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Have you watched the Great British Baking Show? I absolutely love it! The people are so polite to each other and the feeling is so different from American cooking shows. Plus, they make many things I have never seen, or at least their versions are different from ours.
My DIL hadn't seen The Great British Baking Show. I was appalled and started her off on the first season on Netflix. It was great to watch again and one of the first things that they made was a spiral rolled cake. Whenever they make things, it makes me want to try them myself. This time I thought of the recipe I have for this party cake roll that I call a Swiss Cake Roll. I think that it would be perfect for Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, I thought of that idea after we made it and ate it. But, just add a few sprinkles or some piping and you can decorate this cake anyway you would like. It is delicious with a luscious cream cheese filling and chocolate frosting. We have a frosting recipe here that is perfect, just add some cocoa to it for the chocolate version.
Look at the spiral. Merry Berry would say that my filling is too soft so it hides the spiral, but let me tell you, Ms. Berry, it is delicious!
Ooey and gooey, the American way! I hope you give it a try and enjoy it!
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Last Sunday was Organize Your Home Day, which seems like an appropriate day for the month of January. When you put away all of the Christmas trappings and new gifts, it is the perfect time to organize your goals and your home at the same time. It takes me more than one day to do all of this. January should be Organize Your Home Month!
The 4 of us here at 3 Winks Design are all in different stages of life that require various different types of focus when it comes to organizing our homes. Alicia and her husband and 2 children live in a tiny little apartment in the expensive Bay Area in California. Lindsey and her PH have a brand new baby in a new home. Maddy lives at home with my husband and I in a small bedroom with millions of clothes and shoes. Plus she eats vegan, so she has different food items that need to be stored in our pantry. My husband and I are about to have a home with only 3 people in it. (My son and his family are soon re-locating to his new job!) We are going to be re-purposing some of our rooms in our house. Because of all of these needs, we have decided that, for today's Friday Faves, to share with you our current favorite tools and products that we are using to help us be more organized.
Helen's Faves
If you have been following along with me at all, you know that one of my goals for this year is to go through all of the books in the house and weed them out and organize them. I have always wanted to have a library area in my home. To help me with this, I have purchased 2 new bookcases. I love them! They are the Target Threshold brand and they look so nice. They come in a variety of colors, they do require assembly, and they are sturdy and budget friendly.
Another tool I use for organizing is something I made for my pantry. It is an inventory method that I use to help me know what I have in my food storage and to keep my pantry stocked with the basics. I used word strip charts that I purchased at the Target One Spot to make them. I don't see those available right now, but they are usually there at the beginning of the school year. Many people have asked me to share my method and I will on another post in the near future. In the meantime, here is what it looks like. It hangs on the peg board wall of my pantry.
Lindsey's Fave
Lindsey and Austin are furnishing their new house from scratch! They have of course spent a lot of time and effort in the nursery, getting it ready for Baby Emily. It was really nice when they received some Target Gift Cards as wedding gifts and were able to purchase this beautiful dresser with them for her. Their crib is also grey so this goes so nicely with it and goes so well with the Where the Wild Things Are theme. (I talked about that here, as well as her adorable letters of her name!) The 6 drawers give lots of space to hold all of a baby's many article of clothing and supplies. It is a dresser that will grow nicely with her over the next few years.
Alicia's Faves
When I tell you that Alicia lives in a really tiny place, I mean really tiny. They actually rent a 2 bedroom, 1 bath guest house that just had a kitchen added. (For awhile, they lived with a hot plate, microwave and mini fridge. Their only sink was in the bathroom!) It is super cute, though and is helping them to save money for the future. Alicia has worked really hard to make it as organized as possible and to use as much wall space as possible to make it work for their family.
Recently, Alicia shared how she made a hanging diaper stacker from a t-shirt. It has been extremely popular, which leads me to believe that many young mothers are needing some of her space saving tips.
There are some other clever ideas that Alicia has used as well.
She ordered these plastic containers from Dollar Tree. When you order them online, you get 24 of them! At first, she thought that was going to be way too many. But, surprisingly she started using them at a very quick rate! They are perfect for nuts, crackers, cereal and other dry goods. When her kitchen was added to her apartment, they put in a nice long pantry cupboard. Look how organized she is making it with her plastic containers! Another great buy from Dollar Tree are these cloth boxes for organizing shelves. Baby Sofia has a cabinet instead of drawers for her clothing. Alicia uses these fabric boxes to hold her clothes.
There are a couple of kinds of these boxes. There are these with grommet handles, and these collapsible cubes. When you order the grommet handled ones, they come in units of 24. When you order the cubes, they come in units of 4! These boxes also look great on shelves and bookcases to keep things tucked away neatly.
One last thing that Alicia loves are her library style bookends. They work very well to hold up a lot of books and although they are plain, they are very hard working! Alicia has ideas for decorating them if you would like to to that. But, in the meantime, they fulfill her need to keep her shelves neat.
Madalynn's Faves
Maddy also uses the fabric cubes for storage in her room. As I mentioned before, she has a ton of shoes. One of the best ways to keep them organized is by using a shoe rack. Here are some choices from Target.
Maddy also uses some Dollar Tree items to store some of the grains and things that she uses in her healthy diet. We love the decorative glass storage jars for storing chia seeds or other grains. (Do you know that chia seeds never seem to run out!)
Dollar Tree also has these nice canisters! When you order them online, you can get 4 to a unit! That is perfect for flour, sugar, brown sugar, marshmallows, rice or any other thing you may want to store!
