The one good thing about all of the rain we have had lately in NY is that the garden is going gangbusters! In a week the cabbage has tripled in size, the corn is almost knee high and the carrots and beets are making small meals for us and it’s only the end of June.
Here are some pics from around the garden.
Melons and Buttercup Squash are looking good Onions in their new bed are growing fantastic Purple Cabbages Beets
Cherries are ready for picking, the bosc pears and apples are growing well and the red raspberries and blackberries might be ready right after 4th of July. Can’t wait!
From now until Autumn we will be harvesting or planting or processing almost every day. How is your garden coming?
My Cross-Stitch Project
About 3 months ago I got back into one of my favorite hobbies. Cross-stitching. I have to say though, it is difficult to find patterns for my kind of cross-stitch style. I am not into cute puppies or tacky tea towels with grapes or pillow cases with birds on them. I prefer a more modern style.
I happened upon a book at my local library that had the most beautiful pattern for a poppy remembrance field in honor of Veterans Day in it.
Here is my progress so far.
I have almost half of the picture done. The other side will be more of the same with an even bigger tree than the left side. This ain’t your gramma’s kind of cross-stitch and I love it! I plan on trying my hand at my first Black-Stitch project sometime in the fall too. What kind of sewing project are you working on? -MM
The area behind my garage has always given me problems. Years ago when my grandparents had my home they used the space behind the garage for a sunken garden which had blueberry plants and many other things in it through the years. By the time I bought the house the area was a mess from years of neglect and there was nothing growing in it other than giant weeds.
About a year into us owning the house we rented a small backhoe and dug out the “pit of despair” which I liked to call it and filled it in with a couple of loads of top soil. However, even after filling it in, it would still give me problems.
It is a fairly large space which was wonderful for growing tomatoes and squash and such but sometimes the chore of weeding would get away from me and again it would look unkempt.
This year I vowed to make the space usable and easy to maintain. Here is what I started with.
Again, the space started the year out as weedy and any nutrients left from the original load of top soil were gone.
I first lined the entire area with cardboard boxes that I opened and placed flat on the ground (working at a grocery store has its advantages). Then I recycled the rails from an old split rail fence that I had laying around and used them for the frames of the garden beds.
I made sure when I was constructing it that I left room for a wide sawdust lined pathway. My dad is a woodworker so I have unlimited use of his sawdust bin.
So far at this point the new garden bed area has cost me absolutely nothing except hard work.
I filled the two long beds with soil and in the back I planted various herbs which included, parsley, sage, lemon balm and lavender. In the front I planted the whole thing with close to 100 onion plants. Done.
I am excited to see how the plants grow in the beds! As the season progresses I will post updates. -MM
Douglas is my 13 year old son. After reading the Happiness Project , by Gretchen Rubin, I got the idea to take my son on a monthly adventure/date night. The two of us would go out to dinner together and shop for a few necessities once a month.
The rules are we have to eat at a different place each time and it has to be a place we haven’t been before.
Our first adventure/date night was last Tuesday and we decided to go to an authentic Polish restaurant in nearby Geneseo but first we stopped by the Goodwill retail store on a hunt for a pair of summer sneakers for Doug.
As soon as we went into the store he headed right to the shoe section and found a pair of black Under Armour sneaks for $9.00. Score! We also picked out 3 shirts, 3 pairs of shorts, a pair of swim trunks for him and I also found a couple of shirts for me. Total $50.
After our good fortune at the Goodwill Store we headed over for dinner.
The Euro Cafe is on Main Street in Geneseo, NY and is run by two sisters with authentic Polish accents and boy do they know how to cook!
Our soup was borscht. I had never had borscht before. It’s an earthy soup of beets (hence the red color) and veggies like celery, potatoes and carrots in a rich veggie based broth. It was so delicious Doug even drank the broth.
We each had a different main course. Doug had the Hunter’s platter.
Smoked sausage, perogies, hunter’s stew, mashed potatoes, and a stuffed cabbage roll.
Both platters were delicious with such a depth of flavor! Something you can’t get at a fast food/chain restaurant.
We skipped dessert and had ice cream on the way home. It was a perfect night. I so enjoy my son and these date nights give us a chance to catch up with each other.
I have to admit that I had never been to an Easter sunrise service. I have been to every 10:00 Easter service, every year, for forty years but I have never gotten out of bed in the early dawn to attend a sunrise service. I regret that now.
A few months ago I told our Pastor that my husband and I would like to host this year’s Easter sunrise service. I wanted to experience it and I figured the only way that might happen was if we hosted it at our home.
