mennonite Girls Can Cook. It is their Cinnamon Biscuit Roll. This is the exact recipe I used without any variations except I didn't glaze my roll.

As you can see on my blogroll, I have the Mennonite Girls' website listed. Every recipe I've ever made from this site has worked out great and tastes great, too. I've also made the Rhubarb Platz for company and work. You can substitute fruits so I did. We don't have rhubarb here, in South Carolina, so I used apples and cinnamon one time. I used apricot filling another time. Next time I'll use canned cherry pie filling or fresh blueberries. It is really a pretty presentation and tasty, to boot. However, it is too sugary and I won't make it for home. This is just something special I make for others.

If you haven't ever been to this site, it's well worth the browse. The recipes are great. The pictures are great. They give you a bit of a background about themselves. They have a special Sunday "Bread for the Journey", which is very inspiring.

Here is what my Cinnamon Biscuit Roll looked like.

Cinnamon Biscuit Roll

As you can see, it turned out pretty much like on the Mennonite Girls' website. It is nice and flaky and not very sweet. It's more like a biscuit in texture. It holds together well if you want to eat it with your fingers. If I were to serve this for company, I would either glaze it after baking, or sugar it before baking.

I hope you'll give this one a try and browse the Mennonite Girls' website.

Take care.

The MOST Decadent Cake...Easy Too!!!

While I was searching for pictures of decorations for the scholarship program at work, I came across this cake at this site. It was so easy to make and is disgustingly sweet. If you ever have a need for a very easy and pretty cake for a die-hard chocoholic, this is the one for you! Well...I didn't feel like make 8 of these cakes for the scholarship program. I considered smaller cakes, but that would've been too much work and too much worry to transport them. Then I considered the cost - about $15 to make a 9" cake. That was a Little pricy. So, (drumroll please) ta da! My cake, with a lot of help from my favorite assistant.

Kit Kat Cake

It turned out pretty well, if I do say so. I don't usually try out gimmicky stuff, but it was for someone else's birthday. She liked it a lot but she couldn't eat but one slice of it. Yeah. It's that rich. It could be considered a 'death by chocolate' cake, for sure. That's one phrase I wish I could've coined.

So, if you go to the site highlighted above, you'll see a step-by-step progression on how to build it. If you Google 'Kit Kat Cake', you'll see a picture section. Expand that and you'll see many many variations of this cake. There are lots of good ideas you can do with this, as you'll see.

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I liked eating this cake. (I ate several slices, but don't tell anyone.)

Take care.

Yummy Dip

The company I work for sponsors a scholarship program for high school seniors and college students whose parents work in the industrial site I work in. The scholarships are generous and the funds for them are donated by each corporation at the site. The program is in memory of a gentleman who tragically lost his life after being hurt at the company I work for. This gentleman, Tyrone, was really interested in helping children any way he could. He was a coach and tried to instill good qualities in the children by his example. It has been 16 years ago that Tyrone passed, but through this program, he'll never be forgotten. I, myself, never had the chance to work with Tyrone. I hear about him through my coworkers.

My part in this program is helping with the event. I ordered a spinach artichoke dip to be served at the scholarship awards ceremony. It was fantastic! Of course, I don't have the recipe for the dip served, but I found a really good one at the Kraft site. Here it is. I served it with lightly toasted pita triangles, just like at the awards ceremony. Anyhow, it's really good and simple. I made it by this recipe with no deviation. My take is that it needed a bit more garlic. I would use two cloves of real garlic instead of the garlic powder. There is something to be said about real garlic. I guess 'pungent' would be a good word. However, I like yummy. ; )

I hope you like the little bit I shared with you about one of the best parts of where I work. I also hope you'll try this dip. I think you'll really like it! If that doesn't suit you, then you should browse the Kraft site. I get a lot of recipes from there.

Take care.

Camper Cleaned

I got the camper ceiling textured and painted. I just went with white instead of the beige I was going to do. It turned out really well. Hubby has been cleaning a lot of the inside. I've been scrubbing walls and ceilings. Hubby got the outside all spiffy. We still have a bit of trouble getting the mold stains from the siding.

We are getting psyched! We love to camp, even though we've given up our tent and gone soft. Then, again, we had to find something more substantial than a tent to keep 4 dogs in line. We tented with 2 dogs and they gave us a fit. As soon as we jumped into our sleeping bags, they started fighting right on top of us. Literally. They don't fight. But they did that night. Put fear into us that night! Down here, we also needed a bit of A/C. Yep. We've gotten soft. But the dogs like camping with us. Sometimes they don't.

Take care.

Cleaning Up The Camper

We've been cleaning up our travel trailer to go on vacation soon. Hubby found a soft spot in the roof where the antenna comes out. He fixed that from the inside since some water leaked into the ceiling. He did a pretty good patch job on the ceiling. Now, it's my turn to get the ceiling painted. First off, I'm going to do a little texturizing so the patch won't be so visible. Then I'll paint an area between panels a darker color than the rest of the ceiling. That color will actually be very close to a color in the wall paper. I think it will look great. Hubby is a bit skeptical. If it doesn't look right, I'll peel out the white and paint it all.

We've been scrubbing walls, floors, appliances, nooks and crannies. It is getting a really good once-over. We also bought an air deodorizer. It is in a tub and it is really taking the stuffy smell out of the air. Between the scrubbing with Simple Green and this stuff, which I don't remember the name of, it is smelling pretty good in there.

I still need to do the blinds, as well. THAT is a chore I really don't like. However, I'm going to try my household trick. In the house, our blinds are a plantation blind. The slats are about 2" wide with a wood grain that gets dirt and pollen stuck in them. I get a bucket with my ammonia water, dip a sock in it with the roughest side out and stuff my hand in the sock. I wipe both sides at one time which cuts down a lot of time turning each slat.

Then we have to scrub the outside. Down here, mold grows on just about everything. It especially likes vinyl siding and aluminum siding. Mold has no mercy. You can clean it one day and next week it will start coming back. Bleach works for a while, but you can't use bleach through the pressure washer because it degrades the seals in the machine. I have no idea what to use on it successfully. So, we're trying Simple Green and a pressure washer this year. Hubby did a little spot, but he didn't have much success. You can still see a mold shadow on the siding. If anyone has a suggestion that kills mold and keeps it away, please let me know in the comments section.

Wish us luck with this cleaning chore.

Take care.