WFMW — Slow Cooker Liners

A few weeks ago my mom sent me a slow cooker liner in the mail and said I needed to try it.

It felt like one of those bags you use in the oven for your turkey at Thanksgiving.

I think it's my kids' new best friend. Clean-up is such a snap!

All that brown burnish gunk that would normal have to be scrubbed off the crock pot now is on the liner that just gets thrown in the trash.

You just pull it down over the crock pot. You don't tuck it in or anything.

Simple!

That's what works for me, and my kids!

Check out what works for others at We Are THAT Family.

Bread Starter and Bread Recipe

What a boring title...


I have starter that a friend gave me, but how do you *start* starter?

I tried it. It's called sourdough, but technically since it uses yeast it isn't.

To start your starter:

1 pkg yeast (I used rapid rise)
1/2 cup warm water

Mix well until yeast is dissolved. Then add the following ingredients:

3/4 cup sugar
3 T potato flakes
1 cup warm water

Mix well and pour into clean glass jar. Cover with a towel and leave sitting on the counter for 8 hours. Put the lid on and keep in the refrigerator for 3 days. Then feed your starter and make bread.

To feed your starter:

3/4 cup sugar
3 T potato flakes
1 cup warm water

Mix well and let stand out of refrigerator all day (8-12 hours) uncovered.

NOTE: When bubbly, take out 1 cup to make bread and return to refrigerator. Keep 3-5 days and feed again. If you did not make bread, give or throw away the 1 cup. Always feed every 3-5 days to avoid deflating starter. (I make my bread at night after the starter has been sitting out all day. It's very bubbly at first, but this isn't when you're supposed to use it. I let the dough rise overnight and then make the three loaves the next morning. See below. I also have to throw out a smidge of my starter even when I use the 1 cup for making bread.)

Bread:

(Makes 3 Loaves)
In a large bowl
1 cup starter
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup oil
1 1/2 cups warm water

Mix with a spoon and add:

6 cups bread flour

Turn out on a lightly floured board and knead a little. Oil bowl and put dough in and turn over so oily side is up. cover and let stand on counter overnight (10 hours).

Next Morning:

Punch dough down and knead a little. Divide into 3 parts and knead each on a floured surface 8-10 times. Put into greased pans, cover, and let rise 4-6 hours until rounded loaves appear. (Weather will determine time - dough rises slowly)

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-32 minutes. Remove, brush tops with melted butter. Cool on rack.

My starter I started rose much higher than my regular dough does.

Usually it doesn't even reach the top of the inside of this bowl.

The loaves also rose faster in the pans.

I think this was before they got slathered with butter.

Mmmmm....I hope you enjoy. If anyone has questions I'll answer them in the comments so everyone can see.

Menu Plan Monday — February 8

It's a busy week at our house! And of course I chose tonight to get rid of our first builder beige. Exciting!

Monday — French Toast using my homemade sourdough bread. I started starter to see if it would work. I made bread from it. It tasted almost identical to what I already have. When I say almost, I was really trying to find something different.

Tuesday — Roast in the crock pot. We have small group at our house and are having one of the couples over for dinner beforehand. Then I need to have some snacks for afterwards. I need to work on the snacks.

Wednesday — Leftover buffet or cleanout the fridge and pantry.

Thursday — 5-Minute Southwest Layered Salad, because I have the ingredients and I didn't make it last week. Well, I don't have the homemade salsa anymore, because we ate all of it. Shucks, I'll have to make more...

Friday — Baked Spaghetti, because I also never got to it last week. I was bad. We just cleaned out our fridge instead.

Saturday — I don't know yet, maybe something special for an early Valentine's Day.

Sunday — Completely dependent on Saturday, because if we eat out on Saturday, we won't eat out on Sunday.

My kids love Velveeta cheese dip and little smokies wrapped in bacon and baked with brown sugar. Since we were at church and didn't do anything for the Super Bowl, I'll probably do that one of those two days for Valentine's Day for them. We don't eat junky like that except for special occasions.

I also promised them a Cookie Monster. Recipe to come later this week. You will not want to miss it!

This post is linked to Menu Plan Monday hosted by The Organizing Junkie.

Puppy Chow

Definitely one of our favorite snacks!

9 cups Chex Cereal (I use Rice Chex, and you can use the store brand)
1 cup milk chocolate chips (because they are so much better than semi-sweet)
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar (because for all those wonderful people out there who are completely eliminating sugar, we are not...you can use 1 1/2 cups)

If you want your chocolate chips, peanut butter, and butter to melt just perfectly in the microwave, do this:

After one minute in the microwave this is what it looks like:

Here I have stirred it just a smidge to get everything mixed together some and I've added in the teaspoon of vanilla:

Here it is all perfectly stirred together:

I pour it over my 9 cups of Chex cereal that I've previously placed in a large plastic bowl.

I toss it until all those little pieces are coated very well. It's a mission.

I hope I took the picture before I was done tossing and got those few on top coated better. They're bothering me.

I put all those covered Chex into the largest zip-top baggie I can find (which is currently only the zipper 2 1/2 gallon; I used to be able to find the 2 gallon regular ziploc) that already has all my powdered sugar in it:

Toss the dickens out of it. The zipper tops will sometimes let a puff of powdered sugar out. Regular ziploc wouldn't, but one gallon size isn't big enough unless you use two. Experience speaking.

Spread it out on wax paper or parchment paper.

Eat immediately. Store leftovers in a new, clean, smaller ziploc in the refrigerator. I like it better cold. Unfortunately, I have vultures in my house now and there is rarely any left after the first hour.