Easter week was a tough week at work. I was just coming off of being sick for a week with a stomach virus unlike anything I had ever experienced and I was behind. I had a lot to catch up on and I needed to get all of the specialty items prepped for Easter sales. Bunny cakes, Easter egg bread, St. Joseph’s bread, Easter wreathes, dinner rolls, loaf breads and cookie cakes were on the to-do list.
After being pulled automatically through the tunnel that is holiday baking I came out on the other side tired as usual but excited this time unlike usual. I was excited for Easter morning. All week we watched the weather forecast. It was going to be cold that morning. About 27 degrees to be exact. And snow. About an inch or two. These reports did not discourage us.
In addition to the service we also would be serving breakfast afterwards. On Saturday evening I spent about two hours prepping everything for the morning. I baked the quiche, mixed up the dry mix for the scones, cut up all of the fruit, and had the danish and sweet roll dough rising in the fridge over night. I went to bed excited.
We woke up the next morning at 5:30. Our guests were coming at 7:00. I baked everything I had prepped the night before. My husband set up the chairs outside in the cold side yard. People started arriving. My first Easter sunrise service.
Although it was not a sun filled morning, it was crisp and calm. A calm like no other. Most Easter services are filled with glad rejoicing. With singing of praise to our risen King. What I had experienced at this service was calm knowledge and peace. The cold air outside conveyed a peace that our sins were forgiven and that atonement flowed from our Lord to us. What I had been missing all of these years was a more intimate experience with Christ’s Resurrection. A quieter time to reflect and be thankful for His sacrifice.
The service lasted about 20 minutes. We sang hymns, read scripture and listened to the sermon. After worship, we gathered in the warm house and sat in fellowship sipping hot coffee and eating our breakfasts. We were a joyous group.
My husband and I hope to host Easter sunrise service again. Even though it was cold and a little snowy this year I plan on being there next year. I don’t want to miss it ever again. -MM
This time of year I am so happy that I dug up my geraniums and brought them in for the winter. A few posts ago I talked about these beauties and now they are in full bloom! What an encouraging lift they are for me every day. I hope to be using these plants as accents this weekend when we host our Church’s Easter Sunrise Service at our home. Stay tuned.
Pop Bottle Garden Update
My pop bottle experiment has gone fabulously! I have replanted all 24 tiny basil seedlings into their own individual space using two biodegradable cardboard egg cartons. Free and easy container space which of course I love.
The other seeds I tried in the pop bottle soon overtook their spaces blowing off the tops of the bottles within a few weeks. A single tomato plant and zucchini squash were my next experiments. I might have to plant them into another pot instead of waiting until May to set them out. What do you think?
I will definitely be using this method next year for starting my seeds. It worked flawlessly.
Food Waste in the Bakery Department
As you can imagine grocery stores have a lot of food waste every day. To the left is an example of what I pulled off the bakery shelves on a typical Friday morning. Luckily not all of what is pictured in the cart is thrown out. Not yet anyway. We reduce our out of date items and give our customers a chance to purchase them at a lower cost. After that, if items are not sold on the reduced rack then yes, they will end up in the trash. Sad huh?
On a good note though, our store does donate many items that are coming close to their expiration dates to local food pantries and other organizations that will gladly take them.
The bakery and deli departments have another unique way we use items that are damaged or otherwise considered unsellable to the general public. We make stuff with them. What kind of stuff? Yummy stuff!
Every morning the produce man comes around to the bakery and deli departments to see if we can use any of their day’s freshly pulled damaged or undesirable items. Deli usually grabs the tomatoes and peppers and lettuce and re-purposes them using them in salads and the hot foods case for lunch.
Bakery on the other hand can use just about any of the produce. Carrots get ground and used in cakes and muffins, Cranberries get made into coffee cakes, peppers, squash, and asparagus get made into quiche, and of course apples get made into pies. How glorious! This week we got berries. Lots and lots and LOTS of berries. Over ten cases of strawberries in fact. “What the heck do I do with all of these cases of strawberries?” I said to my store manager.
I made lots of things with these strawberries. Scones, fruit breakfast bars, filling for cakes, and finally freezer jam. Yep when you are drowning in berries make jam. I made freezer jam because it was easy and quick. Nine, 16 oz. jars. Yippee! I use the jam in my thumbprint cookies which I bake a lot of. I still have a 5 gallon pail of frozen cut-up strawberries in the freezer to use in the future.
