Diner Pancakes

Last week, my husband and I went out to breakfast.  He enjoyed the pancakes and we talked about what makes for good diner pancakes.  I resolved this weekend to try a new recipe and get closer...

I found a recipe online that modified the recipe I've been using for a few years and then I modified how I mixed them up and made them.  Here's the recipe with my directions.

Diner Buttermilk Pancakes

3 Tbsp melted butter (salted or unsalted--your preference)
2 cups buttermilk
2 eggs

Place all wet ingredients in the bottom of your blender.

Then, add:
1/4 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt (which is equivalent to 1/4 tsp. table salt)

Blend, pausing to scrape down the sides until all is a smooth mix.

Let batter sit for 8-10 minutes so that it will start to thicken a little.  At the same time, let a cast iron skillet start heating over medium heat on your stove.  When you're ready, use cooking spray each time you cook a new set of pancakes to give them the diner "look".  If you don't care,  they will cook on a cast iron skillet without needing cooking spray every time.  Once you've poured the batter on the skillet, wait until you see bubbles throughout the pancake on top and then flip.  If there aren't any bubbles in the middle (and are only around the edges), wait--otherwise, you'll end up with a mess.  Once you've flipped them, give the pancake another minute or two and then check :)

Voila!  Yummy pancakes.

My family was very happy with this recipe and I was, too!

Fun Modern Art Idea Book

Ideas.  I love them!  I love sitting down and taking ten minutes to write out plans to some project I'd like to do or an event I'd like to plan.  Writing down my idea energizes me.  But over the years, I've come to realize that many of my ideas get to remain just ideas--at least for a while.  There simply isn't enough hours in the day to pursue all of my ideas.  Even so, I love to brainstorm and my mind is often spinning.

As a result, I smiled like I was opening up a Christmas present when I received a new book in the mail recently.  The book was Your Idea Starts Here by Carolyn Eckert.

This book contains 77 ideas about what to do with ideas in the beginning middle or ending stages. There are ideas like recycle, share, wait, critique... and others that I won't give away in this review.   You can view a preview of this book on Amazon or on Storey.com.  For each idea about ideas, there is a graphic and description of that idea.  Many interesting stories are included about little inventions that have changed our lives.   I could flip open anywhere in this book and smile.  I do not generally like modern art, yet most of the graphics in this book are just that--modern art.  And I love them!  I genuinely enjoy looking at this book--at the lines, composition, shadows, color, and subjects of the graphics.  My husband also enjoyed looking at all the pictures.  One thing which occurred as I read this book was that I laughed out loud often or at the very least smiled regularly in my reading.

As a book, it is well written, interesting, engaging, and easy to read.  All of the formatting makes the text easy to read and understand.  The graphics add to each idea about ideas and don't take away from the text.

You can see a preview of this book on Storey's website HERE.  This is a book is one you would give someone looking for ideas.  I greatly enjoyed this book!

It would be a perfect college graduation gift!

Please note that I received a complimentary copy of this book from Storey books.

Seafood Salad

My husband asked me recently what I enjoy doing.  My reply to his question was that I am finally enjoying cooking again.

For a long time, I didn't enjoy cooking.  I always felt like I was inside a pressure cooker, ready to explode and working as fast as I could to get dinner on the table.  But, I have begun to finally make myself get started earlier when it comes to cooking dinner.  I've also realized that I needed to look for the enjoyment in my cooking.  As I began looking for it, I discovered that my enjoyment in cooking comes when I try to think about what I'm cooking and be creative.

Today I was really hungry after mowing the lawn, cutting down a rose bush, weeding two flower beds in the front yard, and trimming the grass along the fence.  (I did a little at a time while taking multiple breaks to teach my kids and help them get their work done.)  Nothing in the refrigerator appealed to me when I was finally done with the yard work, so I decided to make some pasta seafood salad. Here's the recipe I came up with: (my youngest son and my pickiest eater both gave it a thumbs up)

Seafood Salad

4 oz. imitation crab, chopped
12-15 shrimp (1/2 pound) cooked, peeled and chopped in large chunks
3 cups cooked pasta (small noodles like shells, elbows, or small rotini)
pinch of dill (to taste)
1 tsp deli mustard (or 2 if you like more mustard)
Juice of one lemon, fresh is preferable
1 tsp worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup light mayonnaise
1/2 medium size red bel pepper, diced
1/4 cup minced red onion

Mix everything in a bowl and chill.  Add more salt and pepper to taste.  You can also add 1/4 cup diced cucumber and/or 1/4 cup diced carrot to taste.