So, those are our suggestions for storage and organization around the house! We hope you can use some of our ideas. Is there a product you love that you couldn't be organized without? Let us know down in the comments! We'd love to to try them out.
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Our baby girl (PH calls her Baby Puppy, which my mom doesn't like, but she doesn't understand how much he loves dogs, and therefore, it is a term of endearment) is three weeks old today. Every day I stare at her in wonder. She is changing so quickly and it makes my heart hurt a little because these precious days are going so fast. On the other hand I'm also grateful because breastfeeding has been a battle royale for us.
I have been experiencing the joys of having flat nipples and nipple shields don't work. At least they don't for me. they move around and come off so she ends up with a shield in her mouth and nothing else. I also tried a nipple everter, which works except it expresses milk that gets everywhere and that is annoying. However, on those rare occasions she has latched she tries once and then gives me a look that says, "why have you done this to me?" then she goes to sleep and doesn't eat. Most nursing sessions have ended with us both in tears. Her crying because she is still hungry, and me crying because I am in pain, and feel like a failure as a mother. I personally am not ready to give up the ghost and switch to formula. (I am not judging anyone in a similar situation who has switched, or if you just started with formula from the get go. Although I know the nutritive properties of breast milk are better for baby, I am from the fed is best camp. You have to do what is right for you and your baby, and it is none of my business what that decision is. Just as long as you are feeding your little one.) This flu and RSV season have been horrible. We just heard on the news last night about two more deaths from the flu, and three children who live in our same county have died from the flu. So I am determined to give her breast milk at least through this RSV season, while I keep us quarantined in the house. Because of this struggle I have become a pumping warrior. Every time she eats (from a bottle) I pump. I have been trying so hard to do everything I can to increase my milk production so I can start storing breast milk and get ahead of our little eater. I take my daily vitamin every morning along with two fenugreek capsules. I eat oatmeal with flax seed, and I put brewer's yeast in my morning shake and chug it. Of course, I am trying hard to stay hydrated. In all of this effort I have been able to get back into baking a little more with lactation cookies. I mean, I don't know if you've ever had brewer's yeast, but it tastes like vomit. I personally do not enjoy that flavor, and somehow, when I put it into these cookies the vomit taste goes away, and I have something that will increase my milk production, AND taste delicious! Of course, I had to come up with a version that included pumpkin.
These cookies are moist, soft, and pumpkiny. They don't taste a thing like brewer's yeast, they taste like fall, and happiness. If you're looking for a way to boost your lactation, these cookies are the perfect solution. Pop a couple every day and watch your milk production increase!
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Hello our beloved readers! It's Alicia here with another post from my month of German food. If you missed the previous post, basically every month I am picking a different country and making one authentic (as possible) meal a week. This helps me to spice up our meal plan, and have fun cooking again.
Last week I made bratwurst with himmel und erde (heaven and earth). And it was so good! This week I decided on a German classic, Schnitzel! On the side we made a Swabian Potato Salad. I got both of these recipes from The Daring Gourmet. Kimberly is German so I thought I couldn't get more authentic than that! Traditional German Schnitzel
Schnitzel is essentially a very thin, breaded porkchop. It's crispy on the outside and nice and tender on the inside. Usually you have to pound your boneless pork chops until they are about a 1/4 inch think, but my local grocery store sells pork chops that thin already. Perhaps I should have pounded my chops out to be more authentic or traditional. But I also have two very needy children at home so I thought this time saver was ok. I also bought them bone in because it was $3 cheaper per pound for the same thickness and cut of meat but with a bone. I was able to easily cut the bone off and have my boneless chops.
I really stupidly forgot to salt my pork before I breaded it. I'll blame mom brain for that one. But it wasn't a huge problem I just salted the whole thing after it was done frying. But next time I will surely salt my meat before putting the toppings on. These cook up nice and fast so they kind of perfect for those days when you don't have a lot of time. And they were so good! I can only imagine how good they would be if I didn't forget to salt them. I mean look at that beautiful golden color. Just lovely. We squeezed some lemon juice on ours and it was just perfect. Swabian Potato Salad
Swabia is a region in the southwest of Germany, and that is wherethis recipe comes from.
When I started this culinary adventure, I asked my friends and family what their favorite German dishes are. One answer I got was German Potato Salad. I am not sure if this is the same salad they were talking about, But if it wasn't, it should be. This is honestly one of the best potato salads I've ever tasted. Ok, it's the best. Seriously, the flavors were just so amazing! And confession, I didn't read this recipe until 20 minutes until before we were going to eat it. I had forgotten about a side dish until I started making the schnitzel. I had to call my husband and ask him to bring me key ingredients, like the potatoes. So, I didn't do my due diligence on this recipe either, and it was still one of the best things ever. I took some shortcuts by slicing up the potato before I boiled it, and obviously I didn't let it sit for the hours it needed. But when I took the leftovers out of the fridge the next day to have for lunch. WHOO! It was so good! So I'm excited for the next time we make this and I do it correctly. This salad deserves it. So be warned that this is not something you just whip together (though it will still be good), the potatoes do need to marinate for an hour or so. It's worth it though, believe me. The leftovers are divine.
Have I convinced you to go to The Daring Gourmet and try these recipes out? Please do. They are so good! And if you do please come tell us what you thought! Or have you decided to try this experiment in your own menu plans? How is it going for you?
Next week I am making Käsepätzle, so be sure to come back and check it out!
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Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)
Author
Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
April 2024
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