Berry Crumb Bars

You can click on that photo to see it up close. ;-)

I tried out a new recipe last week and it was decent. It has lots of potential! I'll list the recipe "as is", but per usual, let ya know what I did differently.

1 cup white sugar
1 tsp baking powder
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup shortening
1 egg
1 pinch salt
1 pinch ground cinnamon
4 cups raspberries
1/2 cup white sugar
3 tsp cornstarch


Preheat oven to 375. Spray 9x13 dish (or you could half the recipe and throw it into an 8x8). Combine 1 cup sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon (I used 1/2 tsp of cinnamon and thought it gave just a hint of taste. A pinch would be pointless.) Cut in shortening into the flour/sugar mixture (I used 1/2 butter and 1/2 vegetable shortening. Next time I'll use all butter, because I think it'll give it more flavor.) Stir in egg. Pat half of crumbled mixture into pan. Reserve the rest.

Combine 1/2 cup sugar, corn starch and raspberries in a bowl (I used a bag of frozen berries - mixture of strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. Really, any kind of berry will work here - all the same or mix 'em together.) Pour berry mixture over the crust in the pan. Top with remaining crumbled mixture.

Bake at 375 degrees for 45-50 minutes or until top is lightly browned. Now the original recipe didn't call for this, but what I did was take a cup of powdered sugar and a few teaspoons of warm water and mixed till I got a glaze consistency. Then after the bars were cooled, I used a spoon to drizzle the glaze over the top. The recipe 'as is' is not an overly sweet dessert, and I thought the glaze gave it just a hint of sweetness - not too much, not too little. Just my opinion! Another tip: if time allows, I encourage you to make this the day before you'll be serving it. It tastes way better the next day. :-)

Life Before Microwave Ovens

What on earth did we do before we all relied so heavily on the Microwave? I'm currently going through withdrawal. I've had to wrack my brain to think of how I heated leftovers.....how I cooked a Lean Cuisine. Our microwave has been acting strange for about 1.5 years or so. It started with the thing not being able to keep the time on the display and just went down hill from there. Occasionally it would turn itself on when no one was in the room, so we took to unplugging it while we weren't using it and that worked OK until 2 weeks ago. We'd plug it in, but it wouldn't respond to any buttons; the lights come on, but no one is home. I think the time has come to admit that we can get nothing more out of this microwave.

So the other day I had to pick up some milk at the store and since my favorite Lean Cuisine Chicken Club Panini was on sale, I bought one for my lunch that day. It wasn't till I pulled the thing out of the freezer to "nuke" it that it dawned on me that the microwave option for food is no longer available in my home. I had to do a quick scan of my decades old memories to see how to deal with frozen food. Oh yeaaaaah. Turned the oven on, popped my meal in there, and had to wait 25 minutes till it was done! I had to guess on the oven temperature because the box assumes you have a microwave in which to cook the meal and doesn't offer oven cooking as an option.

I gotta admit, this really stinks not having a microwave. You don't realize how much you rely on an appliance or electronic till you are suddenly without it. I'm constantly thawing out meat for dinner or frozen marinara sauce I've made, plus I heat water in there for Eric's oatmeal or for making tea each morning. Now I have to boil it?? That'll take, like, 5 minutes! Reheat leftovers without a microwave?! Good grief.....it's really much greener to own a microwave. Think about it - to reheat leftovers, you either have to fire up the oven or burner (most of us have gas and we all know how expensive that is), then after you're done cooking your leftovers, you have to use water (and more gas if you're using hot water) to clean up the pans you used to cook the food. That's a lot of natural resources, don't you think? Now if you'd just used the microwave, you could've reheated the food in the storage container, used a little electricity, and poof, you're done. That justifies the purchase of a new one, doesn't it????

Flipped The Switch

I've tried holding off as long as possible, but this year I had to flip the switch a bit early. The switch I'm talking about is the thermostat where I turned it from "off" to "heat". You could say it's been a bit chilly in the house in the mornings the past week or so, but this morning it was down to 64 degrees which is a tad brisk, even for me - the heat miser. So the switch got flipped this morning, and as I type, it's a toasty 70 degrees. It looks like the sun will shine all day and heat the place up for free so the heat doesn't have to work too hard. Hopefully it'll be a very sunny winter, because we need all the help we can get. It's getting mighty expensive to live in America, eh?

