Homespun Help.

Lately, I’ve been semi-obsessing over new ideas for the Homespun Haley shop. Admittedly, I’ve also been semi-proud of myself for thinking things through before diving into them. I’ve been drawing up ideas and sewing several prototypes until I reach the best design. Even though I’ve got about a million ideas that flutter through my mind everyday, what actually gets created and sold depends on one thing…what you want. I may think I have a good idea of what those things are, but how could I possibly if I’ve never asked? Here are some ideas I’ve been kicking around.

So please, please, please, take a moment and let me know…what would you LOVE to see in the Homespun shop? More jewelry?  More clutches? Something random that I’ve never thought of? Leave a comment here or head on over to the Homespun Facebook Page and comment there. You never know…there might just be a giveaway that comes out of all this. ;)

Olive Garden Breadsticks

So, maybe you don’t want to know this recipe. It’s a guaranteed way to pack on a few pounds. These breadsticks are so delicious and taste almost exactly like the Olive Garden one’s you know so well. They’re also relatively simple. I’ve told myself I can only make them again when someone comes over to help me eat them. Anyone up for a visit?

Olive Garden Breadsticks:

• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 1 packet active dry yeast
• 4 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter melted
• 2 Tbsp. sugar
• 1 Tbsp. salt

Seasoning:

• 1/2 stick melted butter
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon salt (Note – I thought this was too much. Next time I’ll do half the salt)

1. In a large bowl, dissolve sugar and yeast in warm water and allow to sit for 10 minutes, covered. Mixture should be frothy.

2. In separate bowl, combine flour and salt. Add to yeast mixture. Add melted butter. Mix with paddle attachment of stand mixer or wooden spoon until fully combined.

3. Knead dough for a few minutes just until dough is smooth. Do not overknead!

4. Grease a cookie sheet. Pull off pieces of dough and roll out into strips. Cover the dough and let sit in a warm place for 45 minutes to an hour. (I like to heat my oven to 150, then turn it off…nice and warm for bread to rise in – they should double in size)

5. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and once heated, pop in the bread sticks.

6. Combine melted butter (or 1/2 cup margarine), garlic powder and salt.

7. After bread sticks have cooked for 6 or 7 minutes, brush the bread sticks with half the butter mixture. Then continue to bake. Bake for 5-8 more minutes.

8. Immediately upon removal from the oven brush the other half of the butter on the sticks (Also delicious with parmesan sprinkled on them). Allow to cool for a few minutes before eating.

9. Say “Yum.”

Lyra-Girl

It’s been a sad couple days for my Hubby and I. Our hen Lyra died  two nights ago. A raccoon got into the coop and snagged her. We’re both so sad and feel incredibly guilty. For the past two years, we often wait until well after dark to close our coop up. We’ve never had a problem. Well this one time we weren’t so lucky. We got home late and following our normal routine we started to close everything up. As Matt approached the coop he noticed a raccoon scurry across the yard. He soon discovered poor Lyra-girl. We must have been just a few moments too late. She was in-tact except for an injured neck. We pray she went quickly. We buried her in the back yard and held Miss Marple for a long time. She narrowly missed being a raccoon snack as well. Now Miss Marple is out there all alone. Luckily for her, she’s got six buddies who will join her in a few weeks. Until then I take a chair out into the run and sit with her to keep her company.

It’s odd. Matt and I actually grieve the loss of Lyra, not just a hen. The fact that I had about 80 pictures of her to choose from should tell you something. We’ve been talking about her individual quirks, her beautiful  feathers, her puffy cheeks and beard, her green eggs and memories of her crazy chicken-hawkness.

I’ve come to realize that it will always be hard to loose a hen. The grief might become less and less shocking, but in reality hens die all the time. They get sick, they get eaten, they get in fights with cats/dogs/eachother, they don’t have very long life spans. Chickens die in chicken ways, which is usually not graceful. But when we think of our pets, we hope they die in natural and graceful ways. When they don’t, when they die suddenly and painfully, it’s all so tragic. So I’m working on how to reconcile these two elements of my pet-parenthood. How do I keep loving my chickens as dear pets, but grieve for them appropriately when they die not-so-pretty chicken deaths? Cause we’ve got 7 more to go folks and I’m really not looking forward to sobbing that much.

If you feel like it, pop on over and read these old posts about Lyra (“A Brood Awakening” and “She’s Back.”)…they are some of my favorites.

P.S. To those with chickens…if you have a run to enclose your ladies make sure you lock them in there if you’ll be away past nightfall. If you don’t have a run, make sure you get them closed in their coop when it gets dark. You honestly never know when something might happen and it’s best to err on the side of caution.

Pinterest Fail – Watercolor Streamers

Well it’s happened again. I turned to Pinterest for help with some cheap DIY party decor. And once again, I botched a project.

A dear friend of mine has a baby on the way. I was decorating for her shower at our church. Church baby-showers are not typically supported by big budgets. So I figured I would try out this streamer water color idea. Cheap, cute, unique. And I had several roles of white Dollar Tree streamers left over from who knows what. How could it go wrong?

Here is the original pin:

Now I thought the outcome of the above project was subtle but cute. I bet I could make them more vibrant.

Here’s how it works:

Mix food coloring with water until you get your desired color.

Dip the streamer into said water.  Give it a second. Pull it out.  Let it dry. 

Seems simple enough. I started this project 2 days before the shower. (The shower was on a Sat morning…I made these on Thursday morning). Who would have thought it would take 2 whole days for these to dry? Not I.

Well. It didn’t take two days to dry. It took 8. EIGHT WHOLE FREAKING DAYS.

