Spring Cleaning One Day at a Time

When the snow finally melts, we get all antsy for spring cleaning, don't we?  It's as if once we've started refreshing spring bed covers and cleaning out closets winter is banished.  But then after a couple frenzied days we're all exhausted and don't care about spring cleaning and just want to drink a pitcher of sweet tea. Or is that just me?

So then I go for the one task per day plan and after a few days of that, I feel like I've got it all taken care of and now, it's time for that pitcher of sweet tea.

But this year - I'm determined to get further along since I've come across a day by day schedule, posted by TheDCLadies.

On Monday, Day 1, I cleaned my microwave and stovetop. That was easy. For the microwave, I wet a cloth with water and a little lemon juice and microwaved it for 30 seconds, then wiped down the inside with the hot, lemony cloth.  Granted, we primarily use the microwave for popcorn and defrosting. If you are a serious microwaver - one of those people who can bake a cake and a turkey in there - you might need a little more TLC.  The stovetop, I took apart the burners, washed them, used a little degreaser and scouring sponge.

Day 2 was clean out the pantry and fridge day.  This is actually a great task right before the long holiday weekend. Get all that stuff out of the fridge that you know you are not going to eat anyway, especially if you're going out of town or having a big cookout.  Wipe up spills those you've ignored and those no-one ever mentioned.  Pull out the drawers and swipe out the crumbs and errant green onion that accumulate under them.  Wash the drawers in hot, soapy water.  Then put everything back neatly.

In the pantry, I like to put the dry goods in jars so that we can actually see them and keep them from going stale. (I always have trail mix and can never keep those plastic bags closed tight enough.)  And it's an easy recycling project!  I wash out our used jars (pickles, salsa, spaghetti sauce, etc.), peel off the labels, and to make it pretty - spray paint the lids.  It takes all of 2 minutes to paint the lids, plus the additional drying time.  You could get really fancy and get those chalkboard labels and stick on the sides of the jars (on my list for the next trip to the craft store, but in the meantime, let's stay focused.)

Quick, easy recycling project: paint jar lids & re-use jars to store dry goods.

Cleaned, recycled & filled - ready for the pantry!

Day 3 is clean the dishwasher. That's an easy one for me - I only use mine half the time, so I'll empty it and do a quick run empty, then wipe it down.   Maybe I'll get a jumpstart on under the sink.

Ready to spring clean?  Here's the complete schedule - #TDCL4WeekSpringCleanUp - join in and let me know how it's going.  Post comments here and/or pics to Facebook & Twitter.

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Best of Just Piddlin': Top 10 of 2013

Thanx for Just Piddlin’ along with me in 2013!

I've had a wonderful year blogging and chatting with you.  Checking over my blog posts, these were the 10 most read posts of the year (no particular order).

Working moms and stay-at-home moms, alike, were represented in these motherhood and parenting posts:

• "Lean In" Isn't Such a Bad Message
• Now That You're a Stay-at-Home Mom
• Shall We Give The Kids a Sticker for Breathing

These dishes perfect for busy moms who want home-cooked food for their busy families were popular:

• Next Best Thing to Fried Shrimp - from Witchery in the Kitchen
• Asian Chicken in the Crockpot - selected as a Circle of Moms Recipe of the Day
• And for birthdays, holidays, or any reason to have cake - Cake Decorating - tips from Fancy Cakes by Leslie

Perhaps I’m not the only one struggling with the “where’s your family from” projects, as many of you read up on Another Family Heritage Project.

Fellow yarn-holics picked up their needles for this one: My First Knit Hat

Folks were busy cleaning out their closets & looking for tips on what to do with those old clothes: Re-Use & Recycle Old Clothes

And friends were looking for answers of why they were de-friended (or justifying why they de-friended folks): 5 Reasons You & I Are No Longer Friends

Was your favorite in the top 10?

In 2014, we'll continue striving to grow Just Piddlin' and make it better - for you, the reader, and me.  To learn more about this whole blog-o-sphere, I attended 2 blogging conferences - Disney Social Media Moms and Blogalicious - conferences will be in the plans again in the coming year.  We received a pile of products and books for review which was a lot of fun and look forward to continuing to bring you great products and recommendations.

Book reviews will continue, but I’ll be changing the reading plan a bit.  I’ll let you know in the beginning of the month the Book I'm Carrying Around and invite you to read along and discuss the book with me.  (I’m busy trying to pick out what to start the year with.)

I’ll still be In the Kitchen, cooking and trying out recipes, especially anything chocolate.  Feel free to recommend any great foods or coffee/chocolate shops you think I should try if ever in your city.

