Upcycled Caddy

Easy homework caddy that matches the colors of our kitchen and doesn't take up so much space on our little round table under the kitchen window.

Here's how to make this 10 minute gem:


Take three clean soup cans, lids removed, and a washed milk jug. Cut the milk jug in half, saving the bottom portion. I cut mine on an angle. I covered all three with fabric scraps which I hot glued in place. You can see from the picture that two cans will fit all the way down into the milk jug bottom, and the other will sit a bit higher up. I liked this for accessibility and it also meant I didn't have to glue them in --they are perfectly snug as is.

Not Your Average Potato Bread

I made some mashed potatoes with broccoli & cheddar cheese in them this past week, thinking I could sneak some vegetables past/into my extremely picky toddler. Nope. She spit them right out. So, my husband and I enjoyed them but were stuck with a bunch of leftovers. Hence this bread creation I am calling:

Broccoli & Cheddar Potato Bread

aka HUGE Mound of Cheesy Broccoli Bready Goodness

1 c. milk

2 T. unsalted butter

1 T. sugar

2 tsp. salt (use only 1 tsp. if your potatoes are seasoned like mine were)

2 1/2 tsp. active dry yeast

1/4 c. warm water

2 1/2 c. warm mashed potatoes (I used my broccoli & cheese mashers, heated in the microwave about 1 minute.)

5- 6 1/2 c. flour

1 c. chopped & cooked broccoli florets

1 1/4 c. shredded sharp cheddar

1 T. unsalted butter, melted

Combine the milk, 2 T. butter, sugar and salt in a small saucepan and heat until butter is just melted. Pour into a large mixing bowl. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water; add to milk mixture. Add mashed potatoes and 1 cup of flour. Mix until combined. Now slowly add the remaining flour - enough to form a soft dough. Mix in broccoli & 1 cup of the cheese. Dump out onto a floured surface, and knead for about 5 minutes, adding more flour as necessary, until you have a soft, pliable round of dough. Place in a large, oiled, bowl. Cover with a dish towel and left rise in a warm place for 1 hour or until doubled.

Punch down dough and knead several times. Form into a round loaf and place into a greased deep-pie pan or casserole dish.

Cover again and let rise for about 20 minutes or until doubled again. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup cheese. Bake for 20 minutes more. Remove from pan to cool.

This might be one of my favorite breads now.

Toast slices of it the next day and smear with cream cheese...

Use it for an amazing grilled cheese sandwich...

Watch in delight as your toddler devours it...

Haha! Mama was sneaky after all...

Chicken Vegetable Soup

Making a BIG pot of homemade soup is one of my favorite past times. Fact is, I don't think I know how to make a small batch of soup anymore. After years of making from scratch soup at the several restaurants I have worked at, it's just easier for me to do things in a BIG way. It's really nice to have leftovers to freeze for later, have for weekday lunches or use as a sauce/base in other recipes. Not to mention it's extremely economical to make delicious soup yourself and get a huge pot for your money, rather than a small can at the store.


I froze what soup we had leftover and plan on using it next week as the base for a Tex-Mex Chicken "Pot-Pie". So look for that next week!

So yesterday was my take on Chicken Vegetable Soup - but it wasn't the boring same old thing. Let's call it...

Red Pepper Chicken Soup with Lemon

2 T. light olive oil

1/2 large white onion, large diced

4 carrots, peeled & large diced

4 stalks celery, large diced

2 sweet red peppers, diced

3 c. cooked, shredded chicken ( I use cooked, shredded chicken breast I had stashed in my freezer. I didn't even thaw it!)

6-8 c. chicken stock, depending on how chunky you like your soup (I used 6)

1/4 c. chopped fresh parsley

zest & juice from 1 lemon

black pepper & salt to taste

Heat the oil in a large stockpot over medium heat and add all of your beautifully diced vegetables.Add a small amount off salt, then cover and let the vegetables sweat until they are tender, about 10-15 minutes. Sweating the veggies, rather than sauteing, makes for a more flavorful broth I find. Once the vegetables are tender, add the stock and chicken. I recommend letting the soup then simmer, covering for several hours for the best flavor, but you can eat it as soon as everything is bubbly. When ready to eat, add the parsley, lemon zest and lemon juice.