In the original post, she mentions the whole drying-slow thing and she actually took a blow dryer to hers. I was not in the mood for blow drying streamers. HENCE why I gave myself 2 WHOLE DAYS of buffer time.

Beyond the whole drying thing…here’s how they turned out:

First off, they became really brittle and crunchy. And Secondly, most of them ended up looking more like something in a surgeons trash can. (Which I noted would be handy come October.)

The colors bled, which could actually look cool…
…IF the color actually soaked all the way through the streamer. Instead the colors ended about 12 inches into the darn thing.

They also soaked up rust off my old-craft cooling rack I set them on. Good for the crappy cooling rack…bad for the streamer.
I even set them out in the sun at one point, to get them dry faster. One rolled off and landed in the dirt. Ugh.
All in all, the lessons I learned for this are as followed:

#1. Use less water. Like a 1/4 cup is enough. But you probably won’t see the color by the end of the streamer…I’m guessing. And I’m not going to do it again to find out.

#2. This will be most handy when you actually need a bloody-gauze look. Halloween.

#3. Buy colored streamers.

Kale Pesto Pasta (Vegan)

I was “stumbling” the other day and was led to a website called Roots and Seeds. I started poking around and was finding the best looking recipes! It was when I came across this one for kale pesto that I stopped what I was doing and made it that night. I’ve made it several times since. I had been waiting impatiently for our kale to grow large enough for this meal, and with all the sun we’ve had lately that happened sooner than I thought!

The kale in this recipe is only slightly wilted, leaving a lot of the nutrients in the greens. Kale is so freaking good for you it’s not even funny. This recipe is super easy to whip up and with only 8 ingredients it’s surprisingly delicious. If you are not concerned about the whole vegan thing, feel free to add parmesan at the end.

Kale Pesto Pasta

• 1 head kale, cleaned with stems removed
• ¼ cup toasted pine nuts or walnuts (I used walnuts)
• 3 small shallots, peeled
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 package brown rice pasta (I used Trader Joe’s Organic Brown Rice Fusilli)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Juice of ½ lemon

Directions

In a small frying pan, toast the nuts over low to medium heat, stirring continuously to avoid burning. Remove from heat when nuts are toasted and set aside.

In a sauce pan, boil water and then add the garlic and shallots, boiling them for 3 minutes.

Add the kale and allow to simmer for 10 seconds.

Remove kale, shallots and garlic with a slotted spoon and add to a food processor. (Don’t worry about draining water off the leaves – the excess water will add a needed liquid)

Add nuts, olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper to the food processor and pulse until smooth.

In the water that was used for boiling kale, garlic and shallots, add the brown rice pasta and cook according to package directions.

Drain and combine with kale pesto.

EAT!

Spud Killer

Okay. So I was weeding some of our veggie beds today. There is one in particular that I was weeding…my soon to be brussel sprouts bed. Anywho, I was weeding away, ripping things out and tossing them in a bucket. I yanked real hard on one weed and “POP!”, out came a potato. WHAT!?

 When I took a closer look, sure enough the foliage looked just like a potato plant. Okay, do potatoes go to seed? I was astonished…I felt like a murderer. How the hay-bails does this happen? I find it so fascinating because I have only ever planted potatoes with actual spuds.

Here is a picture of where this bed is located in comparison to our potato box. I can only assume the potatoes went to seed and made a mini-edible tuber in the neighboring box.

Anyone have an explanation? I could just google it, but that seems less fun.

French Toast w/ Homemade Honey Syrup.

Mmmmhhhh…I love me a good breakfast meal. ANY time of the day. French toast is a rarity in our house. And really, I just usually google, “French Toast Recipe” and make the first on the list. Not bothering to fancy it up or pay attention to the process.

However, this particular morning was special. My 11 year old BFF Lexie was sleeping over, and we wanted something spectacularly special to cap off a great weekend. Hence, the fancy french toast.

I again googled “French Toast”, but spent a little more time looking for something different. Alton Brown’s recipe caught my eye because though the ingredients were simple, they were a little different, with the addition of honey. I also liked his suggestion of draining the bread beforehand and letting the bread sit in a warm oven afterwards. I thought these steps added a crispness that was oh so good.

Last minute I realized I was out of syrup and powdered sugar. Uuuuhhh….so again I googled, “homemade syrup simple” and eventually I was led to a honey syrup. Basically honey mixed with water and sugar. But MAN is it good!

This french toast is really rich. There is no need to add extra butter and the lightly sweet honey syrup was absolutely perfect. All in all this meal made my freaking day. Lexie’s too.

French Toast:

1 cup half-and-half

3 large eggs

2 tablespoons honey, warmed in microwave for 20 seconds

1/4 teaspoon salt

8 (1/2-inch) slices day-old or stale country loaf, brioche or challah bread

4 tablespoons butter

In medium size mixing bowl, whisk together the half-and-half, eggs, honey, and salt. You may do this the night before.

When ready to cook, pour custard mixture into a pie pan and set aside.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Dip bread into mixture, allow to soak for 30 seconds on each side, and then remove to a cooling rack that is sitting in a sheet pan, and allow to sit for 1 to 2 minutes.

Over medium-low heat, melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a 10-inch nonstick saute pan. Place 2 slices of bread at a time into the pan and cook until golden brown, approximately 2 to 3 minutes per side.

Remove from pan and place on rack in oven for 5 minutes. Repeat with all 8 slices. Serve immediately with maple syrup, whipped cream or fruit.

Honey Syrup:

Equal parts sugar, water and honey – heated on the stove. I did 1/3 cups worth of each. Stores well in the fridge for later use.