Tidbit Thursday - Butter Up!

I'm pretty sure baseball season has started.  I think I heard that on the radio the other day.  Our house avidly follows hockey and not so much, well, anything else at all, really. 

Unless you count cooking shows.  But I doubt you do.

I am, however, an avid follower of butter.  Real butter.  I know, I know, I will surely get a thousand e-mails now, extolling the virtues of margarine and the evils of butter.  But here's the deal:  the way I see it, there is nothing in butter that wasn't there several thousand years ago, when butter was first invented.  It hasn't changed.  What changed is that people are sitting instead of moving.

At any rate, I digress.

A significant portion of the time, butter, when purchased in full pound blocks, comes with a label that looks something like this:

These markings are a tremendous help in measuring this golden gem of goodness.  I don't know about you, though, but I don't keep my butter in it's wrapper.  My shortening and lard, sure, but not my butter.  I have a pretty butter dish for that.

My sister-in-law gave it to me for Christmas one year.  It matches my canister set.  And my frog scrubbie holder.  I love it when everything matches.

So here's what I do.  If you have a butter keeper, you may already know that it's easiest to remove the butter from its package when it is at least fridge cold, if not frozen.  That way, absolutely none of the butter will get stuck on the wrapper and you won't be kept up at night, fretting about the teaspoon of butter you wasted.

Or maybe that's just me.

I mark the butter as soon as it gets popped into the dish.  If I still have the wrapper, it is very easy to use as a guide.  If I have gotten a little overzealous with my recycling program, I eyeball it.

Not literally, that would be gross.

If you are not quite comfortable with that, go ahead and use a ruler.  Here, I've marked off every quarter cup.  If a recipe calls for a third of a cup, just triple the recipe and don't worry about it.

Message me if you don't think that's feasible.  I am available for cooking donations with no more than 20 minutes notice. 1. 2.

Tidbit Thursday - Butter Up!

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Tidbit Thursday - Mastering Your Mornings

I don't get morning people.  Never have, never will.

My daughter is a morning person.  I hope this will have no bearing on the future of our mother-daughter relationship.

I am willing to do almost anything that will cut down the amount of time I have to be up in the morning before my children turn into hungry, ravenous wolves.

Leaving out the milk and cereal is problematic.  Sure, you can sweep up cereal.  But have you tried cleaning up sour spilled milk?  Or the upchuck that is likely to result from the milk having sat out all night in the middle of the summer?

I knew a guy who used to go so far as to pour milk on his boxed cereal, cover it in plastic wrap and keep it in the fridge until morning, but that would test the limits of even Chex, I would think.

My grandparents used to entirely set the table the evening before to cut down on morning activities.

The authorities frown on allowing 5 year olds to use the stove unsupervised, so bacon and eggs are clearly out.

Ditto with sharp knives, even grapefruit knives.

They leave me no choice but to roll my sorry self out of bed in the morning and feed the little rascals.  At least the kitchen is also where the coffee maker is stored.

I am not a huge fan of toaster pastries, pre-fab pancakes, or frozen waffles.  Our budget is really, really not a fan.  Solution?  Make them myself. 

It takes almost no extra effort and very little extra time to make extra French toast, waffles, or pancakes, while you are already at it. 

You can even use your handy dandy panini press!

The one on the right may or may not be the victim of a child-based distraction.  Let them cool on a plate in as close to a single layer as is practical.

To keep them from sticking to one another inside the zip top bag, put them in one layer at a time and freeze them, before adding another layer.  This will actually give the other pieces more time to fully cool and even dry out a bit, since they may have steamed from being at the bottom of the pile.

I suppose you could use wax or parchment paper between the layers, but that's a whole other step.

Then you'll need one or both of these. 

In your toaster oven, preheat to 400 F and cook for 5-10 minutes, depending on how many you cram in there.
*Sidenote:  I keep my toaster oven tray covered in foil.  Cuts down on clean up.  That and I have never quite figured out how to adequately clean that little thing.

If you have a frozen pastry setting on your toaster, fantastic!  If you have a toaster that is not equipped with such advanced technology, set it to a higher than normal toast.

This trick works with pancakes as well.  For re-heating those, I would recommend sticking with a toaster oven, as the pancakes tend to flop over and get stuck in the regular toaster.

And that's it.  My ultra-secret technique for making mornings a little easier.

What kinds of tips and tricks do you use? 1. 2.

Tidbit Thursday - Mastering Your Mornings

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Tidbit Thursday

In the blogger world, there is now something called Wordless Wednesday.  The idea is that bloggers can post an intriguing photo on their site and not have to say, er, type, a word.  Fun for the readers and a bit of a break for the blogger.  Since I have not, as of yet, run out of things to say, I have no participated.

Call me a spoil sport.

At any rate, I am hereby declaring the fourth weekday to be Tidbit Thursdays on this site.  And if it catches on elsewhere, I won't even ask for a royalty.

Maybe just a shout out.  That might be nice.

So, without further ado, here is today's life altering tidbit

Big hairy deal, you say.  It's a pan of overcrowded chocolate chip cookie dough balls.  Be still my heart.

No so fast there, compadre.

What you actually see here is the ticket to selling your home faster, the key to filling up the bottomless pit that is your teenager, and the magic button to making last minute hostessing look like a breeze.

These little suckers are frozen.

You heard me, frozen.  Ready to be baked and served warm, ready to fill your home with the aroma of homey goodness, ready to be devoured.

Scoop as many as you can fit onto a cookie tray and lay it in the freezer.  If you don't have a deep freeze, a plate will do.  I would recommend having parchment, wax paper, or foil on the tray to make removal easier.

Once they are good and frozen, pop'em in a zip top bag and have them on hand for whatever baking/food/home selling emergency may come into your life.  Oh, and keep them in the freezer.  And do not succumb to the evil practise of eating raw cookie dough.

Bake them from frozen, just expect it to take a few minutes longer than it would if they were fresh.

Disclaimer:  I have shamelessly stolen this idea from my old friend, Anita.  Not that she is old, but rather that we have known each other now for 12 yeara.  She and most of her family stood in our wedding.  She now lives in another country, although we now live within local calling distance of her parents.

I don't know why you'd need to know that last part.  In fact, you probably don't.

Anyhoo, she uses this idea to feed her four spawn when they return from school and as a way to get them to all it down together in one space long enough to actually tell her about their day.  Truly an ingenious plan. 1. 2.

Tidbit Thursday

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