Hair Spray Isn't Just For Hair

We're working on a transparency map project at our house right now. We did one a few years ago, we took a break from it, and now we're starting a new one for a new time period — the Medieval time period just after the fall of the Roman Empire. Lots of fun gore for the boys.

Another day I'll share the map project in detail, but today I want to talk about hair spray.

I've had this bottle of hair spray since 2005.

It's moved across the state lines from Illinois to Virginia in 2006 and then from Virginia to Michigan in 2008. Even though I don't use it on my hair anymore (unless I'm having a horrible, no-good, very bad day and need to tuck in an extremely stubborn grey piece), I've kept this trusty bottle.

It's great for killing bugs when you can't stand to step on them.

You know, because they're big and they crunch.

That's also assuming you have time to get your bottle before they run away.

Vacuum cleaner hose attachments also work great too. Especially in hard-to-reach areas.

It also helps to have growing boys who don't mind the crunch.

So back to the purpose of this post. Yesterday I was printing out base map after base map after base map after...well, you get the picture. And along the way I needed to print a few transparency maps. We could just put the transparency over the original map, but because I like to do things just so, I wanted to try.

Of course the transparencies I have are not the ones you can run through your printer where the ink will dry. I found that out as I was printing off four copies of one of the maps. See that little smudge on the bottom when I realized it.

I thought maybe in time the ink would dry, but after about an hour it was just as wet as it was when I printed it.

Smart chick that I am, I thought of my hair spray. I don't really know why, I just did. I'm kind of silly that way.

I sprayed on one layer, but it was too thin. I realized I needed to do it like I'd use spray paint...cover the surface completely and thoroughly.

Worked like a charm.

Burlap Wreath

I found this burlap wreath tutorial via The Nester.

I started it with some burlap that I had, but I didn't have enough.

So Hubby had to stop and get some when he was out running an errand. Joanne's has multiple burlap colors, so he called me asking which color to get. I just had him get extra, that way if it didn't match I could start over and have enough.

It didn't match so I started over.

I don't know how Jennifer got by with only 5 strips. I used 7 strips (or maybe more, I forget now) that were 4" wide. They were the width of the burlap, which I think was a little more than 36". Maybe if I washed the burlap first, but I've never washed burlap (can you dry it?). It would probably make it not lose all those pokey, needle-y threads (or whatever you would call them) while you're working with it.

Still cute.

I have some burlap left. I think I'll try washing it now.

This post is linked to Show and Tell Friday hosted by Cindy at My Romantic Home.

WFMW — Scheduling Deep Cleaning and Organization

I seem to be getting hung up in my house, not being able to get any one room cleaned and organized properly for going on to another. Same with an organization project or any project in general.

One of the best things about being a military family was moving around. Not necessarily leaving friends behind, but the actual moving process. It made you go through your things. You actually had to physically touch everything you owned every time you moved.

As long as you weren't someone who left boxes unopened from one move to the next, which we typically were not.

Now that we don't plan on moving again, I know that it's important to go through our things regularly. I always did to some degree about once a year because we would have a yard sale, I would really try to weed things out before we would move, and when I would open boxes from a move I would wonder why we ever decided it was okay to move some things.

And I was always amazed at the amount of dust and dirt that could accumulate behind a piece of stationary furniture.

I think having a plan to deep clean every room in my house throughout the year would satisfy several issues.

• By spreading it out over the year it doesn't seem like such an unmanageable task.
• I can weed out all the things that we no longer use or need.
• I can deep clean each room at least once each year.
• I can see if organizing the room differently would be of some benefit.

I've come up with a rough plan for one year, from February to next January. It includes the room and then in some cases additional organization. A couple of times there are not actually rooms but organization projects. Those fall around the Christmas holiday, are Christmas related, and I think it would be difficult for many of us to find time to add deep cleaning in to our holiday time schedules. It's going to be hard enough for me to do the organization projects I planned!

• February — Family Room/Den/Rec Room/FROG/Bonus Room/Basement...You might have one or more of these. I know I do. You could save one for a month when you know you won't have much, or just do one this year and one next February. For my basement, I have Christmas decorations, but I'm not touching them until later in the year since they are in one area. I'll just do everything else.
• March — Children's or Guest Closets and Dresser Drawers (Clothing)
• April — This one is a bit of a hodge-podge...Coat Closet/Mud Room/Launching Area, Laundry Room or Area, Bathrooms to include Linen Closets and/or Bathroom Cabinet Storage.
• May — Master Closet
• June — Garage
• July — Master Bedroom
• August — Living Room, Dining Room, or School Room
• September — Kitchen, to include Pantry, Cabinets, and Drawers
• October — Children's or Guest Rooms (good time to go through toys before the holidays)
• November — Christmas Decorations...this one isn't a room, but when I get out my decorations I'm going to seriously go through them and get rid of things I don't use anymore that just take up space in my basement.
• December — Another non-room...get my Christmas card list organized once and for all, streamline my address book at the same time, and figure out what to do with not only the new Christmas cards and pictures I receive but also all the old ones I've hung on to.
• January 2011 — Office/Loft Area/Scrapbooking or Craft Area

I have found that I tend to excel at things when I have accountability and not so much when I don't, so I thought others might be interested in doing this along with me. If you are, leave me a comment so I can get an idea how many people might be. I could put up a Mr. Linky at the end of every month and everyone could put up before and after pictures if they have them. If I get enough interest to do it and put up the Mr. Linky I'll even try to have a little random giveaway with it every month.

Since I know this list is specific and everyone might not have every exact room or feel like doing the one(s) listed that month, there could be some switching around and it wouldn't bother me. I just do better with lists and goals and specifics.

And I don't even want to think about working in my garage in Michigan until at least June!

This post is linked to Works For Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family.