So you might ask why produce had so many bad berries? Many times they arrive that way on the truck. They come in too ripe or too damaged to sell. We get credit from the warehouse on anything that is damaged or not up to par. Instead of throwing them in the dumpster we try to use them. I love turning items that would normally wind up in the trash into something wonderful. What can I say I am a sucker for a freebie! -MM
I have been working diligently on most of my goals for the year but I need to get back on track for others. Here’s how I am doing so far.
1. Renovate our only bathroom and replace the window in our son’s bedroom.
After having two different contractors come in and look at our bathroom we decided that we were going to have to work on some of it ourselves. One of the contractors gave us a quote on re-glazing the tub and putting in a new surround and fixtures. His quote came in at over $4500 and the tub re-glazing was only guaranteed for five years. The other contractor took a look and didn’t like the window we had in our shower. I didn’t have much confidence in getting a bid from him after that, thinking it was going to come in way higher than the other one.
I decided that I would re-caulk the tub myself, which was one of the biggest things bothering me about our bathroom. I had already done it twice before and it hadn’t worked, so I decided to try once more. I got a better silicone caulk this time and went at it on my day off.
Here are the before and after pics.
Pretty yuck right? After spending a couple of hours scraping off the old caulk, cleaning and drying the tub and surround perfectly, I re-caulked the whole thing as carefully as I could. Taking care not to leave any air bubbles or gaps. The instructions said that we could use the shower fully after eight hours but I left it for about 36 hours before we took our first shower. So far, so good. Nothing has started to pull away from the walls or bubbled.
Replace our son’s bedroom window. Done!
2. Catch-up on and read my favorite daily blog – “Feed Your Family for $100 a Month” by Mavis Butterfield. Also catch-up on and read a really great e-magazine “From Scratch”.
I still am not caught up on “How to Feed your Family for $100 a Month.” I read through about 30 blog posts but I am still behind by about 60. Sigh…
From Scratch is a bi-monthly e-magazine. I did read one of the issues but after reading it I was so frustrated with the poor editing that I have put it on the back burner. I love the information in this magazine and the photos are beautiful, however, if you can’t edit your spelling I tend to not to want to take you seriously. I even wrote an email to the editor but as you can imagine I didn’t get a response.
3. Journal Daily
I have kept up on my journal writing but sometimes I am a week or so behind and by the time I get a moment to write I have forgotten the details of those days. I have resorted to using my Facebook posts and texts to fill in the blanks. My goal is to write daily so I won’t forget anything. I am happy that I have written something for each day no matter how small the post may be.
4. Pay off one of our two credit cards
Here is my major focus this year. I have to say I am completely and utterly frustrated and stressed out about these two credit cards. Almost two years ago all of our credit cards were paid off and I was very proud of that fact. But life happens and yet again we are back in the vicious credit card cycle. When I had my bakery we had to put everything on hold including house repairs and waiting to buy new furniture and many other necessities. After I got my full time job as a bakery manager with a steady paycheck we faced the task of catching up on four years of back repairs and aging vehicles and household items. We needed so many things. Our couch was falling apart, my car died after ten years of faithful service, my husband got into an accident and the deductible was $1000. All of that went on a credit card because I knew now that I had a job along with my husband’s full time job we could afford payments.
Now we have the huge task of yet again paying these things off. I think about them almost every day. We will do it. I don’t know how. But we will. Stay tuned.
5. Organize our attic
Still nothing yet
6. Exercise three times a week
I haven’t done very well with this. I did work out twice two weeks ago. Does that count?
7. Read one book a month
I finally finished Fall of Giants, by Ken Follett. It only took me nine weeks to listen to it. I did also read and finish Takedown Twenty, by Janet Evanovich. I use Evanovich books as a kind of palate cleanser in between heavy novels like Follett’s, Giants. How can you not laugh at Lula and Grandma Mazur?
8. Send out birthday and anniversary cards each month
All set with March’s birthdays!
9. Make copies of my Granny’s recipes and give a copy to each of our family members.
Nope. Not a thing yet.
10. Digitize my Dad’s family’s photos and make photo books and give CD copies to each of our family members
So far I have about 100 photos scanned and put on disc. It really is fun.
11. Blog at least once a week
So far, so good!
12. Read the Bible from cover to cover with my husband
I have to admit we are behind in reading our Bible daily. We may not finish it in a year but my husband and I are still reading and growing in the Lord’s Word.
I feel good about my progress on my 2015 goals. Do you have goals? What are they and how are you doing on them? – MMR
On Monday night I taught a class at a local high school on basic cake decorating. I love doing these classes because I get to meet new people and everyone has a smile on their face by the end of the class. Learning something new is always exciting!