This is going to be lower fat than most versions because I added more lemon juice and cut the mayo.  It doesn't taste heavy.

Awesome Cookies

My family's favorite cookies are the ones made with recipes from my mom, grandmother, and great-grandmother.  But, that only leaves me with a small handful of recipes and my family loves variety.  I have looked over the years for more cookie cookbooks because I enjoy making cookies.  A few years ago, I was blessed to find King Arthur's Cookie Companion.  In it, I found several good recipes that I could add, which my family enjoyed.  Even so, I am always up for trying new recipes in the hope of finding some treasures... and this week I was ecstatic to find a new cookie book that has already added two new recipes to my family's cookie list.

The cookbook is a small one that won't take up a lot of room on anyone's shelf.

Cookie Classics Made Easy by Brandi Scalise surprised me.  A few of the old standards are there along with some new ones.  We made the Apples Rolled in Autumn and Chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter.  Both were very flavorful cookies and my family loved them!

The first cookies, Apples Rolled in Autumn, had a strong spice flavor to them and were nice when baked a little crispy.  The crispiness helped them last more than one day because normally apples make cookies get mushy the day after.  The second cookies were an even better surprise.  My family happens to love chocolate cookies.  I don't usually make larger cookies because they don't cook through very well, but these did!  They had a sort of brownie like texture in a cookie.  My 10 year old daughter made them (with just a little help from me).  We used a size 40 ice cream scoop to scoop out the dough onto the cookie sheets.

Some of my determiners of whether or not a cookbook is a good one is whether the ingredients work together, whether the directions are clear and work, whether the timing is correct or close to accurate (in my experience), and whether the formatting of the book makes the recipe easy to follow.  

Here's how this cookbook did.

1.  Ingredients:  The combination of ingredients was great for both recipes we made.  A few of the recipes did use something called Bischoff butter, which is cookie butter.  Cookie butter is super-duper high in calories so I think I'll hold off on making these recipes unless it's a very special occasion.

2.  Directions:  I did use parchment lined cookie sheets when I baked them and the oven temperatures that the cookbook calls for.  But, I did make one change.  I have been a one bowl cookie baker for years like this author (she explains this in her introduction).  My mom and I feel very strongly, though, that you must cream the butter and sugars together first thoroughly to make sure that there are no lumps of sugar in the batter.  This author recommends using room temperature butter instead and mixing a bunch of ingredients together at the beginning.  Other than this difference (creaming the butter and sugars first), I did find that the directions were clear and easy to follow.  My ten year old daughter and twelve year old daughter (who made the other recipe) successfully made the cookies (using my added direction of creaming the butter and sugar first).

3.  Timing:  This isn't an essential determiner for me, but the closer the better.  The first recipe was off by quite a lot.  The apple cookie recommended baking time was 20 to 25 minutes.  I baked them for only 16 minutes.  The second cookie, Reese's, was closer.  The recommended baking time was 15 minutes and I found that 13-14 minutes was better.  That was a lot closer.  Even so, I'd recommend starting to check the cookies from this book 3-4 minutes before the shorter baking times and 5 minutes before the longer baking times.

4.  Formatting and Graphics:  The photography is done well and makes the cookies appealing.  The formatting is mostly easy to follow.  I wish she had separated her second step into two or three steps. Spacing would have made it easier to follow each recipe and keep track of where I am in adding ingredients.

Given all of these comments, it's probably surprising that I'm ecstatic that I have new recipes from this cookbook to add to our family's cookie repertoire.  In all four of the areas above, this cookbook isn't perfect.  But, the fact that the first two recipes we made tasted wonderful trumps all of that in my mind.  Normally, I won't even consider reviewing a cookbook until I've made several recipes, but I wanted to review this cookbook after we made only two batches of cookies because the cookies were so good!

If you don't have a lot of space and are looking for a good cookie cookbook, check this one out!

Please note that I received a complimentary copy of this book for review from Storey Books.

Toilet Paper

My mom was over this week and said something to me that I thought a little unusual.  She asked me what toilet paper I buy.  She really liked it.  I explained that I buy either quilted northern or charmin when it's on sale at Target in large packages.  I worked it out that I pay about $3 for 6 rolls (sometimes a little less).  I know that the rolls are advertised as "double rolls", but that's been an advertising gimic for so long that I haven't been sure whether or not to believe it.

Well, according to my mom, it's true.  She explained that the same thickness of 7 thin squares is only 3 squares of the thicker paper.  Hmm...

I just thought I'd share this in case you'd ever wondered if the advertising was true the way I had!