Let me begin by saying that I love pinterest. I find so much inspiration there.
I came across a fabulous tutorial for turning an old sweater into boots and couldn’t pass it up. I seem to wear through my favorite shoes, TOMS, faster than I can afford to purchase a new pair and then I just can’t let them go. In fact, throwing my very first pair of TOMS away several months back was a heartbreaking episode. After that first trashing experience I couldn’t do it again so I had another pair of TOMS that I’d repaired several times (1. dog takes bite out of the back when they’re only 5 days old, 2. wear through the toe several times, 3 heel begins to show serious signs of wear and tear as well) that I had stashed in the recesses of my closet. After so many repairs, they had finally given up the ghost and the holes just kept coming back bigger and more ghastly looking.
This tutorial spared my TOMS.
In an afternoon I took a thrifted sweater and my shoes and made these. I cannot tell you how comfy, cozy and warm they are. I’m not giving full instructions here because Urban Threads does a superb job of providing step-by-step instructions, complete with pictures on her site. Simply follow this link.
My little sister, LB, and I were fooling around in the kitchen awhile back and decided it would be fun to find a quick and easy on-the-go snack. She’s made a name for herself at school as always having delicious, homemade treats on hand so it had to be something we could make enough of to share. That’s when I came across a great pin on pinterest for no-bake granola bars. The original recipe is courtesy of Rachel Ray.
Ingredients:
1/2 stick butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 cups granola (we used my homemade version minus the dried fruit)
1 cup rice cereal
1 cup mini marshmallows
Spray a 9×13 pan with vegetable oil and set aside. Combine the honey and butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat and stir in brown sugar once the butter has melted. Bring the mixture to a boil, lower the heat and let simmer until the sugar is fully dissolved. Remove the pan from heat and add granola and rice cereal. Gently mix in the marshmallows. Spread into the prepared pan and press firmly with a spatula. Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top and press down lightly. Allow to sit at room temperature for at least an hour before cutting into bars.
I don’t know about you but too often I come home from work frazzled and the last thing I want to deal with is the “what’s for dinner?” question. After visits to a few pizza joints that produce fascinating combinations of fruit, meat and cheese I decided to try my hand at combining said ingredients at home. Thus the apple,bacon,whatever-cheese-we-have pizza was born.
Ingredients:
pitas (at least one per person you’re feeding, and to be on the safe side–2 each)
garlic
fresh basil
olive oil
bacon
apple (preferrably something on the tart side)
cheese (anything you may have, we used a sharp goat cheese and mizithra this time around)
Mix up crushed or finely minced garlic, chopped fresh basil and up to 1/4 cup olive oil (you be the judge of how much oil to use depending on how many pizzas you want to cover). Spread a light layer of this mixture on your pitas and top with thinly sliced apple and chopped, uncooked bacon. Sprinkle generously with cheese. Bake at 400 degrees for roughly 10 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when the cheese has melted and your bacon is crisped. If you’re worried that your bacon won’t cook fast enough or if you like it extra-crispy, fry it up in a pan and then chop and place on pizza. I tend to like mine on the chewier side so I skipped that step.
At the tail end of the peach season I nabbed a case of perfectly ripe ones from Yakima and then scrambled to use all of them quickly. My first decision was another round of preserves. I found this recipe for Vanilla Peach Jam courtesy of pinterest.com. Of course I had to make my own modifications and they are as follows…
Ingredients:
4-5 lbs peaches
3 Tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
2-4 Tbsp vanilla extract
4 cups of sugar
candy thermometer
I dropped the peaches in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes, making it really easy to remove their skins. Then I simply chopped the peaches and mixed then with the lemon juice, vanilla and sugar in a large pot over medium-high heat. Bring to a full boil and keep it there until you reach the jell point, stirring often. Don’t go past the jell point or your jam will either stiffen too much or start tasting burnt. Ladle immediately into sterilized jars, leaving about a 1/4 inch at the top.
Meanwhile you should have a big pot of water boiling so that as soon as your preserves are in the jars you can process them in boiling water for 15 minutes. Lift them out with canning tongs and allow to cool for up to 24 hours. You should hear the lids pop and be sure to check, once the jars have cooled, that you can’t press the center of your lid in and out. If you can then the jar didn’t seal properly and you’ll need to refrigerate right away.
I choose to make my jams pectin-free which means spending more time carefully watching a boiling pot of fruit and paying close attention to the temperature on the thermometer. While it is definitely time consuming, I think the all-natural end results are totally worth it! This time around the preserves didn’t set up as well as I would have liked. We opened our first jar a week ago and they are a slightly runnier than regular jam but soooo tasty! We blew through that first jar in no time.
In case you missed it, I came up with a recipe for vegan lemon currant scones that was shared by my good friend over at Green Vegan Living. If you’re curious, check the recipe out here.
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