In my basic class I give each new student a goody bag with a writing tip, a border tip, a coupler and a few disposable pastry bags. There is a misconception that cakes have to be fancy to be beautiful. With just these two pastry tips you can do a lot to make your cakes look professional without having to learn advanced skills.
I had 10 students, all women, ranging in age from early college to mid 60s. I started them off with the border tip and we practiced how to hold the bag. What I recommend to everyone is that they practice their piping skills on their kitchen counters or tables so that they can wipe the surface clean and keep practicing over and over. In fact if I have a new design that I am working on I practice piping it first on the counter. It’s a lot easier to scrape off my attempt on my counter than it is to have to scrape it off the cake and potentially ruin it.
After we practiced borders we then switched the border tip out for the writing tip using the same pastry bag. The writing tip is really the most versatile of all pastry tips in my opinion. Not only are you using it to write names on a cake but it truly can be like a pencil in your hand. Below is an example of an Iron Man cake I did with just the writing tip and the border tip.
As you can see in the first photo, I outlined Iron Man’s head first then filled it in. Then in the second photo the details of his face pop after I outline them with the black. Now some people might want to smooth the lines to even out the texture but I liked the texture so I left it alone.
The idea of using the counter to practice my writing skills was given to me by my first and only cake decorating boss. She stressed how important it was to practice first before having a go at the real thing.
The class lasted about 2 hours and everyone had a blast. Lots of questions were asked and lots of answers were given. Some of the ladies had experience in cake decorating but enjoyed the advice they were given and some of the ladies were completely inexperienced and loved learning something new.
I think they did a darn fine job! What do you think?
I also like to print this example of some of the most popular decorating tips and what they are used for. I give it to all of my students to keep as a reference.
I also want to mention that this would be a very creative and fun way to spend some time with your kiddos on a weekend afternoon. Give them some disposable pastry bags and a few tips and let them loose on your kitchen counters. I promise they will love it! -MM
I finally finished my DIY project that I was working on a couple of weeks ago. My kitchen shelves.
BeforeAfter
All are painted now and dried thoroughly. I put down my favorite shelf liner which is non-sticky and plastic so it wipes clean.
I also brought down from my attic a box with beautiful crystal and milk glass pieces that have been stored up there for about a decade. They were my Granny’s and she had them on the very same shelves. They were packed away after she died and I decided to bring them out and showcase them again.
Aren’t they beautiful? I am very please with how everything turned out. Now to make a curtain to hide the containers on the top shelf. Or maybe I could get new containers. Hmmm… -MM
Last Sunday I started a few basil seeds in my new mini ecosystem thingy which I mentioned in my last blog post. The idea is to use two 2-liter pop bottles to make an enclosed mini greenhouse. I planted and watered the seeds in on Sunday and placed the bottle on a warm radiator and by Wednesday tiny seedlings were popping up. Cool! So far this system is working great. I will continue to give updates and experiment with other seeds to see how they fare in this kind of environment.
30 Day Challenge
A few months ago I challenged myself, my husband and my son to a 30 day challenge. We would not eat out, get take-out or go through the drive-thru for an entire month. Yeah. This was tough for us. I love to cook but by the time I get home some nights I have seen too much food and too many dishes and I would rather just order a pizza for dinner. This kind of eat out lifestyle had left me feeling very mediocre. I used to be the wife that would have a great meal on the table every night for my family. It was always balanced with a protein, a carb and two veggies.
After opening my bakery in 2010 and leaving my desk job as a legal secretary our home meals were rushed, quick and downright, yes, mediocre at best. After working a 12 hour day standing on my feet, I had no desire to stand even a second longer making dinner. My husband doesn’t cook but he is the best at ordering take-out.
Now that my self-employed career was done and I had a full time job again I was itching to get my mojo back when it came to cooking. We were spending a ton of money eating out and why should we eat out when my husband would say my cooking was better! What really got me into this challenge was having dinner at a local BBQ joint and it cost me over $85 for three of us to eat! Not cool! I knew I could do better and I knew it would be a lot cheaper if I cooked for us at home.
Now this was a self-imposed 30 day challenge. I came up with the idea myself so I made my own rules.
Here were my rules:
1. No eating out at a restaurant, ordering take-out from a restaurant or going through the fast food drive-thru.
2. No eating out at all including not just dinner but breakfast and lunch too.
3. No coffee out or fancy drinks like Lattes, Mochas or Frappes. Yes that meant no Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Tim Hortons or local coffee shops. We own three coffee machines so we would make our coffee from home.