8 servings

152 calories

5.9 g fat

6.8g total carbs

1.9g fiber

3.9g sugar

17.6g protein

approx. using caloriecount

Party Idea: Football Cake

Super bowl is coming! How about making a football cake?

Here's how: Just bake cake of your choice in a round glass bowl. When cool, carefully remove and cut in half. Sandwich the two bottoms of the cake together to form the football shape. Decorate and display as desired!

Mini Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Buttercream

A long time ago someone passed onto me this two ingredient pumpkin bread. However, bread takes nearly an hour bake into a loaf. These cute lil guys came out of wanting something bite-sized and decadent - and fast!

 Two Ingredient Pumpkin Muffins

1 box spice cake mix
1 can pumpkin

Mix together and fill greased mini muffin tins. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes. Dump from pans (that's right, they should dump right out) and stand on rack to cool.

Maple Buttercream

1 stick butter (softened in the microwave 10 seconds)

3 cups powdered sugar
1-3 Tbs milk
1tsp maple extract

Beat butter and sugar together. Add extract. Keep beating,  adding milk by tablespoons until desired consistency. (I like mine pretty thick) I used a star-tip to decorate mine, though you could just as easily swirl yours on with an icing spreader.

No-Butter Butter Chicken aka Murgh Makhani

Thank you to my loving sister, who asked me to co-author this blog, you got me hooked on Pinterest ! So in honor of my new-found addiction I will share one of the recipes I was inspired to "repin" and also made for dinner tonight. No-Butter Butter Chicken! A lightened up version of a very popular Indian dish. I doubled the recipe and I'm so glad I did because it turned out SO good! The original inspiration is from Bal Arneson on The Cooking Channel's site.

My slight changes:

* no tomato paste used

* marinated chicken in spices

* no brown sugar in my recipe

* added eggplant

So first off the recipe called for tomato paste, of which I had none, so I did this:

Slow Roasted Tomatoes
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
several cloves of garlic, UNpeeled
black pepper
thyme
olive oil

Spread tomatoes out on a lined sheet pan and throw on the garlic. Sprinkle with pepper & thyme. Drizzle generously with some olive oil. Bake at 225 for 3 hours. The tomatoes will shrivel up and just be divinely tart and sweet. If not using right away, store in the fridge with a little oil over them. Squeeze the garlic out of their skins and add to the tomatoes and oil, or use in any recipe as a sub for fresh garlic.

Before:

After:

Now on with the show!

No-Butter Butter Chicken

4 T. light olive oil

1/2 large white onion, chopped

1/4 c. slow roasted tomatoes

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 T. ginger

1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin

1 T. garam marsala

1/2 tsp. red chili flakes

1 tsp. tumeric

1 tsp. salt

1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut in 1-inch pieces

1 small eggplant, cut in 1-inch pieces

1 T. ketchup

1/4 c. plain yogurt (not lowfat)

1/2 c. water

fresh chopped cilantro & parsley for garnish

Combine the chicken and eggplant in a large bowl. Add 2 T. olive oil, the garlic, ginger, cumin, garam marsala, chili flakes, tumeric and salt. Cover and marinate for at least 1 hour in the fridge. Heat remaining 2 T. oil in a large skillet; add the onion and tomatoes. Saute, stirring often until onions begin to soften and tomatoes start to break down. Add chicken mixture to the pan. Cook over high heat, stirring often for about 5 minutes or until chicken is looking mostly cooked. Add ketchup, yogurt and water to the pan and stir. Reduce heat and simmer another 8-10 minutes or until chicken is cooked through and the sauce is thickened.

Serve with Baked Brown Rice, fresh cilantro & parsley, and extra roasted tomatoes.

**Warning! This is a SPICY dish! On the 1 to 5 hotness scale, my husband rated it a 3. If you want things milder, omit the red chili flakes.**

I want more...right now...yes, it was THAT good!

Future Refashion: Long Skirts

OK, OK. I'll admit it. I just raided my closet and took out all those long skirts I wore when I was teaching high school English 10 years ago. That's likely the last time I wore them (or when their stretchy waistbands were the only comfy thing when I was pregnant).

But look at the material! You see why I didn't chuck them in the Goodwill bag already? After the ruffle skirt success, I feel like I can refashion all of these into something. So stay tuned for four new skirts soon!