And of course, I will continue to be a busy mom of 4, who is always carrying around a skein of yarn, a book, and my perceptions of the world.  I hope you’ll keep piddlin’ along with me.

Please feel free to let me know in the Comments below what you would like to see in 2014.  We'll see what we can do.

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Cake Decorating 101: How to Make a Beautiful Cake at Home

Let’s blame it on those Food Network cake shows that we feel like every cake has to look ready for competition.  Nothing short of fondant, flowers, birds, fountains, and 6 layers is going to do.  Some frosting slapped on a lopsided cake just doesn’t cut it.

Yes - that is a cake!

But, do we really need all that? Can’t we make a presentable cake for our kid’s birthday or the PTA bake sale without calling in the professionals?  Yes, we can, says the namesake of Fancy Cakes by Leslie.

Leslie Poyourow started decorating cakes after basic lessons, not from a culinary school, but from her local craft store.  Since then, she’s continued to experiment and learn her craft.  Over eighteen years of professionally decorating cakes, she’s been featured on the Today Show and won numerous best cake awards, including The Knot’s 2013 Pick for best wedding cakes.  On the day I stopped by her bakery, she and her team of about 8 bakers, frosters, and decorators, were busy in various stages of preparing cakes for weddings, birthdays, and other happy occasions.

I’m going to share her tips for making a pretty cake at home, but here’s what I learned to be one of the most important ingredients: time.  You can have butter imported from France and sugar straight from Brazil, but if you just throw it all together, you’re still going to end up with that crooked cake that looks like a Kindergarten class frosted it.  Allow yourself time and it will be beautiful.

Start with a good recipe that will give you a firm cake and use the proper pans.  Fill your cake pans to about 50%.

After baking and removing it from the pan, wrap the cake in plastic wrap (not the cheap plastic wrap, use the good stuff) and let it cool completely.  This step will help keep the cake moist while it cools.

Cut off the rounded top for a flat, level cake.

Make the cake level.  I’ve heard this tip before, but I always think I can skip it and my cake will still look straight.  Nope, rarely ever does that work.  Use a sharp, serrated edge knife (the “bread” knife in your set) and carefully cut the top of the cake off, the part that’s mounded.  Now – what do you do with this leftover cake piece because no-one wants to throw away good food?  Two options: (1) give it to your kids to eat or (2) make cake pops and then give it to the kids to eat or make them part of your party celebration.

Use a good icing.

Use an icing recipe that does not include liquid.  A good icing will include the basics – sugar, butter, flavor – but no liquid like water or milk.  We’re talking about the regular fluffy, creamy icing, no fondant, no rolling pin.

Frost your cake with a cake spatula, not a butter knife or spoon or whatever else you have in your kitchen.  It has a nice long handle and your fingers won’t get in the way.  There’s a long edge and you can cover the entire cake in one swoop.

Make gum paste or buy it already made from a cake supply store

Want to be fancy and add special decorations?  Use gum paste, a sugary mixture like fondant, but firmer, that you can buy from cake supply stores or make at home.  It looks like play dough, but it is edible.  When I was there, the decorators were making stars and an Eiffel Tower.  Roll it out, cut out your shape, decorate with piped icing if you wish, stick it on your cake. And how do you get an Eiffel Tower?  Print a picture at the size that you want it, cut it out, and trace it with a knife on your gum paste.  This is something I am really wanting to try.

A little something extra - add fresh fruit (here, raspberries) in between your layers

What if you don’t even own measuring spoons and Betty Crocker is your best friend?  Leslie’s got a few tips for you, too.

• Splurge and buy two boxes of mix.  One is never enough for a decent looking 2-layer cake.  There will probably be left over batter – make cupcakes!
• Store-bought frostings are not made to look fancy in the end, so don’t fight it.  Don’t try anything too decorative, but neatly put your frosting on and enjoy the nice “homemade” look.

Still feeling that pressure to buy the beautiful cake in the bakery window for your kid’s birthday party?  This, I thought, was a gem of advice for us stressed-out, gotta make it all perfect moms.  Leslie said that even if you don’t think you’re a great baker or artist, try it anyway for your kid.  She mentioned, repeatedly, that kids love the idea that mom made their cake and will think it tastes good just because you made this special effort for them.

Red velvet, S'mores, Chocolate Chip Cookie, Nutella, Vanilla, and Cookies & Cream

And how do her cakes taste? You know I didn't get out of there without a chocolate cupcake. And it was delicious! The cupcakes were moist and the frosting was light and not-too-sweet.

Enjoy your baking!