4. Meals had to be made at home. They don’t have to be made from scratch either. I don’t care if you want to eat a bowl of cereal for dinner, just make it at home.
5. Farmers markets and grocery stores are your friends and should be your daily inspiration. If you have room to grow a veggie garden than all the better. Can’t get much healthier or more inexpensive than growing it yourself.
6. The only exceptions would be school lunches. (At only $1.40 a lunch I couldn’t pack a lunch less expensive than that) and if we had already planned a dinner out a month in advance we could still honor our previous commitment and go out that night.
I have to say we really enjoyed our month cooking at home. My son enjoying cooking with me. Our garden was still alive so we could harvest lettuce, carrots, swiss chard, cabbage and herbs. Working at the store was helpful because I was already there and I made myself stay and shop so there was no excuse for not wanted to go to the store. I also got my love for cooking back. I really missed it.
I did slip a couple of times. I was summoned to jury duty that month and it was pretty tough to bring a bag lunch even though I did stash some fruit and granola bars in my purse. Also once, we went to Subway on a night where I was completely wiped out and we figured that was the cheapest, healthiest way to enjoy a night out.
I might have to do the challenge again. I really didn’t like paying $30 for a small pizza and 12 wings yesterday. Would you try a 30 day challenge like this?
A meal our 13 year old made usNaan flatbread pizza
My Work
Work at the store gets very slow this time of year. After the hustle and bustle of the holidays people tend to hibernate after December. Here in Western, NY we have been plagued by many snow storms including our November super-storm which brought national attention to southern Buffalo.
After such a slow week last week I decided to jump-start people and get them in the spring and summer event planning mood with a few pictures on my Facebook page. I posted 5 different categories of goods that would be perfect for baby and wedding showers, custom cut-outs, character cakes and small weddings.
If you have an event coming up in the spring or summer of this year it is best to start getting your thoughts together now while it’s quiet. Bakeries love to hear from people well in-advance of an upcoming event. This gives them enough time to order or hand make special decorations for a cake if needed and gives the person hosting the event the peace of mind that their wishes will be met correctly and their event will be perfect. What kind of event are you planning for the summer? -MM
I was in a winter blues kind of mood yesterday. I was looking through my order book from 2014, before I took my job at the grocery store. Taxes have to be done to finish up closing my business books and I saw all of the people I had baked something for in March and I was kind of sad it was over. I needed something to get me out of my mood so I turned off the computer and got my grungies on and went in my basement to tackle cleaning off my potting workbench.
I love gardening. It isn’t work for me. It is relaxation and creativity and a way for me to connect with myself and my surroundings. I feel at peace even if I am shoveling 50 lbs of topsoil or turning my compost pile.
In the winter I like to plan and dream of my spring garden. I get my seed catalogs out as soon as the new year arrives. I pour over them looking at what’s new for the season. Sometimes I order and other times I have seeds left over from last year.
This year I have a ton of seeds left over from 2014. Working at a grocery store has it’s perks and one day this last fall, I went to sit at the break table for lunch and there were two big boxes of seeds for us employees to take for FREE!
Apparently the grower didn’t want the packets back because they were last year’s seeds and it wasn’t worth it for them to pick them up. So management left a note on the boxes to take any that we wanted. SCORE!
So I cleaned the heck out of my workbench which I love dearly. My grandfather built the workbench into the basement room with the most windows in it so he could start his seedlings in the sunniest spot in the house. It always makes me feel better when I work on it. Today was just cleaning, but I did plant a bit of basil in my new homemade ecosystem thingy that I will show you in another post if it works properly.
I also got a nice chat in with my geraniums that I re-potted and brought in before our famous November snow storm. One day it was 50 and the next we had three feet of snow. Screwy NY weather. I re-potted 9 geraniums at the last possible second before they got hit with frost and brought them inside. They love it when there is a sunny day and the light streams in warming them.
I had a wonderful afternoon with my plants and fresh dirt and sunshine. Even on a cold wintery day it definitely chased my winter blues away. – MM
Join Mavis Butterfield for vegetable gardening and canning tips, easy recipes, and saving money strategies (Rug hooking, too!). Simple living at its best!
also got a nice chat in with my geraniums that I re-potted and brought in before our famous November snow storm. One day it was 50 and the next we had three feet of snow. Screwy NY weather. I re-potted 9 geraniums at the last possible second before they got hit with frost and brought them inside. They love it when there is a sunny day and the light streams in warming them.
The Professional Domestic 