Refashioned Ruffle Skirt

I found this skirt today at the senior center resale shop. It is made of a soft jersy, stretchy sort of material. But it was waaaay too long.  I have seen several people making ruffle skirts and thought this would be a great time to try my own.













I cut the bottom off (and didn't hem it -the beauty of cotton stretch!). I the cut the remainder into curved pieces and sewed them in overlapping layers to create this pretty piece.

Three Pictures from One

A couple years back my husband and I fell in love with a large rectangular landscape print. The colors were right and we thought it would be perfect on a particularly large wall in our home. But when we got it home it was dwarfed by white space. Solution? We cut it into thirds, matted and framed them, then spaced them along two walls.

Decorated Glass Bottle

Sometimes, but not often, glass makes me happy. It can be old wavy glass in windows (we have some on either side of our fireplace!), added bumps, color or the shape of a certain bottle. This one was too cool to throw into the recycling bin (hard to see but it's squared off on the sides). So with a little decoupage and an old card, voila!

Card Placemat

 I have long been a lover of cards. I save them and make new cards. I use them for making paper ornaments  and decorating other things in interesting ways.

This recycled card placemat sits under candles, jars, whatever tis the season for the round table that sits in our front room (upcycled piece from my dad's college dorm room!)

Future refashion: Striped Skirt

I found this fun piece at (you guessed it) the Senior Center. I'm thinking of making it into a bubble skirt. I'll be sure to post soon.

Resale Find: Sweater and scarf

 - soft (and I mean soft) beige sweater
 - stripey scarf 



Total cost: $2.75

Lion Costume

My oldest son wanted to be a lion this past Halloween. The mane was going to be the hardest part. Not only how to make it (mops? yarn?) but also how to keep whatever it ended up being on his head. Enter, the toilet seat cover. Yes, that's right. The toilet seat cover. Found in the bottom of the linen bin at Goodwill, in yellow (and washed thouroughly indeed).

Slight change: Black and White Skirt refashion

I found this skirt at my favorite resale shop here in town: the senior center. They have all sorts of old (and gently used) items for half the cost of the local Goodwill.  It was a size 24 - more material than I needed for what I intended would be a summer sleeveless A-line top.But I couldn't pass up this gorgeous pattern.




After cutting out the zipper (and many fittings and pin-sticks), I managed to sew it into a very nice summery top. Now, if only the snow outside would melt away and let me wear it!

Milky Way Bars

I found the 3 ingredient recipe for homemade 3 Musketeer Bars but didn't feel like hand-dipping those little blocks of soft chocolate goodness. But I still wanted the soft chocolate goodness. So I decided to use the recipe for the musketeer-like cream centers in the middle of a bar. I'm calling them Milky Way Bars.

Melt 3 Tbs butter and mix it with 1 c graham cracker crumbs. Press into bottom of 8x8 pan and bake until set, about 10 minutes at 375 degrees. Cool.

In microwaveable bowl, melt 2 c chocolate chips. Beat with electric mixer 1 minute until fluffy and cooler. Add 1 tub Cool Whip (I used the light variety) and beat for 30 seconds until combined and light. Press this mixture into a waxed paper-lined 8x8 pan and freeze for 20 minutes.



Place cooled (and now firm) square of chocolate filling on cooled crust. Top with 1/8 c caramel topping. 

In microwave, melt 1/2 c chocolate chips with 1 Tbs. shortening. Spread on top and keep in fridge until ready to cut and serve.

Slight change: Monster Cupcakes

I found this cool cake the other day. My son turned 7  and I wanted to make a smaller version of this for him. This is what I ended up with. With cake balls being all the rage, they made perfect monster eyes. (and my husband and sons both found pleasure in ripping eyeballs off).

Beginning Out

I have been cooking for my husband and children for eleven years now. I have likely made thousands of desserts and tried hundreds of recipes. But here's the catch, for every recipe I have used, it is likely that I have changed at least one (if not more) things. Added something not listed, or substituted what I actually have on hand instead of named ingredient. Slight changes.


I recently started doing the same thing with clothing. Things that have been in my closet for years, unworn because they are frumpy or too small. With slight changes, I have refashioned them into things I can wear and that make me happy.

This blog will share these things: recipes and art and clothes, all with slight changes from what I have seen, read or originally bought.