Thanks to Leslie and her staff for letting me wander around her sugar-scented haven.  If you live near the Bethesda, Maryland area and want more hands-on tips, check Fancy Cakes by Leslie’s class schedule.

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Snow Day Crab Soup

The weatherman predicted lots of snow - inches and feet. We got enough slushy inches for school to be cancelled and all our other activities, too.  Its been a welcome respite of doing nothing.  The kids went out for a while, the dog got soaked in the snow, and we lounged around all day.

And of course, we ate. We made puffy pancakes for breakfast, a new favorite since its so easy (the recipe is on my FaceBook page).  I had bought some crab meat the other day and crab soup seemed the perfect lunch for a cold, wet, snowy day. I was missing a few ingredients from my regular crab soup recipe, so I improvised and came up with this one.

Snow Day Crab Soup

1 small onion

2 stalks celery

1 TBS minced garlic

2 TBS butter

1 pint cherry tomatoes

2 cans tomato sauce

1 can broth (vegetable, chicken, seafood)

seasonings: Old Bay, salt, pepper, chili pepper, bay leaves

1 lb crabmeat

1. Dice onion and celery.
2. Melt butter in stock pot.  Add onion, celery, and garlic. Stir and cook until soft.
3. Season to taste.
4. Add cherry tomatoes. Stir occasionally so vegetables do not burn; cook about 10 minutes. Tomatoes won’t burst, they will cook down until soft.
5. Add tomato sauce, broth, and ½ can of water.  Add bay leaves.
6. Add crab meat.
7. Cook until crab meat is warm.
8. Taste and add seasonings, if necessary.
9. Turn heat down and simmer for about 30 minutes.
10. Remove bay leaves, serve and enjoy!

Saute the vegetables in butter until soft. Season to your liking.

Simmer to mix all the flavors together and enjoy!

Alternatives:

Use canned, diced tomatoes instead of cherry tomatoes

Add corn kernels, canned or frozen (and of course, fresh if you have it!)

Organizing and Cooking

As a busy mom, there are many days that I loathe hearing the words, "what's for dinner?"  But, not because I don't like cooking.  In fact, one of the few household chores that I like is cooking.  The rest - laundry, dusting, mopping - I do because that's what grown people are supposed to do.  But I enjoy cooking, especially when I have the time to slice and dice and saute.  And if I am working from a new recipe, even better.  When I don't have time, I feel bored returning to the same meals over and over.  This boredom is colliding with my effort to de-clutter.

I read an article the other day by a de-cluttering expert that says you only need 2 cookbooks.  I don't know how many I have, but I think the count may start with "2", including a couple in another language (anyone know what "eierdooier" is for my "pecannotenwafels"?)  I'm not trying to cull my cookbook collection to 2 - that would not really be a collection, anymore, would it?

My cookbooks, although numerous, are in pretty good order.  I have them neatly on the shelves, tabbed with my favorite recipes, the tried and true go-to recipes marked by the spill marks on the pages.  It is my piles of cooking magazines and torn out recipes that are a little bit out of control.

"What's for dinner?"  The answer is somewhere in this pile.

To start putting this stack of "one day I'm gonna cook this" pages into a usable format, I sorted them out into categories, you know, like a cookbook.  Meats, Veggies, Desserts (baked and frozen - because I like making ice cream), Soups, Breakfast, Breads/Baking (not desserts), Pasta. I kept or discarded the recipes based on a few simple criteria:

• is it something I'm really, actually going to make?  Although, I like the idea of making fresh, yeast breads, I really don't have the patience to wait for yeast to rise - out went all those recipes.
• is it something the husband and kids are really going to eat?
• are the ingredients easily purchased at the local grocery store?  If I have to go to any specialty market, it's never going to get made - out went those recipes.
• do I have a recipe I already like for this food?  I have several cookie and dessert cookbooks, so I didn't keep any basic pies or cakes or cookies like sugar cookies, vanilla pound cake

Torn-out recipes sorted into food categories, ready to try out.

The keepers, I put in a vertical file folder.  I plan on pulling recipes each week and trying them out.  After I cook them, I'll keep the ones I really like.  If I'm in a particularly organized mood, I might even type them up.  (If you look real close in the photo, you might note a few scribbled on a piece of paper.  These are recipes I jotted down while watching TV or talking to someone.  I'm telling you, I get recipes from everywhere.)  The keepers will go into plastic sleeves and I'll add them to a binder of recipes I've already collected.  I'm thinking I might make separate binders for different categories, because already my existing one is almost full.

I'll keep you posted on the good ones (you know I will!)