If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space

I've known for several months that my camera needs some cleaning....specifically, the sensor. My photos have little specks on them, which is dust on the sensor. This happens quite easily with a DSLR, especially if you use your camera frequently and change lenses often. Dust is bound to settle on the sensor and that turns up on your images.

In May I called the camera store where I purchased my camera body, and was told how much it'd be to clean my camera (Eeeek!) and that it would take 6-8 weeks. Are they kidding me? I'm supposed to be without my camera for two months?!

I figured there had to be a way I could do this myself, so I started hunting and searching online and did find one approved method for cleaning the sensor; of course, Nikon doesn't approve it, and if the sensor gets ruined in the cleaning process, the least of my problems is the voided warranty. I'll be out one very expensive camera body that took me 2 years of saving the money I earned from selling kids clothes on ebay. Decisions, decisions....pay $150 to have someone take 2 months to blow the dust around inside my camera body or invest $80 in the supplies I'd need to do it myself (many times, not just once.) I decided that I needed to live on the edge and do it myself, so that was Mike's birthday present to me......back in June.

It's taken me two months to work up my nerve (the irony of 2 months passing isn't lost on me.) I love my camera and don't want to hurt it....especially because I can't afford to replace it! It's replacement model (albeit a better version than mine) is about $750, and that's just the body. I took a photo to view on my monitor to see all the dark dust bunnies on my sensor. I lost count at 22 (you might not be able to see most of them, but they're there.) Basically I wind up having to Photoshop out all the dust from most of my photos, which quite frankly, is a pain in the butt.

22+ DUST BUNNIES

The kids were off to AWANAS last night, so I set up my sensor cleaning business in the bathroom where the light is high and the traffic is low. I mounted my camera on a tripod, wheeled my "office" chair in there, said a quick prayer, and hovered over the camera body after doing a "mirror lock-up" (forces the camera to expose the sensor). I felt like a dentist hovering over my wide open camera set up on the tripod.

My shoulder and neck were a bit stiff with tension by the time I walked out of the bathroom, but I'm pleased to say it was a successful endeavor. Take a look at the after photo - a couple little particles there, but overall, a huge improvement (and major relief - the camera worked to take the after photo!):

Apple Picking

Charlotte's preschool class had a field trip to a local apple orchard last week. The kids had fun playing in the kid's area, plus learning about how apples come to be on a tree! Interesting tidbit: the number of seeds an apple has is due to how many times a bee visited the apple blossom. After viewing the informational video, we took a hayride out to the orchards to pick some Gala apples.

After our trip to the orchard, we all gathered in the pavilion for some apple cider and apple cider donut (these are so awesome....maybe because I only eat them this time of year!) As you can see, my fruit lovin' daughter lets the donut sit while she eats one of her fresh-picked apples (the donut didn't sit there long, though.)

Tortilla Lasagne

I got this recipe out of a magazine. It meets my criteria of being easy and mighty tasty (in my opinion anyway!) I used low-fat cheese and low-fat sour cream, as well as ground sirloin to help shave off some of the fat and cholesterol (not that it helps much in a dish like this, but at least I get a C+ for effort.) And since my kids freak if we serve them anything too spicy, I eliminated the cayenne pepper, and I think I reduced cheese by 25% because I didn't have enough. It still came out great. It's sort of hard to go wrong here. Make it your own.


1 pound ground beef
1 cup water
1 envelope taco seasoning
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1-1/2 cups sour cream
1-1/2 tsp chili powder
2 cups shredded monterey Jack cheese
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
8-10 flour tortillas (6")
1 (8 oz) jar salsa
1 small onion, diced

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large skillet, cook beef and drain. Stir in water, taco seasoning, garlic powder and cayenne (if using). Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small bowl combine sour cream and chili powder. In another bowl, combine cheeses. Spray cooking spray into a 9x13 pan. Arrange 1/2 of the tortillas on bottom of dish, overlapping. Spread 1/2 cup of salsa on top. Layer with half of the meat mixture, then onion, and spread 1/2 of the sour cream mixture over the top. Sprinkle with 1.5 cups cheese mixture. Repeat layers (retaining 1 cup of cheese mixture.) Bake uncovered at 375 degrees for 35 minutes. Sprinkle with remaining cheese mixture. Bake 10 minutes longer or until cheese is melted. Let stand for 10 minutes before cutting. Enjoy!