At Home My Way

 *This recipe isn't hard.  I just tell every little thing.) Recipes at the Top - Chit Chat at the bottom! Pepper Jelly (Surejell) (Printable View here) 14 various peppers, some sweet/some hot (50% hot peppers is good) 1 cup apple cider vinegar ½ teaspoon butter/margarine 1 box (regular-yellow box) Surejell (I only use that brand) 5 cups sugar, measured into a separate bowl Nitrile gloves for seeding/trimming the peppers. (Makes 6 pints of jam -I always use some 4 oz jars and 8 oz; washing up extras so I have enough just in case.  Any partial jar at the end can be refrigerated for a "test taster") Instructions Wash jars, lids and rings with soapy/hot water.   (New USDA guidelines say you don’t have to sterilize jars if you are processing for 10+ minutes.)   I use the dishwasher.   Once the dishwasher cycle is complete, I then start my recipe while the jars, etc. remain in the hot dishwasher until time to fill. ...

I wanted to share a couple of the food/book combinations that we used at my niece's baby shower.  I bought the baby a new bookshelf and we used books as the theme.  We all had a great time and the new mom welcomed a great assortment of children's books to add to her bookshelf.  My niece is super smart and I credit some of that to the fact that her mom started reading to her as an tiny infant.  I remember Jill perched in her mom's cross-legged lap, staring intently at the pages of the books my sister-in-law read to her.  I think before she could even hold her own bottle, she tried turning the pages of the books.  My sister-in-law set a great example for me.  My girls were born after Jill and I knew immediately I wanted to start off reading lots of books.  My niece, herself, suggested that instead of cards at the shower, we all give her children's books (since they are about the same price these days!) but we also decided to decorate ...

Seems like these days (in my area anyway), some of the greatest treats at showers and weddings are being forgotten.  What happened to the MINTS AND NUTS? I would say 100% of the recent weddings and showers I've been to lately don't serve mints, nuts, OR punch?  What's up with that?  I get the peanut allergies are causing a problem for mixed nuts, but what about the MINTS?  And bring back the PUNCH! When I got married (I know... way back in the dark ages), we didn't serve everyone a full meal.  We got married and at the reception, everyone enjoyed and looked forward to lusciously huge slices of delicious, beautifully decorated wedding cake as well as pastel butter mints, and frothy punch.  These days, these simple pleasures seem to be amiss at weddings and showers. So being the complete traditionalist that I am, when I hosted the baby shower for my niece last week I knew for sure that I was serving mints and punch.  My neph...

We hosted a baby shower at our house last weekend to welcome the birth of a new great-nephew.  I'll post later on about the wonderful theme we used (books) as well as all of the wonderful food that we served to match the book titles.  It was a blast! One of the things I served was BBQ meatballs.  When I saw the price of a bag of frozen meatballs, I knew I would be making them homemade.  What I didn't know was how easy and inexpensive they were to make!  I turned to a favorite blog ( Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ) for a meatball recipe that I could depend on to be delicious and easy.  The link to Lynn's recipe is HERE .  Lynn's recipe for the meatballs is perfect!  Most recipes I've seen for homemade meatballs use lots of ingredients and spices.  Lynn's recipe is very simple - ground beef, egg, and oats.  It can't get much easier than that!  Lynn uses bottled barbecue sauce on her BBQ meatballs.  Since I've made BBQ...

Yesterday as I was reading over some of my favorite blogs I ran across a recipe for WACKY CAKE! Now, how can you read a name like "Wacky Cake" and not be intrigued? One of the blogs I most like to read is Kim's Jabez Farm blog . I love to read the posts Kim writes about her farm and family. She lives in the Pacific Northwest (where I have never even visited), and is a homeschooling mama who has a wonderful menagerie of farm animals. I work in a law office all day, wishing I was home, and ONLY have one dog and some cats! Reading blogs is definitely a wonderful way to experience a different way of life and at times, it is a delightful reprieve from my sometimes dull existence! I had heard about Wacky Cakes. My mom tells me she used to make them all the time, but I don't remember. Chocolate cake is CHOCOLATE CAKE when your mom bakes it for you, right? A win-win, whatever kind of recipe! I believe the history is that this cake was popular during the depression when ingred...

This is the very best pasta salad EVER!  It is not made with mayo so it can stand the heat better than other dishes you might take to a BBQ or picnic.  I get the most requests for this recipe!  I posted the recipe for this dish here , but wanted to add these pictures because it is so beautiful.  Sweet & Sour Pasta Salad (a/k/a Peggy Jean-ish Pasta Salad) I mix up the dressing in a quart canning jar and heat to boiling in the microwave, but you can heat it on the stove if you like.   This recipe will be a great one to include all of those fresh garden vegetables coming in hot and heavy now... (tomatoes, red onion, cukes & bell pepper)  

Today was my older daughter's last day to work with the kids at the City Summer Camp.  She wanted to do something special for them so she decided to make these Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes. There's not really a recipe.  Just use regular cones, and fill not quite full with cake batter.  She sat them in my broiler pan or any cake pan.  Just sit the pan in the oven with the cones all standing up.  Rebecca just used a cake mix but you could use your own homemade cake recipe if you don't want to use a mix.  Bake as the box says for cupcakes -  maybe 5 minutes longer.  I think we baked these 25 minutes.  Cool completely, and then frost and sprinkle! That's it! They are probably best served the day you make them.  She said the cones got a little soft from sitting overnight with cake in them and just weren't quite as crunchy as they were last night.  I bet dyeing the cupcake batter like our tye dye cupcakes would ...

We like to smoke meat when we are having very many people over.  This way the meat cooks itself and you aren't slaving to the hot grill while trying to visit with your company.  Leftovers freeze beautifully and you can cook up a bunch of meat, wrap each hunk in foil, put in freezer bags and have some for later.  We use our smoker even on the coldest winter days (in Missouri Brrr!).  Most always, I whip up this easy rub and it seems to really season the meat nicely.  I use this rub on turkey, chicken, pork, and even briskit.  People will think you are a pro when they taste smoked pork loin with this wonderful rub.  Often, I make this homemade honey-mustard bbq sauce.  I found these two recipes in SOUTHERN LIVING magazine.  Enough said, huh?  I always find great recipes in that magazine.  I have modified the original recipe to suit my tastes.  The original recipe had cinnamon (of all things) in the rub, and I'm just not read...

My daughter was in a wedding over the weekend.  She was a bridesmaid!  They were going to get ready at the bride's house - doing hair, makeup, etc. and my daughter wanted to take some breakfast over to the wedding party.  She had to be at the reception hall decorating until 1AM and so I got up early to give her a good start on breakfast.  (I never sleep much anyway).  She was going to make muffins (two kinds) and make a fruit tray.  She had wanted a breakfast casserole but we didn't have quite the ingredients to make the breakfast casserole and she would have had to have gone to the store after decorating (at the all-night supercenter) and then made it (we had no bread), but that morning I discovered I did have enough ingredients to make a little pie crust and a simple quiche.  I made the muffins (chocolate chip and blueberry) using the Plain Muffin recipe from http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/ , the quiche from a favorite cookbook in my cabinet....